And Jennifer, actually, anybody who answers the phone, just say, I want the help. Everybody take their seats, please. Stay standing. Yeah. We're going to start with the pledge of allegiance. As you stand, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Ready for the roll call? Yes, sir. Donald Dice. Here. Mark Shrope. Rick Nipper. Here. Bruce Larson. Kimberly Newton. Deborah Harmon. Here. Laura Lee Thompson. Nicholas Sanzon. Richard Bankhead. Here. Aaron Adams. Kurt Smith. Here. Fred Goldstein. Here. Barbara Scanlon. Here. Eric Maness. Here. John Windsor. Charles Venuto. Here. We do have quorum. Amazingly enough. Looks pretty empty today. Approval of the agenda for today. I'll make a motion to approve the agenda. Did you get those? I did. Deb and Mark. Any comments on it from anyone else? All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? No. It passes. The approval of the minutes from the last meeting. Hopefully everybody reviewed them in detail. I'll make a motion to approve the minutes. Second. No stick Bankhead. Okay. Second. Any comments? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? No. Progress report. Good morning. Okay. After last month's comment about having to compare the previous month to know what had changed, with this report, everything on the front page is new and different from last month. So if it didn't change, we didn't include it. The one thing that looks the same is in that top line where it says 128 community projects completed, 2,457 homeowner projects, and 987 conversions to sewer. That should be 988 conversions to sewer. The first thing completed this month is Aaliyah's beautiful annual report. It came back from the printer. So we have more for you all to take with you and distribute. We've also been distributing them to the cities as we've been meeting with them, and so we're working on getting them out into the community. The Homeowner Association Pond Pilot Program, the grant, all the deliverables for the grant that funded that pilot program have been completed. The final report was submitted. You'll hear more about that later on your agenda. We have five more quick connects to sewer completed, 43 more septic upgrades completed, six more repairs of leaky private sewer lateral pipes. Several more contracts executed, one more video completed, and a derelict vessel removed. Lots of projects underway. So the Willow Lakes package plant connection to sewer, that bid is advertised for construction. West Melbourne, their reclaimed water, they're excavating for the new aeration tank. West Melbourne's Ashley and Dundee septic-to-sewer projects, the lift stations have been installed. South Beaches A, that's where that extra sewer connection came from that was noted in the top line. Sykes Creek Zone N septic-to-sewer, the sewer pipe installation is now underway. South Beaches Zones O and P, the pre-construction meeting was held, and we're reviewing the submittal documents to get construction underway. South Central Zone A is out to bid. The construction bids are due at the end of the month. Sharps B, septic-to-sewer, we receive the 100% design documents, and those are under review. Sharps A, septic-to-sewer, we receive the 75% design documents that are under review. South Central Zone D, we have a new consultant on board who is reviewing the survey data and geotechnical data collected by the first consultant, and they're looking to see, you know, how much of that they can use and then, you know, where they need to pick up and move forward from. For the stormwater basin on Flamingo Drive, that was reported as completed earlier. They're working on the punch list. For the South Babcock bioreactor, construction began this week. For Sand Dollar, we have a contractor for construction. It's the same contractor who's working on the box culverts under the road there, so as soon as they finish the box culverts for public works, they will begin work on our stormwater improvements upstream. The land acquisition to treat three stormwater basins on North Merritt Island, these projects have been held up for years now in a legal tussle, and a settlement agreement was finally reached and approved by the judge, and so we're excited to be able to have land to be able to provide treatment for those stormwater basins. The O'Galley muck dredging project, they are preparing to mobilize the pipeline to get dredging underway. The Cocoa Beach muck capping project, we've completed negotiations of the master contract and the task order, and documents are being circulated for signature now. Grand Canal, the old fence has come down, the new fence is going up, and we will continue to monitor the survival of the rest of the plantings to restore the site. Sykes Creek muck dredging, the dewatering site there on the north side of Walmart is under construction, and we're preparing the bid package for the dredging. We have a lot of contracting underway. I just wanted to explain for a moment, you know, we get scopes of work for our projects. We review those to make sure that, you know, technically they contain what they need to contain, and then they go through county review with the county attorney's office, risk management, and the purchasing office for procurement. And then once all of those experts have reviewed and approved the documents to move on, then they go to whatever signature level is required for the dollar value. So, you know, a lot of things have to go to the county manager or have to go to the chair, and so they go through a whole review process that way. So that's why you see so many documents under contracting. It's just a, it's quite, there's a lot of review that goes into making sure that the dollars are spent the way they're supposed to be spent, and all the contract requirements are what they need to be. We shot a new video of the giant drone distributing clams down in Grant this week, and the nanobubble water treatment demonstration, zooplankton monitoring that we're doing that Aaliyah described last month, she was, they were successful with their sea monkey trial, and they have been able to, the machine has been able to capture zooplankton in the marina. The software is still giving us heartburn and not identifying what those little critters are yet, so we're continuing to work through those issues, but we're making headway. April is Earth Month, and so there's just a lot, a lot, a lot going on, so it's all hands on deck, and I just wanted to give a shout out to Don and Fred for also giving presentations this month. We're trying to say yes to everybody who will have us, so a lot going on, and down in volunteer participation opportunities, you know, multiple opportunities every weekend, so pick your favorite group, your favorite location, your favorite activity, get out there, and help the lagoon. That's my report. I have a question, too, whether or not the stormwater projects, is there any monitoring at all done on the success or the outfalls of those? So we monitor a subset of the stormwater projects. I don't know whether these are on our monitoring list or not. We have, we, so we use, you know, if we're using standard DEP techniques, then there's a lot of literature values out there. If we're doing something innovative that there's not a lot of data for, then those are the ones that we tend to collect data on. Yeah, it would be good to understand, you know, some of the newer projects, you know, newer and innovative, I mean, and how well they're doing. So if we could get that information one day. Okay, yeah, we've presented that, you know, every couple years we'll bring in somebody to present on that, but we can get that on the agenda again. Okay, thank you very much. Update. Boy. Go ahead, Kurt. Thank you. We'll go on down the line. Thank you, sir. I just listened to about eight or ten minutes of Virginia talking about all the things that we're doing just this month. I had an occasion. I had an energy audit done by FPL at my house yesterday. And the guy that was doing it about ten minutes in, he said, you live right here on the river. What do you think about this half-cent sales tax? And I said, no. So I said, I think it's a great idea. I think that we would be remiss if we didn't renew it. He said, well, I don't know. I don't see anything going on out there. I love this river, and I just don't think it. I think it's a waste of money. Well, about an hour and a half later, when he finished, he said, when do you guys have meetings? I'm going to come to a meeting and hear all this. So my point is that we know all the things that we're doing. I don't know how we convey that out to the public. I just don't. You know, I just don't have – if we could encapsulate what she just said and put that on every doorstep, half the people wouldn't read it. But the half that did, at least we'd have some educated people out there. So it's a quandary. But I just wanted to bring that to your attention because I was really kind of stunned. And he's a fisherman. He's a guy that, you know, spends time on the river. And he said, well, you know, there's muck and there's – I took him down and showed him the water at my dock. And I said, up until about three years ago, maybe two, I haven't seen the white sandy bottom in probably 10, 15 years. Now it's clear as a bell. And that's after we had all this wind. And it's still clear. So we've made a lot of steps. We just have to convey it to the people. Yeah, a lot of it is not talking at them but letting them ask questions. Mm-hmm. Just one quick comment on the Tire Amnesty Day. The staff did a good job. I dropped off tires yesterday, seven of them on the Sykes Creek, but I hope there's still five more at least that I've seen out there. But they were really efficient and they went great. So whoever's working on that is fantastic. Thank you. Virginia, I have a question about derelict vessels and how do you prioritize the ones to be resurrected right away. And my comment comes from there's a derelict vessel near Squidlips in Melbourne, and it's on the north side of the causeway. And it's a huge mass that's up there, and all I can think of is a speeding boat, because it appears to be in the intercoastal waterway, hitting that in the middle of the night or just during day. And it would be horrific, the damage. So how do we do that? So, excuse me, they need to be reported to FWC as soon as possible. That starts the clock. The state law enforcement have to try to identify who the owner of the vessel is, notify the owner, and then provide the owner a set amount of time to come retrieve their vessel. So we are not allowed to do anything with it until it goes on that list of FWCs, you know, declared to be derelict. The owner is not going to do anything about it. So it's a procedural thing, even though it's very dangerous. Okay, thank you. I appreciate your help, and I appreciate all you're doing. Good morning. All right, so we have received $4.1 million in January sales tax collections. The total revenue from conception is $517 million. For the monthly financial statement, the anticipated $571 million in revenue by the end of the fiscal year, we've actually received $23.5 million. And the expenditures this fiscal year, total assigned is $71.2 million, and actual spend is $15.6 million. Okay, any questions? Yes. On the financial statements, you added a new line for other contributions and donations with $50,000. Yes, that is from the Coastal Conservation. It's for a reef project. They want it to—Terry will explain a little bit more on that one. Later? Great. I can tell you now. We received a donation from the Coastal Conservation Association to install an artificial reef in the Banana River Lagoon near the historic bombing target there. It's right off of 528, and kind of where the new aquarium's going to go. Great, thank you. And then, there were a bunch of moved dollars or something in terms of projects funded under aid to government agencies, projects under aid to private organizations. Oh, you're right. Oh, I'm sorry. Yes, because the fiscal or the plan update, the 2026 plan update, the BCR was posted finally, so that did adjust a lot of the figures out there because we had to match the plan update that was in our budget. And then just moved those numbers to the different categories so the reserves dropped considerably or et cetera. Yes. Got it. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Thanks. All righty. Any other questions? Perfect. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Moving right along. Melanie, you're up first. Looking forward to this, Melanie. Thank you. You too. Good morning, everybody. My name is Melanie Hawater. I'm with the Save Our Indian River Lagoon program, and I'm very excited to share with you today some of the results and lessons learned from our pond pilot program. This project was funded in part with a grant from the Indian River Lagoon National Estuary Program and was matched with Sorrel half-cent sales tax dollars. Our objective was to develop an education outreach program to partner with HOAs to improve stormwater pond maintenance and reduce stormwater pollution in the lagoon. Our central message was that whether you live immediately adjacent to the lagoon or miles inland within the watershed, stormwater runoff from your home and lawn makes its way to your neighborhood stormwater pond and eventually to the Indian River Lagoon. So we wanted to highlight positive actions that homeowners could take around their yard, including lawn care practices, to reduce that stormwater runoff and likewise work with HOAs to highlight positive actions they could make to improve the treatment capabilities of their pond because we believe these are important ways that HOAs can help improve water quality in the Indian River Lagoon. Excuse me. We were able to provide opportunities for both passive and active engagement through this education campaign. Passive engagement opportunities included attending a series of educational presentations, which were interactive in nature with opportunities for question and answer and discussion. And we were also able to implement some active opportunities for engagement as well. And I'm excited to present the results of our water sampling program, our pond assessment field day, and our pond improvement projects. So we had grant funding to offer each HOA to implement best management practices to improve the function of their ponds. We used pre- and post-pilot surveys to gather information about residents' awareness and perception of these stormwater issues and also to evaluate the results, the success of the project, and identify areas for improvement. Here are our four HOAs that participated in the pilot. We had Country Walk HOA in Sun Tree, Tortoise Island HOA in Satellite Beach, Longwood HOA in Melbourne, and South Lakes HOA also in Melbourne. I want to interject here that Country Walk HOA, we actively recruited to participate in the pilot program. We became aware of them. They have been, for years now, implementing best management practices to improve their pond, and they really served effectively as a model to show our other HOAs what was really possible. Our first step was to get our water sampling program up and running. So we leaned heavily on our primary contacts at each HOA to recruit our water sampling team. We designated a lead and a backup, who I worked with closely to schedule our monthly sampling. We developed training materials and trained these volunteers to follow standard operating procedures. We sampled once a month on the second Tuesday of the month, and those samples were sent off to be analyzed for nutrients, specifically nitrogen and phosphorus, and also chlorophyll A, which gives us an indication of the algal abundance in the pond. I'll be presenting today for each pond the nutrient data. On the left, the graphs will show total nitrogen and total phosphorus, and on the right, chlorophyll A. On these graphs, you'll see the sampling months on the x-axis, sampling from November or December of 2024 through March 2026, which was just last month. The nutrient data on the left-hand graphs are measured in milligrams per liter, and that's for TN and TP. And chlorophyll A was measured in milligrams for meters cubed. When we go through here, it's difficult to compare these ponds directly to each other. They were different sizes. They had different watershed characteristics. But we were able to discern some trends. So if we start with country walk HOA, their nutrient data on the left there, you can see the blue dots are the total nitrogen values. And the dotted line represents a trend line. And you'll see that the values were pretty consistent over time. There wasn't a clear upward or decreasing trend that we saw. And the same was true for the total phosphorus values, which are shown in orange. I will point out that even though some of these values look low, across all ponds, nitrogen and phosphorus values were above thresholds where we would consider impaired. When we take a look at the chlorophyll A data at Country Walk, they were quite low values consistently across the sample period, and we actually saw a downward trend line. And keep in mind, this pond already has multiple best management practices in place. Now on to Tortoise Island's Loggerhead Pond. This is a pond adjacent to their community center. We see similar things when we look at the nutrient data. Again, those total nitrogen values, those blue dots on the left, are oscillating within a fairly narrow range. There's not much of a trend increasing or decreasing over time, and the same for the total phosphorus. Again, the chlorophyll A values were relatively low throughout the sample period also at Tortoise Island's Pond. We did start to see a little bit of an upward tick in the last few months. At Longwood HOA, they have two long canal-like ponds. They call them canals, and we sampled the western pond. Here you'll notice that we do have higher levels of total nitrogen and total phosphorus loading in this pond, and we see greater variability there in those blue dots, the total nitrogen values. I want to point out, we don't always know why we might see spikes in some of these values. We might assume someone's fertilizing maybe along that pond. But if you notice the, if you can notice that outlier there at April, that high total nitrogen value, we actually went out and did our pond assessments that month, and there was some hydro seeding to repair, to hydro seed the pond bank at the north end of this pond that likely had some fertilizer in it as well. So this is an instance where we can kind of determine what was behind that high April value. When we move over to the chlorophyll graph, you'll notice I've added a line to show the threshold for where we would consider chlorophyll values high enough to consider the water body eutrophic, which just means that that's very nutrient-rich. We did have a few data points where Longwood had eutrophic conditions, but we never saw active algal blooms at this pond, and when you look at the trend line there for chlorophyll A, it's actually decreasing over time. Finally, our Southlakes HOA, this was their eastern pond, and what we really saw here were seasonal effects. So if you look at the summer months, on the left we had higher total nitrogen and phosphorus values, and what really probably jumps out at you are those sky-high chlorophyll A values in the summertime. So we had chlorophyll A values reaching hyper-eutrophic conditions in that pond. This was the only pond where we saw active algal blooms. And this was not unique to the sample period. This is a seasonal regular occurrence at this pond. So I know there's a lot of data. For each section, I'll summarize some of our lessons learned. So I would say we have very high confidence in the quality of the data that was collected by our water sampling teams. We were able to compile some baseline data to help us better understand nutrient levels in these ponds. And we even had a chance to, we can look at some of the results, which I'll briefly mention here, that have some real-world applications. So when we looked at the total nitrogen across all these ponds, it was primarily comprised of organic nitrogen. The inorganic forms were quite low. So this has implications when we think about improving the nitrification, denitrification processes for nutrient removal. So maybe we can identify some better BMPs to improve nutrient reduction in the ponds. Another key conclusion was really the more the merrier when it comes to the water sampling teams. These individuals were the heart and soul of this pilot program. And I think any efforts to increase the number of people who can be involved in the program would be to the benefit of the success of the program. We did present the results from the water quality data at educational meetings and emailed it out to volunteers. But I think we could do a better job, and the data really needs to be up on a public-facing website where it can be updated regularly, and they can have better access to those data. So the next engagement opportunity were these pond assessment field days. These were really fun. I hope our volunteers enjoyed them as much as I did. You can see they're armed with clipboards. We made some stormwater pond inspection checklists, and we used some UF-IFAS littoral zone and buffer zone scorecards. So we walked the ponds. We checked the inflow-outflow structures. We were looking at bank erosion. We were assessing that shallow littoral aquatic zone to see its feasibility for installing aquatic plants and also evaluating the buffer, the perimeter of the pond. This helped us to not only identify potential maintenance issues that could be then addressed, but also to identify potential best management practices that could be implemented. And that kind of thought process led into our final major engagement opportunity, which were those pond improvement projects. So, again, we had each HOA had grant funding to implement a project. And this is where we really, our involvement with Country Walk as a model really benefited. So in the picture here on the left, you can see Meg Murphy from Country Walk hosted a field trip to their pond. And we have volunteers from both Tortoise Island and Longwood that came over. And on the right-hand side, you can see just the level of improvements they were able to make. So Meg was able to share the challenges and the successes that they had made as a community. And I think this really helped to guide the pond planting process for the other HOAs. So, again, they already had in place this no-mo buffer, which we were interested in seeing how appealing that would be to HOAs to implement, as well as aquatic plantings. So here are some of the projects completed as part of this program. Country Walk HOA decided to go big. They matched the funding we had available to do a kind of three-phase project. On the left, you can see they did a shoreline restoration project for a heavily eroded section of their shoreline. Phase two was to add some native and Florida-friendly plants to create more of a buffer. And then their third phase will be to install some more additional aquatic plants coming later this month. At Tortoise Island's Loggerhead Pond, they decided to go with an aquatic planting project. And they really came out great. It's an assortment of duck potato that's flowering now, pickerel weed, soft rush. We go out there every month, and the plantings are still looking really, really good. There was really high survival there. At both Longwood and Southlake's HOAs, they also went with aquatic planting projects. We had some challenges, partially due to the timing of when we finally got to implementing these. The timing wasn't the best with higher water levels. Southlake's was experiencing some of those algae conditions. So we had lower survival of the plants at these ponds, but the vendors will be coming out soon to replant. And I want to point out, too, that this is kind of an investment that can keep growing. Once these plants get established, they can start to proliferate as well. So I'm excited to see how the replanting goes. Lessons learned from the pond improvement projects. I think, one, in the event of an expansion, I would say really offering a more specific menu of best management practice options. We gave the HOAs some latitude, and if we can make that decision process easier for them, that would probably be good. Also, ensuring that that BMP is a good fit for that specific pond. These HOA volunteers that implemented these projects, I can't overstate how much work they did. They were really project managers to get these, the consensus building approval from their board, and to get these implemented. So if we could simplify that process as much as possible, that would be, I think, a benefit. We used our surveys to assess residents' views of aquatic plantings and no-mow buffers. We found that, in general, residents viewed aquatic plantings more favorably, and that those favorable views improved and increased over time. As I mentioned, I think we can look at improving survival of the plants by looking at planting timing and techniques. The no-mow buffer was viewed slightly less favorably by residents, and they addressed some valid concerns, including aesthetics, maintenance issues, and invasive species proliferation within the buffer. So I think it would behoove us to evaluate and address those concerns so we can make better recommendations to HOAs, because these buffers are important to protect the pond from upland activities. We also found that no-mow buffer was kind of a non-starter as far as a name. It implies that it's untidy, and so I think a better name, like maybe a pond protection buffer, we had suggestions from some of our residents what a better name for that might be. And then finally, we were kind of synthesizing the input and the feedback we were getting from our volunteers to develop some education content that we hoped would help to address that first thing we were talking about with reducing the source of the runoff from homeowner actions. So we really targeted two types of resources. On the left, conversation guides for homeowners who work with a lawn care service. So we created some conversation guides to guide discussions about fertilizer use and irrigation preferences. And then on the right-hand side, we also developed a more comprehensive home and yard care guide for homeowners who do their own yard work. So to conclude some of the lessons learned from this education outreach component, we found that attendance at in-person presentations was limited. So it might be better to create targeted, accessible educational content that's kind of tied to action items, sending it out across a variety of platforms to reach and engage more residents. So we did a good job of engaging our core group of volunteers. They were really the heartbeat of the program. But we struggled to have broader reach to more homeowners. So again, I think that's a major goal, to increase the depth of participation, because again, the greatest impact was with those who were the most engaged, which makes sense. Also, we found that our core volunteers really did a lot of the work for us. I mean, they really got out and could increase the reach and impacts within their neighborhood. Survey results also showed that residents were more willing to participate in community actions over individual actions. And so perhaps revamping the Lagoon Loyal Neighborhood Competition to introduce some friendly competition might be a good idea to incentivize action. We also found with our results from Country Walk that the residents there, and this is in large part due to the ongoing work they had done, had a strong sense of neighborhood pride about what they've been able to accomplish in their neighborhood. And I think that's something that should try to be replicated. And then finally, our survey results also showed HOA-specific differences, and also difference between even folks who live directly on the pond, in view of the pond, and not in view of the pond. So continuing to use surveys to tailor educational content to specific HOA needs, I think, would be beneficial. So in conclusion, we found that residents are certainly interested in more opportunities for this type of sustained active engagement in stormwater projects, and we learned a lot of lessons from this project that could help us improve future programs. And then finally, this project would absolutely not have been possible without the help of all these volunteers from each of our four pilot program HOAs. We have Catherine Vecchio here today from Tortoise Island, along with Megan Murphy from Country Walk, and I know we have some folks listening as well. I'd like to thank again the Indian River Lagoon National Estuary Program for the grant funding they provided, and I'd also like to thank my coworkers with Brevard County Natural Resources and Sorrel staff, especially Cole Stubbe, our stormwater engineer, who helped me a lot with this project. So now, I know that was a lot of information. I think first, before we take questions, you'd like me to have Meg come up? Is that right? So one second here. I want to bring up Meg Murphy from Country Walk HOA, and while she's walking up, I just want to personally thank her. Her input dramatically improved this project. So I'll let her speak a little bit on their involvement in the program. Meg? Hi. Good morning. I'm going old school. I've got my notes on paper. I want to thank you for the opportunity to speak today, and I really want to begin by thanking each of you on the Citizens Oversight Committee for your leadership in protecting the Indian River Lagoon and your oversight that you provide to ensure these public funds are used wisely. I'd also really like to thank the county staff and experts who've generously provided guidance and encouragement over the years. It's been invaluable. Long before the pilot project took off, I'm a very aggressive information seeker, and so I've made lots of phone calls, and lots of people at the county have been very receptive, very encouraging, and very helpful to our neighborhood. So I'm here to show enthusiastic support for the Sorrel Pilot Program. I had the opportunity to participate in 2025, and I want to share what that experience has meant for my community. Some of you might have received an email from me a couple days ago giving you some background information because I really wanted to focus on this pilot. Many HOAs like ours are focused on doing the things the way that they've always been done. More turf, more irrigation, more fertilizer, more spraying, fewer mature native plants, and over time we've learned that those practices come with real costs. Shoreline erosion, declining water quality, loss of habitat, and ever-increasing maintenance expenses, which is really the crux of the conversation with HOAs is they have a fiduciary responsibility just like you. So we need to show them how these choices can benefit them and give them the robust support that they need to make these changes. We wanted our neighbors to feel proud of where they live. We wanted to improve the health and appearance of our community. We wanted to reduce harmful chemical use, and we wanted to protect the lagoon. We weren't sure if that was the entry point for the discussion, right? Kind of like what you were saying earlier, how do we get individuals to hear these messages? You're doing great work, but how do we make it personal for those people? What the pilot program gave to our HOA was validation that those goals are worthwhile and the structure to move forward with confidence. Because of this program, we gained a better understanding of how our pond functions, what was causing the erosion, how native plants, shoreline buffers, and better maintenance practices could make a difference to the IRL. It also helped turn good intentions into measurable actions that helped us understand what the cost would be if we didn't make these changes. Prior to the pilot, Country Rock participated in the Lagoon Loyal Neighborhood Competition, installed a floating wetland. We were also featured on an episode of Flip My Floor to Yard, which has not aired locally, unfortunately, but it talked about how HOAs can make these changes. Each of those milestones built momentum and encouraged more people to get involved. Once we joined the pilot, we were able to capitalize on that momentum and impact the broader community. So today, Century Master Homeowners Association, which includes over 50 neighborhoods, more than 25 stormwater ponds, and over 2,500 acres has implemented a native and aquatic planting and educational signage at a demonstration site. But more importantly, recently, over 70 percent of our voters approved an amendment to the governing documents to adopt Florida-friendly landscape practices on the common areas, really requiring the association to make these changes. Not a homeowner, you need to do this thing, but homeowners compelling the association to make those changes in their practices. And that's a lot of money. Most importantly, this pilot showed that aging HOA communities can be a part of the solution and stop contributing to the challenges we face in the watershed. We all know that there are neighborhoods across Brevard County facing these same challenges. We're all the same. These neighborhoods are all facing the same challenges, and the lagoon is paying the price. We all need education. We need guidance. We need support. And this program can really provide that blueprint for others to follow. I think there's so much potential for impact with community engagement and HOAs, but at the individual level also. I'll be happy to tell you all about it. And I encourage you to continue broadening this effort, providing tiered levels of participation, technical assistance, and education so that more communities can adopt these practices. We are the proof that this model works, and now it's up to all of us to broaden its reach. So I want to thank you for the opportunity. Thanks. All right, I think I can take questions, if that's all right. I have them. Go ahead, Dickie. I have one, too. Oh, thank you. Yeah, that's fantastic. Just a question to help me. How much, the flows, do all these have flows to them? The stormwater ponds and stuff? The ones you looked at. Discharge. Oh, discharge. So, yes, we had, it's interesting, at three of the four ponds, there were outfall structures. That's where we sampled from. At Tortoise Island, interestingly, they have several ponds in that neighborhood. None of them have outfall structures. And if you're familiar where they are in Silent Beach, they're really close to the Nana River Lagoon. So there are no outfall structures, but yet when we measured supplemental water quality data, like salinity, we saw heightened salinity at Loggerhead Pond. So they're actively exchanging water with the pond and the lagoon, the Nana River Lagoon. Yeah, the, all the ones that we see around, you know, the county, do they fall under all the same rules, or we've owned one for a while, is the reason I'm asking? So they're permitted through the St. Johns River Water Management District? That's kind of the primary permitting agency. So you have a lot that predate permitting requirements? Okay. Then you have a lot that were under the rules that were adopted back in the 80s. Okay. And then the recent statewide stormwater rule changes are just now going into effect. Holy micro. Yeah, multiple different rule sets for different communities based on age. I had no idea. I noticed we had one on a piece of property, and a guy from the county had come once every three or four years, and that was about it. But I had no idea they were all different. Hey, thanks. Good job. Wait, we're not done yet. Let's get back here. Go ahead. Okay. So some of these communities have more than one pond, I think you mentioned. Did you then select one of the ponds to do the studies, and how was that selection process conducted? Good question, yes. So we had a lot, and this kind of was kind of delayed the process. We had a lot of meetings, first of all, to kind of shore up support and make sure that that HOA was going to participate. So that involved conversations with our board. But also, Cole Stuby and I, he's a stormwater engineer in our department. We went out, and we did kind of evaluate all the ponds. We even collected some preliminary water quality data, like at Tortoise Island, from several of those ponds. Part of our consideration was how likely and feasible was it going to be to implement some of these best management practices. So, for example, there was a pond that I know Tortoise Island really wanted us to select in their neighborhood. There was a lot of homeowners. It was surrounded by homeowners. It would have been kind of difficult to perhaps implement some of the projects. So it did weigh in. So there was a decision-making process. We didn't have it formalized. We were kind of figuring that out as we went. But we were trying to pick a pond that would be most feasible for kind of the goals we were trying to achieve with the project. Yes. Is there any correlation how much herbicide they use now? We did not quantify that. I mean, I know sometimes we would see lawn maintenance people out spraying. Algaside, also pond maintenance. Oh, as far as some of the treatment practices? Yeah. That's a really good question. You know what? We didn't really take that step. But I think in an expansion of the program, that would be a really good idea. I know I want to mention at Tortoise Island, we did work closely. They have a property manager there. That's Kurt, who's listed on there. And we did work closely with him. So we did have a little more information, I guess, about some of the pond maintenance practices that they had in place. And I guess we did learn some things through personal conversations with Meg. Meg, do you want to? I can actually address that. Do you want to come up to the microphone? And talk into the microphone, please. So in Country Walk, we originally were going to pay our vendor to continue to come and monitor the pond, but not spray unless we instructed them to. And we received significant pushback on that. So we had to change vendors. And in the last four years, we have done some targeted spraying maybe three times, where the prior practice for the last 25 years, we know, was that every single month, the entire pond bank was burned with chemicals. And something anecdotal, the last time we did some targeted spraying of something that would be considered invasive, the feedback we got from the homeowners was, why would you do that? After all of this hard work and how beautiful everything is, why would you go ahead and do this thing? But I will tell you that after several years of hand weeding in the pond, that we wanted it to be something that could be sustained by future boards and future community members. And so we're testing what that means. But we have not used any chemicals in the pond in a year. And they do adhere to the broader buffer, where there's no herbicides or fertilizer within 10 feet of the pond. And though we do, we have a more tightly manicured, better buffer around the pond. That's a significant outcome of the program. Yes, Charlie. So going back to what Kurt started the meeting with about this person who was unaware of what's going on in Laguna or the improvements and the opportunities through the HOAs. And I think Meg talked a little bit about the engagement. So it sounds like there's an opportunity here to use HOAs to help get that word out. And I know the staff has addressed HOAs many times. But it seems like maybe that's another, there's an avenue we need to keep working on. Also, taking an opportunity from the freeze, a little bit off the subject, but putting native plants in. If you had native plants in your yard, they probably did a lot better than the non-natives. So hopefully that's something, too, that maybe people who have been reluctant to put native plants in can now see the benefits of it. And if they haven't, they should go to Catherine's house. I just just mentioned it. I mean, I haven't been over there since the freeze, but I have a feeling everything's A-OK. My yard is, it's, there are a lot of naysayers. And now they are like, why is your yard so green? Why is it flowering? Right, because, you know, over 9% of my yard is native. Yeah. Just to share that, if people couldn't hear, Catherine was sharing before the meeting that she has a lot of native plants in her yard. And with the recent freeze events, some of the neighbors are noticing that she had better survival. And she has a nice green yard. And asking, how do you have a nice green yard? And some of it's related to what she's been working on for years in her yard to propagate native plants. Anything else? Thank you very much. That's really a good program. Is there any plan on continuance? I think for that we would take direction from the committee. Yeah, I think we would like to hear from the committee your thoughts. And if you want to get through the panel discussion on sort of expanded ideas along the same lines first. And then give us some general ideas. That sounds good. Thank you very much. Who's going to present this panel? Well, I asked Dr. Laura Wilson with the Marine Resources Council if she would sort of kick off the panel and help run some panel discussion questions after each of the speakers is given a quick presentation. Thank you. Perfect. Thank you. Thank you very much. So, if you're not familiar with Marine Resources Council, we're an environmental nonprofit that's been working on the lagoon since 1989, or sorry, 1983. And we really have kind of three main places where we fit into the lagoon ecosystem. We're mangrove people. We do a lot of shoreline restoration, specialize in mangrove. We have one of, if not the largest, nurseries in the state and provide mangroves statewide for restoration and mitigation. We do a lot of water quality monitoring and reporting. We've been running a citizen science water quality monitoring program since 1991 and have all the data associated with that. And then we do monthly and annual reporting, translating those data to the public for public education. And we're stormwater people. So, we do a lot with education and advocacy of not just the water in the lagoon, but the water that falls on land. And making sure it doesn't even have the chance to become a problem for the lagoon through runoff. We run conferences. We meet with municipal leaders and elected leaders. And at the heart of all of these work is public education. Low Impact Living is an initiative that we launched last year, which is really a stormwater-based education and advocacy program. If you're not familiar with low-impact development, then it's really just the idea of how to keep rainwater where it falls so that it soaks into the land, it can get clean, it can recharge the aquifer, and it doesn't even have the opportunity to pick up pollution, runoff, and become a problem for our neighborhoods and our lagoon. It's conservation-based, it is a custom design, so each site has to be treated a little bit differently, but it helps preserve biodiversity, clean water, while still allowing for responsible development. It addresses problems of things like stormwater-related flooding. So rather than having all of our concrete and impermeable surfaces that don't allow water to sink into the ground, it allows for that regeneration of water into the soils and our aquifers, reducing flooding. And then you can both use the gray infrastructure, like a baffle box, or green infrastructure, like plants, to address water quality issues. Those plants will absorb the nutrients, use them to grow, and clean the water along the way. It addresses habitat loss by maintaining biodiversity on properties, but one of the things that we don't really talk about is the aquifer. We talk about runoff and the problems with that, so that nutrients, nitrogen and phosphorus, as well as fresh water, are pollutants to the lagoon. Those are both transmitted through runoff, through surface waters. But one of the things that we don't talk about is our aquifers. Pretty much all Floridians get their drinking water from the Florida aquifer. And that aquifer is only recharged through surface water, so essentially through our rainwaters, our stormwaters that fall. And if we don't allow the water to infiltrate through the sediments into the aquifer, we're going to run out of drinking water pretty quickly. And this low-impact development is a way of addressing that. And it uses both gray, green, and gray-green infrastructure. When I say green, I mean plants. When I say gray, I mean kind of hard engineering. By allowing for permeable surfaces like pavers, pervious concrete, things like that. Rainwater harvesting, both on large and small scales. That bottom right picture is these big exfiltration units you can put underground. But also using the green infrastructure, so the bio-retention, like our bio-swales. I know that Vinny will talk about that in a little bit more. Adding green spaces to what have typically been impervious surfaces. And then preserving our trees. A great example of this is the Minuteman Causeway in Cocoa Beach on a municipal scale. So before LID techniques went in, this is what that looks like. You're looking towards the Atlantic Ocean. Behind you is going to be the Indian River Lagoon. And then after this, they put in pervious pavers. I think they have up to 28 parking spots using pervious pavers. They have bio-swales. They have tree boxes. And actually under the intersection, they have exfiltration that can hold up to 190,000 gallons of water that was previously being discharged into the Indian River Lagoon. And this is all great, but not all of our land in Florida is publicly owned where a lot of these projects take place. So this is a 2023 development map where we have our developed areas in red. We have our concentrations along coastlines. If we look at Brevard, 43% of Brevard County is developed. But if we look at statewide trends, most of this land is actually privately held. We have 71% of Florida are privately owned and 77% of our shorelines are privately owned. So that's really places where this infrastructure isn't necessarily getting. And if we look at just both Brevard and statewide trends, we have 65% of our housing are single detached homes with a significant portion of those within HOAs. So we're dealing with different types of restrictions and limitations on a significant portion of our population and our developed land. And this is really where low-impact living is our education and advocacy initiative around stormwater has taken off because we're working on the individual and community levels as well as with elected officials and trying to translate to people what they can do in their own yards and their own lives that can help impact positively stormwater issues and community flooding. The one issue that we run into this, or the most significant issue that we run into this, of course, is with expense. Because all of these retrofitting and existing property comes with an expense. And this is where I proposed having a homeowner grant program that encourages and funds or helps funds green stormwater infrastructure for homeowners that can then be translated to HOAs, to schools, and other community groups. So everything from living shorelines and using native plants to some of that more hard engineering like replacing pavement with permeable pavers. And these are pretty tried-and-true techniques that help reduce stormwater, on the left here you have kind of the root system of common lawn grass versus the root systems of our native plants. So those are going to be more drought-resistant, they're going to be not requiring fertilizer, and they're going to be doing more for absorbing nutrients and preventing erosion. Things like our much-beloved or maligned St. Augustine, after about an inch of a rain, you're not getting any absorption into the ground. It's just running off like it was concrete. Tree canopies. So the power's trees, they can provide cooling, but they also provide a lot of flooding and stormwater protection. Tree canopies can intercept between 25% and 35% of rainfall. And then even trees themselves, they hold water. So this is actually just looking at hackberries. And it's not just trees holding water, it's older trees. So preserving trees, grouping them together into a green space versus you get a tree, you get a tree, you get a tree per quarter acre lot. So the power of all these together. And then again, kind of as the image on the right shows, it's not just the intercepting with the rainfall, it's allowing that rain to seep down into the ground and then infiltrate into our aquifers. Living shorelines, like I said, we're shoreline people, so we're pretty anti-seawall and really seawalls are the most destructive ecological hard armoring or any sort of armoring we can do to our shoreline. They completely disconnect the aquatic ecosystem from the terrestrial ecosystem. So all of those plants and animals that go back and forth between land and water are now cut off from access versus our green infrastructure. So using native plants and native shorelines really promote that biodiversity. They provide the fish habitats and nurseries as well as for oysters and clams. I mentioned that we're mangrove people, so I have to throw in a word for mangroves, both in terms of their nutrient removal power, but also in terms of their shoreline resistance or resilience and really protecting shorelines from storm surges, storm winds, and waves as well. We just heard a lot about stormwater ponds. We don't have as much kind of anecdotal data, or we have more anecdotal data versus Melanie's data, but we've run a few experiments in our own neighborhoods with buffered and unbuffered ponds, showing that a buffer zone alone can reduce nutrient inflow by at least half between different treatments along the shoreline. And then also the power of permeable pavers. So the gray bar is showing rain events. The blue is showing peak flows on typical concrete or asphalt versus the dashed line are showing those reduced flows, so therefore reduced flooding, when you use different types of permeable pavement or pervious concretes. So to not have to kind of start things from scratch, there are a lot of examples out there for similar homeowner grant or rebate program. Probably unsurprisingly, a lot of these are in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. I think most counties in the Chesapeake watershed have some sort of program like this. So this is from Montgomery County, Maryland. They'll do a rebate program for rain gardens, for rain harvesting, for removing pavements and then replacing it with permeable pavement. And I just pulled a couple of examples for how they do this. So they do it per square foot in terms of what that rebate looks like, and then they have the requirements in terms of letters of approval, working with certified builders and things like that. And then they do both the residential and commercial, so working with businesses or working with schools and things like that. So that was rain gardens, and this is a permeable paver refit, a retrofit, so removing the pavement of a typical driveway and replacing it with permeable pavers. So again, both the residential and the commercial. Another example from Maryland County, I thought this was pretty interesting. So I just really looked at their native landscape for conservation landscape. So they actually require 100% native landscape, a minimum of 250 square feet, so that's pretty typical. This one just made me think of Camille and some of her programs, is they actually have an edible conservation landscape with 75% native and then up to 25% edibles, herbs, vegetables, and fruits. And then they have a rewilding program, so for larger spaces, 1,000 square feet or more for installing native landscapes. I brought this one up from King County in Seattle because this one directly addresses issues of equity, that there is problems with some of these programs, looking like they're benefiting the wealthy shoreline homeowners more. And this one in Seattle, they actually have two different kind of tiers or funding based on economic status of the applicant to allow these things to happen in much more diverse and equitable across neighborhoods. I didn't pull that example, but there's another example in Maryland where they actually gave a $100 rebate if you pumped your septic tank at least every three years. So kind of rebates for septic maintenance. And then the last one, this is the only example from Florida I could find, so this is from Jupiter, and they fund through a grant about three different types or three different types of stormwater projects. Water quality, so everything from constructed wetlands, exfiltration, grass swales or bioswales. They do flood mitigation, so putting in some more of the hard and gray infrastructure. And then they do erosion control, so things that are going to be along slopes and along shorelines. And this is an up to 50% reimbursement program that they have. But that was kind of where I thought that we could help address a large portion of the land that in communities that might not have as much access to some of the funding that's being granted to more of the public lands. But anyways, thank you for your time and the opportunity to present this. And I'll hand it over to, I can't remember who's next, before we start the panel. Camille. Camille. Sorry, so next up is Camille Hadley, and she runs the Little Growers program. I'm going to look, I'm kind of tall. So I'm going to move this just a tiny bit there. You can move it wherever you want. All right. Can y'all hear me okay? Good morning. And thank you, Oversight Committee, for the opportunity to present Little Growers' work to you today and to the community for being here and participating in the important work of restoring the lagoon. As Virginia mentioned, my name is Camille Hadley. I am the founder and executive director of Little Growers, Inc. And I'm going to be honest with you, when I started this work, I had no idea what was going on in the lagoon. I just wanted to address issues of food insecurity in my community, which was a USDA-designated food desert community. So our focus initially was on growing organic foods and teaching youth in our community how to do that. And then Hurricane Irma hit, and stormwater sat in the streets of my community for three weeks straight. So as I was standing at the edge of my driveway in this stormwater, I always say, God speaks to me. And I heard the Holy Spirit say, hey, you can fix this and feed the people. So I started rethinking the way that Little Growers' does work. And I started by having conversations with my community. Not asking them to show up where I was, but showing up where I knew that they were. Going to the community neighborhood watch meetings, going to the community events, going to the youth programs, joining the South Brevard NAACP, and becoming the environmental and climate justice chair. That's how I showed up to find out where my community was having conversations about how stormwater was affecting them, how pollution was affecting them, but also how they were being impacted by this issue of food insecurity. And as I began to learn about all of these things, I began to learn about their connections and the intersections that they had with the Indian River Lagoon. So we started engaging our community, and we started that with the focus of our mission. And Little Growers, Inc. mission is to empower youth and communities to build more resilient, equitable, and sustainable future through hands-on education, workforce training, and nature-based solutions. We work with the community to design place-based solutions to local challenges like food insecurity, habitat loss, and climate vulnerability. And we do this through our four core focus areas, which include community education and connection, our youth programs, green infrastructure design and development, and our workforce development programs. And these are some examples of how we're doing that community engagement. So prior to this work, our community was considered a weather desert, which means that there was no information about how weather was affecting our community coming out of that neighborhood. So in partnership with Florida Tech and the Department of Energy grant that we received, we've installed 11 weather stations in our community that are currently being monitored by residents. So these weather stations are on residents' properties. They're collecting data about rainfall, temperature, and humidity, and all of the things. And we're using that data to predict future flooding, sea level rise, and stormwater issues that could impact our community in the future. Also, we have, of course, our volunteer events. Most recently, on April 4th, the day before Easter, we planted the Jackson Street Food Forest. So I'll share more about that later. We've also done a native plant prairie at Stone Middle School. And we have lots of volunteers. Just on April 4th, we had 68 community volunteers come out and join us to help us with that planting. We also do this through our community education, which includes our Make a Green Noise forum. Make a Green Noise, we've had eight of those forums. We engage community members and stakeholders in conversations about designing solutions around food insecurity, lagoon restoration, and stormwater mitigation within our community. And, of course, our summer Earn and Learn program, which is funded through our Department of Energy grant currently, we work with 13- to 18-year-olds to educate them about lagoon restoration. And as they grow through the program, they are moved up in the program. So we pay them to participate in the program. Students entering the program start at $500. They move up to mentor. Then they can earn up to $700. And then as they stay in the program, they can become staff in our program. And they earn up to $1,200. And they do that all while doing restoration in the Indian River Lagoon. And we also have our quarterly steering group meetings. We are thankfully funded by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. We won a grant from them last year for, I believe, $668,000. And I always say I like to tithe back to my community. So about 10% of that grant went back into other community organizations and nonprofits within our community to continue to have conversations with us about this restoration work and to help us design that. So we currently have six community-based organizations that we funded $10,000 each to do this work with us. So as I mentioned, our Make a Green Noise is where we educate community. We've had eight such forums so far. And what we've learned is that our community is pretty educated about their needs, right? Where people thought that they weren't educated about climate and environment and the lagoon, we've learned that not only are they educated, but they're excited to learn more. So we've used our Make a Green Noise forums as a tool to continue to grow that education and engage them in solutions designed for the lagoon and for the other problems that our community is facing. We have average attendance of about 64 people to each one of these events, with a total of 325 unique participants over eight forums. Another project that we are about to start working on that we're really excited about is our Celebrating Urban Birds project. This project is being funded through the Cornell Lab Celebrating Urban Birds grant. And we are going to be installing five free bird-friendly gardens here in Brevard County in South Melbourne. There will be four residential ones and one to two church or public properties within the community. We're going to be installing, all of these are native, so there's going to be wildflowers for nectar, wildflowers for insects, for seeds and berries. And of course, we're going to have our students design and install birdbaths into these native lawns that we're going to be designing. And we're excited about this because birds are a great indicator of a healthy ecosystem. So, and we will also offer our residents the opportunity to include an oak tree, which we know is great at capturing thousands of gallons of stormwater as well. Each lawn that we do this installation on will receive a sign certifying them as a wildlife habitat. And we require that each participant also participate in the Lagoon-Friendly Lawn Guidance Program. So, member-level criteria includes that they would be fertilizer-free from June to September, only use 50% or more slow-release nitrogen fertilizer, no phosphorus, fertilizer-free buffers, regular pickup of their pet waste. They're going to keep their lawn clippings out of the storm drains. They're not going to wash their cars in their driveways. And they are going to use little to no pesticides. This will, we also require that they refill the birdbath once a week. And we're also going to install signage in their yard related to them having Lagoon-Friendly Lawns. So, our goal is to transform these bird-friendly lawns into also Lagoon-Friendly Lawns and get them participating and excited about being certified in that program. Our next form of development in the community that we're working on is our green infrastructure projects. These include our two food forest sites, which are the Crane Creek Restoration Project. Together is what we call them. This is the Jackson Street Food Forest and Brother as Ave restoration site. We also have our cassava project, community aquaculture, our Stone Middle School prairie planting, and the Richards Park Project. All of these projects are within one square mile of each other. And they're important because also within this one square mile are quite a few corporate polluters. So, we have a school bus compound that's leaking diesel fuel into our groundwater. We have a Superfund site, a brownfield site, a waste transfer station, a water treatment facility, and an oil company all within this one square mile of where we're doing this restoration work. So, as Dr. Laura Wilson mentioned earlier, there's a need to protect what's going into our groundwater. And we're hoping that this work will contribute significantly to that. So, the Crane Creek Restoration Project, as I mentioned earlier, is these two sites, Brothers Avenue and 1005 Jackson Street. The project goals are to reduce flooding and capture stormwater, absorb nutrients before they run into our stormwater system, provide food for our neighborhood, increase wildlife habitat, and start a pilot food forest project that is replicable, that other communities can implement. Our Jackson Street Project, which we just started planting Phase 1 on April 4th, is an acre and a quarter of land, which is a total of four parcels. We are planting there a fruit tree orchard, deep-rooted native plants for pollinators, and to address flooding. Sixteen raised garden beds and more in Phase 2. And as you can see, this is just a kind of a site vision of that space. These outside lines in the yellow on the streetscape are where we have planted the native plants. You see the orange section is the raised bed. Our fruit orchard will be in the green section. And then as we expand throughout the property, we intend to plant more natives and more deep-rooted absorption plants. So this is what Jackson Street sidewalk looked like. Before our April 4th planting, there was poor soil, shallow-rooted grass, and no absorbency happening there. Now, this is what it looks like. On April 4th, we had 68 volunteers. We planted 95 native plants, 65 pigeon pea seedlings, and built and filled five raised garden beds. Our native plants require no fertilizer. They have low water needs. They absorb all of the stormwater and nutrients. And yeah, these are some examples of how deep the roots are of the plants that we've planted. So those are some of the plants that are actually on site right now. In phase two of this design, we plan to expand the nature-based solution for retaining more water. Just behind the property is a city-owned water retention area. So our hope is to plant more native and for-friendly plants to absorb stormwater nutrients before it reaches that space, which you can see is the land is downsloping, as you can see in the pink areas. So we're going to be planting natives all in that area so that it cleans and filters that water before it hits that retention space. This is our Brother's Ave site. It is for parcels, just under half an acre. And we are designing it to have water retention, so bioswales, deep-rooted canopy trees that will take up water in both the leaves and the roots, permeable parking and walkways. And we are going to maintain the existing vegetation around the perimeter. Our Stone Middle School Pollinator Prairie was a result of flooding that was happening in the school bus loop. So there was quite a bit of flooding that was happening on campus. Stone reached out to us and FIT and asked us to provide a solution that we could also use to educate students on campus. And we planted 200 native plants with over 32 volunteers. And it is looking very healthy, as you can see. And as you can also see, the native plants are also surrounding the stormwater drain. So all of the water that's hitting that area is also being filtered before it enters the drain. My team always makes fun of me because I say, hey, in case you didn't see, I put the next volunteer workdays on there. So I'm calling you to action. Come out and help us. We'll be out there again on April 25th and May 2nd to do some maintenance on this pollinator prairie. And we're usually out there from about 9 a.m. to 12 noon. But it's a great time. Great friends. We provide the water and the snacks. You just got to come and provide the energy. Our next project that's a nature-based solution is our Richards Park project. As you can see there to the right, those are our students from our Summer Earn and Learn program. This Richards Park is just next to Florida Tech's Mertens Anchorage. And last summer, our students installed oyster reefs on their dock pilings at the anchorage to attract some of the oyster spat that is connecting to Richards Park and move it down on this area of Crane Creek near the anchorage where there's quite a bit of muck happening. So we wanted to kind of attract more of that oyster spat down into the Crane Creek Canal area right there. And we used our students to implement this project, the Oyster Reef Project. But our goal is to expand that project to Richards Park, which currently looks like this. It's just a very small area that's owned by the City of Melbourne. And we're going to revitalize that space to include more shoreline restoration, mangroves, benches to encourage people to enjoy the space, and of course, native plantings, because we love plants, to reduce nutrients entering the watershed there. And one of my projects that I'm most excited about is our Community Aquaculture Project. This project will be our first full workforce development program that will be implemented in our partnership with Florida Institute of Technology. This development program is a certificate program, so Florida Tech will certify all of the people who go through this workforce training to participate in this program. And they will be paid to go through the training. As you can see, this is us visiting the example site that is at the Florida Tech Aqua Center of the project. This project will actually be installed at my church, which is Chief Cornerstone Missionary Baptist. They are one of our community-based partners. This church is just along Main Street, which sits in front of the Brightline Railroad train and right next to what is Glover Oil. So this project will go in between Glover Oil and the church. And what we'll be doing is we'll be installing two systems, one saltwater, one freshwater. This system will not only grow food for our community, but it will also grow fish and restorative plants, clams and oysters, mangroves, for the Indian River Lagoon, which our workforce team will then implement into the lagoon for restoration. We're going to modify two shipping containers. Each will hold 4,000 gallons and two 2,000-gallon pond liners with internal dividers to separate the plants and the animals. We will also be putting on top of these shipping containers solar panels. So these triangles that you're seeing are the solar panels that will be adjusted based on the sunlight. Those solar panels will not only provide power to the project, but also supplement some of the power to the church. And finally, our cassava project, which we encourage you to pull out your phone, scan that QR code, and help us grow this food and support the lagoon. This cassava project is being shared currently through 15 volunteers across Brevard County. We provide a cassava seedling to each participant, which is very easy to plant. You literally just go stick it in the ground. They plant it. It grows big leaves and deep roots. And we go out, we harvest the first of their planting, share it with them, help them replant, and take some of that cassava back to the community that we then use to educate the community on how to prepare the cassava and use it. Cassava is a very, very healthy plant. It's starchy. It's filling. So it's a great way to give our community access to food. All of this work is important to us because it creates opportunity for us to feed our community and meet our community's needs, mitigate stormwater flooding in their streets, but also to educate them about the importance of lagoon restoration and directly engage them in this work. Our residents are doing this work, not little growers. They are putting their hands in the soil. They are putting the weather stations in their yards. They are implementing the lagoon-friendly lawns. We are doing this in partnership with our community, and that's what engaging community in lagoon restoration looks like. And I just, again, want to thank you for the opportunity to share our work with you today. I hope that we get to see some of you at our Planned Prairie cleanup on April 4th, but just in case you don't, you get lots of chances to join us and volunteer. You can check us out on our website at littlegrowersinc.org or visit us across all social media platforms. Thank you. Yes, sir. Camille, where do you get all the energy to do this? I, you know, it's just the grace of God. I pray a lot. Well, it shows. Congratulations. Thank you. You're doing a great job. Thank you. Any other questions? Don't we have some stormwater projects down in that area? It's in the city of Melbourne. Yeah, so we're adjacent to the MRC. We're very close to that. When did you initiate, when did you start your organization? It was very recent, wasn't it? So I started in 2017, and we were fiscally sponsored at that time, and we became a 501c3 in 2020. So basically, you had your core there, but you began five years ago. And to see the growth, I think you highlighted beautifully, great presentation all around. Thank you so much for being here. But you highlighted beautifully the community aspect and the involvement, and you went from a food desert, weather desert, and you've implemented all of these things in such a short amount of time. And obviously, I know your prayers have driven this. I believe that completely. But as well, that community relationship, and so you have those hands-on. I don't think there's a better example that could be shared of exactly what community education looks like and putting that into action. So brilliant. Thank you so much. It was very nice to finally meet you in person as well. Thank you. It was nice to meet you as well. Yes, Charlie. And I just want to kind of follow up with what Kurt was saying about where you get your energy. She's a really good delegator, and if you go to one of her sessions, which I encourage everybody to do, you know, the little grower session, and you are going to get some work because she puts everybody to work, and we put together some proposals about how to lay out some of these areas areas that she's working on, and they feed you really well, too. Yes, you do. Which is one of the draws, but it's really worthwhile, and I just encourage everybody to go to one of her sessions because then you'll want to go to the next one. Yes. Our next one is October 25th. October 25th. So please, I'm sorry? April 25th. I know. Next Make a Green Noise is October 25th. Next Volunteer Planting is April 24th at 1005 Jackson, and the next Native Plant Prairie Maintenance is April 25th at Stone Middle School. So please, please, please join us. Yes, we do feed you. It's my favorite thing to do, so much so that my sustainability specialist realized she had to start tracking how many meals we were providing. Last year, we provided over 635 meals to community. So we give you breakfast and lunch if you come hang out with us and help us do this work. So thank you again, and if there are no more questions... Oh, one more. Just a quick one. Do you feed us some of the plants that you grow? Not yet. We're almost there. Not yet. We're working on it. But we do try to provide healthy meals at our events, and we encourage you to bring your water bottles we give out fresh organic eggs as raffle tickets. So that is something we provide. My chickens, they like to share their eggs, so we raffle them off that and make a green noise. Anything else? Thank you very much. Thank you. You all have a great rest. Next up is no stranger to this committee. I'm Vinnie Toronto. And just to... Oh, good. Sorry. Just to introduce... So we've got the four panel speakers, and then they're all going to be sitting over here. Dr. Laura has come up with some initial questions to get the panel discussion going, but you'll have the opportunity for more Q&A as a panel when they're done with their individual presentations. Thanks. All right. No stranger to the committee. I used to be a stranger on the committee, but now I'm no stranger. First off, let me step back a second and thank you guys. I've been watching all the meetings, and I wish Dr. Windsor was here so I could thank him with $100 for the kind comments he made about me last month, two months ago, but he's not here. So Dr. Windsor, I know you're watching. I got $100 for you. Thank you. But joking aside, you guys just finished your first year, and I have had another member of this committee say the first year was shock and awe. You know, it's real easy to come to these meetings and just have that fire hose hit you in the face, and then it's time to put in the work. So thank you all for the last year, and now that the year of shock and awe is over, you know, please continue putting in the hard work, doing the work between the meetings, and continuing to make our lagoon better. So thank you. Last thing, Commissioner Smith asked a great question about how do we reach these people, and he is the answer. The fact that that person was at his house, and in an hour and a half, he convinced him, and he created a messenger. That person will now go on. And so communication, like lagoon work, is what they call a wicked problem. It has no solution, and it never ends. And so the question should be, how do we communicate today, and then how do we set goals to communicate better tomorrow? And so we're doing it. I was lucky enough, she left, to participate at one of Camille's summer classes for her students, and I told them, I wanted them to pretend they were the committee. I gave them $2 million, and their eyes got real big, and I said, create projects for the lagoon. And there was a parent who came, and she sat through my presentation, and she goes, I had no idea about all this. So that's what we do every day, and it doesn't stop. So thank you all for your hard work. All right, now let's get in and have a little bit of fun. So I'm going to talk to you today about how swell it is with swales. And again, my name is Vinny Toronto, and today I'm presenting as a member of the Sustainable Community and Resiliency Committee from the town of Indy Atlantic, a tiny town that punches way above its weight. So first thing first, a few thanks. Because again, as a small town, there's a lot of people involved. And so these are our current members of our committee, as well as past contributors. The first three were previous members. Paul Gugelman was the town attorney for decades. He actually gave us our name, which I love our name, because it's about sustainable community. It's not just about environment. So sustainability can be bigger. And of course, Christian is our previous town manager and our interns, which I'll get to later. Okay, and just a few more. Mike Casey, our town manager, Joe Gureis, our public works director, and our town council. And so I am so thankful for our public works director that I told him that I wanted him to come today so I could thank him personally. He said he couldn't. So I said, okay, I'm going to picture, put a picture of you on the slide. He said, okay. And so that's the AI-generated picture of our public works director. Because in Indy Atlantic, we dig swales by hand. And so, Joe, that one's for you. So again, I really am thankful. Mike Casey and Joe come to all our meetings because the town is bought in. All right. In the beginning, again, town of Indy Atlantic is a one-square-mile municipality nearly completely built out, located on the barrier island cut in half by U.S. 192. In 2016, when the precursor to our committee was created, the town offered free swales. Again, one square mile. It's not a big burden to be able to go to somebody's house and dig that swale. In 2018, the town voters approved a $3 million bond issue to fund our stormwater improvements. We were having original stormwater pipes that had been put in in the 50s and they were starting to fail. So the town added a $3 million bond to fix the stormwater pipes. In those discussions, the question was, how do we handle more stormwater? Are our pipes big enough? What do we do because we're going to get increased rainfall? And so the town engineer at a meeting stated that to hold more water, the town needs more swales. And so it's real simple. Think about a bowl and think about a plate. What's going to hold more soup? What do we eat soup out of? A bowl or a plate? We eat it out of a bowl because it holds more water. So that's simply things. So what we did is we started drafting designs because you can have a swale, which is just a hole in the ground. But like Dr. Laura said, if you put St. Augustine grass in there, after an inch, inch and a half of water, it becomes impervious. So how beneficial is that? So we started drafting these designs with different Florida native plants because not only do you have an opportunity to hold the water, but you also have an opportunity to clean the water. And then think about putting sponges in that bowl. That's what plants are in the trees. So we created these designs with the different plants. And then we said, all right, now let's go to, let's do more work. We created an ordinance, right? And we were like, all right, let's go, let's codify this problem, this issue. Let's really give it some teeth so that people in the community will understand why we're doing this. And so what we did is we created an ordinance that had to do with adding impervious area. So again, we're completely built out. And so what happens is people would come in and remodel their home or they would knock the home down and build a bigger home. Well, you start limiting the amount of available ground for the rain to soak in. So we thought, well, let's create a remodel ordinance that once there's more impervious land created, because St. John's doesn't get involved in those remodels, that we add additional amounts of water retention or swale. Well, we put this ordinance together and it crashed and burned. I brought it to zoning and planning and they were like, well, wait, where's the swale? Is the swale on the right-of-way or is the swale in the private land? And who's putting it in? The town or is the resident putting it in? And then who's going to maintain it? Is it the town or the resident? So there are questions. There are questions around this. But Indi Atlantic is an interesting municipality. If you ever want to see your neighbors, all you need to do is add a town council agenda item for sidewalks. And everybody in town will come because we don't like sidewalks in Indi Atlantic. Small beach towns don't need sidewalks. And so again, we put this ordinance together, brought it to zoning and planning and there are a lot of questions that we did not have an answer to. So we do what every good oversight or advisory committee does when it comes to setbacks. What do we do? Where are you guys? What do you guys fall back on? Don, what do you fall back on? Just go ahead and say it. The science! Right? The science! So we fell back on the science. And so we had an intern from Florida Tech via Dr. Lindemann come in and he calculated out the cost of a swale versus the cost of other water retention. And he also calculated how many gallons our town would be able to hold if we had just 50% of our roads had a swale. With just 50% of our roads having a swale, we can hold an additional 1 million gallons of water per rain event. That's science. Numbers like that make the residents go, oh, okay. That's good. So we fell back on the science. And so now what we've done is we are at voluntary and involuntary free swales. And so again, as part of that stormwater work, we are putting in new stormwater pipes. And so if the front, if the right-of-way does not have any utilities in it, the town is going to go ahead and put a swale in because the public works, the town manager, they understand the importance of those swales, of that water retention, of slowing the water down. So those are the involuntary ones. Now as far as the voluntary ones go, we've used the terms rain garden, we've used the terms bio swales, swales, lots of different terms, whatever the residents want. And we've come up with these different options that the residents can do. And so the town will come in, the town will dig your swale for you. Now if you want your bottom open, okay, the town will leave the bottom open. If you want St. Augustine grass put back, the town will put that back. You want Bahia, the town will put that there. And then what we do is we have all these different options that we will show the residents. So the involuntary ones will get a flyer at their door saying you are about to get a new swale. And here are some options for your swale. The voluntary ones, when they come to town to talk, they're given these drawings showing all the different options. And again, what we're doing is we're slowing the water down. We're allowing the water to trickle into the ground, the nutrients to get uptake, and increasing the water retention in our town. So that's what we've done. And we are having lots of residents that are reaching out to the town that are asking for this. We are finally, as there are grants, Dr. Laura talked about, our town and most municipalities offer rain barrel grants. We're also looking now at doing swale native plant grants. We will come out, the sustainability board will come out, help you pick it, help you plant it, and then we'll also give you a grant for the money you spent to buy the plants. So just remember, everybody, how truly swale it is. So what are most people choosing? So it's interesting. People want a simple solution. And so most people will come in and just say, well, you do the bahia grass or crust coquina on the bottom because there isn't any work involved. But now if you have somebody who's got some more free time or wants to have more of a colorful, vibrant swale on the front of their road, they'll come in and they'll say, well, you know, give us the works because the colors, the blooms, like she was saying in her garden, I mean, it really turns it into this ditch that you've got into the front of your house into a beautiful feature. So it's about those, you know, those pros and cons. Benny. Yes, Commissioner Smith. How did you get the word out that you guys were doing this? Yeah, so the mayor put one in his yard and so he put one in his yard and his neighbors were like, oh, I want that and then other neighbors and then every day we got out, you know, any events we can go to. Here's the thing, when people, we always say, do you have any flooding problems in your neighborhood? And they'll say, well, yeah, you know, water stands around. How many people in your neighborhood have swales? How many people in your neighborhood have rain barrels? You know, these are all individual options people can choose. If every house on a street put in two rain barrels, three rain barrels and just set the spigot to a slow drip, you're going to slow that water as it enters into the road. You're going to solve some of those problems yourself. And so we, everywhere we could, we beat that drum. But it started with the mayor and it started with the town buy-in. Again, the town manager, public works director at all our meetings, they understand how important it is. So when someone comes by and they're like, oh, what's this thing? Or, oh, I'm thinking about this. They say, how about a swale? And then now we're putting them in whenever we do work in the right-of-way. You know, you just mentioned something that I didn't know, never thought about it, putting a spigot on the bottom of the barrel so it drains more slowly. Because I've thought about, what could I do? I have coquina rock under my ground, so it's like a sieve anyway. It just goes right down. And after that big tropical storm we had back in, when was it, 08, when we had 28 inches of rain in three days or something? Yeah. An hour after it stopped raining, I had no water in my yard. So, but that gives me a good idea. You know, I could put some rain barrels and maybe encourage my neighbors to do the same thing just to slow the flow. Yeah, just a light drip or slower spigot and you're going to catch, you're going to hold so much. It's all about slowing it down. It's just about slowing down. In the past, stormwater was all about getting it out as quick as possible, right? Let's have cement. Let's shoot it down like slip and slides. But what we need to do now because we don't have this exposed ground, we just need to slow it down. And we need to slow it down in places where there aren't flooding, right? Commissioner Smith, you said your ground, it goes right down. So in the barrier island, we slope to the river. You know, we've got a lot of swales on the river and those swales on the river, we've gotten people going, how come there's standing water there? And we say, because all, you know, the east side of the island there aren't swales. That's where we need to be putting them in. That's where the priority is. You know, last thing, City of Orlando has an impervious ordinance. They base it on location. They base it on soil structure, which we've always talked about. It's not the same. And so find those areas where you can slow it down. Slow it down. And that will help those areas that are lower elevation or they can't, they can't slow it down. Is this all available on the website? Many websites. For example, I live in a neighborhood that was built in the 70s and literally there were swales in front of our houses and they've all pulled their lawns up. And so now the water can't get to the drain. Yeah. Fred, you're mine. Sorry. And so, so the streets get flooded because, and we have people who say, well, gosh, you know, I've got this beautiful St. Artistine in that area and it's lifted up. You can see how the yards were designed to go into a swale. And so, I'd love to take this kind of stuff and distribute it around so people can recognize. Yeah, for sure. Reach out to me, Fred, or Virginia. I mean, we'll get this out to anybody who wants it. And I think that speaks to the communication issue. Florida's a transient state. Not only is Florida a transient state, but this area in particular is transient. How many people grew up here in this room? Raise your hand if you grew up here. Like, maybe half. Wow. And so, if you think about those people that are, and that happens in the Atlantic. We'll put a swale in. And that was, that was one of the things we struggled with, right? Is if we rebate people to come in and put in all these plants, the next homeowner might come in and go, we're going to fill that in. Because they just don't understand. And so, it's that constant communication. But yeah, Fred, of course, we can give these out. I'm grateful, again, for those people that were involved. And, you know, we've put in a lot of work to create these. And anything we can do, the only thing, the only thing I ask is that you include this picture whenever you, whenever you disseminate it. You're welcome, Joe. Hey, Vinny. Yeah. Do you have to do curb cuts in any of these places? Or are they going in where you just had drainage off the road? Yeah, so, Indy Atlantic doesn't have sidewalks. We don't really have many curbs. So, so, what, what, even, what we've found is even if the curb is a little higher, as long as we're creating a bowl to catch some water, again, if they're going to fill it back up with St. Augustine Cool, all we're doing is adding surface area to be able to hold the water. But again, if you've got, you know, if you're trying to drain pasta and you use a strainer versus a bowl, you want strainers or else you're going to be eating your pasta with water. Thank you, when did this project initiate? Like, how many years? So, in 2016, they were doing them, but we weren't really broadcasting it, all they were doing was putting St. Augustine. So, about 2020, 2020 is when we got a new public works director and we really engaged and we were like, these are why we're doing it, these are important, these are the cost. You know, again, our intern calculated the cost of stormwater and if you think about the town, right, if the town is creating stormwater ponds or the town is trying to include, you know, rain barrels or all these different things, resident-owned swales or resident-utilized swales is cheap. And do you have a number off the top of your head how many you've done since the revamp in 2020, 2022? See that, Joe, that's why I wanted you here, Joe. It's okay. I do not. I know, again, But a significant number, I mean, more than a handful. Oh, yes. Yeah, yeah. And we actually got some people, they got some involuntary ones who didn't, that education part, communication, didn't understand the benefit of it. And so, they were complaining about the swale that had appeared in there right of way that now is going to solve a flooding problem but they didn't understand the concept. That's been minimal, the kickback on... Very, yeah. I mean, there was one case, one case, that was it. Perfect. Yeah, I mean, again, we're on the barrier island, we've got that sand soil, so the water's going to drain. Even St. Augustine, it'll stop for a little bit, but it'll drain. But yeah, it's been pushed back very minimal. Again, we're surrounded by water. We're surrounded on all sides, so we've got to find ways to hold it and slow it down. We'll just, you can come up and, you can come up and, we'll just switch you out with Danny. Thank you. Yeah, so for our... Thank you, Ben. Thank you, Ben. Yeah, for our last speaker, we want to provide one more example of local program already engaging homeowners and what they can do on their lot. So Danny Straub, the assistant city engineer of Melbourne, is going to prevent their rain barrel rebate program. Morning. I was just going to tell Vinny, I also live in Indy Atlantic and have noticed several additions recently. The neighborhoods don't have curb. They have extremely wide right-of-ways. They're 60 to 50 foot right-of-ways is the standard, depending upon if you're on East West Street or North South Street. And so there's a lot of opportunity in those right-of-ways for those swales to go in. I personally do not have one, but I have a gravel area in my front that actually works better than his swale down the street because mine's bigger. That doesn't matter, Danny. It does. It does. So, anyway. All righty, again. My name is Danny Straub and I am the assistant city engineer for the city of Melbourne and I'm going to talk about today about our stormwater utilities rain barrel rebate program. We began with a rain barrel program in the 24-25 fiscal year. We partnered with the Green Gables property. It's over off the corner of Riverview and US-1. It's a Sears and Roebuck's house that's been purchased by an organization to bring it back to its former glory and they've been slowly working on that. So we were able to partner with them. They help collect and retain the $50 registration fee and provide us with a host site when we want to have our presentations. We were able to purchase our rain barrels from the MRC because at that point in time, the MRC did not want to have rain barrels. They were tired of dealing with the issues sometimes rain barrels cause. In that fiscal year, we had six presentations. We advertised those presentations with flyers and goodie bags at all of our city events. So our public education staff person, one, goes to all of these events and hands out all of our things. We also provide social media posts on all of our city channels. We had used the Cumulus Media marketing to engage over 77,000 mobile devices through that fiscal year. We did signage at the library's city hall at MRC. There's a barrel sitting in city hall, so if you'd like to come see one, you can come down and see one. Everybody who comes in to pay their water bill walks right by it and they look at it. They go, oh, okay. The flyers disappear fairly regularly. So our flyer talks about what a rain barrel is. Why do you need one? There are lots of reasons to use rain barrels depending upon what your site is. If you don't have very good irrigation, this is an easy way to collect the water and provide spot irrigation for your smaller garden sites. It also slows down the water. It reduces erosion and flooding. It does all sorts of good things. Where can you use your rain goddard water? You know, watering plants, reducing household consumptions. In the sense that you're not using your potable water to water your plants. There are a lot of folks that come down from other parts of the U.S. and they're just used to using their potable water to water plants. So not only are you paying for drinking water, you're also paying sewage on that water to water those plants. So this provides an option to lower your house bills on your water and sewer consumption. You can use it to clean stuff, you know, lawn furniture, tools and such. Don't go wash yourself in it, please. It does come off the roof. So there are pollutants that are in that water that shouldn't have human consumption of. It's not drinkable. Do not try to drink it. And then, you know, if you need more information, you can contact and pay the registration free at the Green Gables website. The workshops give the instructions on what a rain barrel is for, the installation do's and don'ts. They give advice on where these can be placed. So depending upon how your gutters come off of your house, there are better locations than others depending upon where they want to sit. Our education person provides the Enviroscape demo that talks about rain falls from here, it hits the city and then what does it do? And then how does it go from point A to point B? And what you do will affect that. We provide the rebate form. We do provide a $25 rebate form. And then you get the barrel to take home. So in 2025, we had 137 participants. We got rid of all 116 barrels. And then we were able to get 10 people to actually ask for rebates, which was great. We only pay for rebates for those folks that live in the city of Melhorn. They provide documentation that is installed. They have to provide a picture of their wearable barrel against their house to show that they actually installed it. This year, we were able to purchase another 160. We continue with our partnership with the Green Grable's and we retain and reroute those advertising dollars. So we dropped the cumulus media, but we've added hometown news flyers for more information. And we've kept up our displays, but we've added a new one in the West Melbourne Library. We've had four presentations so far this year. 12, 7, and 8 participants. It's not always a big number that turns out, but I know at one of these we had people that showed up that hadn't registered and were asking for barrels after the fact, so we had to figure out how to get those to them. We've had three rebates requested and we've given out 33 rain barrels so far. Our goal is to do 40 rain barrels per fiscal year, but if we give all 160 of them out this year, we'll be perfectly happy with that and our budget is established so that we can continue to purchase things. We like to see these to go to homeowners and so that's our big push is to get them to the homeowner as easy as possible. The whole kit comes together. It's one great big barrel. All the parts and pieces are already in it so all you just have to do is easily assemble them and that's it. It's not very complicated. It's a rain barrel. It's one of the easier things we do. Anybody? Yeah. How big are the barrels? They're 55 gallons. Okay. When you say the parts are in there, what are the parts? So there's a spigot on the top end with a hole that allows you to connect to your gutters and we actually have spigots on all of ours. I'm trying to think the one at City Hall. So down here at the bottom of this picture you can see the spigot sticking out over that concrete block. So we allow for a hose connection so that you can then connect it to a guarding hose or just let it drip down into the ground depending upon how much water you have. Each of the houses have different pitches of roof and roof materials and gutters and hollows come off so 55 gallons of water comes off a roof pretty quickly so you need to be able to allow for okay so when it's full and it's still raining what is it doing? So leaving the hose bib section on the end open to allow a soaker hose on the end so it can continue out into the yard just so you don't end up with a lot of steaming water right at your foundation is super important and we go over those instructions. And they're plastic? They are plastic yes sir. And you can obviously paint them. Yes sir. We have all sorts of folks that like to paint them. We've got some that look like cows at the moment and some of our more artsy folks have put flowers and birds on them. I am not that person so brown bucket in my front yard. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. Okay. Gloria you're in charge. Perfect. So I do have a couple questions to start things off if anybody on the committee wants to jump in at any time with questions please. We'd rather hear your questions than anything that we have. But my first one for the panel you know many of us are working with community members that don't live directly on the lagoon. So in your work how do you connect the dots between what happens in someone's yard and the lagoon that might be miles away and what sort of strategies have worked so far to get these homeowners or neighborhoods on board? I'll start with that because as a government agency we have the most interaction with the folks that don't live on the lagoon. So it's very complicated to explain to people because we are so transient in our nature in Brevard County and especially in Melbourne of folks that come down here. So I like to use a little analogy so everyone forgive me. Finding Nemo. The whole line about what goes down the drain goes to the ocean is not correct when you're talking about wastewater but there are a lot of people who still think that. They still think that they still have a combined system so what goes down the drain goes to the ocean through the treatment plant. That is not true. So if you flush it it's going to go to the wastewater treatment plant and be treated appropriately. Stormwater on the other hand what goes down the drain will either go to the ocean the lagoon or the St. Johns River depending upon where you are in the county. So you have to think about what you're doing when you're doing that. The other thing is there's still folks with a combined system oh it rains it goes to the wastewater treatment plant. No it doesn't go to the wastewater treatment plant. So what you put directly on your yard down a storm drain in the street where anywhere that's not in the house going down the sanitary sewer main is going to end up in the lagoon or in my case the St. Johns River or the city of Melbourne. So trying to make that understanding to all of those folks and give it to them in a way that they can understand that so hence the finding Nemo example is a very good way of trying to interrogate those folks because unless you live on the lagoon or you have a tie to the lagoon you're a fisherman you're a boater you're you're a sailor you're like the pretty seashells you can find along the edges people aren't aren't recognizing the fact that what they do inland carries all the way out to the lagoon. And so what what the way that I look at it is is that we know it affects the lagoon right but if I want to affect behavior maybe I don't need to make that connection of what this does to the lagoon maybe I need to make the connection of what this does to your house to your property you know like Dr. Laura talks about with the low impact development I was we I was talking to somebody about going about going to the MRC low impact development conference somebody who's in who's in city government and they go oh well you know I can't make it but I'm so glad about all the work that's being done on the lagoon and I said well LID does affect the lagoon but what it also affects is homeowners flooding issues those are big flooding insurance is expensive and so as we go through life and life gets faster and faster and we've got these blinders on we may not be able to see these auxiliary things but what we see is we see what we have in front of us every day and so I'm in the Atlantic we're more concerned with showing people how it affects their house their day-to-day because we know in the long run down the line it affects the lagoon I agree with you a hundred percent I would start by saying that yes the people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care so when we have conversations that make a green noise with our community we don't talk to them about the science and how lagoon how it affects the lagoon specifically we talk to them about how the impacts on the lagoon replicate on their daily lives and how the how revitalizing their yards how doing this work with us not only supports the lagoon but it has a huge impact on how they're living daily how they're not being inundated with flood water if they plant native plants because they're going to be draining their water how they're able to reuse the water that happens when they collect it off of their roofs and rain barrels and how much that reduces it going and sitting into their streets so having that conversation about how it's directly affecting the people within our community is how we've been able to really connect those dots between the work that's happening in the lagoon and the the work that they're doing at home to make those those adjustments and those corrections to support the lagoon I think for us as also being a youth-led organization is we know that when the kids learn they go home and talk to the parents and they are also teaching the parents better behaviors right so we've had kids that have been in our program for years and years we have a 95% retention rate I've had kids that have been with me since they were 11 years old and now they're about to graduate from high school and over the years the things that I've heard from these kids is Miss Camille I didn't I know the water was there but I didn't know how important it was until I started doing this work for you and then their parents are coming back and their parents are telling me oh my god they told me that they did this last week and they did water sampling and they installed oyster reefs and they looked at the muck under microscopes all of those things are having a huge impact on how we're connecting the dots between the homeowners doing the work and being educated about what the lagoon needs and how we're actually doing restoration in the community I think the other what was the other question what strategies have worked so far so I told you some of my strategies but also like Chuck said I feed the people you want to come talk to me I got some food for you so we come into the room we we provide them with at least two meals that they can come and eat because we know that they need that you know we and we do it every time they come and see us we provide so many meals I told you that my staff had to start recording how much food we were giving out to community and that that is another way that we've been able to keep them engaged and just their general excitement about being a part of the change the fact that they're monitoring the weather stations and they're collecting that data and that data is going to be translated into science that's going to support this work the direct engagement that the residents are having the opportunity to do they want to be a part of the solution and they're designing it they're implementing it and they're developing it right alongside us thank you okay so how can we move stormwater management from feeling like a municipal obligation something outside of our control to something that homeowners can and want to do so our motto and if you'll see it on all of our social media posts is hashtag our community our responsibility you have to live with the stormwater in your streets you have to live with the pollution in the lagoon because our community hugely depends on the lagoon for their livelihood they fish they eat the fish that come out of the lagoon so you have to live with it so if you don't do something about it why do you expect somebody else to and that's kind of the motto and the movement that we've created around this work is our community our responsibility and so in india Atlantic it's all about peer pressure your neighbor does it that means you're going to no it again it is about community during one of the hurricanes i remember you know the mayor members of council were outside we were all sandbagging somebody's house literally just got together to try to stop flood and when you know that your neighbor who you see every day or you go outside you know that there's a danger to their house for their livelihood and all you got to do is put a hole in front of your house that's not going to cost you anything you know it really kind of affects those values but but i think it's all about being open it's all about communicating gently and and and and just keep with that science you know again a million gallons a million gallons how many of those million are you holding for our town i'll say milburn has a different problem than in Atlantic does because we are way bigger than that you are sorry size does matter and also there's a lot of economic differences between all of our citizens so we have to talk to people about your yard really needs a little help i'm so sorry because you don't have enough grass in your front yard and we we talk about grass being a bad thing but if you don't have enough grass or landscaping in your front or to hold your front yard in your front yard it ends up in the gutter which ends up in the inlet which ends up in the lagoon and while sand itself we classify it as bad a lot of people like oh it's just sand that doesn't matter well that sand then becomes part of the muck problem because it binds with all the other junk and stuff that's in there so we have to have those conversations okay are we going to go find a citizen for not having enough sod in their yard maintaining it well that citizen is trying to figure out how to buy a gallon of milk and so we have to have that fine line between what the city's responsibility is and what the property owner's responsibility is and still making it viable for everybody so that's why our program is okay we have an eru and a dollar amount that each property owner has to pay for us for us the municipality to go through and put projects in and that's why we work really hard to get grants from you guys and try to do projects that have small footprints so we can use as little dollars as possible to make them out so once we have a project that's done and we've got a baffle box in a neighborhood then I can go to that neighborhood and say hey guys I've caught 47 basketballs and 82 tennis shoes I'm not sure what you guys are doing for shoes in your neighborhood but I got a lot of left ones let's talk about what we can do to help educate them that yes that baffle box is there to help protect that lagoon but we need you to also help protect what comes to that lagoon to that baffle box so that we're not having to collect all the odd we don't mind collecting odd things I think Melbourne is known for collecting odd things and it's baffle boxes but we have to make sure that those property owners upstream really realize because a lot of times our boxes are miles away from those people and so we need to make sure that those folks understand what comes off of their yard does eventually go somewhere I kind of have two points that follow up on both things that were mentioned first she just stepped out of the room but Meg Murphy I met with her about a year ago up in country walk and she was great for opening my eyes of the fact that the lagoon isn't the most important thing to probably most people within the watershed but your home your property value your neighborhood beautification is and so it really is about making sure you're telling the right story for the audience and that story might not be the lagoon even if that's kind of what's in the back of all of our minds and our end goal and then the other thing is probably I just forgot it oh sorry thank you something that Vinny said you know following the science and I was putting together this question specifically and I started going down a Google rabbit hole trying to figure out you know how much stormwater comes off of my lawn and my roof and there are calculations for that a thousand you know square feet and an inch of rain and how much that produces and then you add that up and I think people just don't see the impact I'm a scientist so I like to chase the numbers but you know people think that like oh the road is the biggest problem but there's a lot more lawn area and roof area than there is road area in our neighborhoods and so our properties are causing a lot more stormwater than the municipal infrastructure and I think that's something that's probably missing in a lot of our education points so interestingly you've all sort of started and dealt with what this group dealt with was we have this big old fish kill it wakes everybody up you have a three-week flood you've got flooding out there so once we're through that and look you know and we're in an area an issue where that's kind of past it's a little old how do we message people now do you mean in the sense that we don't have this big tragedy we do have communities that are struggling with flooding right now and they get and obviously there's a lot of interest in that and got to be solved but just overall a lot of people are just kind of living their day and don't have these major issues going on and it's particularly around the lagoon so how do you message that or what have you seen that successful you've obviously got a group that cranks along so how do you keep that going I think one of the one of the the challenges versus the successes is that we're in an area where there aren't there like there are homeowners but there are a lot of renters so we have to have like this dual conversation of why it's important to you as a renter and why it should be important to you as a homeowner but I think I think one way that we've managed to like continue the messaging is we use the resources in our community that are messaging that are sharing and create and have their own communities so we we have our homeowners associations we have our concerned citizens group we have the churches engaged and we're we're funding them as well so we we give them grants to support them and then we do these projects on their properties like yeah we're coming to chief cornerstone to put up this IMTA system and guess what the church is going to manage it so we don't we don't actually have ownership over any of the properties that our projects on they're either owned by community residents or they're owned by these churches or these other nonprofits so it's it it's a network of collaboration that has allowed us to continue that conversation and and to evolve the conversation to suit the needs of our unique community that's not just homeowners but also is largely renters as well and I'd say I mean the honest answer is we haven't figured that out yet you know you have heard Keith Winston talk multiple times about nothing drives action like tragedy you have a big fish kill and people want to get involved and the votes come in the money comes in you know the hardest part about what we're doing is we're requiring people we're trying to have people have a behavior change that this isn't a one-time fix you know sorrel's a great example it's not just one vote for 10 years after 10 years we're in our infancy if you look at the chesapeake it took 35 years before they started to turn the corner of constant funding and projects so we're a third of the way in and so it's really that behavior change that this isn't something that you're going to do once it's something that needs to maintained because if we go back to our old ways the problems are going to come back too and I think we've struggled with how to reach people we're not reaching and we've struggled with you're going to have to think about things a little bit differently and you're going to have to have that buy-in so I'd love to figure out the answer to that. Can I offer a follow-up on that behavior change? I think I think the important part about the behavior change is also thinking about the fact that in 10 years you're dealing with an aging population and the kids that I'm talking to now will be purchasing homes in the next time that we have this vote so I think that there's a need to create buy-in from young people as well by giving them opportunities to have direct engagement with the lagoon. As I mentioned earlier there were kids in my program who they they live across the street from the lagoon. They didn't know anything about it. They had never been to it. The last time they even had a conversation about it was in their third grade class when somebody came to the school to talk to them. So the fact that we're doing these programs and not only doing them but paying our students to participate in engagement we're teaching them that it pays to support a healthier environment. It pays to support a healthier community and then in 10 years you're going to be the community that's responsible for maintaining the work that we're doing today. And because we've spent the time to make them care about it they're ready to take that and and and take that charge and continue it moving forward. You or me? All right. So we we're also having to tell them we're not done yet just because we did this little tiny experiment of a 10-year tax and we've been able to benefit immensely in Melbourne with our baffle box program for example. We're still not done. I mean there is a basin management action plan that's mandated by the state that we have to for from our standpoint we're looking at 35 to 45,000 pounds of nitrogen out of each basin. Melbourne has three basins. We're both in the north lagoon the central and the banana luckily only a little teeny tiny put in the banana so I don't have to work too hard over there. But we're just not done yet and so we just have to continue and then we have to re-educate our citizens because who lives here today is not the same person that was there six months ago because of the turnover of population and the and the bringing in of new jobs and while while we're seeing a lot of folks that are coming to Melbourne may be well-educated and engineers and such because that's the job market that's in Melbourne right now. She got no clue about stormwater and where the water goes and where it goes and why it's important and you know that's I mean we all see it every year when we start that that prep for that June month that I don't like to talk about as a government employee I don't like to talk about those three months those those harm me well on wait I just moved here I moved to Florida in June of 99 do you know what happened in the June of 99 we had Floyd I had no clue I grew up in Arkansas I knew how to hunker down for a tornado I've spent more than once watching a tornado go across a field from my front porch and people go wait you stood outside I go yeah there's a category four right over there floating by there's an F4 floating by took out in the entire neighborhood took out all the cows and the horses and the barns and things and I watched it a hurricane is a completely different thing they don't give you a user manual when you say I'm moving to Florida and these are the things you need to know so part of our problem is making sure that we educate educate educate because just because you know it today doesn't mean you're the same person that's here tomorrow so we just have to keep that message going out to our citizens all the time and you're and I know we're tired of saying the same seven things but you have to realize the people you're telling it to it aren't the same thing people that you told two weeks ago I think finally like it's about champions so Camille was talking about and Danny about right find champions find those people that will go out Commissioner Smith's on the champion and he told him all about the lagoon and that guy's gonna be telling everybody and then again thinking outside the box maybe we ought to talk to installers maybe we ought to go to all the companies that are having installers in the area and go what do your employees know about the lagoon I know you're asking a lot for your employees but can we just give them this little flyer you know I've taken a few uber drives in my life and I get you know what the best way to disseminate information is to give it to an uber driver because that's a captive audience you know they've got somebody in their car they're giving them for a ride and then they're gonna give them some information so it's about those champions and it's about finding the next champion second thing is behavior change behavior change takes generations you know think about the what's it called it wish wish recycling or whatever where people will just put everything in the recycling bin because they're like yeah we're supposed to recycle we're supposed to recycle everything and they're like well yeah but we don't recycle everything but that's all that's a good problem to have when people are wanting to recycle more than they'll actually take and that's a behavior change I remember growing up people starting to talk about single stream recycling so it's behavior change generational it takes time and then finding your champions and then finding the next champions the ones that are going to carry it on great thank you very much yeah that's really good all right yeah very good while deb's getting ready I just want to let everybody know that I had an epiphany while I'm listening to all this that gentleman that I spoke to the other day had I told him because he asked where these meetings are but he's got a job I could have told him about watching it on spectrum or whatever channel he has and that's that's an informational thing I just never even thought about yeah but people can do that and anybody of course you're not going to get everybody to watch but the people that are interested will and they're going to learn an awful lot about what's going on in this lagoon and then they're going to tell their neighbors because they're going to be more educated and you can fast forward and you can fast forward when people like me are talking and there's a lot of information to fast forward through I can tell you based on my project which came about as an assignment from Don to COC members to do for Heather and I to do a presentation on advocacy and education since that's the sector we represent on the COC and I'd like to thank Kimberly for helping with the presentation she's going to take the lead on the next one we're going to be doing which is going to be on alternatives to herbicides I'd also like to thank Heather because Heather was instrumental in this because our assignment was to go back to Heather's memo on advocacy which we all received earlier this year and to come back to this group with some clear definitions and examples of education outreach and advocacy and I think we heard some of that today which we'll talk about so are you ready to dive in okay then let's make some waves and talk about how COC members can help reward residents learn about the sorrel program how many of you are familiar with the children's story Horton hears a who a young elephant discovers a new world on a speck of dust and no one believes him until residents of that world make noise in unison to prove we are here sound waves in that story save a tiny imaginary planet I believe most of us if not all of us apply to be COC members because we care about the lagoon because we think government accountability is important and we're willing to help ensure funding is well spent and because we share a future vision of a healthy lagoon at the county commission workshops in January there was a call for more public education and we've heard that call here today but in a year when political action will be required to sustain funding and restoration progress we as COC members have boundaries on our efforts our challenge our opportunity is to understand those boundaries and help others learn without crossing them similar to the challenges facing Horton and the whose we must find ways to raise our voices collectively to get the outcomes we want to be achieved and that's the topic of discussion today we're going to revisit Heather's memo we're going to look at some definitions and examples and we're talking we're going to talk about some of the tools we can use to spread the word so let's start with the boundaries in Heather's memo the short answer on boundaries is that members of the citizen oversight committee which is an extension of county government because we're an advisory board to the commission should not use their our official position to influence a referendum vote and the county cannot expend funds or authorize the expenditure of funds to support or oppose a referendum and we must avoid express advocacy Heather's memo also talks about what express advocacy is and the legal standards that define it but it basically boils down to these two things the county and us as an extension cannot spend any time or energy or money on political advertisement relating to a referendum including the one that we know is important to this program that means that we shouldn't use words of express advocacy which are shown here like vote for vote against or any of those things but there is a lot that we can can do as coc members to help educate the public and advocate for this oral program specifically and this is outlined in Heather's memo as well we can report on official actions of the local government body in an accurate fair and impartial manner we can post factual informations on a website or use them in printed materials we can host or be part of public forums that provide information and we can provide any factual information about our experience as coc members key question is when we're thinking about the things that we want to continue to do is that the we need to ask ourselves is this activity as a coc member or as an individual private citizen as individual private citizens we can do things that we can't do as coc members and if ever there's a place where the line isn't clear Heather as our legal advisor can help clarify those boundaries but let's dive a little deeper about what these things mean regarding public meetings and forums because that the commission workshops in January were sort of the trigger for the memo that we all received we are allowed to discuss our knowledge of the sorrel program and our experience as coc members but we must be clear in situations that we are present as a private citizen we do not represent the coc and accepted these meetings we we can in a year we do know that in a year where political action will be required to sustain the funding that it is a political issue but we shouldn't speak directly about the tax referendum which i'm told the commission will consider in may whether to put it on the ballot as coc members we can't expressly advocate for a vote one way or the other on the referendum but we can speak to people about how funds that we've received are spent and why they are needed i asked heather and kimberly and i asked heather what does this mean for political activities because it is going to be a political year and there are things that we can do on our own time as private citizens and these include things like participating in political campaign activities or making political contributions to groups that may be involved in political activities we can volunteer in organizations that advocate and educate for the lagoon and those that support the tax we can talk to elected representatives family members neighbors friends co-workers and the general public and our commissioners about our personal private opinions about issues that are on the ballot but we cannot express advocacy as a coc member or in coc meetings in a way that would violate the boundaries and again heather is the expert on that if we have questions but of course as coc members we are in a unique position besides the sorrel staff and the scientists and engineers responsible for creating and implementing the sorrel plan we have tremendous knowledge and this includes our predecessors on this panel and this knowledge could help brevard residents understand the ongoing work and why it's important moreover i believe the time is right to begin again making waves of knowledge flow to more people and a broader set of audiences in our community that came out in our discussions today working together we can raise the volume just like all those little who's on that little speck of dust and we're going to talk about why but first i want to give you some definitions that we found because don asked for them about what is the difference between education outreach and advocacy education provides knowledge outreach connects information to new audiences and advocacy uses knowledge and connection to spark action and i would say that most of our speakers today are really strong advocates and great role models for those things but as coc members i believe we do and are doing all of these so let's talk about some examples and i'll start with some examples of things that i'm doing personally not that they stand up to some of the work others are doing but because they're just examples of what we're talking about here coc members can join organizations that support and advocate for sorrel and its funding that image there in the up on the upper left is from the space coast chamber of commerce it's an invitation to a business advocacy meeting and it was actually through the chamber where i learned about the depth of the sorrel program and met virginia for the first time as well as some of the other lagoon restoration rock stars that organization has advocated for the half cent sales tax since inception and it continues to be a part of the chamber's advocacy agenda when the workshops came up in january i contacted the chamber's ceo and current board chair and asked them to speak on behalf of the business community support for sorrel at the public workshops and they did why did they do that because a healthy lagoon is good business it's important for job creation and economic vitality and it's important to quality of life which is the reason why most of us want to live here my point is coc members don't always need to carry the message sometimes you can simply make a connection that enables other people to do it through the chamber i was introduced the brevard indian river lagoon coalition and that image on the lower left is me and some coalition volunteers and leaders networking at a business networking event through the chamber and we were carrying the earlier version of this very handy summary of the program which i find to be very very effective in fact i want to take a stack of those these things because i've almost exhausted my supply and i want to take them to a tabling event that i'm doing for keep revard beautiful tomorrow at the um enchanted forest these things and that personal interaction is really irreplaceable in getting the message out on what's happening it was actually at a coalition event at the ogalley civic center where i was inspired to apply to be on the coc as a coalition volunteer since 2024 i've worked as part of a committed group lagoon supporters on an ongoing communications campaign and a series of workshops aimed at creating champions and arming them with what they need to carry the message for us that next that largest um voices for the lagoon image there is actually a website that was created after the last workshop which laura hosted at the mrc to um to uh begin to create ways that volunteers can engage and ask for help in engaging in carrying the message so if you look at the bottom there there are links for doing things like walking the neighborhoods and talking to your neighbors about the program which would be a really great thing for some of our homeowners association folks to do there's also a link for the communications program that is ongoing that is digitally based mostly on social media and there's also that link that's called connecting and talking we believe that in the next few months there's going to be a huge demand for people wanting information about the lagoon and we need to take advantage of that and we can't expect virginia and her team to do it by themselves we need more of us stepping up the way that don and fred did in the presentations that are going on but in a horton here's the who uh kind of element to the things that i've been involved with oftentimes keeper of our beautiful and the coalition will work together to support each other's events and to show up for one another to help carry that message and i think that's an important part of what we can do to work together as partners to amplify the education and advocacy activities that help the lagoon but i'm not the only one doing this i know this i'm actually in a room full of some of the titans of lagoon advocacy some of you are shown here and i don't mean to imply that some of the coc members who aren't shown here aren't also doing these things these are just examples that i could find in my sleuthing as i put this presentation together i think we're going to need to do more of this and again nothing replaces the one-on-one conversations like kurt had this week or rolling up our sleeves to get engaged in the community and i might mention that last weekend i'll give you an example was trash bash for keeper of our beautiful we had 11 municipalities and place-based organizations at 29 sites turn out 768 volunteers and we collected 40,598 pounds of trash on saturday morning that's 20 tons of trash that isn't going to go into the lagoon or landfill and i never miss the opportunity to try to make those connections for people and i think camille said it best we really have to be the translators to help people understand the connections between behavior and how it impacts the world around them so coc members and the public at large can join network participate engage and the need for our involvement and voices will be ongoing at a time when the volume needs to get louder than ever so let's talk a minute about raising the volume and reaching the audience because that's really the key right education outreach and advocacy are only effective if the knowledge and messages reach the intended audience in ways that make them care and willing to take action and to do that we have to know we have to know a lot about them we have to know what's important to them we have to know where and when to reach them and we have to also understand what we want them to know but we can be the translators and as coc members we have more knowledge than the average resident about sorrel making us in a very unique position research conducted in 2022 identified word of mouth as one of the top three credible sources of information about the lagoon restoration the other two were local government officials and local tv residents want to hear information from friends family and neighbors that makes each of our voices incredibly important let's challenge ourselves to make waves and to spread waves of knowledge outward to reach new and more diverse audiences that compose our community because they're going to help decide the future of the lagoon so what do we want them to know and I think there's three key things that are very important it is a marathon not a sprint Laura said took 35 years in the Chesapeake I saw a video that Aaron Adams did he mentioned other places around the country in Tampa Bay it takes decades to reverse decades of not caring for our lagoon the sorrel plan is science-based and multi-prong it prioritizes actions and targeted investments and if you want to know what they are in complete totals you can download your own copy of this plan which I'm sure we all have read I have it on my bedside table to understand what's really happening there but I'm serious about this it's hard to translate this much work and 10 years of progress without having passionate advocates who can help translate for people who aren't paying attention to this as part of their daily life but the other thing and Virginia says this so well and so often hope is on the horizon restoration takes time but we are seeing improvement and that's a picture of the banana river right by my house and I am still reeling from the presentation we had last month about our hungry dolphins but let's make way for the lagoon by sharing some of the tools that we have access to and these are you know this was a good exercise for me because there is a lot of information out there almost 10 years worth and despite the great job that Brandon and his team do there is sometimes too much so I decided to point out a few things that I think could be especially useful as we try to carry this conversation and connect to people starting with the website there's a website there's a program update which is the annual report there's a YouTube channel there's Sorrel on social media there's Lagoon Loyal there's newsletters there's a there is story maps there is so much 10 years of information can be overwhelming especially to someone who hasn't followed the program or to a new resident who may eventually need to research what they are being asked to decide on a ballot so let's dive in a little deeper one I want to draw your attention to is on the Sorrel website and it is the Save Our Indian River Lagoon program update and this one is great because it is a good first stop on everything you really need to know about the lagoon how many projects have been completed how many are in progress how the money is coming in what it's being spent on and proportionally how it's being allocated it also talks about how the money we invest from tax revenues creates more money by attracting grant funding from other sources at the federal and state level again you can have your own personal copy on your website of the Sorrel plan you can download it there and all those monthly progress updates are there also like the one we shared today and that information is something that we can use as knowledge nuggets in our talking points when we're meeting new people and new audiences one final thing I think is a really perhaps underused asset for us is the YouTube website and there are so many videos there I think I watched about half of them as I was putting this presentation together because they're so interesting there's so many projects showing the work that's being done out in the community and one of the things that we've heard is we heard it from Kurt's guy today that we can't see these projects I'm not seeing anything happen but if you can take people to a project video on this website that's almost like going to local TV and it's a great way to share the story I also have to credit Virginia's presentation that she did at the workshops and the one that Laura Lee did and the one that Vinny did they all give different aspects of what is happening in the lagoon and you can find all of those on the website and it's very easy to hit share and send it to somebody in a text or in an email or send it to an organization and say hey let's feature something that's happening in the lagoon at our next meeting and here's a resource that we can do that a couple of final things I found that there is a lot of information for homeowners on the site and I have been thinking we really need to have a place where we can go and point homeowners to how they can get funding for things like their septic tank replacement it exists Lagoon Loyal that gets back to changing behavior what can I do I know changing behavior is tough people either change because they're in growth mode or they're in trouble and I think with education we can get more people in growth mode to be making those behavior changes that we need the story maps that are on the Sorrel website I think are really good the main one that used to show all of the projects all over the county is being redeveloped and we don't have a timeline for that I thought that was a very powerful tool and I found it useful for myself as I was diving in learning how to be a COC member so that will come but there are good story maps there on the septic tank program and the sewer replacement program that I think would be very useful and those were the first ones that were done because we get a lot of comments or the staff gets a lot of questions about those programs so just to conclude it's our opportunity to make waves for the lagoon unlike Horton's tiny community on a speck of dust the Indian River Lagoon is not an imaginary place it is our liquid asset our home our place of refuge and enjoyment it's an economic generator and a precious resource to paraphrase what Dr. Windsor said at the February COC meeting it's time to strengthen community engagement on behalf of Sorrel through participation collaboration involvement and commitment and I applaud all of you who are doing that especially our guests today I learned a few things and I hope you'll go into that coalition website and load up your events that are coming up later this year because the goal is to help get more people connected to them and I think that's going to be vital together we can do it and if you can't take on a specific assignment together we will find some who will it's our opportunity for the lagoon and for future generations it's my hope and Kimberly's that today's presentation sparks a new idea about how you can help raise the volume and make waves for our lagoon thank you and I would love it if some of you would share some of the things you might be doing because I know you belong to our organizations I know you're doing things beyond I just had a few photographs of that but I think that would be good to hear more of that this is really a great tool and just handing it to a person you can see their eyes roll back in their head and glaze over so you really have to open it up and show them and present it to them but they're good for presenting when you don't have anything else to present you don't have any slides it's great to present from these are great at tabling events but you're right you don't just hand it to them you have to have a conversation but people go wow I didn't know that yeah exactly well thank you very much that was great any questions I just wanted to thank Deb for presenting that and Heather for everyone and staff that helped put that together so great work taking the lead on that I appreciate it very much I don't know if any you're in an audience so you know you can can we have him present ask a question you're the chair you can do whatever you want I know that position well I was just going to say Deb said something a knowledge nugget and when you think about she talked about trying to connect trying to translate right and so in my presentation last night or I was thinking about it and I'm like my final slide it's an AI generated picture of our public works guy digging a swale and he kind of looks like sexy right well but that might be that might be the message that is memorable right like somebody whose life is so busy right now that they're just working and the one thing they remember is swales are swell like it's that knowledge nugget it's that translation of meeting a person where they are and giving them just enough that they need to know to cause that behavior and so Deb nailed it great job Deb sorry Don I'll be quiet so real quick it said AI generated because it's irresponsible to use AI generated images without saying that they're AI generated especially today's day and age but thank you are we going to do the video I'm just looking at my watch we've got your business item we've got public comment so we could forgo the video I would also like to have some some board direction on whether you want staff to pursue establishing a homeowner grants program for green storm or infrastructure you know we would work on the logistics we would bring back the details of that but I just don't want us to spend time developing it if that's not something the committee can we do that under new business I think that would be a new business and go ahead and get old business out of the way right now so old business we had the funding application and guidelines Terry has a presentation I don't think we need to go over that again I have a motion actually and I'd like to give that right now and then we can discuss we can do something with the motion I move that the application item titled other Indian River Lagoon benefits be revised to read please read please review section 2.3 of the project plan and briefly describe any additional benefits your project may provide in reducing pollutants entering the Indian River Lagoon for example bacteria viruses biological oxygen demand pharmaceuticals chemicals of emergent concern forever chemicals herbicides pesticides microplastics metals oil litter turbidity organic matter include any additional actions you are considering that could further reduce pollutant inputs into the lagoon I'll second that thank you that's right I will second that on behalf of Deb's ambition working together thank you sounds good any discussion now that now we're going to discuss it I have a question would this motion if it passes which is very well worded concise and does what I was most motivated to do was open up more conversation and thought process so it's not just about we need cash to do this project it's the holistic conversation that is so obvious by our guests today and all the work that they're doing and the homeowners association and the Florida native yard so would this eliminate any additional movements in this project year or would this just be one and then if anything else comes up in the future we can address that at that time well there you know there may be projects that don't go forward and we'll have money available in the future so you know we may look at plan changes in the future but I'd like to further this in just saying that the other thing I would like to do is expand section 2.3 in the plan it's very brief and to include other pollutants in the discussion in section 2.3 so people start to understand how projects affect those other pollutants I think that's brilliant excellent I think this is a great starting point to continue to grow through this cycle and then hopefully through the next decade or more as well right and that's really what I want to educate applicants and others on what these projects do other than just stormwater retention or stormwater slowing or whatever they do so yes and again homeowners the pond project is a great example for those people coming in and I think that it was very preemptive when I received that email this week I was like oh this is exactly what I was hoping would grow from changing some specs and it already exists so that was fabulous and then we had the presentation today so I agree so is this the only motion we're going to consider or do you want individual motions on some changes to the plan or do you want to put them all into one do you have another motion as I went through it and I had a great conversation by the way thank you Virginia Terry for a bunch of questions I had one of the said whatever you're building or doing will be of good quality and there's no definition of what good quality is so I was hoping we could come up with some legal term of what good quality is whether you're doing a septic to sewer or you're doing a restoration project or anything like that but that's in the contract right which is part of what we reviewed as part of the stuff that Terry sent if you looked at it but we can leave it what we could do is a separate motion after this one is discussed and voted on normally all that's done in the specs great question but good quality and in the contract you have the specs on gallons or pollutions or all those things like I said it's the staff is that something you are concerned about good question I think the contractually the language and I'm not exactly sure what you're referring to without looking at it again but it should be consistent so the language in the contract should be the same verbiage that's used in the information shared I don't know if it's ever been an issue in previous contracts or if anything has come up if there's an is always better than an example so I agree that that's Fred's comment I can't think of an example of where it's been a problem but we can see where Fred's concern is that it may not you know it could be more clear so we're happy to work with Heather on you know better defining the term in our standard cost share contract yeah thank you and I just know that you may look at something and say well that quality is fine and I may look at and say well that's way over the top or something like that and so that's why when I've done contracts before in the past there were certain terms defined at the beginning of a contract and that's one that stood out yeah something okay go ahead you guys go ahead so I want to speak for the emeritus chairs and you know our focus has primarily been on nitrogen removal and we start putting in these you know and these other areas are good if you have projects that are competing with you and they have the same nitrogen removal basically the same maybe those are the tie breakers but how are we going to quantify a lot of those items up there because now you're putting in you know we know how much nitrogen a project is going to remove how much phosphorus but when you start adding these other areas can we quantify them and if we can't quantify them does that present some liability concerns because now we're awarding it on what we might think is best as opposed to something we can go back and say it's kind of a bedrock concern I think it's more in terms of the applicant just realizing and understanding and I think expanding that section 2.3 will help to trigger their ideas about how their projects make a difference so it's more about expanding the idea of these projects to other things besides X removal of nitrogen Charlie it's one question and the way the question is worded right now because I thought this was a good addition Don because all it says now is it mentions BOD risk of overflows bacteria et cetera and I think at the February COC meeting when Dr. Windsor was talking about lessons learned he made the point that nitrogen is just a performance measure it's not the only thing these projects do so I don't think we're adding a lot of burden but we're maybe gathering some more information and making the applicant think about the full range of things and giving us information if it's available about the full impacts of these projects which I think helps the applicant answer well you know we're putting we are putting more of a burden on staff and they do a lot already so just keep that in mind do you feel burdened well I mean I think the proposed change is going to be not so much a burden on us we're going to copy paste it's going to be on all the applicants to you know go read section 2.3 and think of how to itemize all the other benefits and you know some of them will take the time to do it and some won't and you know then how are you going to judge that how are you going to use that information I think it's a really good point you make that we're getting a lot of you know pushback you're only looking at nitrogen what about all these other things we've got PFAS out there which are clearly problems but we were tasked with dealing with nitrogen phosphorus and going after that and so I would be a little concerned I think it's right I think while we've talked about it from a point of view of us or the applicant it's really in my mind a point of view from the third parties out there who are looking at what we're doing and saying what's going on you're not even touching right which are problems but maybe how we do that is say we you know is less than requiring the county to review it and say well gosh is there a measurement of that or is there something which is going to be really tough is sort of wording it in a section like it almost does but we obviously are interested in a broader range of issues that might be impacted but we're not tasked necessarily with doing that and so if you have some of those could you please identify what they are because you're right trying to then go back and score this and use it and that's the question what is it going to be used for when you're asking the question I think that's what we've got to think about I agree with that definitely and when he first shared the motion my thought my thought was grouping in the chemicals the herbicides pesticides specifically that are nitrogen and phosphorus specific versus how it may benefit removing other pollutants I would like those to be extracted and since they are nitrogen and phosphorus and that is our predominant task because they are a little different if you're adding nitrogen and phosphorus versus a benefit that could remove viruses or bacteria or other benefits but again holistically I think as we move forward because this is more of a significant change than surface glance for the application and I do appreciate that you share this copy and paste for staff so it's not that significant on you but for someone coming and asking for a few thousand dollars or half a million dollars you know working in grants there's due diligence and you know there's two it's not free money you know they're working for money and part of that work is to know the holistic effect that their project is going to have and I would imagine in most cases that it would be extended benefits that it wouldn't be a detriment that this would be an opportunity to identify all of this that has been listed there so I think it's definitely something that we should not close off but this is one step forward to getting to a larger scope yeah I understand that so maybe it should be something that while the following will not be used to score this project or something this information would be useful to be aware of it I mean you know I just don't want us to close ourselves off from future of using this for scoring so maybe just leave it more vague and then see how it develops and as it develops and if we get feedback from applicants then we can come back hopefully with a past referendum oh I can't see that we have the opportunity to come back in future years with the continuing of this committee and these funds then we can we can work to see if this needs revised or instead of trying to revise it now from hypothetical possibilities we can see if there are no other real time examples that Virginia you know now says that it hasn't specifically come up I mean it could just it could be preventative or it could just be non-consequential but I definitely think it's a move in the right direction to address that holistic approach even though our task is nitrogen and phosphorus you know it is the holistic community as we've had again examples today so perfectly timed with native gardens and homeowner associations and city you know municipalities specifically so do you have anything specific that you would change other than a preemptive this won't be used yeah I just don't want people to then come back and say something to the effect that hey did you know you you you misconsidered this or didn't consider this appropriately but otherwise I'm good with it a matter of fact I just identified an article that they are removing PFAS with with the goo coming off of mushrooms 93% of them by running them through this solution so there are obviously going to be things coming out later that can do some of this stuff yeah go ahead I can tell you that just I can tell you that staff really works with applicants and they make the difference in the communication with the applicants so they can talk to them about the significance of this particular question in their application process and how they should approach it and it's just meant to be an awareness more than anything else and that's how they'll approach it they won't use it for scoring or anything like that it's an awareness issue I agree and a great data capture just again as we move forward prompt more ideas and innovation and you know direction for the future as well and in improving section 2.3 in the next plan you know we encourage participation articles of significance that you think should go into the plan you know submit for the plan I mean you participation is everything so sorry you just said for public awareness I thought maybe that was a good first three words of that it tells people the purpose of why you're asking for that information it doesn't say we're not going to use it specifically because at some point we might when we you know I get that but yeah we could also turn that list into checkboxes for people which would make it pretty quick and easy right if they want to elaborate more there's a whole box they can write whatever they want but we could make it quick and easy for applicants I hate you know I got a life in contracting I think all I think that's good I think it's good to have it in that category when you're contracting for something though you're in the hard dollars I'm talking about bigger money now not the small you know they read that kind of thing just like you want them to but what's in the money needs to be very clear it's one thing to think about these things and it's perfect but I think what the staff is doing and what they've done in the past and working with the people and what they show us these you know the charts and everything that stand up with anybody in the country that on what they're doing to manage projects so I again keep those in a category but the hard things are what are important the contractor will laugh about them on the way home okay but the lawyer in it he'll look in and say we need to do this we've got a couple more things to do so we've got to stop right now wait a minute we've got to stop right now I was going to say we need a motion for more time okay good thank you all right motion for more time we need another probably 15 minutes half an hour I'd say 30 minutes 30 minutes do we have a quorum without me because I have to leave yeah I have to leave also they're both voting members is there anything else to vote on besides this motion is it we have to vote on this you got to take public comment and we will take public comment still we need to get this one done now can I make a motion to change that to add the comment that Virginia made oh yeah go ahead sorry you got that one well let's do 15 minutes right now can you okay sorry I can do 15 okay 15 then we'll still have a quorum yeah yeah so we'll do 15 minutes right now and then I'll watch my I'll watch so all in favor aye so we have 15 more minutes so what I would propose is to take this language that we can vote on the concept right now of this and then take this language and shape it into what you're going to put into the application how you want to put it into the application and then we can look at it again and vote on it again how does that sound so if you're good with the concept concept's great in that time if anyone has any other questions or anything they want to draft in or discuss then if you think of that whether that's Fred's concerns about the preemptive language or anything else then we would have that time to bring that back and also look at what they want to put in we generally don't meet in June though so do we want to put a time frame to close this out by next month so we're not doing it I would suggest putting it on old business just add a little bit more information with our timeline here as we're trying to open the portal next month early June at the latest next month we'll put it on old business next month and close it out does that sound good can we put it at the top of old business yes we'll put it at the top of old business it will be probably the only old business but so we're done with now we have public comments we need to do I think you had a motion yeah we haven't voted on the motion yet need to vote on the motion no no you have a public comment before the motion right okay okay we have a motion to we have a motion to approve this in concept this this in concept and then come back with how you would put it into the application and then any any additional changes that you suggest to clarify it and then we'll vote on it next vote on that next time so I would suggest anyone that wants to add anything specifics to be considered to submit that prior to our meeting by a week's time at least yes at least as possible if that's the case we're not going to vote I'm sorry then we're not going to vote until next week on this next month or next month sorry well no we vote on let's vote on now that we're going to move forward in concept okay okay okay and so a lot of people signing up it's going to be on in 15 minutes signing up for this is that an amendment to the motion I think probably need to go back and I don't recall the original motion an amendment would be the amendment to the motion would be that we're voting for this in concept and then we're going to clarify it in the next meeting under old business so do I have a second to that motion I second the amendment yes any discussion on that and then any public discussion this is specific just to this would be specific to this particular motion I was just going to say one thing that you see on federal grants often is to have the applicant write a plain text so for the public abstract of what their project is going to bring to the community or to the cause and that could be a way of addressing how to make it so that it's how it's relevant to the public without necessarily making it like it's criteria for ranking or anything like that okay so Catherine I'm Catherine Vecchio and I was part of the pond pilot program so I wasn't anticipating to speak but having heard what the discussion was about the application process and what we have learned through the pond pilot program I think we have a way to quantify some of these other things by expanding the pond pilot program to include some of these other measures that she's saying because I feel like in going forward to convince Brevard County residents to adopt that continue the sales tax that what you've learned this is evolved you're learning that there is more involved than just this nitrogen you know that we as residents have a bigger impact on the pollution of our waterway and by doing what she's saying by expanding what our pond pilot program is doing collecting more data paying for more tests getting more data points I think that the application to get some of this money to do projects should maybe be a little allow for a little bit more understanding of what you're because there is more to and we're learning that is there's more to keeping the water better for generations to come and changing it I think would be a good thing thank you thank you I have Megan Murphy I need to general comment and I don't need to insert it here okay so you want to go under general Camille mine was also a public comment but I do have something to add here I think it's important especially for oh I'm sorry I'm sorry can you hear me now this comment specific to this I like the idea of the abstract that Laura Dr. Laura Wilson presented I think that is helpful it helps you to share the work that's going on in Lagoon which is important to creating that buy-in for future votes and future education about the project but additionally with my project specifically there's also this need for before and after data that we have been able to collect so we don't have that knowledge base either so I'm wondering if you're considering in the changing of this language also using this as a tool to fund the pre data versus the after data as well I think everybody needs to really realize that our primary function here is still nitrogen removal and that's always going to be true and we're really trying to get at other things and I'm not sure how far other programs are going to test for these things we're really trying to just get at it here but our primary focus is always going to be nitrogen and that's where we're always going to put it so you know I appreciate more testing and things like that but that drives up the cost a lot thank you I have a grace delaporte okay so we're so any more comments yeah yeah any more comments from the committee so let's just we'll vote on it here all in favor aye anybody opposed passes so that's how we'll go forward thank you yeah thanks so now we are down to general public comments or let's yeah general public comments so I have one from Bob Pickert if you'd come up well good morning I'm Bob Pickert a resident of Brevard County and a lover of the Indian River Lagoon it has been challenging to share information on the qualities of biochar and the potential uses to help restore the IRL in summary biochar is a cost effective absorbent for nutrients metals and organics including PFOS PFOS and other emerging and ubiquitous contaminants and a home to beneficial soil microbes that would do all the work to transform Brevard's overfertilized sandy landscape soils into a sustainable living filter to reduce the flux of pollutants to the lagoon no O&M required Brevard County could produce all the biochar it needs from woody storm debris and curbside yard waste as part of a soil health industry based on Brevard natural resources such as worm castings and seaweed extract that would not only flourish here but could be exported to other algae plague geographies soil health could become a third pillar to complement not replace what soil is already doing in source control and legacy load removal to restore the watershed function to a sustainable balance my input has been limited to three minute speeches including comments I made to the Brevard County commissioners on April 7th and a proposal for a soil health pilot project during the Indian Harbor satellite beach dredging project it appears I'm wasting my time but I can't disengage from the sorrel COC while the current white paper on biochar is circulating this document is more of a myopic whitewash to dismiss the ideas presented than authoritative white paper I would work with Charlie and the sorrel COC as I previously offered to correct the incomplete inaccurate and misleading statements in the white paper to set the record straight here are some of the biggest whoppers from that white paper the beneficial use of muck is prohibited this is completely false activities on sovereign lands must be authorized and not contrary to the public interest the rules are written to address restrictions on activities such as operating a marina restaurant or hotel on sovereign lands I encourage the sorrel COC staff to seek approval for the proposed soil health pilot study during planned permit modifications for that project the muck contains phosphorus adding it to biochar would prohibit its application in Brevard County the author previously acknowledged that muck is less than 0.1 percent phosphorus that qualifies as a no phosphate fertilizer under Florida fertilizer laws and someone I assume it was from team sorrel told Sally Scalera that the muck has arsenic in it she's a master gardener supportive of biochar not a toxicologist the standard exposure assumptions for FDEP soil cleanup targets include a child eating 200 milligrams of impacted soil for 350 days per year until adulthood that's 18 years and that person ingesting 120 milligrams for 12 years as an adult if 1 million people did this there would be a cancer dose response relationships cannot be reliably extrapolated to such low dose exposures arsenic is present in deep watered muck at levels consistent with background soil levels and risk based public health protections and well below what's allowed in commercial fertilizers thank you very much you're welcome there's a lot to get in in three minutes yeah and I don't know what exactly you're asking for I'm asking for a chance to work with Charlie and the COC to get that white paper right so that the public is properly informed about the qualities of biochar and its potential beneficial uses for helping to restore the lagoon but it's incorrect and it's inaccurate and it's misleading I would welcome if you created a response to that white paper I did and I've submitted it so much work that would have to be done to turn that into something called a white paper which is an authoritative kind of a document if you let me finish please I do not know where that was distributed or when that may reach us I know staff is excellent about anything that is requested to be given to us so I'm sure if that has happened and I missed it no you have not received that okay so if you were interested in creating a response to that white paper it may not meet the specs for an official titled white paper but I would be interested to see your response to what you're referencing is incorrect I do not have it now it should be attached to the packet that I distributed for this meeting oh I do not I came in late I might have in interest of time I just want to finish quickly the enterprise again I referenced when you spoke last time just the research and development on your we have to stop again and we have to I'll make a motion that we extend the meeting 15 minutes to adjourn by noon no other business we have no other business just public comment just public comments thank you I do have that now so I wait a minute we need to we get a second and a vote sorry I'll move that anyone second that we stay well we don't need we don't need a quorum anymore but we're just sitting and listening to public comments so you have a second all in favor aye so just again briefly to conclude I think that your I did we not vote sorry I I respect your ambition greatly I am a huge component Erica I love the component of putting biochar into the mix I don't see that you have readied a proposal that would request funding for this study opportunity actual work so if you could go and create that the application process does open in July they are hoping to have the application portal open by late May June I just learned in this meeting today and I know this staff is great with working with you to qualify your proposal as yes this is something that would qualify for sorrel funds or no go back and do this I think coming to us and only having your three minutes as you've repeated this forum isn't really a house for you later pitch and we I have an interest I know that there are benefits to what you're proposing and I would love to see that developed further and then brought back to us in a viable form that we could vote on either funding or not funding and again you want to respond to any white paper that's being put out by the county where there's inconsistencies or incorrect information I would love to see that it's in your mix and so is a proposal for what I'm talking about it's not going to be ready for the sorrel approval and that would take a lot of work and the sorrel COC is supposed to do more than just be a goaltender right you're supposed to be helping foster some of these technologies and that's what it would take to get this to move off center otherwise it won't happen I think a side bar of a lot of the work that we're purposed for does include what you just said but our purpose is to advise where funds should be spent to remove nitrogen from the lagoon so I would love to see that in an application with ABC this is how I meet the criteria for the funds and how this is relevant to sorrel so far in your limited time that you've been able to share you've piqued my interest but you have not brought that information to us and instead of you coming back month after month going to commission well that's good to know but I think if you have an interest and yes like I mentioned earlier in the meeting at least once today and multiple times in the years that there's a lot of work involved in receiving money that's called a grant I understand that thank you for your time and I would love to hear back and writing I'm putting in a lot of work but all I'm getting is a cold shoulder and if the committee is not interested and if sorrel is not interested then I'll stop I think that would be in your best interest until you can come back with an actual application and I have not given you a cold shoulder I've reached out after the meeting as an advocacy component of this committee I have done my due diligence on my time outside of this meeting to get information and see if this is a viable project so no you have not been given a cold shoulder you've been welcomed respected and time has been extended to you on multiple occasions so please if you would like to address this as an opportunity for our lagoon's health bring it back in proper form and I'm sure that we'll be happy to address it at that time Kimberly thank you thank you chairman that's exactly towards what you want from us I mean because you're not you're not expressing it in a way that we can use there's a request to get that white paper right we've done enough thank you very much you're welcome thank you Camille do you have closing comments thank you very much thank you for everything you do thank you for welcoming me so mine are a little anecdotal just a little story but also just wanting to share as you prepare to think about approving the homeowners grant program I want to put before you a consideration that there is lots of data coming out of different states on the west coast and everywhere else related to how inland planting and the work that little growers does supports restoration of watersheds and cleaning those watersheds but there is limited data on how that's happening here in Florida and specifically here in Brevard County so I have an interest in the homeowner program also like the HOAs being able to expand on the collection of that data and one of the ways that little growers hopes to do that is through a project that we're working on with Florida Tech where we're installing nitrogen sensors on site before and after the development of our projects to monitor how much we're able to capture so I know that this fund doesn't typically fund research but that would be a great way to work with the homeowners grant program and to expand on it and then my last thing is to say before I started doing this work my husband my husband is a landscape architect he works for landscaping companies and he was so desperately pushing me to fertilize my yard and I was very angry we had a big fight children pulled the muck out of the Indian River Lagoon and he heard and learned from our scientist partners the impacts that that fertilizer was having he totally changed his mind it was like talking to a new person so sometimes even in my own house I'm having this argument but as Vinny said earlier sometimes you have to be the champion at home and out in the streets so I just wanted to share that last little thing thank you and thank you for your time today one really quick comment could you both submit maybe to Virginia the articles that you had that you were putting up about the low impact development and also any information on yard nitrogen because obviously what we have to do is say here's what we get for this here's some of these things and their potential impact so obviously we want to go after the important stuff first the big stuff and at some point you move upstream and upstream and upstream but we need to see that as well so thank you yes thank you so with that direction that yes you want us to work on trying to quantify what those benefits would be for so like little growers can't apply for our funding because they don't know what the nitrogen benefit would be right but we want to collect that data and we have some I don't want to give you more work per se but at some point obviously as you move upstream and upstream you say okay now we can fund these kinds of initiatives that maybe are less important like my yard or whatever but yeah know what that value might be and I don't know how hard that is to get it if it exists or not I mean there's a lot of literature out there we can come up with some starting values which is what we've done in the past is come up with literature based starting values and then monitor the success of projects as we implement them right and I've been working with Dr. Lindeman Virginia so he has been collecting some of that literature as well which I'm going to be sharing with you soon Terry we didn't ever go over the homeowner grant program and can we make that business for next month or does something need to be done sooner no I think that that's the question is do you want us to bring back something next month I do I do I'd like to understand it better just to see how large or is that something that needs to be later or whatever based on what else we have and I don't know if we can get a comment sure come on up I'll give you three minutes but please don't take it so after listening to the panel discussion and the very thoughtful discussion in this room I just wanted to say that I'm really really sorry that you didn't get to see the video because it's not me speaking it's another person in my community that's completely different right so the homeowner grant program under consideration or proposal is at the very heart of the advocacy that you're talking about you need to build those ambassadors in the community can we give them away more rain barrels than 160 a year absolutely in less than 48 hours I had 39 people sign up for a rain barrel workshop in century and we had many more people show up and ask for rain barrels after that and they're not even really like you know part of the rules we're changing the rules in order to meet these expectations can we give away trees can we talk about broad tree planting programs and attach your program pamphlet to that so that when somebody is saying I planted this tree in my neighborhood and now I'm an ambassador to tell every single person on my block exactly what the sorrel half-sense sales tax is doing it doesn't matter how many times you put it on your website I'm the only one looking at it right there's not that many people getting to see these videos there's not that many people getting to see what's there unless they're already looking for it and I am so grateful that it was there for me when I went looking but we need to get people peeked in that direction I'm sorry now I'm using my phone I'm not old school because I just but the Brevard Brevard County should adopt a swale model just like they're using in Indy Atlantic we need to be able to go to homeowners who are saying I'm having a flooding problem and say this is the solution and really honestly that does not exist for us right now and if you don't know that all the problems that the county has with stormwater pipes and all those things homeowners are paying for that we had to repair our stormwater pipes in my community we have to pay for the stormwater pond when you have that permit put the language of the state on there make it an educational tool literally say good quality as defined by the Florida friendly statute the state has already codified it for you they're telling you what is to be done and if they're going to make things stronger and more rigorous to get the permit make that language carry on with the permit so the ultimate permit holder the homeowner the homeowners association that's holding on to it they have that information later thank you thank you I do have grace left too if there's anything else yeah go ahead hi my name is grace teleport I'm a resident of north Brevard up in Mims where we are where are we with the septic tank moratorium we purchased about five acres in north Mims last January as we were preparing to go pull permits to start construction we were told sorry no no septic tanks right now sorry I'm it's not my form I'm not used to doing this sort of thing a single family home zoned AU on that much land not in a flood zone and on a sandy ridge will have very little impact on the lagoon not being able to build is having a huge impact on our wallets another summer is almost here we're unable to sell our current home due to not having a new home we're a military family my husband was a Florida guardsman he directly served this community many times during hurricane response over the years and I'm a native Floridian we want nothing more than to improve our community and to contribute to it but being unable to build a new home when we purchase land to build a home is having a huge impact on that and I'm concerned that North Brevard and septic tank permits was not addressed at all today well actually your argument is not with us it's with DEP the Department of Environmental Protection but doesn't the Save Our Lagoon Indian River people have not a part of that at all because that's the only thing that comes up whenever anybody asks about it on the community's Facebook pages because it's not talked about anywhere like you can find nothing except somebody said no yeah it's the permits are through DEP and that's where your argument is there's a moratorium on them due to a federal judge saying sorry no and my understanding was that was because of this no no well then where do we go when we're I mean that case is actually an oral argument next week so it's on appeal and oral argument it's next week and where do I find information on that sorry not trying to waste your time I'm a resident I'm a resident I don't know we don't know this information anyone thank you for your time being a golf coaster I'm really familiar with dirty water so I appreciate what y'all are doing but I'd also like to save my wallet and build a home on our beautiful new land we do we want to help you too and these guys can help great thank you thank you all very much we're done I'm done now but I got direction yeah thank you much see you later I try the opinions expressed by any member of the public during any period of public comment do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the Board of County Commissioners of Brevard County Florida Space Coast Government Television or the program sponsor and are solely those of the presenter the Board of County Commissioners of Brevard County Florida Space Coast Government Television and the program sponsor hereby expressly disclaim any and all responsibility or liability for any defamatory or slanderous statements expressed by any member of the public during any such period