Save Our Indian River Lagoon on 2026-10-16 8:30 AM - Oct 16, 2026

the Pledge of Allegiance. Approval of the agenda, and I have a movement of speakers, special presentations that's been proposed. The video for the Cape Canaveral Fillmore Avenue stormwater project is not ready to prime time, and so we're going to eliminate that, and I'd also like to move the Decade of Action Save Our Indian River Lagoon project highlights down to right before the Brevard County Save Our Indian River Lagoon program, 10 years, just to make a good sequence there. Do I have any questions about that, or do I have a motion? Motion to accept the amended agenda. Okay, do I have a second? Second. Any discussion? Any questions from the public? Looks like none. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? So that change will occur. Thank you very much. So that's on the approval of the agenda. So now that it's been changed, can I have a motion on the agenda? I'll make a motion to accept the agenda. Deborah? Second. Thank you. Any discussion on the agenda? Further? Any questions from the audience? All in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? Thank you. I'm sure you've all reviewed the minutes from last month. Can I have a motion? Any questions on it? Any changes? That was Kurt. I'll second. Okay. Deborah? Any further questions from the committee or the audience? All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? So that passes. So minutes are done, and we're ready for Virginia. Okay. Good morning. So completed to date, we're at 142 community projects, so two more than last month. Over 2,800 homeowner projects, and coming up on 1,100 conversions to sewer. We had five more quick connects to sewer this month, 47 more septic upgrades. Thank you, Joel. Two more leaky lateral repairs. The Lucky Clover Mobile Home Park is one of those completed projects, so they had 118 homes served by 58 septic systems, so they are now on sewer. We had one more clam aquaculture farmer completed his project. We executed two contracts for additional baffle boxes with the cities, removed two more derelict vessels, and filmed both the Cocoa Beach Golf Muck Capping Project and the Cape Canaveral Fillmore Avenue Streetscapes Project, but the Fillmore Project video needs some more work. It's still in editing, so we'll get that to you soon. We have 85 new project applications, so yes. So prepare yourselves for next month. We will be bringing you a lot to review. The County Commission approved your recommendation to proceed with creating a green stormwater infrastructure grants program, and we have a new employee for that starting on Monday, and so hopefully we'll begin to flush out the details of that program quickly. The South Beaches Zone A septic to sewer project, we had one more home connected this month. We've sent out the 365-day notice for sewer availability for people to connect to the new South Beaches Zone O septic to sewer project. The Zone P project is completed. We're working on the as-built review, so as soon as that one is certified, it's complete, and we get the go-ahead from DEP, then we'll be sending out the notices to those homeowners, the 365-day notice to connect. Basin 998, Richland Avenue Canal, we have 100% plans that we're reviewing, so hopefully that will get out to construction soon. Same situation for the Basin 41 Huntington Pond stormwater project. Cocoa Beach Golf muck capping, the first three-inch layer is about 90% complete. O'Galley muck dredging is about 40% complete. The Sykes Creek muck dredging, we are working through the pre-qualification of the lowest bidder, Kibachi, as discussed last month. We've sent a bunch of questions for them to answer. They have about 30 days to respond. And then I just wanted to highlight, every so often we try to have a work day with staff to get out on the lagoon, so Brevard Zoo hosted us on an oyster reef build, and it was really great to get out there as a team and help with some of the restoration work that's underway. Anyway, busy month for presentations, really super event at the Space Coast Association of Realtors and the Space Coast Chamber of Commerce. Thank you to Dwayne DeFries and Keith Winston, who are also part of the Chamber of Commerce presentation. Lagoon Family Fun Day that was organized by the Indian River Lagoon Coalition with the city of Palm Bay. Marine Resources Council had me come speak at their lagoon at noon. Not listed here because we just, there were so many things going on. We lost track of a few on, earlier this week. On the 14th, Brandon spoke to an environmental science seminar at Florida Tech. Tomorrow, Anthony and Julia are working Lagoon Fest in Melbourne. Alex is working the Enchanted Forest Harvest Festival. I get to talk to the Space Coast Chamber Business Advocacy Committee, and we're also going to be at Brevard Zoo's Heal Our Lagoon Day. Thanks, Aaliyah, and not listed here because it came up after this got published. On November 3rd, I'm speaking to the Melbourne Beach Rotary. So science forums and public events coming up is, first of all, tomorrow is the city of Melbourne's Lagoon Fest, and then October 22nd and 23rd is the Marine Resources Council Low Impact Development Conference. As I said, we got to do some wreath building with Restore Our Shores. So you see, they're out there practically every day, maybe every day for the rest of the month. If anybody wants to get out there, it's work, but it's a lot of fun, very rewarding. So many other ways to get out and clean up the shoreline or help with recovering shorelines. And that's my report. Thank you. Just a minute, John. I'd like to put in perspective the 85 projects applications. In the last, since I've been on the committee, in 2023, there were 16 project applications. In 2024, there were 22 project applications. In 2025, there was 14 project applications. So 85 project applications really shows the need for the program. I think it's almost a cry in the wilderness for the program. But, and then to put in perspective of what Terry has in front of her is that the voting is on November 3rd, and then November 6th is when we expect to get the budget and the project applications. So she has, she's going to be working constantly over those three days, I think, to get us what we need to review. So have your thoughts with Terry. Go ahead, Fred. One quick question. On the Cocoa, on the Quick Connects, the very first work completed, that's actually identical to last month. So is it an oversight? It actually is word-for-word identical to what we did last month. The Quick Connects, five more reimbursements, process 579 to pay. So maybe someone just missed something. Melanie's gone. So, yeah, perhaps, perhaps we missed that one. Okay. Yeah. John. Yeah, on the 85 projects, I was wondering how many of those are from brand new, someone who's never applied before versus, you know, we've had many people who apply every year, the same ones. Do you have a ballpark? Are there any? I think, say, a handful of new applicants. Like, less than 10? Yes. Thank you. Go ahead, Charlie. Yeah, most of them are city applications or, yeah, county departments. That's what I figured, yeah. I didn't think we'd have 85 new people jumping on board at the last minute saying, you know, let me see if I can get something now. And they haven't been part of it. But I received one yesterday. I believe it. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, new, yeah. Go ahead, Charlie. Yeah, and one other event there is to note is make a green noise. I think it's October 24th. And we had Camille Hadley here a couple months ago. So they're doing their semi-annual event if you're interested in that. Go ahead. Laura, you should have probably asked this out of the meeting. But you've brought it to our attention that Titusville, the way it was built, there's a whole lot of land that drops into the Indian River. And it looks like a fisherman. It looks like what we've done or y'all have done with all the water that used to go south of us here that now goes back into the St. John's. It looks like it's really helping the St. John's. You know, we probably had the best bass here, you know, in seven or ten years. When we're looking at these projects, should we be concentrating more on Titusville? I'm just sitting here thinking. Absolutely. Absolutely. But are there projects coming in that direction? I guess I have to say we're getting some momentum and some recognition. I wouldn't say that we have projects right now and, you know, beating the bushes a lot. We just had a really good presentation at the Titusville Environmental Commission on Wednesday night. They turned me loose. So I have six videos that I made about those wetlands in Titusville. And they showed three of them at the Titusville Environmental Commission. They also allowed me to do a slideshow presentation of maps, 1943 aerials that show that wetland and show how it goes southwest to the St. John's River. There's no question that if we could get the water that Titusville, or even part of it, if we could get the water that Titusville is dumping into the Indian River Lagoon back where it should be going, which is towards the St. John's River, it would benefit both the Indian River Lagoon and the St. John's River. And I think, I don't want to, you know, I don't want to put them on the spot, but I think there's some people at St. John's River Water Management District that see that, you know. I mean, you'd have to be blind to not see it. It's pretty obvious. So thank you. Thanks for that opportunity. You can find that Titusville Environmental Commission meeting on YouTube. If you search for Titusville Environmental Commission meeting October 14th, October 15th. What was Wednesday? It was the 14th, so October 14th. And it'll be there. Okay, thank you. I think you'll be interested in it. It's pretty good. Also, you've done a presentation on the 405 wetlands. Well, that's what we're talking about. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, okay. Good. Go ahead, Fred. One more quick question. Last month, you had filed for two Florida resiliency grants. Have we had any update on those for those two bases? Not yet. Well, I can add a little bit more, a tiny bit more. So several, a couple of years ago, the Titus, the Titusville, well, she's now the public works director, Sandra Reller. She applied for a DEP grant, one of their resiliency flooding type grants, to do a study of those 405 wetlands and come up with some recommendations on how we can do what we want to do, which is get that water to stop going into the lagoon and go to the St. John's River. I think they're about ready to do some preliminary releasing of their findings in two weeks is what I've been told. So this is a highly, highly anticipated thing for Titusville. We also have a lot of flooding that's occurring in Titusville because, you know, we've had a lot of rainfall. Our groundwater level is up, I've been told, two feet above what it was five years ago, which means that the wetlands have two feet higher of water in them now than they typically would have this time of the year. And so there's a lot of, a lot of factors that are, you know, that are associated with those wetlands. So, yeah, stay tuned. Thank you. Thank you. I have one more thing on our, on my list here is could we get a presentation at some time on the basins, the stormwater basins, and particularly the most important ones and how those are going and all? Yes, we're, we're redoing the modeling for that right now. So as soon as we have that new modeling, we can have that presented. Good. Thank you. Thank you very much. So that would tell us, like, on this last surge, how much water from here to there is being done. How many projects are being done? No, no, no. Different question. I got, thank you. So the model does look at the volumes. You know, the plan is focused on the nutrient load, but we also have the, the volume, the information. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. We're ready for you, Lori. How is everyone? Good. Okay. So our July, excuse me, collections we collected was 4.1 million, and the total revenue from conception is 552 million. For the monthly financial statement, the anticipated revenue by the end of the fiscal year is 573 million, and the actual received so far is 518 million. For the expenditures this fiscal year, the total signed to projects is 121 million, and the actual spent is 46.7 million. Is there any questions? Okay. Perfect. Yes, ma'am. Are we back closer to our projected incomes, or are we still falling well short? Continuing to fall short. So last year, when the state passed all their sales tax exemptions, the Florida Association of Counties somehow estimated that we would be about 4 million short. Um, that just seemed like a big number, and so we, in the plan update, we only reduced our revenues by 2.3 million, but it's going to be closer to that 4 million dollar number. It'll be in the three and a half to, yeah. Has anyone looked at any projections for the next decade, like what that looks like, any totals possibly, or is it just still big? 100% inflation, it would be 800 million, really. Okay. Interesting. Okay. Thank you. We were 2.6 million short last month for, against it, and it's, last month went up pretty substantially compared to the prior month. About 600,000. 550, yeah. Thank you. Kimberly, you're, you're up first. Me? What happened to? Yeah, you, you missed our movement. Well, I was just getting ready, so let me pull up my, let me pull up my attachment, since I did not, is there a Wi-Fi password to connect to here? I don't see my internet popping up. There's wireless guests, it doesn't have one. Wireless guests? Please excuse me, I was going to make sure this was taken care of during the presentation proceeding month. I think I'm good now. Okay, I'm good. Where's my, is there? Errors. Just arrows, okay, thank you. Okay. Hello, good morning, everyone. Good to see you all. All right, so, I was awarded the privilege of getting to talk about mechanical harvesting, actually from here, instead of just in comments and responses. So, I'm super excited, and as I did some research, it was very encouraging, very promising, and I'm really excited to share what Searle has done. Mike, better? Yeah. Okay, thank you. Okay, so, I am regularly researching new and innovative information, so I hope this will be just one more presentation in an ongoing effort for our oversight committee to recommend true best practices in habitat vegetation management. The title reads Habitat Vegetation Management because it is key that we remember that these weeds are not just random plants, but a habitat for living beings in and around our lagoon. So, community outreach. One of the main pillars of our responsibilities on this committee is community outreach and education. I'm privileged to be in the current member seat for this expertise, though I believe that we are all responsible for this action as part of every project and every one of your expertise lanes, as Vinny named our seats long ago. So, community outreach and education, three pillars of that are to identify partners, project sites and locations, and common goals. We create messaging and, again, common goals. And then we connect with our community outreach, events, media, and, again, through those common goals. Common goals is repeated because that's what we look for and most of us prioritize in our work here. So, it also joins and aligns us with partners and supporting organizations. Authorities. So, these are very intertwined, but they do have a natural flow to support our projects. Again, this is not just within direct education and outreach roles, but a foundational part of all of our projects. So, I'm not going to read this through, but you can see education goes into best management practices. When we have those, then we can enact prevention and reduction. And then we're able to honor those calendar restrictions, buffer zones, and timings. And, of course, to learn all that, we need resources, which are endless. We have IFAS and their electronic data information source, which I love. We have our sorrel website, social media, Lagoon Loyal, and One Lagoon, so many more as well. So, what are we doing here? We are protecting our ecosystem, watershed, and our habitat. So, this is sometimes overlooked. I think that one of the things, as a professional community educator, a lot of times when people ask for coaching on how to do that, we forget that we know more than other people, and we forget what we didn't know. So, to take it back to the basics is very important. So, we're protecting, as I mentioned, not just removing plants, weeds, and vegetation, but we're protecting habitat. So, this also refers to us humans, as you see. It's also a residence of a person or group, and that affects our health, our enjoyment, our property values, and our moral values as well. Outreach and messaging. This was my favorite Facebook post that I saw all year, just for the record. I want to put that in a note to them. This is a couple of things that are common for all of us. Myth. If I'm not right on the water, my fertilizer can't reach the lagoon. Fact. Rain and irrigation can carry nutrients across your lawn, into the stormwater system, toward the lagoon, even in a single storm. Myth. It only applies to people who live right on the water. Runoff can move through ditches, swales, storm drains, neighborhoods across Brevard County. So, we do have local ordinances, which were still in effect when I wrote this presentation, but those are expired for this year at this time. So, just a note from this watershed. That, again, is a system. It goes through our ditches, our infrastructure, stormwater pipes, culverts, direct runoff from roads and parking lots, and all of this water ends up in the lagoon, groundwater, and our surface water drinking bodies. We know that Florida is sand and porous limestone, and we have had multiple dye tests done throughout the state, drip irrigation technologies, that show water flows vast miles, and the chemicals travel when applied even to the ground. So, how have we, the Citizens Oversight Committee, our educated recommendations been implemented? So, in many ways, the takeaway from this slide is really that we absolutely make educated recommendations. So, I think a lot of times that gets overlooked. People out in the community don't understand that we are all selected because we have knowledge in a certain area. That's very important. We're constantly given knowledge and research, and over the last 10 years here, that has changed, improved, expanded, been proven correct, and carefully implemented in our funding recommendations to our county commission. So, why we're here in this presentation today? Mechanical harvesting, my favorite. All right. So, benefits. Right off the bat, less spraying. Keeps toxic chemicals from our watershed, water supply, habitats, recreational areas, fisheries, our oyster and clam beds, and of course, our seagrass beds. So, a little history, which I think is important when you're holistically trying to understand a project and its importance. Mechanical harvesting has been around for almost 200 years. The first being a horse-drawn mechanical reaper in the year 1831, built by Mr. Cyrus McCormick. The horses pulled a frame with a rotating reel that pulled the grain against a cutting blade. This is not what we have now, and a lot of people think that that's really what the options are in mechanical harvesting still, but that is not the case. So, I would love to see a horse carriage, though, if we can get one along US 1. I will come out for that. So, today, we have small, lightweight, modular, even remote-controlled designs that allow for use in small, compact areas. In ditches, along roadways, sloped areas, and around areas that were once but no longer obstacles. Cost considerations. For mechanical harvesting management, over-toxic spray use is our first cost of consideration. So, innovations in machinery have left price considerations almost unnecessary as the market and competition is driving accessibility. So, and we've talked about this here, do we define cost only in upfront cash or from an advanced holistic management view? If we factor in all costs, including health, the health of the habitat, and all of us that call it home, you see a much different picture, even monetarily. We know the harm from toxic sprays to seagrass. We've all heard the effects causing Parkinson's disease. We've seen fish with tumors. We've read carcinogenic warnings. Billions of dollars have been sued for and awarded to humans who have been harmed and killed by the sprays. We're discussing best management practices, and our job is to recommend the best management of the sorrel funds for our entire community. Implementation. Many of our Central Florida neighbors are already successfully changing to operations, including the city of Ocoee, Mechanical Operations, Kissimmee, Osceola County, Sally Beach, many other management districts across the state, and of course, we here in Brevard County have successfully completed multiple management projects with mechanical harvesting, many at the educated recommendation and cost share of our Citizens Oversight Committee and sorrel funding. So, here's a project data slide from 2023. At this time, we were working on nine projects, and we had four complete, and I want to make a note of this, you know, we were given the information at that time, the knowledge, that by mechanically harvesting, we can remove the nitrogen and phosphorus without spraying and causing decomposing plants, and without having to use any chemicals, and actually Brandon did a great job, as always, covering that for us at that time. So, our due diligence is not only to remove nitrogen and phosphorus sediment banks from the lagoon, but to lead in prevention and mitigation of the toxic levels of nutrients entering the lagoon watershed, tributaries, ditches, canals, homeowners' yards, parks, lagoon, and beaches. Mechanical harvesting not only eliminates the need for toxic biocides, but also removes the vegetation before it goes through decomposition, and adds even more nutrients to fuel the muck and algae growth, also known as eutrophication. I practiced that. Dr. Fox taught me that. And here he is, in a presentation that he gave to us, as well, in 2023. He did talk about eutrophication, and that the biggest threat from spraying herbicides is that dead vegetation left behind. He did make one very important note from this presentation, that his study showed what resulted as the immediate growth of algae from the herbicides in his controlled testing environment. So, when herbicide was added to the water, algae grew quickly and aggressively. Mechanical harvesting eliminates that, and the decaying biomass. All right. So, we're interconnected. We repeatedly hear from presenters and partner studies that the Indian River Lagoon Health is not contained to the banks, but it is connected across the state through the watershed. Just this year, our presentation, some highlights have included the St. John Rivers Water Management District film, Connected by Water. We heard from our captain's panel how they identify and work the lagoon's system as a watershed, and they all cited their firsthand observations of what biocide spraying has done to the lagoon. Our marketing ads from Lagoon Loyal have covered this, and through community education, like our Best Management Practices Pond program, as well. To identify continued funding for mechanical harvesting projects and the reduction of herbicides as a goal will lead to it being prioritized and allow us to partner with other organizations and community groups already working to eliminate toxic spraying. Next steps and actions. As always, what we've been doing here all along, continued education for our committee and community, creation of community education materials, again, as we're doing, social media videos, and continue to identify partners, environmental organizations, cities, planning and zoning boards, elected officials, homeowners, and sorrel fund recipients. So what are our expected results? So to put up kind of some of what I've learned and identified as goals and priorities for habitat, vegetation, mechanical harvesting projects are that we will have more informed and empowered community and leaders. We will have a decreased need for biocides. We will be able to support a cultural shift away from dependency on these chemicals. We've gone over the historical context that the cost and the access of obstacles of the past are no longer really an issue. And our true cost, we've identified, is that really just about money or is that a holistic approach so that we can have the best life here? And historically, sorrel has worked to reduce biocide spraying through our mechanical harvesting projects and a fuller understanding of the true cost to our habitat and community. So thank you so much. I do hope that we can revisit some future projects about mechanical harvesting and biocides. I'm anxious to see what those 85 applicants, any, can we have a spoiler? Are any of them mechanically related? Okay. That's a great start. All right. Thank you. Anything anyone wants to know? I think I've covered it probably from my seat most often. Hang loose. Any questions? That was great. Thank you. Thank you. I have a question. Let's go back and visit Austin Fox's work. Yes. I think that was a bit of a misinterpretation of... Please, absolutely. I think that was a bit of a misinterpretation of his work. His work was more towards the breakdown product of glyphosate-causing problems, and that's phosphate was the breakdown product of, and that it breaks down very quickly, and that phosphate, and that phosphate in itself, when you apply in high quantities, phosphate in itself is the problem, not the biocide. I can definitely not speak for that presentation with authority, so I'll be very reluctant in what I respond. What I gathered and understood from that was that the sprays didn't have a direct acute harm on the seagrasses, but what did occur was there was a clouding in the water, and what he identified that was was a very acute and almost instant algae growth on the specimens. So the biocides didn't instantly harm, and there was definitely sites in his study that showed that the shelf life, if you will, it did break down rather quickly, and the accumulation was more in the sediments. But he really pushed on there that the spraying, the biggest harm from that is the eutrophication, the biomass that decomposes after the spray, not the actual spray itself. And that was from the breakdown product, phosphate. I cannot answer that. I believe you're correct, but I don't... I can, because I read the paper many times. Well, then please, absolutely correct me or add information, absolutely, without a doubt. But yeah, my takeaway on this was actually I found it to be a positive study, but what I caught was that the chemicals, the herbicides, caused an instant algal bloom. So, and it looked even from the lowest concentration, so he had his control, and then he had the next step up, which was a minimal application, and then I think there was three series of an added greater amount. But the first one was actually what grew the algal blooms. And again, there was no instant harm to the seagrass, but the algal bloom. And of course, we know that causes the sunlight, and then of course, that's going to kill out the seagrass secondarily. And the applications were much higher than what we would experience in the lagoon at any time. Correct. There was a concentration, and those numbers were all cited in there as well. Yeah. So, but again, really the takeaway, other than the algal growth that was initiated quickly, is that it's, to mechanical harvest, is to remove the decaying biomass, because his study concluded that there wasn't an instant effect to the seagrass, but what actually caused the harm was the sprayed vegetation that was left in the water with the eutrophication. Yeah, which would never really occur, because those kind of quantities aren't used in the lagoon. Well, for the algae bloom, possibly. No, for the seagrass to die, either. Well, I don't know if it was, the seagrass is, or the hydrilla is the invasive species that are sprayed. But once, when someone does the spraying, they leave that biomass. So it's not usually a spray and a removal, it's either or. So his study showed that his conclusion, the main detriment, was the decaying biomass that was left after the spray had been applied. I think there's an interpretation. Absolutely. I don't digress any information. Again, I will not speak for that. I could not even begin to pretend to be an expert on anything Dr. Fox presents to us. Any other questions? Sure. Some of us were not on the COC, then. Could we get a copy of that paper redistributed, or the link, so that we can read it and understand it a little bit more deeply? And it was July 2023. If you want to go ahead and Google us on the website, I think the YouTube channel is for the past. I can send it to Virginia. And please, if I've misspoken in any way about his work, I would absolutely love to be updated on what that information was exactly, and my understanding versus what may have actually been his goal. But again, my takeaway was the algae could have been much denser high concentrations, but either or, however that biomass occurs from whatever amount of spraying, his takeaway was that that was what the harm was. Mechanical harvesting eliminates that part of the process of removing the vegetation. Tomato, tomato. Okay. But anyway. Thank you, Don. Thank you. Any other questions? One quick comment on the phosphate stuff. So my neighbor called me the other day on Sykes Creek on the canal there, and he said, hey, have you seen what's coming out of your canal? And it really got murky. I'd actually done a phosphate measurement for MRC, and the minute I put the reagent in, it instantly went blue. I'd never seen it. And very high level, sent it in. We're trying to figure out what it is. My Secchi disc went from 0.7 meters in the morning to 0.3 in the afternoon. That's how quick that sucker came up. And we don't know what it was that came in. We're trying to figure out, because we're just a short little thing. Yeah, you might want to add a DO measurement to that. Yeah, well, now I have the DO from them, but it's a little, and it's, so we'll start doing that as well. But it's down now. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. All right. Next, we've moved things around. So, next, we've got Lagoon Loyal launch. Becky Clarkson, do you want to introduce yourself? All right. Let me see. I think I'm short enough. This microphone is perfectly set up. So, hi. I'm Becky Clarkson. I'm really excited to be here today to talk about Lagoon Loyal. We're going to be talking about the program, what we've been doing in the background to make updates, as well as what's live and what is coming up. So, I'm going to just get oriented here. I'm going to set my timer. Thank you. Wonderful. All right. So, really quickly, Lagoon Loyal is funded through two different partnerships, or two different programs. And so, you'll sometimes see us out at events and also in public schools in different places. So, just a quick framework of how the program operates. We receive funding from the Save Our Lagoon program. So, there's five different public education and outreach campaigns that are written up in the Save Our Lagoon project plan. They're fertilizer irrigation, grass clippings, stormwater ponds, and septic system maintenance. We also work with Brevard County's stormwater department. There's an interlocal agreement of Brevard County's stormwater, as well as eight different participating cities and towns. And as part of that component, we do stormwater pollution prevention education and work with DEP's metrics for different types of stormwater pollution in schools with adults and different special events. And let me back up real quickly, because I always forget to do this. So, I'm Becky Clarkson. My company is Sparktide. I live here locally in Melbourne Beach. I started Sparktide relatively recently, but it's work that I've been doing for the last two decades. My background is in creative and marketing strategy. I came from more of the corporate world, working with agencies and big brands. And my husband is from this area. So, when we moved back about 10 years ago, I took the opportunity to shift gears a little bit and try and work with opportunities and agencies to work on more positive, lasting impact campaigns. And so, we specialize in different types of social marketing and digital marketing campaigns for environmental and social campaigns. So, this opportunity was an amazing and local opportunity that's really close to my heart. So, I'm really excited to be here to talk to you about it today. All right. So, we are very fortunate to live here on the Space Coast. The lagoon and the wildlife and nature that we have access to is a big draw for folks that live here and a big part of our lifestyle. The lagoon runs through the center of our community. And through surveys, over time, we see very similar trends. In general, we can make the assessment that people in our community care about the lagoon. We always see very high marks when we ask people how important the lagoon is to them and how much the water quality and the health of the lagoon matters. In a survey that we did last year as part of our Lagoon Loyal Feedback Survey, we saw very high marks across the board for the iterations of questions we asked around these different topics. So, we saw numbers between mid-80s and mid-90s when we asked people how personally responsible they feel for helping the lagoon, how much they believe their individual actions can improve lagoon health. And then when we asked people about things they're already doing to help the lagoon, we had a really high mark of over 90% of respondents reported that they're already doing things in their life, whether it's picking up their dog waste or not using fertilizer in the summer to help the lagoon. So, it's a great starting point because it's something that unifies our community and it's something that we see very high, you know, awareness and understanding of. But, we know also from different types of environmental campaigns out there that awareness is only the first step. It's a great start, but it's not what we need if we're trying to bring about lagoon-friendly actions in our community. So, we work with a process called community-based social marketing and what it helps us do is look at a holistic challenge, like how do we bring about more lagoon-friendly actions in our community? When we look at our matrix of things, we have literally hundreds of things that people could do to help the lagoon. So, how do we look at that complex challenge and try to distill it down into priorities that are actionable? So, community-based social marketing and different types of behavioral research gives us the tools to look at this challenge and apply different types of barrier and benefits analysis and then build our campaign strategies around it. So, I know that I certainly, when I'm, the reason that when we look at awareness not being the solution to longer-term changes in behavior, I certainly know that I am supposed to be eating healthy, going to the gym, getting more sleep. You can tell I haven't had a lot of sleep. But, you know, when we're presented with those choices, we don't always make those choices every time. So, it works the same way with awareness campaigns like Lagoon Loyal. So, we use different types of strategies and tactics like pledges, prompts, and reminders, different types of recognition, and also different types of social campaigns to encourage people to take action at the times in their life when it's convenient and the right place for them to be receiving that information and making those choices. So, one of the other trends that we see when we look at the Lagoon Loyal program over time is that the highest time of participation and engagement was during the community competition back in 2024. So, we saw a great spike in engagement, in participation, in reporting of lagoon-friendly actions to the website, and we saw that same type of behavior mirrored in the stormwater pond pilot that completed just earlier this year. And so, in that instance, we had HOAs that were receiving information about how to protect their stormwater ponds, and when we did some surveys before and after, we saw that there was a higher adoption of lagoon-friendly behaviors when people were working together as a community towards a goal. And so, when we look at kind of the history of the program and what's been successful and what trends are important, that's something that we really see as a through line that we are trying to harness moving forward. So, as part of that, in expanding the program, what we know is going to be important is ensuring that we help people understand that we all have a role in helping the lagoon. So, the program itself has been focused on information and engagement for residents and businesses with these new iterations that we're going to be talking about today. We're going to be expanding our audience to also include visitors, which is such a huge component of our economy and our community here on the Space Coast. We'll also be including ways for schools, community groups, HOAs, and other organizations to be involved with the program. So, it becomes more of an inclusive program where we all feel like we are working together to help the lagoon. So, we're going to be talking about a few things today as far as momentum of the program and where we're going moving forward. So, we just launched our latest iteration of the website. It's the phase one of a multi-phase launch. So, we'll look at a few of those components today. We're working on an expanded education and outreach library. So, building communication pieces that we can get out to different audiences and have them present at the time when they're making choices about ways to help the lagoon is a crucial component of our marketing strategies. We just wrapped up our fertilizer-free summer campaign, and it's the first in a series of pledges that we'll be debuting over time. We're excited about this one. We'll get to talk about it. We are debuting a rain check program later this month. So, it's a way to sign up for free alerts before your scheduled watering day that will help alert you to how much precipitation has occurred in the last few days to help you decide whether you should turn your sprinklers off or let your sprinklers run on your next watering day. We just recently finished out the framework and expansion for the Stormwater Pond Partners Program, which was an outcome of the NEP-funded grant that was presented to you by Melanie Hawater. We have built a framework on how that can be expanded to different HOAs over time, as well as to non-HOA groups that have access to a community Stormwater Pond. And then we'll also touch briefly on our Lagoon Pollution Patrol, which is our children's education system that we've been starting to roll out in schools and at events. So, our main goal, so we're going to be talking about the website. So, lagoonloyal.com just refreshed recently with some new content. The goal of the website is, of course, to make it easy to help the lagoon. So, we've got a variety of different content on there, everything from education, tips about how to help the lagoon, as well as content about the Saver Lagoon Program. We have a new events calendar, we've got a blog, and a lot of different pieces that are all integrated together, designed to build the experience of making it easier to help the lagoon. As part of our refresh, to show kind of how the content has expanded, our original iteration of the website had six different pages that talked about lagoon-friendly tips and tricks and ways to help the lagoon from home. We've expanded that to 21 pages, so we now have tips for around your home, in your yard and lawn care practices, your everyday living, as well as tips for on the water. These pages will become the foundation of our points and rewards system in our next phase. So, that layer right now is living underneath everything, but when you go there now, you'll get to see lots of information about ways you can help the lagoon from home. We've also debuted a section on the Saver Lagoon Program. One of the things that we see, both in the data from different surveys, but also in practice when we're on the ground doing outreach, is that people want to know what else is happening to help the lagoon. If you ask somebody to not use fertilizer in the summer, or, you know, make a change in their lifestyle. Like, it's a natural reaction to say, why should I have to do something? Well, who else is also doing things? And, you know, why none of us want to feel alone. So, knowing that other entities out there are doing things to help the lagoon, we find, is both a barrier and also a way that we can help educate and help overcome that initial barrier or resistance so that people can understand that there is a large community effort in our area to help the lagoon. So, the Saver Lagoon section has six core pages. It's everything from funding and how the program works to what you all do here at the COC, as well as results of the program and innovation and different achievements that have come about as a result of it. We have a large project hub that's continuing to expand. There's over 21 pages that talk about the lagoon, Saver Lagoon projects, everything from, you know, stormwater projects to different types of muck removal and habitat restoration. We go into detail about how those programs operate, what types of projects are within them in the plan. We have completed project pages section, which is growing quickly over time. We have, I think, about 40 of pages loaded there now. We'll be loading the rest of them soon. And we also do a blog article after every monthly COC meeting to help people stay involved if they don't have time to watch a long three-hour meeting every month. So, what's coming next for this section of the website, we right now link over to the Saver Lagoon interactive map at the county website. We're building our own map that will serve as an interactive navigational tool on our site. So, it'll be the same type of project information that you can find right now at Brevard County's Saver Lagoon site, but it will also have some additional information that ties back with what people can do at home to help the lagoon. So, just quickly as a preview. So, we're working on infographics that will go on the different Saver Lagoon project pages to help people understand more about what type of work the Saver Lagoon program is doing. So, I'm just going to do really quickly to give you the scope of what we're working on. So, this is just a quick preview of all of the different types of projects that the Saver Lagoon program is doing and what we're working on populating on the website to help people better visualize and understand and walk through how these projects operate. So, in addition to the Saver Lagoon section, we have many new things coming and features that are being launched in our next phase of the website. So, we'll be bringing back the ability to log in and report your lagoon-friendly actions as well as earn awards for them. We have a series of wildlife badges related to species in the lagoon that people can collect over time as they do more things to help the lagoon. We're bringing back additional pledges. So, beyond fertilizer, we have a whole pledges hub that we'll be using to interact with people at events and collect pledges about different, right, and then we'll be following up with them over email. We have what we call the lagoon knowledge base. So, to your point, Kimberly, earlier today, looked at like that myths and facts post for social media. So, we're working on a series of like common questions that we get at events and the Saver Lagoon program has also experienced at events and trying to answer those questions in plain language and in a way that people can more easily access that information because it's oftentimes hard to find like easy and succinct answers to some of the common things that we all want to know about the lagoon and lagoon restoration. As part of that knowledge base, we'll have some more technical articles that are based on some of the content that's been presented here at the COC by subject matter experts. So, it's going to provide us a way to, again, start putting information out to people to help kind of break down some of those like inherent barriers that we all experience when we're looking at why should I do this new thing. And so, it is going to help us both answer those questions for the public and then one thing we didn't quite cover as far as how this new website has been designed and the platform we're using is designing for the AI age. And so, a lot of this content is also designed to help us, you know, get this information out in a way that it's accessible when people are searching the internet these days for different types of reputable sources for this information. We've got a different audiences and sections of content. We're working on one now for realtors that we'll talk about in a few slides and we'll also have a whole section for visitors to the area. So, there's a lot coming that's all in development. It's in different layers and will be activated over time on the site. This is a really quick view of the rewards section that's coming up. I'm going to jump through fast. So, we also are relaunching the business program. So, the previous program focused more on coupons. Our new program is going to still have rewards as a component of the business program, but it's going to be more accessible to businesses. They don't have to provide a coupon. They can participate just for being a business that's already doing things to help the Lagoon. We're working on a take-home piece for new homeowners right now for the Space Coast Association of Realtors. We're collecting feedback from their association now. It's a guide that would go home with new home buyers. It would be distributed by realtors and title companies and it has really helpful checklists for your first week or your first month in your new home, how to understand your irrigation system, what your watering days are, what the fertilizer rules in our area. So, it's designed to kind of put that information in front of people at the right time when they may be looking for it. Really quickly, I know I'm getting close to time. So, our watering alerts is going to be launching soon. It's a free program. We're taking sign-ups starting this month. We'll start alerts next month. It basically pulls information together about how much rainfall has fallen in the last few days. Our rain sensors that are required by Florida for all new automated systems, they measure how much rain we've had very recently, but that rain evaporates relatively quickly. And so, this will allow people to have a little bit of a larger look-back window and a prompt to help them decide if they want to turn their sprinklers off for this week. We're doing a whole new system of brochures and educational pieces around different types of audiences. I'm going to go real fast because I'm going to hit my time. And we're also doing, again, bringing back rewards and neighborhood challenges in this next upcoming phase, as well as more ways for schools and education and providers to find information online. We'll have different types of lesson plans and activities, more content for businesses, and how they can be involved in helping the lagoon. So, again, finding the right information, having it available at the right time is all intended to help people make lagoon-friendly lifestyles more of a habit. But wait, I didn't talk about the children's program, so I'm going to go through this really fast. So, we have been working on a series of characters that live in the lagoon. We call them the Lagoon Pollution Patrol. They all each are geared towards different age groups, and they all have a different type of pollution prevention topic. So, we have a series of children's books that are in the works. These are concept art, so you'll have to forgive us for putting up this really fast for you. But just to give you an idea, we have different styles and different characters for, like, younger age groups. And then, as we get into the older children, different types of graphic novel and illustration that we're building. We brought a really small assembly of some of the signage that we are starting to debut this year with events. So, this is some pieces from our ghost shrimp-themed booth. It's October, so we get to talk about the ghosts that live in the lagoon. And we have some fun activities where the kids get to find the ghost shrimp. And we have, like, a little take-home activity that you get to make your own ghost shrimp, but they're actually sea monkeys. So, we talk to them about the difference between brine shrimp and shrimp that live in the lagoon. And then, they get to take a magnifying glass and a kit home and grow their own little brine shrimp. And then, we get little instructions about how to take care of them and what to do with them at home. So, we have a series of booths that are themes that are planned for around the year to help engage kids when we are at events and then help bring all of this education back around so that when they see us in schools, they can also recognize us at events. Little coloring kits and different activities that are part of our educational series that will be coming to the education side of this site as part of our resources. And that's the real end. So, thank you. I'd be happy to answer any questions because we had a lot to pack in. And this is just a small piece of it. So, I should hope that some of our tracks have questions about what the content is and all. Go ahead, Charlie. Yes. Hi, Becky. Thanks again. Great presentation. A couple of questions. First of all, on the survey results, you had a pretty big population size. How was that population selected or? Good questions. So, the feedback survey that we did last year, it was actually three different population sets that we pulled from. So, we don't, normally with a survey, we would, you know, we would do like one, if you're doing a formal official research survey, you would kind of do like one set survey question from one set population. That survey was unique, is what I should say. So, we used three audience tracks. We used existing Lagoon Loyal members. We used people that weren't members and hadn't ever been exposed to the program. And then we also surveyed people that had, said they were aware of the program and, but weren't members. So, we kind of used different questions for each of those tracks. So, we recruited people from multiple ways. So, for Lagoon Loyal members, it went out by email. We also had invitations on our social channels. For a survey like that, to help us balance out our numbers so that we weren't only speaking to Lagoon Loyal members, we did, I think we bought about 150 panel responses. And so, that's a relatively industry standard way of trying to get a more census, balanced approach to surveys. So, that one is a little bit odd because we are trying to collect information both about your experience with the program, if you were already a member and have participated, and also the opinion of the program from people that weren't familiar with it. So, that aggregate there was, those were three questions that were asked of all of our audiences. And those, you see how high those responses are. So, it wasn't just our existing, like, Lagoon advocate community that was responding in, in, with those numbers. Okay. So, representative, bigger population. Yes. And if I could ask just one more question, and it's kind of a big question, is how do you, kind of measure success with the program? That's a good question. So, from, so again, we have two different funding sources that we work with under Lagoon Loyal. So, with Saver Lagoon, the, our objectives are written publicly in the Saver Lagoon Project Plan. So, there's five different education, public education and outreach campaigns there. And each of them talk about the different types of values of nitrogen reduction that could be brought about by public education and outreach if people were to change their behaviors with these modeling estimates. So, the short answer to your question is, for Saver Lagoon, we track nitrogen removal and, or nitrogen reduction, and, as well as phosphorus, but mainly nitrogen, as a result of exposure and participation in the program. So, one of the things that we've redone as revamping this program is to build out a matrix of many actions that all have an estimated nitrogen reduction value to them. So, if people are participating in the program, we can then model and estimate how much of a nitrogen reduction value is bring, being brought about by the program and their participation and engagement with it. I could talk about this for hours, though, Charlie. So, with, with the stormwater side, we, our metrics are assigned by DEP. So, it's a lot different from the Saver Lagoon side. So, we deal more with impressions and different numbers of events that we do to different groups and that sort of thing. So, yeah. But, I, yes. Go ahead, Kimberly. You had something? No. Well, a follow-up. We, a question that Charlie asked. Talk into the microphone for now, please. The, the question that Charlie asked to follow up, I think it was slide two, the 80 percentiles that you reported? Yes. Was, what were your numbers on that? How many participants were in that data set? Excuse me for rewinding for you. No, please go ahead. So, we had a range. So, depending on if we're counting parts, fully completed responses or partial survey responses, it looks like we had 453 to 473 complete survey responses to that. So, again, we had different break. This was a complicated multi-track survey. And so, these are three questions that were common for all tracks. Yes. You explained that very well with him. Thank you very much. An excellent presentation, by the way. It's great to see the movement and the, the outreach that's building. So, and again, you did have my favorite Facebook post of the summer. Oh, we're so glad to hear that. Like I say, that's, that's in line. Let me share that. No, that's in line with where we're going. So, it's very great. Perfect. Perfect. And another question. You mentioned a vlog or something, a summary of our meetings. Yes. Has that already launched? And if so, what date? When did that begin? You know, that's a great question. I think you can ballpark it. Is it, is it in existence now? Is it up and going already? Yeah. I think it's, I think we've been doing articles for almost a year. Okay. So, it's a written. Yeah. So. Oh, is that the newsletter? It's, it's a part of the monthly newsletter. Yeah. Okay. So, that's, okay. So, I just was, my next question was going to be, where do I find that? So, other than the website. Thank you. I may have already read that and not identified that as what you're speaking of today, most likely. And then, in regard to the businesses, how does that program, is that a self-reporting? They come to you and say, we're doing this. Are you doing, like, an outreach to encourage businesses to adopt practices as well as you can be in this? Or you can, I know that might be a long answer, but if you just, a little, like, one sentence, please. Yes. So, that's a great question, too. We just started the initial kind of, like, pilot outreach for that. So, we're going to do a combination of things. The current program has over 100 businesses that have been participating. And so, we are doing outreach to them to let them know what's coming, how the program's changing. We have, basically, it's like a pledge form, but it's very simple. It's just, like, two things that most businesses are already doing. Like, and we've had some people out in the field last month trying that out with different business types. And so, we've had a really high adoption rate in kind of cold calling, basically, and then just showing up to talk to businesses about the new program. The way that it differs now is there's, like, a universal pledge, we call it. It's, like, two commitments. It's basically not polluting stormwater and, you know, that you'll do one thing this year to help the lagoon at your business. And then, by business type, we have different things that businesses can do. So, we're trying to encourage businesses to join. Most are already doing things to help the lagoon. So, the program is designed to recognize businesses for what they're already doing, and then to give them pathways to continue doing more, depending on what type of business they are. So, we also, as part of that, like, as part of the recognition component, we'll be starting to put out more Facebook posts or social media posts about what businesses are participating and what they do to help the lagoon. We've got a few spotlight articles already written. I think we've done about 10 interviews. And those will also be on the blog. I think there's maybe three, but we will be putting out more. We've got many in reserve that are ready to go. And so, the idea is to show that we're all doing things to help the lagoon. And by working together, like, we can then amplify our impact. Definitely. The partnership aspect is genius. I love that it went through the whole presentation. And especially, I love that you have pathways for businesses if they don't know how to get involved. That education and broken down by business type is excellent. So, thank you again. Thank you very much. I'm waiting for you guys to... Go ahead, Laura. So, following up on Kimberly's question, do you actually have, like, guidelines for different categories of businesses, like restaurants can do this to help the lagoon? And then, in the old program, in order for a business to be listed at a partner, they had to offer a discount or something like that. So, the discount... Okay, good. We didn't have a lot of results from that, which was surprising. So, I'm glad. I think I like your new approach better. It is optional, I will add. So, what we've done is kind of like, we call it leveling the playing field. But, you know, if a business wants to offer a standing discount to anybody that's a Lagoon Loyal member, they're welcome to do that. And we will help promote that discount and that offer to... So, that would be anybody that joins Lagoon Loyal, if they just show that they're a member, if a business has a discount they want to contribute, we'll happily, you know, help them promote that. But it's not... There's no requirement to offer that. It's really just... We want... The requirement is that you're doing something to help the lagoon, because that's the purpose of the program, is to recognize that many businesses are doing many things to help the lagoon. So... Go ahead, Fred. Thanks. I think some great stuff in there. One thing, Loralee, I'll mention is I did try to use the discount, you know, and came in. And I think there's a breakdown in the system, because what I brought in as a code didn't work, but your restaurant said no problem, we're going to honor it. So, I'm not sure. So, I decided, well, why would I do another one, you know? So, I think there was something going on there. Great stuff on the kids. I'm wondering, you're going to feature businesses, which is fantastic. The individuals, you're going to do badges. Do you have other behavioral economic approaches? I mean, I think for some of us, the badges are meaningless. And so, what else are we going to supply to try to motivate those individuals? Great idea. Okay. So, so many... I think there's five things. So, let me see if I can... So, in addition to the business spotlights on the blog, we also have a community spotlight series. So, this isn't quite what... But it's aligned with what you're asking. So, recognizing community members for what they're doing to help the lagoon. So, we have business spotlights. We have community spotlights. So, that's one series. But a lot of people don't respond to public recognition, and they're just doing things intrinsically because they want to help the lagoon. So, we have two different, like, progress tracks that you'll see in the rewards system. We do this because, well, we would like to have your progress be able to align with what you're actually doing from a pollution reduction standpoint to help the lagoon. So, we have the species badge system. And so, we have aligned that with background data and research so that you kind of go up a species matrix. You start with the ghost shrimp, and then you go all the way up to, you know, birds, manatees, an entire ecosystem. That system is actually linked to the nitrogen reduction estimates of what you're actually doing when you report behaviors to the system. So, there's a component where you get to see what species in the lagoon, and an increasing understanding that by doing these things and reporting to the system, you're creating an environmental benefit. There's also what we call a community participation track. So, there's different layers of recognition depending on what, if you're going to lots of events, if you come to the COC, you can get points for that. At a, right now, it's pitched as a quarterly interval, but we're doing what we call the Lagoon Loyal Action Awards. And so, as you do different things to help the lagoon, you get points in your points system. This is separate from the rewards from the species badges. And so, that resets from time to time. But we have basically a prize pool. And if you're doing, going to lots of events, or if you're reporting lots of actions of things you're doing around your home, all of those things earn points. And they go towards more entries into the Lagoon Loyal Action Awards. So, things like a free paddleboarding trip, a free paddleboard, those things are all awards that you can get. The more things that you do, the more chances and opportunities you have to be, to win those components. There was one other piece to what you asked about. Let me see what it, um, so, I mean, those are the key pieces of what we're, we're doing. Um, we're also going to be bringing back, like, the neighborhood and community competitions. So, in addition to kind of, like, those individual drivers, um, you'll be able to kind of see your individual progress in your portal, but also how you compare with your community, or how different communities compare. So, you can kind of see your role, and how you're helping the lagoon, as well as how your community is doing, and how it compares to other communities, with chances to participate in neighborhood and community competitions, so that we're bringing those social layers back into the program, as well. That sounds great. Thanks. Thanks. And we do have a real estate track, so hopefully you're dealing with them, as far as what they're, you're working with them? I'll put her on the list. Okay. Okay. I know that Virginia, Brandon, oh, um, there was a presentation at the Space Coast Association of Realtors. I think it was October 1st that it happened. It was relatively recently, and this idea was, um, was presented there. So, there's actually a survey, um, that's available right now to collect feedback from realtors, title companies, anybody related to the industry about this particular handout. Um, there's opportunities to co-brand it, if realtors would, or title companies would be interested. I didn't mention, but there's, like, a little fridge magnet that comes with it that's got, like, a seasonal how-to-be-lagoon-friendly year-round that has reminders about what to do at different times of the year that could be, like, a co-branded reminder that would go on someone's fridge. So, um, yeah, it's, it's a great, I mean, it's a long, it's, it's a nice little, I think it's a 24-page booklet that has all sorts of resources that we feel like are, would be helpful for new homeowners. Yeah, I had no idea how, how complicated it was to be a homeowner. There's a lot to think about, right, that we just do every day, because we've lived here for so long, and we know what's right. But for a brand new homeowner, this is really a step-by-step of each thing to think about. Where do you take your cardboard boxes? What do you do with them after you, what if you decide you want, your TV is broken, and you want to get rid of your TV, do you just put it at the curb? You know, I mean, there's, it's, it's silly, but, like, you know, there's a lot of different things when you move to a new community that may be different from where you, or even if you're just moving within our community, from one HOA to another HOA or a non-HOA, there's, there's a lot of differences around our region. We're a big area, so trying to put all that in a booklet, we're, we're hoping is, is helpful. I got one, Zach, and I can try to jump off of that to segue. Talked a lot about businesses and locals and people moving here. You also mentioned adding visitors in a visitor-focused portal. Can you talk a little bit more about how that would work? Will those similar projects, program kind of things be applicable to those folks? How are you planning to reach that? Great idea. So, there was a pilot program that the department, it was a TDC-funded piece a few years ago, and Lori, I think your restaurant was participating in it. It was a component where there's signage around the, around the county, the little recreation and manatee guides that, that you may have seen at events. There's the ability to scan those as a visitor, or if you see signage around the lagoon, and take a survey, and it sorts you according to whether you're a resident or a visitor, how you report it. And what I'm getting to is the visitor side of that. You would receive an immediate email when you sign up and provide your email with coupons as, as a pilot test for a couple participating local businesses. So, this was something that was floating around. We looked at kind of the participation. There was visitor participation. It mainly came from the tourism brochures that get distributed around hotels and different tourist areas. So, we looked at that and quantified that there was interest from visitors, and that having access to, like, rewards or discounts may be a driver for people to sign up. So, the long, the, I guess the short version is, when we look, we have a matrix of actions, a small set of those also apply to visitors. So, what you do on the water while you're here. That same time, TDC funded component had a survey for visitors, and I believe the data in there said, reported that about 25 percent of visitors to the area also reported, like, recreating on the water or on a shoreline related to the lagoon at the, during their visit. So, we know that there is a relatively high amount of visitors that come to our area and may engage with the lagoon. So, what we're getting to is, um, we have a visitor pledge where it's basically like, I, I, um, it's, it's a short amount of things. It's basically, I, you know, pledged to, um, safely engage with wildlife. And it's worded in a way that it's very, um, understandable for visitors that aren't familiar with all the different wildlife in our area. Um, but by doing so, um, they basically become visitor members of the program. And we had mentioned before that businesses have the option to offer, like, a standing discount to anybody who's a member. So, assuming we get some participation from businesses at that level, then visitors would have the ability to kind of have access to a, a small set of, like, discounts or rewards as a result of participating in the program. So, that probably sounds much more complicated than I'm making it. It's coming in phase two. But, um, we basically have, there's a, there's a track for residents, for visitors, for businesses. Each will have a way to engage with the site and report lagoon-friendly actions. And to Charlie's question about, you know, what are our success metrics, all of those components help feed our success metrics, which for our program is looking at annual nitrogen reduction as a result of how projects are funded in the, in the plan. So, um, visitors are a huge component to our area. And they do engage with our lagoon. And they do do things like, they commit to picking up their trash. And, you know, if they have a pet while they're here, um, you know, making sure that they pick up their dog waste. Like, all those things help us just come up with estimates on how, when visitors engage with our program, they're also helping to protect our lagoon. So, I'll gladly send you a longer summary that maybe is more. And I'd like to offer to, to help in any way with that, with some of our expertise in this, to connect with them through some existing projects and programs. Off the top of my head, the Scenic Byways Program, which is a DOT program, welcome centers that have brochures and information could help to get that to them when they're physically here. That'd be great. And I'm happy to work with you on that. Thank you. And we know you also have a wonderful children's book. So, we were thinking, when you presented that a little while ago, I was like, I think we could all be friends. Yeah, maybe we could all have a party. So, it'd be very fun. Absolutely. And then you can report back as part of your presentation in the future. Okay. Wait a minute. Sorry, that is. Don, I had just one quick follow-up. Sure. So, my question, and I believe you just answered this through his response, or your response to his question. This is open to anyone. You're not a Brevard County resident. This is actually marketed out to that. Everyone. Like, anyone can be across the state. So, it wouldn't be restricted to just visitor centers in our local area, but at the welcome center, at the state line, anywhere like that. Is that correct? It will be, yes. It will be. Yes. Right now, we're kind of at phase one. We're just testing at the resident and business sign-up level. But you're not required to be a resident of Brevard County. No. No, there's a whole track that is just for people that are visiting the area. And so, we have dynamic QR codes out there on signage. So, I mentioned the previous TDC-funded program, just because we have dynamic codes that can then redirect to some of these components that will help capture visitor traffic for pieces that are already out in the wild. So, we have kind of a system of, we have a system in place for how we plan to kind of do that outreach. And then, depending on the response, can decide from there. You know, you know, scenic byway, I mean, that's a great idea. So, how could we, you know, grow it from there once we kind of see what the response is? Thank you again. Thank you very much. Now, we have the, a decade in action. Okay. Good morning. I'm just going to quickly introduce the video. So, I was tasked with trying to compile a video of all the work we've done in the last 10 years. And as you can imagine, at 142 projects completed, that was quite an undertaking. So, as a non-professional video editor, I did my best to try and summarize all of our different project categories from you using all the videos that we already have made. So, I hope that message comes across, and I hope that you guys enjoy it. And I will let Logan queue it up. So, we're about to embark on this 10-year plan. A whole program from scratch with the science, citizen oversight with the guidance of financial auditors to make sure everything is transparent and spent exactly the way it should be with the people's money to implement projects to restore water quality and a healthy ecosystem to the Indian River Lagoon. Septic systems are actually the third largest contributor of new nutrients into the Indian River Lagoon. Septic systems remove 10 to 40 percent of the nitrogen that enters them. The rest of that nitrogen flows into the groundwater and then eventually out to the Indian River Lagoon. So, quick connect is when a customer is on septic and they have the ability to connect to the sewer by the street. We'll come in, drain their tank, crush the top, crush the sides, and then we'll fill it with dirt. Then we'll dig the line to the street, and my guys will come through, lay the pipe, and connect to the city's task. Depending on the connection type, the program can cover most, if not all, of the costs associated with connecting the sewer. For homeowners who don't have an existing sewer line near them, we also have septic upgrade grants where they can upgrade their system to a system that accomplishes a higher removal of nitrogen. These grant funds are provided by the Save Our Indian River Lagoon Program half-cent sales tax to give them an incentive to connect to one of these advanced treatment systems, which really reduces the amount of total nitrogen getting into the groundwater, which eventually makes its way to the lagoon. Smoke testing is one process that we can do to find defects, where they pump a non-toxic smoke down into the pipelines, and it will come out of the ground or broken pipes, missing clean-out caps, any areas where there might be a defect. Oak Point Mobile Home Park in Titusville. This project here is disconnecting an old package plant and connecting it to centralized sewer. The current package plant was built in the 1950s. It's degraded over time. Same with the pipes, the infrastructure, the pumps, everything has had to be replaced multiple times over the years. So this whole package plant is going to be demolished once that lift station is installed. All of that septic waste that has the potential to leak through the leaky sewer laterals, overflow from the berms, is now being sent away for proper treatment at the wastewater treatment facility. This project in the city of Rockledge Wastewater consists of a 1.4 million gallon equalization basin with associated pumping facility and electrical building with standby generator. The purpose of this project is to pretty much stabilize the fluctuating flows that we have to help make a more consistent treatment process for the plant operations. The addition of this 1.4 million gallon equalization basin will allow the city to control flow rates through the different treatment processes in the plant, reducing ammonia nitrogen levels in the reclaimed water by 50 to 85 percent. So currently we are at the Cocoa Beach water reclamation facility. As the water is collected throughout the city, it comes into this treatment facility. We are in AWT, advanced waste treatment process here. This filter will be better for the lagoon because more water will be able to flow through the filter as opposed to our old sand filtration. When we get periods of wet weather and high rainfall during a storm, we can only treat about 6 million to 10 million gallons per day. This new cloth media filtration technology, we're able to treat 10 to 20 million gallons per day. So we're doubling the capacity that we're treating. So we won't have to discharge to the river. Vegetation harvesting is a method we can use as an alternative to herbicide treatment. And it uses mechanical harvesters like the excavators or floating harvesters that can physically remove plant material that would otherwise cause flooding and also are harboring a lot of nutrients that we're trying to get out from getting into the lagoon. By 25 feet long, by about 15 feet deep on the inside. So it makes it the biggest baffle box east of the Mississippi. So here in downtown Cocoa Beach, we've incorporated a stormwater low impact development project to benefit the lagoon. This project spans five blocks of our downtown area. It incorporates rain gardens with native plants, as well as tree wells, pervious pavers and exfiltration chambers, all to help capture stormwater here on site before it's able to make it to the lagoon. LID project or low impact development. And that's a way to capture and treat stormwater in more urban areas where you can't put large stormwater treatments like ponds. A tree box is a box that gets placed next to a stormwater inlet in an already installed stormwater system. The box consists of a nutrient reducing media that goes in the box as the stormwater goes through it. It helps reduce the nitrogen and phosphorus within the stormwater. You also place a tree inside the tree box. Those tree roots uptake the nitrogen and phosphorus to help the tree grow. So it removes it from the stormwater before it enters the Indian River lagoon. A stormwater treatment train is a treatment process that has multiple steps along the way. So essentially, as stormwater travels through a treatment train, it gets treated in a number of ways. So it removes nutrients not just at one point, but at multiple points along the project. So this project helps the lagoon by removing the harmful nutrients that end up in the Indian River lagoon. About 3,100 pounds of total phosphorus and 24,000 pounds of nitrogen every year end up in the lagoon with that additional freshwater that was never supposed to go to the lagoon. Muck is this really fine-grain, organic-rich sediment that settles on the bottom of the lagoon. So excess irrigation and rain carry sand, mud, and plant material like grass clippings and leaves into storm drains, rivers, and canals. Muck is bad for the lagoon because it's high in nutrients, phosphorus and nitrogen, which make it near impossible for natural seagrass to grow off the lagoon floor. I would say that oysters are a triple threat. So oysters help to improve water quality in the Indian River lagoon. They help to remove nutrients through two different ways. They assimilate that nitrogen and phosphorus into their shells as they're growing. So the more oysters we can grow, the more nitrogen and phosphorus is uptaken in their shells as they're growing. And then they also remove nutrients through a special relationship that they have with bacteria that live underneath the reef that goes through a denitrification process. So that bacteria is helping to physically remove nitrogen from the water column, and it will bubble out of the lagoon as nitrogen gas. So it's removing it from the cycle, and if we can reduce the nitrogen and phosphorus in our lagoon, we can improve water clarity and quality. And finally, oysters provide amazing habitat for our local wildlife, including fish and crabs and invertebrates. Well, clams are really good for the Indian River lagoon for a couple reasons. The first is they've been here forever, and they were actually a really foundational piece of the ecosystem. And what they do all day long down in the sediment is filter water. And so to a large degree, they were able to maintain the clear water that we were used to in the lagoon. We're here in the southern part of Brevard County. The Save Our Indian River Lagoon program has teamed up with local clam farmers to plant millions of clams out in the lagoon to not only reduce nutrients, but also filter the water and promote an iconic Brevard seafood. Homeowners can help out by incorporating similar practices on a smaller scale as well. They can install things like rain gardens that help slow down the stormwater, or rain barrels that trap the stormwater. If they live along the water, they can install a NOMO buffer zone of plants that will help absorb that nutrient pollution before it gets into the water. Additionally, making sure our sprinklers aren't directed onto driveways and roadways helps in keeping that freshwater out of the system. Equally as important is making sure we reduce the pollution that is being picked up by the stormwater as it flows into those storm drains. By reducing or eliminating the use of fertilizer, herbicide, and other chemicals on our lawns, we can make a big step towards reducing that pollution from getting into the water. All homeowners in the county can get involved with restoring the Indian River Lagoon by visiting lagoonloyal.com. On that site, they're going to find simple tips that they can do around their own home to reduce their nutrient pollution footprint. Good job. Thanks. If you have any questions, I'm happy to answer them. Good video. Thank you. Go ahead, Deb. No. So how do we get this on the airwaves? What's our strategy now? Because I want to share it with everybody. It'll be put up on our YouTube channel after this. Excellent. Good job, Brent. Yeah, and it'll be on social media as well. So thank you. Go ahead. Excellent, really. And I think you can add that credential to your resume. Great job. I just wanted to point out, and you did such an excellent job just like as you put everything together, the amount of innovation and technology that's advanced from 10 years ago. I mean, there was no conversation about clam planting with drones at that time or the integration devices. So excellent job highlighting that. But I did have one question. If you don't have the answer right now, that's fine. But you referenced 39 million clams planted. Is that in conjunction with our partner organizations and their clam plantings? Or is that specific to us? So I was really using the drone distribution numbers from the IRL clam restoration projects. But the zoo also does clam projects. So that's why we kind of put some things like they're over 39 million because, you know, I'm trying to get everything ready to figure out. Support like the Wiggins project, Blair Wiggins. So is his millions included in that 39 million number as well? Or is that in addition? Well, that's just what we've funded. They put out over 100 million. Yeah. Okay. So that was specific to our funding. Yes. Our SOAR funded. Yes. That's huge. Thank you for putting that number. I was not aware of that, and I'm really happy to know that. So thank you. Virginia, who put out 100 million on their own? No. Yeah. Blair Wiggins. Yeah. I was talking to Alex last night. They're at 140 million. Oh, great. Okay. It keeps going up. Lots of people doing a good job. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks. Yeah. Thank you. Now our next speaker, I don't know if he needs an introduction. You ready, Dwayne? I don't think you need me as a speaker. I was wondering if that's a great preview, huh? Yeah. Let the numbers, you know, tell the story. You're not going to get the same kind of presentation from me that you expect. And mainly, I've been, mainly, if I was a rock star, I've been on a world tour the last 90 days. Some of it with Virginia. Some of it with Virginia and Keith. You know, Keith has been leaning in on the behavioral piece. Virginia has been showcasing to the community all these amazing numbers. And I'm just doing this. And so I'm going to give you a perspective that's a little different than what you expect. And a lot of it is shaped by the last week. So I started the week looking at high-tech seagrass seed collection and planter. The second day, I'm talking to the Florida Ocean Alliance, who is going to bring ocean and space leaders to a conference that's not open to the public, but at Brevard Zoo in November. The third day, I'm standing on the site of the new Bowen Aquarium. And somebody asked you a question, how do we engage the public? That's going to be a huge one. I'll show you some numbers. The fourth day, we were given presentations. And then last night and morning, I did Lead Brevard, which has shifted its approach. And instead of folks like me talking to the Lead Brevard class, we did a round-robin yesterday morning. And Terry was in the room with about, what do you think, 70 people in your class. I was handling the Lagoon as a business expert. There was somebody there for human health. There was somebody there from aviation and aerospace. And there was somebody there from tourism. And we each took one of four tables and did a round-robin with a challenge. And my challenge was a really hard challenge I'm working on now. And that is, how do you balance the massive growth, especially aviation and aerospace, with what we're doing right now with Lagoon? And as we made the rounds, everybody from people working in drug-addicted homes to aerospace engineers, they all had a common thread. They're here because of the quality of life. They're here because of the quality of this community and the opportunities in this community, which includes beaches, Indian River Lagoon, and water. So what I'm going to give you is a perspective, not particularly bright, but it's what I see right now. And I've been here a while, 47 years and a lot of anniversaries this year. So 10 years for Sorrell. We just passed 10 years for the IRL Council on that reorganization, 40 years from the beginning of the national estuary program at a federal level. And so we are hitting this moment of retrospective, you know, what didn't we do right, what are we doing right, but what do we need to do in the future? And going back, I just, I don't know, I just got lucky. I've been here through three or four milestones that have defined this community. Beach and Riverfront, you know, voter-approved. EEL program, two voter-approved. If you look at some of the great sites that are actually supporting, Laura Lee talks about it all the time, you know, the marshlands, the uplands, these are not disconnected programs in Brevard. So the lands that we protected over those 20 years and still protect actually complement what you're doing on the plumbing side and the filter-feeding side. And, of course, people are deciding right now what this program is going to look like in the next 10 years. And while I don't have the authority, nor would I take the liberty to tell people how to vote for anything, I can tell you that those votes matter and that there is no program in the entire Indian River Lagoon, including Everglades restoration, that has stable, recurring funds at a level where you can count on doing work year to year. The rest of us all go year to year to the state, year to year to the feds, and every year we have to fight for whatever that amount of money is. Everglades, $500 million from the state, $500 million from the feds. For my program at the federal level, $850,000. And we fight for that $850,000. I don't need to tell you this, but I want to change your perspective a little bit. You know, I'm getting bombarded again. Just cut a new inlet, you know, or pump ocean water into the system. That isn't going to work because we have all of these causeways, these partial dams. This is not a high-flow system. It never was. And so engineering a solution to this is actually all happening on the mainland, and you're doing it. And you should be proud because there's no county in the state of Florida that I know that's doing all of the work at the level you're doing, you know, in a comprehensive 10-year program. And so it's not just stormwater. It's not just wastewater. You know, it's not just living shorelines and filter feeders, but it's also muck, you know, which is a big contributor to this system. But it's also diverse in a way that many of us don't think. So how many of you on the COC get up every morning and feel like you're doing a national priority? And I know why you and I talk about it all the time. And Kurt was our chair for, gosh, two full terms. You are working on a system that not only is recognized by Congress nationally, but when you look at the assets, not just the environmental assets, the number of—we have a national seashore, Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge. We've got Kennedy Space Center. We have defense assets. And you go, what's the connection between those defense assets or the business community assets? And I can tell you, and this is real firsthand knowledge, 2016, when we had dead fish, brown water, the two calls I remember, one was from Northrop Grumman, who was trying to hire thousands of engineers. And they were not only offering higher than normal wage, they were putting perks. And there was a lot of turndowns, mainly because those engineers could work anywhere. And they wanted a place where their kids could grow up, they could boat, they could fish, they could go to the beach. The other one, which was really startling to me, I had phone calls from realtors in Cocoa Beach, who basically said we were supposed to close this week, and that closing has been terminated. But what amazed me the most is two, three months later, I got a phone call from a realtor who was the seller, not the buyer. And they were negotiating the price down based on water quality risk. Think about that. You know, these algal blooms are not, you know, short hit and then they're over. People remember risk. And in Titusville, flooding is, you know, the major issue on the table right now. And so you are working at a national level and a local level, and you shouldn't underestimate your power as a COC to move this forward, to make a national statement, and put Brevard County kind of in that moment where we had a really big problem because we kicked the infrastructure can down the road for 30 years. And now we're fixing those problems, and hopefully we don't make the same mistakes moving forward because we are another massive growth surge. So I just wanted to remind you where we started, and I know John remembers this. Back in 2010, 2011, the super bloom hit. We thought it was a one-time deal. It took nine years to resolve, but it wasn't super because the blooms that happened later were worse, including the brown tide. And so St. John's River Water Management District stepped up to the plate with leadership, just like Brevard, and said, we need to understand the trigger for this. And the scientists, and there were multiple scientists, 2011 came out with an idea of what was going on in 2015, and that's what it looks like. But when you take that entire diagram, and that's just the biological, hydrological, you know, water quality nutrients, it gets down to a very simple equation. You fix the plumbing. Before anything gets into the lagoon, you can start to rebuild this giant network, and that network has not recovered yet. So while water quality this year and the last few years, we are on a recovery stage, the very earliest part of recovery, but we are still seeing lingering impacts. Seagrasses are coming back, and as Don knows, we've got a long way to get to pre-2011, and the entire food chain has been impacted, and that will take longer. To your point, Dick, you know, the fishing comes back, but it's not coming back to where it was yet. So we have to have resolve to keep doing the work. And the driving factor, and you are doing that work, and I know you've had pressure over the last 10 years, as we have at the National Estuary Program, everybody wants a quick fix. There is no quick fix. There's no silver bullet, and there's no one thing. You could fix every single one of the wastewater treatment plants. You still have septic. You still have inadequate, you know, wastewater stormwater. And so one of the things we did at the NEP, seeing all that pre-work, we said that can't stay in the general gray literature because it doesn't – it's not permanent. So we have been advancing, telling everybody, if you've got data, you've got a lot of data here, when you have time and as soon as you can, put it in the peer-reviewed journals. And so we have a special series, which will probably close this next year. We have 21 published papers. Look at how many views. 113,000, almost 114,000 views, 30,000 articles. We have a few more articles, including one that I'm writing with Chuck Jacoby, who you know, and some of my staff, to actually document how we changed the NEP in response to this, you know, catastrophe. But we did it at the same time. So you came on board the exact same time we were coming on board with a reorganized NEP. And I can tell you, there's no separation from your program and my program. Virginia and I, in fact, this week I was laughing. I'm not sure who I work for anymore. You know, it's either Keith or it's, you know, Space Florida or Virginia because we are in this together. And because we're making progress, partly it's where we all see the same goal. We all have the same wish. Clean water, healthy fisheries, you know, people don't care about how many pounds of nitrogen. You need it. I need to know it. But the general public wants to ask three questions. Is it safe to swim? Is it safe to eat fish and shellfish? And is it safe for my kids if we're going to be wandering around the shoreline? And so this becomes very much a human issue, a personal issue, and not a science issue for most of our public. So I put a question mark on this because it's not my question. I'm everywhere saying this is a national model on how a community responds to a crisis. And as I was thinking through this list, I thought, you know, a lot of this I've heard. I've watched every one of your meetings all year. And I'm going to turn you all back and all the citizens who may be watching. Listen to Dr. Windsor's. It was February. His list of lessons learned. What was it, 21, 22? Those lessons learned weren't just lessons learned. There were lessons that were fine-tuning what we thought going into this process. And so when you look at how you mentioned that the technology is starting to advance and the partnerships that have evolved with Water Management District, with the National Estuary Program, when Virginia comes to the NEP, every one of those county commissioners on four other counties wish they had the capacity to do what we're doing. Many of them are capped out. They couldn't do a sorrel program because they couldn't levy that kind of tax. And so when you look down this list, I'm going to look at the last two. Talented and dedicated staff, you see that every time you meet. But what you don't understand is how important you are as the Citizen Oversight Committee. Some of you sit on my committees. You know, Kurt was the chair for a long time. The interactions between the hundred citizens and scientists and managers that I have is not just palpable. It is a community of practice that I believe we can't find anywhere in the nation. In numbers, intellectual capacity, experience, and the fact that you have the resolve to get this job done if the financial means are there to do the work. And you can't do a project without funding. And we had a long period since when I got here 47 years ago where we knew what we needed to do. John probably remembers the Indian River Lagoon Act 1990, you know, where they said we're not going to put wastewater in the lagoon. And then exemption after exemption made that just, you know, a great piece of legislation, but no real activity. The opposite happened on the other side of the coast with the Grizzle Fig Act, where they immediately started to look at stormwater and wastewater. And the reason was they were already as green as could be with blooms, mainly macroalgae. And so human nature is to respond quickly. You know, when you have a crisis, you know, we can't allow that crisis to happen again. And I think we are turning the corner. But your plan, and I look at a lot of plans, and we have a lot here. There is no plan like the Save Our Indian River Lagoon plan, thanks to you. You deliberate in a way that is both intellectual. You don't care about whether you're going to push the buttons of staff, you know, or ask the hard questions. And you come up with a plan every single year that is defensible. It's science-based. But it's also got that one goal. How many pounds of nutrients, or especially nitrogen, are we removing in the cost per unit pound? I can tell you that doesn't happen anywhere. And, John, you have mentioned it, and I mentioned it earlier as a concern. The very first year I was worried, God, we're focused on nitrogen. All the science was talking about dual nutrient and synergies of nutrients. The fact is, and you have said this often, if you get the nitrogen out, the processes that do that are going to also get phosphorus. But you're also impacting water, fresh water input. And right now that's a huge issue, the pulse of fresh water. So what we have is this shared vision, you know, for a clean lagoon. And what we have is everybody communicating, collaborating at levels that I've never seen before. About a month ago, we were at Restore America's estuaries in San Francisco. And we asked everybody who was from Florida, and most of them were a lagoon, to come up for a picture. And we could barely fit on a stage, restore our shores, Florida Fish and Wildlife, NOAA, my staff, Bonefish Tarpon Trust. There were people there that I hadn't even met that are working on this lagoon system. They all know what's going on here. And so we should all be really proud of how that's moving forward. It's a partnership in action, and it's a partnership that is very tenuous. We have enjoyed ten years of extreme alignment of both shared vision, shared resolve to solve this problem, but also the recurring funds here. What's the average? It's going to be, what, $583 million total. When you average that out and then you look at every other revenue source. So we've had three really major legislative changes. Clean Waterways Act in 2020 kind of set the tone for new stormwater rules. Resilient Florida program, which a lot of people don't realize the connection between resilient communities and water quality. So if you've got a wastewater treatment system or a septic tank that's got a bad location with no separation, every time we have events, you know, you're going to have failures, and those failures are going to be the moment, the instant. Not the chronic, but the instant. And I think you mentioned, you know, how tannic the water looks right now and how high it is. You know, we are unusually high for this time of year. And get used to it, because this is not a combination of just rainfall, you know, and the fact we're in that fall king tide season. This is the evidence of sea level rise and climate change. We've had the highest temperatures I've ever heard of, you know, in surface waters during this past summer. And what saved us from that moment of another event, really bad event, has been we've been having these rainfalls that haven't been persistent, long-lasting, and they've been somewhat patchy. So we've had areas that have gotten three, four inches of rain. You go five miles north and they're not getting anything. That makes how we work really difficult, you know, on a lagoon-wide basis. But the key is just to have to keep doing the work, keep cutting the nutrients, keep managing the system. But here's where it starts to get me really worried. So my entire budget, the base budget, is really $50,000 from each of the five counties, $500,000 from each of the two water management districts, which largely is ad valorem-based. And then DEP, $250,000, and that's the local-state match to the federal contribution. What we've been able to do, and I had it on the other slide, with all the money Brevard County has, your staff here is still hungry to match. You could have sat back and said, you know what, we've got $50 million a year. You know, we've got to get these projects. You have leveraged over $100 million. What's it now? $130 million. $130 million of match dollars. When you think about that, plus over 20% of that revenue coming from tourism, you know, this is an efficient, effective, and focused program. Largely because your staff, because you as the COC, you know, are driving the credibility and the oversight of this program. But we brought in $9.4 million for Habitat. That's a three-year project. Next year it ends. I don't have any idea where we're going to get supplemental funding because the federal dollar is contracting right now. We had five years of Infrastructure Investment Jobs Act, and the only reason that money was available was because the 28 national estuary programs got together with our association and made sure we had a line item for national estuary programs in the Infrastructure Investments and Jobs Bill. It's like $134 million. Guess what? Next year, that money ends. What we did with the NEP, which you all are using to some degree, directly or indirectly, is we built infrastructure. So we have five operational seagrass nurseries. I knew we weren't going to outplant our way to success with seagrasses, but what we're learning in those nurseries is going to help us in the field. And, of course, if we don't need it for seagrasses, we can always start switching that life support system to something else that we want to do, fish. You know, I'd love to see smooth-toothed sawfish somewhere. And then congressionally directed spending. We've had a remarkable support base with our congressional delegation from South Florida and Everglades all the way up through the coast. Again, that's a one-shot deal, project after project. You cannot do this work year to year without a recurring source. So the revenues are going to end this year for Sorrel 1, and if we don't decide as a community to continue this work, then you will see the projects in the queue slowly, you know, finish with the available funding. You know, and then, you know, we're going to be looking at being right back where we were 10 years ago without a substantial revenue source. And I can tell you from experience, the time value of money is really, really important. I saw it when I was running the Endangered Lands program here. You cannot do long-term programs, long-term projects, without knowing at least what the revenue is going to be in the next year. You can't budget. You can't plan. And for projects that take two, three, four, five years to, you know, plan, concept, plan, permit, get the teams together and build, none of that is easy. None of it's fast. So, you know, we complain at my program running the small projects. I show your spreadsheets to my staff, and they go, glad we're not working there. Your staff is doing an amazing job, and you should congratulate. So the work's not done. You know, we're at the beginning of the first 10-year plan. Chesapeake Bay's been at it for well over 30. And if you watch the news, the Chesapeake Bay is having some real problems right now, not just in spot areas where water quality is bad, but overfishing. You know, there are a lot of issues. So this isn't something we're going to ever be done with. But once we get over the, what I would call the hump of restoration, then it becomes stewardship. But the population is going to go down anytime soon. And I can tell you what is going to go up, and it is inevitable, because it's happening right now, is the expansion of aviation and aerospace, not just at Kennedy Space Center. Everybody's worried about launch. All of the attending support facilities that are coming in, whether it's manufacturing, high tech, our brain trust is expanding at levels that we haven't seen since 1960. There's opportunities there and also some challenges. If we do it right, we will be the model for the nation. And we also have uncertain weather. I'm really worried about this winter. If the meteorologists and the models are correct, we are going to be cloudy, cooler, and we could have massive rainfall impacts. And one of the most sophisticated rainfall centers, you think it would be, you know, the weather stations. It's down at South Florida Water Management District. You go into their weather and water station, it looks like you went into NASA. You know, they are modeling, because they have to watch the levels of Lake Okeechobee. And when they're concerned, we should all be concerned. This is not the, you know, unusual event now. This is going to be the norm. In our stormwater or wastewater, you know, unless we get resilience built, as soon as we can get it built, then failures are going to continue. Miami-Dade goes underwater in certain streets, every high tide now. And so now's the time to retrofit what we know we need to fix, like in Titusville. But the heads up is that we can't build the same way we did the last 50 years. That construction has to be risked at least aware. And you can see this in Cocoa Beach with the 800-room new hotel. It's elevated at least a full stage up. And Patrick Space Force, you know, all the homes they're building on the back of the dune line, they're all elevated. You know, take a lesson. You know, from the big investors in government, we shouldn't be building any monolithic slab homes on the dune line anywhere in this county. And just take a look up the coast on what was a pretty severe northeast storm, Cape Hatteras, Rhode Island, you know, areas in New Jersey. You know, they are losing real estate faster than you can imagine. So I see challenges, but I also see huge opportunities. And so I have really worked hard for three, maybe four years to build a level of availability and trust and understanding between our emerging commercial and our governmental space entities and the National Estuary Program. And communication has to start with respect. Communication has to start with understanding of each other's needs. And there are going to be impacts from heavy launch, especially the heavy lift rockets, the super lift. We're not in this alone, by the way. We've got the longest history of anybody in the United States. Where I really worry is 130,000 acres of wetland in Louisiana. I like to call it the Louisiana Purchase. It will be the first privately owned, privately run spaceport in America. And if you look at the vision for that, when I was in San Francisco, they came to me and said, well, what are you guys doing up there? I said, we're going to have to be rethinking how we work with space and how space works with us, especially the commercial space and the cadence. I said, you should be talking to Florida and learning what we learned over that 60 years. You know, as we went through this, what didn't seem slow and easy back then, even shuttle, we're going to be looking at a launch, maybe two launches a day as we move forward. And so this is the new world, and we need to figure out how to maintain and protect the Indian River Lagoon as this growth happens. And I have to tell you that if our county in the Space Coast wants to be an even partner in this, we have to have money in it. So you can't go, and I see this in Congress all the time when I'm up there, some of these communities that are in our NEP are asking for legislative funding, but they are not bringing any match to the table. Those days are over. You know, you need to have skin in the game, and we do. So we are positioned to be a leader in the nation, and the work you do is that leadership. The Citizen Oversight Committee, the vision, and this only continues if we wind up, you know, looking where the opportunities are. Keith didn't know I was going to push this in, but it was on my mind, standing on the dirt mound, where this is going to be built. The Bowen Aquarium is going to be a centralized location, not just for the Space Coast, but the whole east-central Florida region. And its extent could be, not could be, it will be national, depending on how this moves forward. And, again, time and value is really important, but a lot of things that the East Coast Zoological Foundation does not talk about, and I do, is that I think it was 90 or 91 we signed that agreement. I think it was 90. For which? You know, for the dollar for conservation. I think it was 90 or 91, before, you know, this had really gotten a, you know, full roll, the foundation, Keith, came and said, you know, we should be investing in the Indian River Lagoon and the coastal resources. And they pledged a dollar from every ticket sale to come to a, basically it would be a competitive grants program. $500,000 right now is the conservative estimate. We offered from the NEP to be the administrator of that and work with partners to figure out what those annual priorities are. That also doesn't happen elsewhere. It just doesn't happen. And so think about $500,000 in earned income every year being available lagoon-wide for projects. You know, that's a recurring fund. And so research, technology, all of the things that you talked about already, that becomes the center hub, you know, for identity, you know, rather than sitting where I'm at, you know, in an old school building or up here in a government building. So that is the future. It's one transformational project. The other one is a 21st century wastewater treatment plant, which has been on the conversation piece since 2018. Now's the time to start moving the really big visionary opportunities because a lot of what we're going to do is still going to be local. I love this quote. And actually, Laura Lee is going to like it too in a minute. So if you look at really good businesses, you know, they have a vision, they have a mission, they have a set of core values, and then they move forward to actuate that vision through action. So they have this hedgehog approach. They just keep moving forward. You see that with aviation and aerospace. You saw it with Blue Origin, SpaceX. But there's a whole slew of new technology companies that are just starting out, that are having to deal with, you know, how do we keep that cadence? So our hedgehog is really, you know, our horseshoe crabs. They've survived billions of years. And the stories I hear from fourth and fifth generation commercial fishing families that there were sandy shorelines up towards Kennedy Space Center where on certain nesting seasons you would see hundreds of thousands instead of just a couple of locations, you know, now. And so water quality gets better. We think about habitat. But we have to stick with this. You know, we just invested 10 years in a lot of sweat equity and a lot of intelligence. You know, the human capital part of this is not only growing, but it's also getting smarter, better, faster, cheaper, because we're figuring out how to ways to do it better, like throwing clams in with a drone. And so this is the moment, you know. So in the next couple of weeks, I know people are voting right now, if we do not extend this sales tax and continue the work, here's my prediction. And I'm allowed to do this because I asked my board what I can do and can't do in the purview of a national estuary program. We are going to continue to grow. We are going to continue to have climate change impacts, sea level rise, which is now pushing into areas that normally don't have water. If we don't keep this cadence and the momentum, then we go back to being super vulnerable and waiting for that next moment, which could be four years, to even get close to where we are now. And four years from now, trust me, what we're doing seems expensive, but we shouldn't be thinking about cost. We should be thinking about long-term value and what the Space Coast in Brevard County means to the nation. And a lot of that decision is happening right here in the room with you all. So I'll leave you with this. I couldn't be more proud to have this association once again, you know, with one of these scary but transformational moments. Science matters, monitoring matters, all of this stuff is the only way we're going to get ahead is metric the progress. If it doesn't work, move on. Do like the space industry does. You blow up a rocket, you know, they're building that next rocket within 12 hours. And so be ready for some failures. Seagrass planting, you're going to see failures because we can't control Mother Nature. And we might see water quality decline, you know, over this next winter. And the real key will be how fast does this system rebound, even though it's still out of critical care, but it's still in serious, you know, health care. But if it comes back next season after a hard winter, then that's going to be the moment where the work we're doing, it's not just natural, it's not just weather. It's all the work you're doing to change the plumbing. So I'll leave it with that and say thank you again. It's been my great honor and pleasure to be able to work with you all the last 10 years. I don't know what happens next for me on the next 10, but either way, I'll be with you. Thank you. Any questions, comments? Go ahead, Deb. So thank you so much, Dr. DeFries. You always do a wonderful job of advocating for the lagoon. About the funding, you made a very clear case for why we need to continue. And I think you said this, but I think I'd like to underscore it for the public that might be watching. The funding sources outside of what we are providing through the half-cent sales tax are drying up. And I know from advocacy efforts that I've been involved with in the business community and other things, including discussions with you, that oftentimes when there are matching funds available or grant sources, we improve our chances of being able to tap into those because we bring our own funds to the table. That's absolutely the case. And, in fact, you can't even put a proposal into our cycle, which, by the way, is now on the street. But it's not a million dollars in its entirety. But we want matching everything other than small grant. And, by the way, the work that you looked at earlier that was on the glyphosate, that work was done with $5,000. But it was preliminary. You know, and so your focus is exactly where it needs to be because the history is if you get the nutrients reduced, then the harmful algal blooms get reduced. They're not going to go away. And then once you have clarity for most of, you know, that seasonal growth period, you'll get stability. But I don't think we're going to see, unless you have a philanthropic donor who is going to give a gift, and those days are over, too, you need to be at the table, you know, with skin in the game, whether it's volunteers, in-kind match, you know, or real cash. And real cash, that is a big deal. And imagine what a 21st century wastewater treatment plant might be from ground up. And I can give you a good example. So they moved the wastewater treatment plant on the north end of Hutchison Island five miles inland, not for any other reason than they recognized how vulnerable it was. They also recognized how valuable that end piece of property was. But they just, they couldn't, they didn't have the capacity to handle growth. My understanding is Fort Pierce Utilities, I think they're in $100 to $130 million for that. And, of course, you learn along the way, and you're doing it with septic. There are some septic tanks that go in easy, and some septic tanks even down the street that go in harder. And what they realized, even though they had all the engineering, is they needed more lift stations to move waste, you know, five miles. And some of that, you know, is an incremental improvement on technology. And I'll go on the record. Advanced wastewater treatment, to me, is not advanced. We were doing AWT. That technology was here 30 years ago. Where Sarasota's made really big strides isn't redoing their whole plan. It's putting smart sensor technology that's reactive to the changing loads. So the efficiencies go up with the same kind of treatment. Once you add industrial commercial, it gets a little trickier. But we should be doing all of that. I used to say, and I don't say it now so much after Artemis, because they did have that little problem with the toilet. But I said, you know, human waste treatment isn't rocket science. All the technology is there. We have to be wanting to invest in that top end to get, my goal would be, no waste to ground, no waste to water, no waste to air. You know, zero pollution. And that's available for, you know, it's expensive either way. But so is polluting a water body and trying to then solve the problem once it's out there loose. Excuse me. Kimberly. Just thank you so much. But I wanted to just, I had no idea what the other presentations entailed today. And I was really focused on common goals. And that's definitely been a theme through our Lagoon Loyal and then what you've said as well with our partnerships. And, again, what she was just questioning and talking about with the matching funding, the partnerships are so important. And I think one of the things that I recognize as being part of this committee is just how vast our partnerships are. And there's other large entities that just don't even come close. So thank you for pointing out that what we do here is valuable. There are times that, you know, some people have resigned and left or turned out. But, you know, it's just are we making an impact? So thank you very much for bringing that information to us and really giving us just a little boost. I think that it meant a lot to me and I'm sure to everyone else here as well. So thank you for taking the time to put that in. And, again, you mentioned cost. You know, I think a lot of times we overlook the difference between an expenditure, the cost of something, and an investment. So we have a return. So this isn't money that's spent. It's not spent and gone, but it's an investment that does have a return. So thank you again because your presentation also highlighted a lot of those investments, and that is what we do here. That's where the Sorrel funds go. They don't go to just be spent. They're an investment. We do have a return on that, and definitely that's highlighted in your presentation today as well. And you all saw that back in 2025 when I think Dan came in and showed you our economic study. That one couldn't have been done without federal money. It was all federal money. But the return on investment, the benefit-cost ratios of individual projects, I mean, even Virginia and I, when we saw that $28.3 billion economic output, of course, that's not just Brevard. That is real money. Yeah, Valerie. Yeah, Valerie Seidel did that, Valerie did it, and we still work with them, but that's gone everywhere. So we're still getting phone calls from people all over the United States going, you know, how did you get ecosystem services? That's not an easy, you know, analysis. You're using real data on cost if you're doing projects, and then you're using modeled data, you know, to get there. And so all of that, by the way, is on our website now, including Valerie at the Balmoral Group was getting so many requests for presentations that we said just we'll do a webinar with you because we didn't, our contract didn't have hundreds of presentation and travel costs. But that is on the website right now, and we're happy to help anybody who wants to walk through that cost-benefit ratio analysis. But thank you. Dick? Yes, we talk about matching, you know, at different levels. Mm-hmm. And comments on what you're seeing where the individual person, Virginia and her husband, are getting a septic tank or something. What do you see across the country on that that the people, the actual customer, is willing to match? So it's interesting you ask that question. We often look at ourselves like we've been behind the curve on septic and nutrients. There's a lot of states that don't even have nutrient credit criteria. They don't have nutrient criteria. They don't have B-maps. They don't have total maximum daily loads. And so we know what our problem is. But if you look at Rhode Island, for example, they basically came in and Rhode Island said, we've got all these distributed, small, centralized plants. We're going to start making them. They forced, they regulated them to merge into larger, more efficient systems. And along the coastline, and I've heard this a couple times just recently this year, people will call and say, should I be worried? I want to buy a $2 million home, but it's on septic. And they're coming from places like Connecticut, Virginia, coastal areas where they've been, if you're going to sell a house, you're going to have to deal with it. Either the owner is going to have to put septic connection in if it's available or advanced, or the buyer is going to reduce the cost because they're going to be forced into doing that. One county on our watershed, Martin County has had a very aggressive campaign for septic to sewer, and they've got some financial, unique financial mechanisms to make it a little easier. But there's very few places that I know that have communities early on, especially Rockledge was one of the ones where the first phase, the city of Rockledge says, if you're in this first group, you're not going to pay anything. So they incentivize that first phase of connection. And what's remarkable to me is that in that early first phase, and this is all what I heard anecdotally, there were still people saying, nah, I'm not paying a fee, so why would I hook up and then be charged? And the opposite of that is Satellite Beach, for a long time, said 100% of their town was all connected. And when they finally started, and when they finally started to look, there were a whole bunch of homes on streets, in satellite, with main pipes from me to you. They'd been paying on that mandated connection fee for years, but nobody ever connected, and nobody knew. So somebody bought a house, and they're getting this monthly utility bill, not knowing that they were actually still on septic. And, of course, you'll know you're on septic when the septic fails, and then you'll be looking at tens of thousands of dollars of water and sewage damage inside the home. But, yeah, we're way behind the curve in our minds. But as a state, you know, we've had almost all of the funding that came through the Indian River Lagoon Protection Act, which was an executive order from DeSantis in 23. His budget request and promise was $100 million a year, every year for four years, for water quality improvement. And, of course, the first two years, the House and the Senate supported it. The last two years, it was significantly less. And that worries me as well, the political will to do this, other than our own community, doing like we've always done in Brevard, doing it for ourselves. You can't count on anybody else to be there with you because of the politics. We just don't know. So we're going to have a new governor, a lot of new faces, both at the state level and legislature and also on the Hill. And so those of us who are in that world will be spending a good part of the next four to five months re-educating or newly educating, newly elected, where this isn't on their radar screen. Thank you. No, thank you. And thank you for letting everybody know how the fishing's going. I have a whole bunch of Indian River Lagoon guides who call me up. They never call me up when it's good. They always call me up when they see, you know, colored water. But occasionally, you'll get one of those pictures. And this year, I think you had some of the guides here a couple weeks ago. So the fishing is not what it used to be, but it is way better than it was five years ago. That's water quality and seagrass. And, you know, it'll get better if we can keep this up. And some of the trophy spotted sea trout this year have been pretty amazing. And then snook, I don't know why this year. They're catching snook like crazy. Even an idiot like me could catch a snook right now. And, you know, I love fishing, but I don't catch very well. Thank you very much. No, thank you. All right, Eric. I just had a quick question. I know you mentioned freshwater. I feel like I've heard some differing opinions on how big of an impact freshwater might have on our lagoon. Do you think you could maybe talk about some of the impacts and, like, maybe how we would prioritize projects that might include lowering freshwater? Yeah, great question. So if you look back at the historical watershed, you know, freshwater flowed. You know, we had about the same amount of rainfall except for these last few years of exceptional rainfall. But on average, you know, somewhere between 58 to 65 inches a year. But, you know, it hit the watershed. And if it was, you know, on the ridge here, it was going west of the St. John's in this slow flow through marshland, being filtered along the way. But it was slow. And then on our shoreline, coming this direction, it was the same deal. You know, it would go through wetlands and eventually the transitional wetland. And, you know, one of the things we had back then, you know, which a lot of people have forgotten, we had a lot of coquina rock shorelines and reefs, you know, which buffered the system. I can give you a good idea, you know, how big this is down in St. Lucie County because they did a study. And so the watershed changes down in St. Lucie, mainly due to ag, it was an 89% loss of wetlands but a 300% increased in directional channelized flow. And so for us, when you look at Crane Creek, you know, some of our smaller creeks, Sebastian River, you've got flow coming into those systems. And if you can slow the freshwater down, store it, treat it, and then manage, release it, that is the goal. And that's what St. John's has been doing. And, in fact, just a year ago, they put their new priority list out on stormwater. You've got to have land to do it on large volume. But freshwater is going to be a commodity, especially with saltwater, you know, inclusion into our groundwater. Nobody should be wasting freshwater. We should be holding it, reusing it. I know there's a lot of anxiety about the whole idea of using wastewater for drinkable water. The whole rest of the world is using that technology. And we have been very, you know, very much kind of, I don't even know what you'd call it. This idea of toilet to tap just raises hackles everywhere. But the fact is, you know, if you're getting your freshwater from Lake Washington, you know, versus, you know, direct from a wastewater treatment plant that's got every, you know, bit of technology that Artemis and the moon will have. I'm thinking I'm going with Artemis because, you know, some of our surface water systems are challenging. And some of these harmful cyanobacterias, you've got to treat that dissolved toxic component, which is also expensive. So the answer is yes. I see stormwater not equivalent. In fact, you have the data on the contributions. What's worse about stormwater is this pulsing, this fast, you know, velocity, large volume, shifting salinities dramatically over short periods of time. You add that stressor to plants and animals on top of algal blooms, you know, on top of everything else that's in the system. And you have to ask, what can we control? That one we control. You know, we can do it, but that is also expensive. But do not discount, you know, stormwater in this system. And you're doing baffle boxes, but we've got a lot of work there. There are places, you know, start at Pineda Causeway, run south on Route 1 all the way to Sebastian Inlet and see how many from the road cascades of fresh water come in. You know, I don't know how many millions of gallons on a rainfall. But remember, that's got no treatment, no retention. It's straight pipe. So every car that's leaking gas, oil, I worry about rubber fragments only because they've had problems with chemicals and rubber manufacturing. Took years to figure out what was going on in the Pacific Northwest, you know, with some of the salmonid species. There's some stuff out there. I worry about what we don't know, and we don't even know we don't know. But that is not something that Sorrel is going to be able to address directly. That's going to be local. Some of this is all, you know, it's a state, and it's, you know, all controlled by, you know, transportation, you know. And so we've got a lot of players, but you're doing the work, and you're doing it in a timely fashion. And Kurt knows better than anybody, trying to get a road, you know, improved or a bridge rebuilt in the state of Florida right now, unless it's a catastrophic emergency, shouldn't take as long. And I know the road that you worked on, the whole time you were here, it still isn't built yet. Yep. I bet everybody can figure out which road that is. It's not a big one, but this shouldn't take that long. Governor DeSantis, after the one hurricane, rebuilt a causeway, so it was less than two weeks. It wasn't perfect, you know, and there was a lot of other work to do. But this idea that it should take, you know, 20 years to figure out how to expand 528, you know, or, you know, rebuild a road for capacity, every time you wait a year, add another percentage of cost. And in some cases, a big percentage. Yeah. What was it on? When I first started trying to get Ellis Road extended, it was probably in the $22 million range. And I finally got Tallahassee to agree to help us get that done, and it was at about $32 million. And they put it on next year's budget, and by the time we got to the next year, it was $58 million. Yeah. So the project's still not done. Yeah. That's what inflation has done. Yeah. Inflation and the bureaucracy of just moving. I'll tell you a good story, because I don't want to end on that. So part of our NOAA grant was to reconnect 2,000 acres of wetland just south of Max Brewer Bridge. It's called the C20A impoundment. Our prime contractor is St. John's River Water Management District, and they do that work regularly. I think we had a little bit less than a million dollars for that project, hard cost estimate. We're halfway through that first year, and it starts to move forward. Last year, I get a phone call from Ron Brockmeyer. I don't know if Ron's been here. And Ron calls me. He says, we have a problem. And, of course, I always think a problem is a real problem. And he said, well, we finished the contract, the scope of work, and we have two-thirds of the money left over. You know, we could have been bureaucratic and said, well, let's tell NOAA we won't need it. So Ron goes back to NASA and Kennedy Space Center, and all the players that make decisions up there gets an extension on that agreement and then doubles down on the amount of diketop that got, you know, removed. And four weeks ago, maybe it was five, we're all out there looking around to see all the reconnections. And this is just south of the Coroller Way. And Ron goes, well, we still have kind of a problem. And the water levels are coming up. They're going to have to move the equipment. And we still have a couple hundred thousand dollars, a few hundred thousand dollars left to move that project. And the answer is, how does that happen? What do you think? It's not that Ron's a magician. I can tell you he's not. It's technology. All of the technology that the really big contractors could afford ten years ago with tunnels, big bridges, is now at the hands of smaller vendors. And so they have GPS and laser leveling equipment on front-loading machines. And as they're taking the diketop down, they know exactly when they hit that contracted level. And so my discussion now is, how much do you need out there? And where can we take what money we have left next year and combine it with whether it's mitigation? I don't care. Let's just keep doing the work. But technology is going to help us out a lot. And if it's focused technology, you know, that could be a game changer. And there are some really innovative technologies that Virginia is aware of, I'm aware of, that Debbie Mayfield is aware of. One of them is a company that does biosolids processing. They were here in 18. We saw them again, I think, later in 18 and 19. Back then it was called Janicki. They had a system that was designed because it was funded for Africa from the Bill and Melinda Gates. And they were not in wastewater. They were in composites, advanced aviation composites. They started to move forward. Most of their business was overseas. We didn't take advantage of at least exploring the possibilities. But Martin County never took their foot off the gas. And now there is a, it's called Cedron Technology, down in Indiantown, with a company called Ara that just invested $500 million. And no private equity company is going to come in and invest in technology like that unless there's a profit margin. That's what new technology can do. But we have to have enough vision and not be so, you know, risk-adverse that we're not taking some chances because some of those, you know, are going to change the game. So I know I'm way over, but it's always a pleasure to see you all. My next stop is Texas to talk about space and national estuary programs. So I appreciate it. Thank you very much. All right. Now for something completely different. So speaking of technology, our next video coming up is using a technology that we don't see as much with our muck. So we've been doing the muck removal, but they've successfully done muck capping projects in Lake Worth Lagoon and also up around the Nassau property. And we're using this now around Cocoa Beach. So we'll let you see a little more of what's going on. Here at the Cocoa Beach Gulf Muck Capping Project covers the eastern, southern, and western shores of the Banana River Lagoon adjacent to the Cocoa Beach public golf course. This project entails placing a sand cap over 140 acres covering legacy muck within the Banana River Lagoon. In total, there's 1.6 million cubic yards of this muck within the lagoon that we will cover with this sand cap. So a lift is a thin layer of sand, approximately three inches each lift. After we place a lift of sand across 140 acres, we start a second lift, eventually building up to a one-foot-thick layer of sand across the 140-acre extents. The total will be placed in 250,000 cubic yards of clean sand, and the ultimate goal is to prevent intermixing and to consolidate that underlying muck. The sand cap creates a physical barrier that prevents that muck from resuspending into the water column and causing all those adverse effects. Additionally, a clean sand cap itself provides habitat for organisms and animals that live on the bottom and live in between the sand grains. And so those organisms that are growing there will consume any flux coming out of that muck deposit before it even gets to the water column. And it can potentially turn a nutrient source into a nutrient sink. And so in addition, that clean sand itself in some areas can provide habitat for seagrass recolonization in areas where the bottom is close enough to the surface for sunlight to reach the bottom. One of the big drivers for capping overdredging is the magnitude of the site itself. We have approximately 1.6 to 2 million cubic yards of muck that's up to 19 to 20 feet thick across the project site that's about 140 acres. So because of the large volume and what we'll call a relatively small footprint, capping was the most economical way to proceed forward. Essentially, the sand is loaded into a hopper or a container, which is then hydrated with water and hydraulically transferred through a pipeline in what we refer to as a slurry all the way over to the capping barge, where it's then dewatered in real time and then gets placed in a dry manner in a very, very thin layer. We're essentially doing something on this project site that has been done all over the world because capping is not a new technology, but how we're capping is very innovative and designed specifically for the Cocoa Beach Muck Capping Project. The capping portion of the project itself is going to take about 18 to 20 months. After that, it's going to be followed by a period of habitat restoration and recovery of the aquatic system. This project shows that with the right science and engineering, we can solve a large-scale problem efficiently and cost-effectively, and the lessons we learn here can be used throughout the lagoon. It's important that we reduce the pollution from muck by either removing it or capping it to stop the pollution, but it's also important that we reduce the sources of muck. Since the 90s, we've been working to enhance and expand stormwater treatment in order to slow down the production of muck, but you can be a part of this solution, too, in your own home. Many of the muck pollution sources come from the land, so by blowing your grass flippings back into your yard after mowing, making sure you put your yard debris in containers for pickup, and reducing chemicals like fertilizer and herbicides that feed algae blooms, we can reduce the amount of muck that's being produced. Visit lagoonloyal.com to learn more tips and tricks that you can do to help the Indian River Lagoon. Project. Yes. I just wanted to – I have to give a shout-out. Thank you for adding the ending. So, again, that common messaging, that consistency to point out what we can all do as individuals, even when, you know, the feature is a big project like that, is so relevant. So thank you for being mindful of that continuously. Yes. I may – sorry, I missed part of that video, but can you give us an answer? I hear all the time, oh, you're just covering it up, and it's not going to work. So do we have some information or data we can put out on that? Yeah. We've had a few posts on our social media before, and, you know, as you're capping that muck, not only is it trapping that flux below the sand, but as it seeps, that flux does eventually start to seep up through, and you'll get beneficial bacteria that then break that down, and it ends up releasing that nitrogen in nitrogen gas, which bubbles out of the lagoon, so it's not harming anything. And then the phosphorus that's being released gets bound in with the sand. So we have data from a little FP&L project that was in the Indian River south of Titusville, so we can make that data available. Obviously, we'll be collecting data on this project, but we don't have that yet. If you could send me that one on the FPL, and then, yeah, I understand we're studying off of this, so we can then show at the end what we got. And just a quick comment based on that. The earlier list of potential discussions, I really like the ones on outcomes at the end of the day. That's what we want to see. So if we could make sure we do those, that would be great. Yeah, and that FPL one, they looked years later, and it was still performing, keeping that flux from getting out. Just a quick reminder, I think we did a couple of presentations at two different meetings on the FPL project. Yeah, on Austin Fox, we contracted with Austin. I feel like that they... Yes? Kurt, also, Dr. Fox was very generous with his time. I have a lot of questions about this, and he went through a whole briefing on exactly how it works. And then, Abby, she was still here, I had questions at the meeting, and she was able to kind of clarify the mechanism of how this works, because I was having a hard time really grasping the benefits of covering it as opposed to removing it. I'm looking forward to seeing the results and more research from this project as well. But there's definitely more information that we would all be benefited by to have, so it's definitely good. But there's a lot out there, and I'm sure Dr. Fox would welcome a call from you. He's already got his script from what he went over with me, so it'd be a good idea. Yeah, and the capping is not a new thing. It's been used extensively across the U.S., and like I mentioned, it's been used in the lagoon before, too. So I think the Lake Worth ones were around 2012 or so. They did capping there. Thanks a lot. We've got to move along here. I'm trying to... All right, we have no old business, and we do have new business, and it's the calendar for next year. Any comments on that at all? It's been the calendar for many years, so if there's no comments on that, any public comments on it? So can I have a motion? I'll move to approve the calendar as it's been in the past as well. And that includes an option to vote for the December meeting, correct? We do that. I mean, for 2027. Like, the way it's written now, it... Yeah, the December meeting is always optional up to the committee, depending on how November goes. Okay, so that would be preserved in the same continuation of the calendar? Okay. I'll move that we continue as is. I'll second it. Okay, we have a motion and a second. Any additional comments? Again, any comments from the public? All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you. We have a couple general public comments. One from Warren Edwards. My name is Warren Edwards. I live here in Vieira. I'm a retired dentist, and in my retirement, I've sort of taken up the lagoon as my pet project. I am on the board of the BIRLC, as well as I'm the president of the Friends of the Thousand Islands. And I wanted to first thank everyone that's sitting at this table. You know, I've known of this committee and have seen you on the web a few times. But to actually be here in this room, it's impressive. And I just want to say thank you, you know, for myself personally. And I'm also the voice of the Lagoon Minutes on WFIT. And we recently, just last weekend, we did a shout-out to the upcoming referendum on the half-cent sales tax. So we spelled vote yes with kayaks. And that information hopefully is getting around because my worry is that there's so many people that have moved here within the last four or five years. And they weren't even aware of manatee deaths. And certainly they weren't aware of the smelling of the lagoon, the fish kills, all of that stuff. So that's the reason that we, the Friends of the Thousand Islands, put that event on. And hopefully, you know, we can get it out there. I think you can see it on our Facebook page and also on the BIRLC's Help the Lagoon page. You'll see a picture of it. But we had fun, and, you know, hopefully it makes a difference. So, again, thank you very much, and keep up the good work. Thank you. Thank you. And we had another from Vince Lamb. So I'm a founding member of the Bavard Indian River Lagoon Coalition. I'm a past chair of that, and I've been an active member of leading the campaign effort from the Lagoon Coalition. I'm also the chair of the Political Action Committee, Lagoon Renewal PAC, which has brought in somewhere between $30,000 and $40,000 that we're spending on basically educating the public. I kind of support Duane's view of we don't need to say vote yes. We just need to let people know what's going on, let them make up their own mind. I've run across very few people that are informed on the Lagoon that when you talk to them about it, they're not prepared to vote yes. So right in the middle of all this, I've spoken to, oh, 10 or 12 different organizations over the past month, spoke at Indy Atlantic Rotary yesterday, speaking to O'Galley Rotary next week, League of Women Voters, a lot of different organizations around. And, of course, the most interesting part of those conversations is always the question and answer period. And right in the middle of that, I will tell you that there is tremendous public appreciation of the Citizens' Oversight Committee. The fact that you guys are stepping up to do this and it just provides a view of an oversight is actually, I think, is a major factor overall when you look at how this program has worked over 10 years. The guidance from the Citizens' Oversight Committee has been invaluable in terms of keeping it on track, keep letting us sell things to the county commission, sell the annual plan to the county commission every time. It's just been a tremendous factor here. So I want you to know that there's public awareness of this and public appreciation of it. So thanks for what you do. It's not going unnoticed. Along the lines of not saying vote yes, you know, we put out yard signs that have basically been dealing with support as opposed to vote yes. So I brought four of them with me today. I don't want to take them home. So if any of you have a place for them, I know there's some of you who live in communities that won't allow yard signs. It's something of a factor. You can put them in your window, though. Anyway, also a lot of you have stepped up in terms of different levels of support. You know, the big thing is educating. And, you know, all of you are doing that in one way or another. Thanks for that. Thank you. Did you have a question of Vince? No, I was just going to... Okay, just a minute. Let's, I'd like to add 15 minutes to our time here. I've been told I've got to do that. Make a motion to add 15 minutes. Do you have a motion? A second? Yeah, a second. Okay, all in favor? Aye. Thank you. Kurt, let's do Kurt first and then we'll do you, John. Go ahead. Well, I just wanted to give you guys some background in case you had no idea how this Citizens Oversight Committee came about. When we were first 10 years ago, when we were putting this whole idea together of raising money, one of the questions, Virginia and I and Jim Barfield at the time, we encountered at many of these homeowners association meetings and rotary meetings that we attended. Well, how do we know you're going to spend it on the lagoon? How do we know it's not going to go to some pet project of one of you nasty politicians? And so that's how the Citizens Oversight Committee came about. And you guys stepped up, your predecessors stepped up, and you've had a tremendous influence. Thank you. Thank you. John? I would like one of the signs that Vince held up, but I was wondering, does that meet the legal requirements? If it says, well, I was going to, anyway, county attorney, did you happen to see the sign? Not to put you on the spot, Heather. It doesn't say vote, but I think it seems like it's suggesting that I'm supporting the vote if I put that on my front lawn. Is that your interpretation or no? Well, again, your home, your private time, private citizen type is how I interpret that. But you're free to go and sign wave in your own time as a private citizen. Thank you. Thank you. Can I have one? All right. I want to, I want to, I don't want to, I want the public, anybody else in the public comment? You can come up and comment at this time. You're getting a sign there. All right. All right. Now I'll open it up to the committee and I'll start this one because I always end up last, but I'm taking the first one this time. You're going to get two weeks that Terry's going to give us to go over the projects and to be ready for a vote in next month in November. Take that two weeks to study the projects and the budget that we have available. Take that two weeks, please. And ask staff questions. Make sure that you come to the meeting prepared. And I asked everybody to do that. Thanks. That's my comment. So any other comments? Good point. If I could just play off that for a second. In past years, we have had people come to me before in the recent four or five years, but long ago, people would come to the meetings and they hadn't looked at those documents. And they asked questions here at the meeting that should have been sorted out before coming to the meeting. So I used to always, I used to always plead with people at this time of year to please look at that stuff because it really helps everybody if we all look at it ahead of time. And staff is here for you. They always answer every question you ask about those projects. So, you know, reach out to them. Thank you. Go ahead, Deb. I just want to comment that I'm already talking where our partners are already talking about something that you suggested we should do more of last year as a result of that meeting. And that was to put our thoughts together before we come to the meeting. So we're actively working on that. And I asked the staff recently because it wasn't clear to me last year, can we ask staff questions or is that something we have to do in the meeting? And that was clarified, which you just did again. But I also think we'll have a much better discussion this year because there were a lot of us, most of us had not been through the process before. And also, I know part of Terry's work, I think, is that this year we're looking at what happens if the renewal does not happen versus the renewal happening. There might be different decisions to make in that regard. So I just think it would be helpful for all of us to have that in the back of our mind. And I know, Terry, you've got a lot to go through there. So if there's any way that I could personally help that, I would be glad to. But I think we're set up to have a better discussion this year. Thank you. Eric, did you have something? Okay. Any other comments from the committee? Good. We're going to end on time. I just have one question. When are we supposed to expect the two weeks before? No, we're six. Is that? Okay. Thank you. I was told I don't have to call for a vote to end the meeting. So let's just, we're done. 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.