Biscayne Bay Watershed Management - Jun 05, 2026

And to begin our Biscayne Bay Watershed Management Advisory Board, can you please call the roll, Nancy? Yes, thank you. Good morning, everybody. Commissioner Mickey Steinberg. Here. Vice Chair Mayor Vince Lago. Can I see you? He's here. I'm saying yes. Commissioner Natalie Milian Orbis. Commissioner Alex Fernandez. Mayor Tim Mirabott. Present. Mayor Rachel Streitfeld. I'm also here. Dr. Jed Redwine. Sarah Hobson. Dr. John Stieglitz. Present. Sam Acursio. Yannick Sederberg. Spencer Crowley. Kevin Kniff. Here. Dave Dobler. Present. Jalissa Kepner. Gerald McGinley. Jerry Menendez. Jim Murley. Here. And Roberto Torres. Here. Okay, we have quorum. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you so much, and thank you all for being here this morning. We'll begin with reasonable opportunity to be heard. Will the following people who have signed cards come up? Mariana Aziz. We'll have two minutes. Hi. Good morning, members of the board. My name is Mariana Aziz with address in 22121 Sponsor de Leon. I am here on behalf of Miami Waterkeeper. On September 2022, the county passed a resolution, Resolution 838-2022, where it directed the county to expand its asset management system to incorporate stormwater infrastructure. And to this date, we have no updates on how that update is going or how integrating those stormwater asset managements into the overall asset management system is going. So we would request from this board to ask for an update on behalf of the county, especially now. We think it's extremely relevant. Miami Waterkeeper, along with Everglades Law Center, Pierre, and the Environmental Justice Clinic at UM, just released a stormwater report card. Where it shows that inspection of stormwater infrastructure is declining across all municipalities in the county. So we do consider that expanding this asset management system to include all stormwater infrastructure from all the cities in the county could really help improve this and increase the MS4 permit compliance. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker, it will be Valeria Donet. I apologize if I didn't say that correctly. Good morning, Chair Steinberg and members of the Biscayne Bay Watership Management Advisory Board. My name is Valeria, and I'm speaking today on behalf of Friends of Biscayne Bay, the official citizen support organization for Biscayne Bay Aquatic Preserves. And my address is 40, oh, the address is 1277 Northeast 79th Street. First, I would like to thank this county staff for continued work on a reasonable assurance plan. RAP is one of the most critical means by which we can improve the water quality in Biscayne Bay and coordinate restoration efforts across the watershed. We're also very happy to hear that a draft RAP is on track to be submitted to DEP by Fall 2026. However, as RAP moves forward, we must remember that restoration of water quality cannot be performed in a vacuum, as it's inseparable from loud news planning, wetland protections, and Everglades restoration initiatives. Just two weeks ago, more than 450 people attended the Biscayne Bay Marine Health Summit. Scientists, resource management, local governments, businesses, activists, and residents all came together around a common message. The public cares deeply about our blue heart and the $64 billion economy that it generates. There were several common themes that came out of this event. One, let's get creative with funding mechanisms that can help us improve infrastructure and buy land to improve water quality and flood protection. Public-private partnerships, a percent of funds on every real estate transaction, or maybe a bond. Second, strengthen protections for wetlands. The fact that we have a CDMP application moving forward, or potentially moving forward, that could destroy hundreds of acres of wetlands with no need established, has set off alarm bells that we need to tighten restrictions. This may create a very dangerous precedent. All of the projects, third, all of the projects that would improve Biscayne Bay have been delayed by 10 to 15 years, instead of being expedited under SERP. BBC and the Southern Study continue to drop in importance in the integrated delivery schedule. And because we don't yet own the land needed, they will continue to be deprioritized under the new rapid protocol. We need to reverse this trend and buy the land or work with South Florida Water Management District to expedite projects ahead of the federal government as we did during Accelerate. One opportunity before us right now is also evaluation and appraisal record cycle, so we need to incorporate the recommendations. Thank you. Thank you. Anybody else wish to speak? This is the time for reasonable opportunity to be heard. Seeing no other people coming up to speak, now reasonable opportunity to be heard is closed. With that, we're going to move right into the approval of setting the agenda. Do I have a motion? Do I have a second? Second. All right. Show that. All in favor? Aye. Show that done by acclamation. Do I have an approval of the minutes for March 6, 2026? So moved. Thank you. Do I have a second? Second. All in favor? Aye. All right. Show that done as well. Now we're going to move right into our first presentation of the WRAP milestone. I'm going to recognize Pamela Sweeney to please come up, kick off the presentation. I know we have, now that we've worked out the IT issues, and I know we have a few people who you'll be introducing that will also be a part of this presentation, correct? Yes, ma'am. All right. Thank you. You have the floor. Thank you, Chairwoman. This morning we're really excited to provide a very brief WRAP update for you just to hit some milestones. The first of which is, I realize we haven't really talked a whole lot about communication and what you're going to hear from Mr. Wessel next and some of the subsequent speakers this morning is the effort and the lift to make sure our stakeholders, which are those entities that will be subject to the WRAP and any allocations that come out of the WRAP to reduce nutrient loading, pardon me, as well as any stakeholders that benefit from it. And we're also looking for these programs that come in and for the WRAP and that's all. Thank you so much for when we're going to join us today that we're going to be here for you today. And that includes six southern Broward entities, including Broward County and Monroe County. Also state and federal agencies across the board, Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, FWC, DEP, of course. Federal agencies, NOAA, EPA, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the tribes. We also are making every effort to reach out to those folks in academia who are contributing to this work and whose work we've certainly benefited from, as well as, of course, local agencies that are internal to the county that have offered up files, data, opportunities to invest in and cooperate with our consulting team to help expedite this effort. In terms of one-on-one conversations or group settings, we've had dozens of kickoffs in one-on-ones or one-on-ones. And this actually had to sort of repeat itself. We noticed that at the end of last year's budget cycle and election cycle, there was a lot of turnover. So a lot of folks that were engaged with us were either no longer there or moved into different roles. And so we took the initiative to almost restart the process in some ways with some of those stakeholders and prioritizing those that are going to be subject to the RAP. We've participated in several of Maryland and CAVA's forums to talk about the RAP, including our science roundtables, as well as our municipal stormwater roundtables that happened pre-season, so right before the storm season, coastal mayors' meetings, the last of which Mayor Streitfeld hosted and really appreciated the opportunity to speak with the mayors that are in attendance there and talk about the RAP, regional planning council meetings, of course, our watershed board and your presence, and also the state's Biscayne Bay Commission. Those are great opportunities for the public to engage with what's going on with the RAP. And dozens upon dozens of project identification meetings, as we're calling them. So this is where we're engaging with those 40 municipalities one-on-one. And so my staff and the staff that you'll hear from today have made phone calls. We've made visits to offices of those entities from whom we hadn't heard or whose projects were sort of on the back burner. And that has yielded some of the results that we see today in terms of obtaining project lists from entities that are interested in implementing nutrient-reducing technology or other projects. Upcoming, I wanted to share that we have a RAP website in the works, working with our communication team, to have a place where all of this information coalesces. And for folks new to the process, you can fit right in. Folks advanced in the process, you can learn the most recent information and what's going on. We have a municipal stormwater workshop that Durham is putting on June 9th. And this is another opportunity to engage with municipalities. So for folks listening and folks present, that's an opportunity also to hear from various county departments on our efforts to help protect against flood. Flooding issues come the wet season and to take proactive measures to make sure that your stormwater systems are ready and prepared for the season. Lastly, we have a RAP workshop scheduled for June 16th. So this is going to be a follow-up with topics that we're going to build upon, having surveyed our attendees at RAP Day, which you'll hear about in a minute. But I want to lead in now to RAP Day. RAP Day was hosted by the Biscayne Bay Marine Health Coalition. And I really want to appreciate Mr. Dobler and his efforts to lead the charge, the invitation to bring us the day before the Biscayne Bay Marine Health Summit earlier in the middle of May. And it was a great opportunity to not just have the added capacity and insight and input from that coalition of stakeholders, but we had a lovely venue. We had the ability to welcome numerous stakeholders, and Mr. Wells is going to talk about that in a minute. But it was also just a great way to engage with our community advocates over the RAP and be able to engage on that level as well. And the lift that Mr. Dobler and the whole team brought was, you know, can't be understated. And so that was a really successful event that I'm going to let Mr. Wessel lead with from ESA. ESA is the entity the county has brought on board that has successfully accomplished several basin management action plans around the state, which is the state version of telling you how you're going to fix your water quality problems, as well as reasonable assurance plans. And we're really excited to have him and Dr. Janagy as our leads, sort of keeping everything together, the glue on the team that works with me directly. And then later, of course, we're going to hear from GHD and our modeling team. And we're going to hear also from Marcy Frick from Tetra Tech, and they're responsible for obtaining those projects and working on the calculations to basically derive the benefit from projects that will be paired with the model outputs. So with that, I would like to hand it off to Mr. Mike Wessel from ESA. Thank you, Pamela. Good morning, everyone. I'm going to be talking about, briefly talking about WRAP Day and the current status of the project, but I would also like to take a second to support what Pamela said about the summit and to thank Mr. Dobler and all the staff who helped put on a great event for the summit and also for providing us the space to gather with the stakeholders to discuss the WRAP. I was really just extremely impressed with everything about our time there. The scientific presentations, the support among the community to protect Biscayne Bay. And it was really clear that the county efforts and Durham specifically were very much appreciated across the spectrum of attendees and that the data that Durham collects, the long-term water quality data and the long-term benthic habitat monitoring data in particular, were just incredibly valuable to the researchers who were out there trying to understand how to protect the bay. And that goes for ourselves, too. We are using these data sets extensively to try and solve this WRAP puzzle, so I appreciate that very much. We spent the afternoon, we had about 60 representatives from local governments in attendance for WRAP Day, and we kicked it off with a welcome from the Deputy Director of the Division of Environmental Assessment and Restoration. These are the folks who will approve the WRAP and with whom we've been working very closely over the past six months to move the WRAP forward, and they expressed their support for the stakeholder-led plan to address these nutrients impairments in the bay and encourage us to keep pressing forward, us and the stakeholders, to keep pressing forward together to develop the WRAP. So that was a very important statement from DEP that said that they support what we're doing and they're behind us as we move forward, and we really have been engaging with them over the past six months consistently to work these different aspects of the WRAP. I can only see myself. Are you seeing the presentation, the WRAP wheel? Yes. Okay. All right. Great. So, ah, great. Fantastic. So this is what we call the WRAP wheel. It really kind of is a way of outlining all of the different aspects of the reasonable assurance plan that we are tackling kind of in parallel, and these, my colleagues and I spoke to all of these various aspects of what it takes to build a reasonable assurance plan during WRAP day. And today I'm just going to be talking a little bit about the ecological evaluation and the target setting portions and where we are with those two aspects of the WRAP. Next slide, please. The last time I was here, oh, there is a dashboard slide prior to that. There you go. The last time I was here, I talked about the data dashboard that we're building as this collaborative tool to go through the different aspects of the data associated with the WRAP and to really use this as a communication and collaboration tool. And since then, we've been consistently meeting with DEP to discuss various aspects of the analysis, and this dashboard has proven very helpful to collaborate with DEP so that, you know, instead of passing written communications back and forth, we can just all get in a room and talk about all the details of the data. So that's proven to be very instrumental, and we intend to work with the stakeholders and use this dashboard with them too for their questions as the project moves forward. And so next slide, please. We have been doing a lot of data analysis on the water quality and the ecological evaluation. We have that mostly complete, and we have actually had two presentations with DEP to talk about that so far. The data, especially the ecological data, do show some declines in seagrass and sponges and, to some extent, coral communities within the bay and increasing abundance of macroalgae. And so we're really looking for a time period when the bay was healthier to define what we call that reference period. We've got most of that information compiled into memos, and they're in draft form and currently in review. At the same time, we have scheduled these stakeholder workshops, as Pamela said, so we have another workshop in June 16th where we're going to be going through all of this data as well as the model and the projects that Marcy Frick is going to be talking about soon. And meanwhile, we are continuing with the pollutant loading model development and identifying these nutrient-reducing projects moving forward. And so we very much look forward to this summer where we're going to be collaborating continuously with the stakeholders and with DEP to move this wrap forward and, you know, complete the wrap this fall. And I'll pass it to Pradeep, I think, to talk about the model. Good morning, everyone. Thank you so much for giving us the opportunity. Again, I'm Pradeep from GHD, who is leading on the modeling side as one of the key components as part of developing this wrap. I'm still not seeing the slides, but hopefully – okay, thank you so much. I think I'm just going to run through what was sort of a few slides here to highlight what was in the wrap day and where we are today and where we are moving forward. One of the key components in this is why did we – why do we need a model? And a lot of the questions is on why do we need an integrated model. I think an integrated model for a Biscayne Bay watershed is very critical just because the watershed's highly interconnected surface water, groundwater, and coastal dynamics here. The geology of Biscayne Bay watershed is unique for its plans when compared to other watersheds. The extensive canal network that charges to the bay and, most importantly, the strong tidal influence, the complex interactions between the rainfall runoff process, the groundwater exchange, the tidal backwater effects that will affect your nutrient loads, your flow patterns, and your water levels. So in an area, urbanized area, such as Miami-Dade County, and especially within the Biscayne Bay watershed, a standalone model is not going to prove its purposes considering its complex coupled processes. So as you could see on the slides, we are using a coupled version of three different suit of DHM models, starting with MIC-SHI, which basically runs the hydrology, which is the surface and the groundwater interchange. And we have a MIC-PLUS, which leads to the conveyance of the flows through the canals and the pipes and the systems. And then we will be followed with a MIC-ECO lab that will actually run the water quality processes and assess the water quality impacts and the salinity impacts, and with the addition of projects, determine the reductions in these nutrients before entering into the bay. So I think the combination of these three suits of models for a Biscayne Bay watershed is an approach that will be critical for informed decision-making, infrastructure planning, and also restoration efforts to meet the water quality criteria and support the long-term resilience of Biscayne Bay. Next slide, please. So this slide basically saying where we are today. Again, we wanted to have these modelings that are being coupled in order of process in which it's done. So we started with the development of the hydrological model that's been completed. We finished on the MIC-PLUS model, which is on the conveyance portion of it. And then the coupling of MIC-C and MIC-PLUS is a complex process that's also been completed. So we actually have a tool today that actually runs the interaction of the surface, the overland, the groundwater, the canal network, all in one place to actually determine the impacts on the flows, water levels, and also determine the amount of impacts it's going to have on the watershed. In the next phase of our study, as we further move along into the water quality state, we are going to be looking at pushing the model to the MIC-PLUS lab as our third interconnected modeling platform, which basically runs all of the water quality hydrodynamic processes that will look at the nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorus, the effects of impacts of those nitrogens, helps to determine the load impacts derived from those land uses within the Biscayne Bay and also be able to incorporate the projects and understand the reductions efficiencies for these different projects and come up with the allocations for the future. Last slide, please. So basically, these are sort of the next steps that's going to be done in the next six months before we actually have this model completed and develop a draft wrap is develop, as I mentioned, the Ecolab to determine the water quality parameters, then have to calibrate that water quality based on, as what Mike had just mentioned, based on the water quality monitoring data that's available within the watershed, then calculate the pollutant loadings for the watershed, and then come up and then incorporate the projects that Marcy has either collected or will be collecting and including in the models and basically validate those projects using this tool against the projects and come up with the allocations for all of the jurisdictions there. Again, thanks for the opportunity. We'll keep you updated on these models as we move along into the different stakeholder meetings, one beginning on June 16th. With that, I'll hand it over to Marcy to discuss on the projects. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks, Pradeep, and good morning, everyone. My name is Marcy Frick. I'm with Tetra Tech, and our role on the project is project collection. So as Mike mentioned, we're going through the process of evaluating water quality to set targets for nitrogen and phosphorus, and then as Pradeep discussed, we are creating the model to determine the current loading to the bay, and that difference is the amount of reductions that we're going to need to meet the targets. And so to do that, we will be collecting projects. So I don't know if you all were able to find my slide, but what we're doing with the projects is we want to make sure we're gathering those that actually have a water quality improvement benefit. So we don't need to know about every stormwater pond that was built as new development occurs. We're really looking for those projects that provide additional benefits beyond basic permit requirements so that we see that improved water quality to the bay. We're looking for projects on two different timelines. So the model that Pradeep and GHD are developing is based on a certain period of time and the data in the model that were available when we started the project. And so we do want to make sure that we're giving folks credit for any water quality improvement projects they've implemented since the data in the model period, as well as backing up a few years, understanding that as soon as the project's completed in the ground, we won't see those immediate benefits. So we are collecting projects going back to 2017. And then most importantly, we're collecting projects going forward. So ones that are already in people's plans, whether they're capital improvement plans or stormwater master plans, and even those, you know, kind of wishlist projects of if we had the resources, we know we need to put in some sort of stormwater treatment in this location, or we need to connect this neighborhood to sewer and get them off of septic systems. Because one of the benefits of actually having your project in the reasonable assurance plan is it opens the door to some additional funding. It either gives additional points on existing funding sources that are available to the municipalities and the county, as well as provide some funding that requires that you be in an adopted restoration land. And so we are gathering a variety of projects. So we're looking at more traditional stormwater treatment. So this will be, you know, wet detention ponds, swales, as well as more innovative stormwater treatment. So adding bioabsorption activated media, which is a way to get some additional removal. You use that to line, like, your pond or your swale or put in your baffle box. And it helps uptake some additional nutrients. Looking at stormwater reuse and larger regional treatment, like stormwater treatment areas, anything to provide, you know, the more meaningful nitrogen and phosphorus removals. We also have some kind of non-structural types of objects that help remove the nutrients at the source. So a big one is education and outreach. If you educate people about how to manage the nutrients to begin with, about, you know, fertilizing smartly, not blowing grass clippings down the storm drain, you're preventing a source at the – from even getting to the bay to begin with. That's similar to street sweeping and cleaning out baffle boxes and inlet filters. That all captures material that would otherwise run off into the larger system and make it to Biscayne Bay. There's also opportunities for wastewater treatment facility upgrade benefits, if that's going to improve the amount of nitrogen and phosphorus treated at those facilities. And then looking for septic systems, there are parts of the watershed that have high densities of septic systems. So either they're removing those by connecting them to central sewer or upgrading them. There are systems that are meant for nutrient removal, whereas traditional septic systems are not. So there still can be water quality benefits by keeping on-site treatment as long as it is those nutrient removal systems. As Pamela mentioned earlier, there are about 50 stakeholders, so 49, across the watersheds in both Miami-Dade and Broward. And we have been contacting all of those stakeholders. My coworker, Reagan Armstrong, has sent many emails. As Pamela mentioned, her staff have actually started, you know, gone and knocked on doors to make sure we were getting engagement. We've held about 40 meetings to discuss with different municipalities their projects, what types of projects we're looking for, what they have planned, how we can maybe add on to projects they've already identified to get a water quality benefit. So if their Stormwater Master Plan is more focused on addressing flooding, how we can augment those flooding projects to also get a water quality benefit for the Bay. And to date, we have received projects from 33 of those 49 stakeholders, and we're working on gathering additional information as we can. And then as Pradeep mentioned, we'll use that model to determine the load reduction estimated benefits for nitrogen and phosphorus for those projects. And then we'll look at how far that takes us to the target that Mike discussed. And then any additional efforts that are needed, we will work with the local stakeholders to brainstorm some probably larger-scale regional treatment projects. And so that will all be part of the meetings we're having moving forward over the next few months. With that, I'll turn it back to Pamela. I can take any questions, Madam Chair. All right. Thank you. Thank you for that great presentation. I will open it up now to any board members who have questions or questions. Yes, please. Good morning, everybody. Kevin Kniff, Miccosuke Tribe. This is for the folks that gave the presentations, and thank you very much. Obviously, I'm trying to understand that, you know, we're seeking to reduce nutrient loading to Biscayne Bay and to be in an effective way to measure that load reduction with the various programs, efforts, BMPs, et cetera, that have also been discussed. Where I'm falling short in understanding where the project is working to establish an actual baseline for assessing these efforts and whether they're going to be successful or not. So to this end, I'm going to ask the question. I heard that there is an effort to look toward a time of, quote-unquote, healthy seagrass in Biscayne Bay. I'm also hoping that that would entail an assessment of what the total nutrient loads to the bay would have been at that time, if that can be determined. I'm trying to understand where and how you're establishing baseline and obviously calculating the current load compared, you know, as a baseline for today. But if we're seeking to match that baseline from today to a baseline in the past, how is that being done? How is that being chosen? And what are the tools that you are going to use to get us those two reference baselines with which to compare it to, please? Pamela? Thank you, Mr. Karnoff. That's a great question. Since we have the pleasure of having Mike Wessel with us, who's an expert in this, I'll turn it over to Mike to answer that question. And I don't know, Mike, if you heard that. I can repeat it quickly. I did. And thank you for the question. It is an excellent question. And you have it exactly right. The reference period identifies the healthy condition. And we would calculate pollutant loadings under the reference period and calculate pollutant loadings under the current period in which we are impaired. And simplistically, the difference between those two loading estimates is the amount of nutrient load reduction we need in order to get the bay back to health. It's somewhat more complicated than that in the details, but that is, in the simplistic form, what we intend to do. That is the reference period approach that is approved by DEP and EPA to establish these kinds of nutrient load reduction goals. Can I follow up, please? Thank you, Madam Chair. So then, with this reference period assessment, following a methodology from DEP, does that also accompany the biological components of what data were available during these reference periods? Again, noting that seagrass, macroalgae, chlorophyll A are important biological indicators of the real ecological impact of nutrient loads. Are you confident that you have that data with which to then ascribe to this reference period effort that you're going to try to determine what our target reference period should be versus our current in order to hopefully move us back toward that direction? Great question. Yes, sir. Again, excellent question. And like I said, you know, really the benefit of the DERM's long-term water quality and also ecological monitoring data sets have been invaluable in that regard. They have, in particular, their benthic habitat monitoring data set goes back to 1985. They have made some changes in the monitoring, added some additional metrics in 1995, I believe it was. So we have, you know, at least, you know, almost 30 years of data for which to look at this, you know, evaluate the ecological data to define this reference period. So we do feel comfortable that we can identify a period of time when the bay was healthier using objective ecological data collected in the estuary and identify that reference period and then be able to use that to calculate the necessary gluten load reduction. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Yes, Mayor Straitfeld. Thank you, Commissioner. What is the reference period? I mean, you've made reference to a number of memos, and I know you're working on it. Are we talking about 1945, 1925, 1885? What are we talking about? Mike, would you like to take that? Sure. Right now we're looking at 1995 to 2007 as the reference period. When the numeric nutrient criteria were set, established for Biscayne Bay, and those are the numbers that you all have exceeded and the reason that you're impaired. That reference, they use a reference period approach, basically all the data that they had at the time to establish that and showed that the bay was healthy during that period of time. That period was defined as 1995 to 2009. We've looked at the ecological data and suggested that maybe we want to shave a couple years off of the more recent period because we did see a decline in seagrass in a lot of the areas starting around 2007, or right after 2007, and so we're recommending 2007 as the end of the reference period. We still need to work with stakeholders and with DEP to make sure they both agree that that reference period is appropriate, and then that will be established as the reference period, and then Pradeep and the modeling crew will come in and model some portion of that reference period yet to be decided to identify the reference period loads. Thank you. That's encouraging. Sorry for the sarcasm. I do have a question about the nutrient loading from the canals. Where is that data coming from, and how specific is it? Do you want to answer that, Mike? And I'll just say in short, our data set, Miami-Dade County's long-term data set, is the source of the nutrient data, but as how it's applied, I'll refer back to Mike. And I think I'll pass that to Pradeep. I mean, we can calculate empirical estimates of loads from water quality data and flows where they exist, but the model is really the key tool, I think, in that regard. Yes. So wherever the data is, we will try to match or calibrate against those water quality data in terms of the nutrients or chlorophyll or dissolved oxygens, but the Mike Ecolab is a pretty strong model that will allow to do that hydrodynamic process of eutrophication and algae and things like that, and it will run through the canals with the interchange between surface and groundwater, so it will almost like a three-dimensional system running these water quality parameters, and you will be able to, almost on a time series basis, understand the loads, amount of loads that comes from the surface, from the groundwater, and also along the canal before it's discharged through the bay. Wow. And the only other thing I'd add, Madam Mayor, is that the, as Pradeep mentioned during his presentation, and speaking of accuracy, the reason why the integrated model is such an important approach for us as opposed to other water bodies is you'd want to capture pollutants entering canal systems, not just from surface water, but from the groundwater as well. So that initial piece of the model that Pradeep mentioned captures that very effectively. Thank you. Anybody else on this side? Yes. I'll go to this side. Thank you, Madam Chair. So this question relates to something that we deal with at the Miami River with Derm and WASDE and a lot of other, and it's a different pollutant, but I'm just trying to get in my mind as a layperson all the work we do to identify sources of human and animal waste going into the tributaries and the canals and the work we're trying to do to reduce that. I don't think that's the focus of RAP, but is there any interactions here that a layperson should understand outside of the models and everything else? Does that make sense? Absolutely, Mr. Murley. So I think on two fronts, and I also defer back to our consulting team, I would say on two fronts. One is by understanding where the sources are coming from, which is the nature of the model, and as Madam Mayor asked a minute ago, sort of what is that data set from the canals, you know, we go a step further to ascribe based on land uses, volume of rainfall, to get a sense of in each watershed, in each sub basin, where those pollutant sources are coming from. And so that helps sort of hone in, and as you know, you know, of course, and I think what you're getting at, too, is that there's opportunities for when human waste and organic material makes its way into our waterways, that is a source of nutrients. So this may help us, but those are sort of defined uses. That doesn't speak to illicit uses or other discharges, you know, per se, and also aged or faulty infrastructure. So, you know, when our water and sewer pipes are leaky, the extent to which that gets into groundwater, even directly into surface water, we're going to see how well the model does with that. But it's really meant to capture what's coming from the land through those, you know, sort of certified, you know, attributable land uses. But at the DERM side of the house, especially with our grant-funded projects that you've heard us speak to, task three, which is to characterize water quality coming into the surface water bodies in North Bay, does just that as well. And we go through a series, dozens of parameters, including bacteria. And so that first phase that we've been in is to sort of look at where those hotspots are in the water body. The second phase is going in based on their data that we'll collect and analyze and figure out where in the watershed we need to go to figure that out, be it an illicit discharge, be it faulty infrastructure. That second phase will help us single out those actual sources of bacteria because that's exactly it, Mr. Merlin. We just, we don't know. And when we've done, when our NPDES program at the county has done various projects to identify quote-unquote hotspots, these areas come up as hot regardless, meaning too numerous to count, meaning the bacteria exceeds even the ability to count it in the lab sometimes. And so we know we have our work cut out for us. Thank you. Anybody else on this side before I move over? All right. Anybody on this side? Yes, Dr. Red one. So I have a comment or one question and one comment. So in your modeling of integrated surface and groundwater, what is the granularity of that model in terms of what's the smallest spatial extent, what's the size of the smallest area where you can say loads within this area are meaningfully different from other areas? I'll pitch that to Pradeep, our expert. Thank you for the question. Okay. I'm sorry. It was sort of, okay. It looks like you are asking the spatial extent of the model. So it's a grid-based model. So the spatial extent of the model, we are looking at 500 foot by 500 foot grid cells. So we would be able to sort of determine the load of pollutants on a 500 by 500 foot grid cell size. So you can accumulate the total loads either based on the grid cells or the sub-basin boundaries because the sub-basin boundaries do comprise of multiple grid cells. But the smallest area that you can do is almost to 500 foot cells. Now, the advantage of this model is if there are areas where we do really need to go and hone in to make it more, you know, finer, then you can always reduce the cell size automatically from 500 to a much smaller cell size as needed. So it's pretty, you know, interactive to see how do we want to, where the loads are coming from, and it's easy to determine that. But for the time being, in the current model, it's about 500 by 500 foot grid cells across the entire county. Okay. Thank you very much. That's a, I like that spatial scale. I think that's useful for recognizing and attributing sources. My second comment is I'd like to bring to the surface and hope that your team is aware of the natural systems regional simulation model. This is a model that was developed at the Water Management District over the course of a decade. It uses the 1880s as a reference period for water flows and the surface and groundwater runoffs in connection between Everglades and Biscayne Bay in an undeveloped environment. The reason I would want to direct your focus to that is because it's important, I think, when we're thinking about our comparison, what our goals are. I feel like what I'm hearing from you today is you're looking for a reference period where you could reasonably expect yourself to achieve these goals during our lifetime. I think it's also very important to understand what is the baseline function of the natural system. So, you know, it's always, you know, we always want to do good work and make improvements on what we have now. But we need to measure those improvements against an objective standard that is authoritative and it's an objective, it's a standard that's not a negotiated standard. It's a clear, it's an objective and observable standard. What the advantage of the natural system regional simulation model is that it gives you clear sense of the relative proportion of surface water to groundwater runoff. That's one of the main things that's changed in Florida through the process of development. The freshwater springs that used to ring the entire peninsula don't flow the way they used to because we don't have a consistent freshwater hydrologic head moving down on the geological system and driving water to move through the ground system into the estuaries. That groundwater flow was very important for maintaining the mesohaline character of the freshwater estuaries of Florida. It's also, the ground has incredibly effective filtering properties. And I would subject to you in this board that really ultimately we are seeking to emulate the filtering capacity of the ground. That's, to the extent that we can achieve that with our stormwater systems and with our pollution control systems, will to a large degree determine the degree to which we are successful. So, with that comment, I just want to thank you very much for your work. The fact that you're engaged in an objective process with the team in an open and consultative manner gives me a lot of hope that your process will be more successful than previous attempts to improve water quality in the county. And, you know, at FIU, we just want to be as supportive of you as we can. And we want to be available to all the municipalities for, so that you can have a authoritative, a reflected, and a well-studied independent source of information on what you're seeing. It's produced by county staff, by the consultants. So thank you very much. Thank you. Yes, I know we have a few people on this side as well. Doc, well, Spencer, I know you raised your hand, but I'm going to let, no, I'm going to let, yes, please go first. Okay. Thank you so much. John Stieglitz here with the University of Miami. Just a couple questions about the model. Does it, to what extent does it factor in temperature and salinity? Is that, because if we're looking back at sort of your reference period, I would assume that those are factored in. And if you or one of the people on the phone could speak to the level to which that's factored in, I think that would be of interest. Yes. The straight answer is yes, and I'll pass it to Pradeep. Yes. It is going to be factored in. Again, the water quality piece of it is actually is in the next phase. So we would definitely, as I said, you know, based on the reference period, we are collecting the temperature, the salinity, all the data that we need for the purpose of the modeling efforts. I don't have the exact information, but it would be included because that's our next four to five months level of effort. So hopefully we can give an update as we go into the water quality phase in the next few months. Both temperature and salinity? Yes. Okay, great. And then also just following up on Dr. Redwine's comments, I think, you know, there should be some caution about sort of getting caught in a situation of shifting baselines, right? So that's a classic scenario that we all encounter, whether it's looking at fisheries, whatever it may be. But sort of looking back and saying, okay, if this reference period of what I'm hearing, the sort of mid-'90s to early 2000s where the bay was, quote, unquote, healthy, I think there are many folks here on the board as well as in the audience here that, you know, I don't know if everyone would agree that all indices indicated that it was indeed sort of healthy at that point in time. So if that's what we're looking back to, I do think it's very important to factor in some more historical data sets like Dr. Redwine mentioned. And then lastly, I had a question about there's a lot of discussion with organic matter, right, and everything sort of the sole focus on what's coming out of the western coastline, right, of the bay. But in more recent years, we see increasing amounts of organic matter with, you know, sargassum in particular, changing ocean currents. It varies year to year, but, you know, massive amounts of organic matter that do come into the bay. And as that organic matter is broken down, how is that being factored into these models, particularly in the case of some of these shoreline areas? You go to any of the marinas, any of the canals, that sort of thing, and some days you just see mats of, you know, degrading algae, and that is something that I hope we're factoring into these models. I'll pass it to Pradeep, but I'll say, Dr. Stiglitz, the other opportunity to capture information like that, because historically, well, we haven't faced the inundations, of course, we've faced in recent years, but there is a monitoring and adaptive management component to their app. So we are likely going to, you know, not just keep our regular data set intact, our monthly grab samples, our benthic monitoring data that was referenced by Mr. Wessel, but looking for new opportunities and ways in which we need to incorporate new data sets. And thank you for the suggestion, because that very well may be one of them. But I don't know if Mike or Pradeep want to speak to that in terms of the model and or how that would affect our assessment from our water quality perspective. I think if I take it from the modeling aspect of it, again, as I said, we recognize that we are going to consider it, but again, it depends on to the scale of the watersheds and in which we are trying to do. We are looking at, as I said, a representation of 500 foot by 500 foot cell grid of pretty much the factors coming off the land use and the things. So if there is any specific point loads of, as you just mentioned, we will consider it. But again, it would be looked at on a case by case basis. We don't have it. I have not looked at the data in detail on the water quality side, but availability data is also a key, and determination will be determined on that as we get into the water quality modeling phase. Thank you. I know, Mr. Torres, you wanted to speak. Just one quick comment to follow up on the shifting baseline theory. I wasn't collecting nutrient data in 1975 in Biscayne Bay, but I did start fishing commercially with my dad off Miami at that time. And by 1986, we shifted our operation to the Keys because of how bad fishing was here in 1986. So what I heard 1995 as the healthy period, it kind of raised the red flag to me, sounding like you're kind of selling yourself short. So I thought maybe we should try to improve on that a little bit. Just anecdotal comment here. Thanks. Yeah, definitely. Anybody else on this side? Okay. Yes, I thought. Okay, Spencer. Thank you. It's, I guess, nice to see progress on this finally. It's been nine years since the county was cited, and it's taken this long to get, you know, where we are today. When I hear the discussion with the board and from the consultants, you know, there's such a high degree of analysis and specificity being targeted at these things. But I feel like it ignores the practical reality of where this community is in stormwater management. I mean, the reality is we don't have a system that can manage solid waste from getting into our stormwater stream. Every time it rains, plastic and garbage flushes into our system and accumulates in our system and then gets flushed out into the bay as solid waste. And so it seems to me like this analysis is sort of like skipping over how do we attack the low-hanging fruit? Like what are the easiest things to go after and how do we take care of those? And I think we know the answer to those, and we've discussed those for a couple of years. You know, stormwater grates, baffle boxes, like simple things that we, I mean, it's intuitive to almost everyone that like untreated stormwater shouldn't be flushing into the bay, right? Like we know that. And it doesn't matter what the historic condition is. It doesn't matter what the baseline is. It doesn't matter what, whether it's 1996 or 1985 or whatever. Like we can't have untreated stormwater running into the bay. So we don't need like a multimillion dollar study to tell us that. We just need to do something about it. And, you know, again, with the solid waste, it's like if you have a stormwater system that can't prevent solid waste from getting into the watershed and the stream, how are you going to prevent, you know, parts per billion of nitrogen and parts per billion of phosphorus from getting that? You know, and so, I mean, the goal here is laudable. And I think it's in a perfect world, it would be, you know, this would kind of be the right strategy to be pursuing. I just feel like there's a lot of things that can be done that should be underway that are intuitive to anyone who's ever worked on any kind of watershed restoration project. It doesn't necessarily have to be Biscayne Bay, it could be Lake Worth, it could be Indian River, it could be Charlotte Harbor. Like this is not new. This is not like groundbreaking. I mean, these are simple things. And actually the Tetra Tech presentation or portion of the presentation was, to me, the most important, I think, for short term because it identified some of those things that are being done and can be done in other places and could be done here. So, and finally, you know, with all of this degree of specificity and high analysis, like none of that work is self-effectuating. And so, to me, it's almost like academic in some respects because once we get to a final report, then it's like, okay, how do we get to a nitrogen reduction or phosphorus reduction that reflects what we think is the natural condition? That is going to take years of additional analysis and study and, you know, budgeting and all those things. And so, by the time we actually get to implementing those projects, it's going to be maybe five years if we're lucky. So, you know, I guess my feeling is great that we're making progress, great that some of these things are happening, but it shouldn't be at the expense of more short-term practical measures that we know need to be implemented and that communities have implemented all over the country, all over the state, and have been shown to have real impact and effect. Thank you. Thank you. Dr. Odenwein, I know you wanted to say one quick thing. Yeah, I'll just say real briefly, you know, one thing, Spencer, is, you know, when people have asked me in the past, should we do this or this other thing to improve water quality, I say, yes. And I think actually it was our public presenter that came up first this morning who pointed out the need to carry out inspections and to maintain a consistently high level of inspection of our basic infrastructure. And I think that could go a long way to addressing some of the issues that you raised about the intuitive stuff. You know, let's just not throw trash into the bay. You know, that's a good basic message. One thing, an extra comment I wanted to make to address the specific presentation, which I think would strengthen it, is to bring in the economic component, right? Because what we've, in previous meetings, we have very clearly identified that the bay is a source of $68 billion of economic activity recurring annually. You know, that's one out of $5 in Miami-Dade County is associated with Biscayne Bay. Biscayne Bay, in a healthy condition, is an attractant to people worldwide who want to have a lifetime experience of something unique, something that they would never experience where they are from. I think that is the type of mechanism that we could reference to identify that improvements of water quality translate directly to economic benefits, to Miami-Dade. And therefore, aligning all of our, instead of saying, oh, well, I would pick up this trash, but it just takes time. And I have more important things to do. Perhaps people could internalize the idea of every action I take to improve water quality actually adds financial resources to my life and the life of my neighbors. I think that's the alignment that we're going to need to achieve this distant goal that you reference. And we're going to need that kind of alignment to develop the momentum that allows us to get to the goal. Because it is a consistent march towards the goal that creates the awareness, the communication environment, the social environment, that is going to be required to deliver the result that we need to achieve. So thank you. Thank you. I know Dave Dobler hasn't had a chance yet to speak. And I know he's chomping at the bit. How do you give everybody some space? I heard we haven't. I know. I want to echo what Spencer said, and thank you for saying that, Spencer, and harping on the stormwater and the canals. Those are the two conduits, and that is the opportunity to really accelerate. I'm curious about our reference period. I heard late 90s, early 2000s. If I remember correctly, I was told that the history of Biscayne Bay, we are on our third attempt at restoration and recovery. The first was in the 80s, and the second was in the 90s. So I'm concerned that we're using a reference period of a time period when we had already identified that Biscayne Bay was in trouble. It's my understanding that in 1983, Florida designated the Florida Outstanding Waters with the numeric criteria. And I also remember fishing with my dad. I didn't like it, but I remember when we had to stop fishing for snook because they were depleted and the water quality was too poor. So I would like to see us reference a time period when the Bay was actually healthy, and I think the early 80s is a more appropriate goal for us rather than something in the early 2000s, late 1990s. I don't know how we get there, but I would love to see that as the reference model. Thank you. Thank you. Pamela. I would just say that, and I'll ask Mr. Russell to jump in. I would say that, and there's several approaches that the state offers in terms of what fits best for your watershed. This is one of the three. And in terms of the timeline, and I think these are really valid points, and we definitely can revisit this, we didn't have numeric criteria in the estuary until 2012. They were promulgated in 2010. They became active. We started employing them in 2012. Before that, it was a narrative standard. You know, no degradation beyond what the water body was when it was established as an outstanding Florida water body. We didn't have the National Park established until I think it was 81. The aquatic preserve in 74, 75, respectively. And it did take some time to see the benefit of some of that. And later, you know, we talk about living shorelines. You'll see just, you know, where that development came from and when that really started to become, like, those land uses moved in. So I do think that there's a lag in that time period where you saw some of those benefits, where you didn't have rampant, drudging, and filling. You had better criteria around wastewater and treatment and those kinds of things. But I do think that, you know, we can certainly look back and see if there's a better way to bring that earlier date back. I would say that it aligns so closely with the work that FIU and the National Park and Durham and others did to establish the criteria working with the state of Florida, the numeric nutrient criteria. Those were also based on data that we had available. Because really prior to the mid-'80s, we really didn't have a data set. And we are arguably the longest-running data set in the state of Florida and started at, you know, the earliest. And so I think that's the other big thing is having data that is solid and dependable and that was, you know, quality assured. Also pits us at a place where we've got to, you know, provide this reasonable assurance to the state that we're coming from a place that we understand what the conditions actually were. So that kind of starts us automatically at a particular date. But I don't know, Mike, if you wanted to add to that to answer Mr. Dobler's question and the question that others have had. Yeah, no, I agree, Pamela. I mean, I agree with everyone. It is a complex problem for sure. And we are taking a very data-driven approach. And we are limited by the data, including the water quality data and the benthic habitat monitoring data, which, as Pamela said, is extensive and one of the longest-term databases we have available. But also the watershed data. In order to build the model for that reference period, we need data. And so it is challenging. And it is also, with respect to the RAP, you know, relative to nutrients. We can't solve every problem with the reasonable assurance plan. And what we are looking to do is identify declines in the bay that are associated with nutrient pollution. And one of the things I'll just say is the numeric nutrient criteria that are established for Biscayne Bay are some of the most stringent in the state. I mean, you know, Biscayne Bay is evolved as an oligotrophic system, and it should be. But you have a lot of people living in the watershed right now. And so you have standards that are, you know, very protective, would be very protective of other systems in Florida, but that are required for Biscayne Bay. But it's a hard target to meet. And if you were to make them too much more stringent, it would be hard even to measure. And so, you know, we have to kind of keep those things in mind as we're using this kind of data-driven, objective approach to set targets and to set nutrient load reduction targets. Thank you. Yes, Kevin. Sorry, I don't mean to thank you, Madam Chair. I know we've been talking about this a lot today, but it's a really important topic. I appreciate the extra time to ask questions. So, Pamela, we've obviously been kind of delving into some of the key issues here on a baseline and why that baseline has been established in the time frame that it has been, being data-driven, et cetera, et cetera. And let's just suspend for a moment some of the criticism of, well, is it the proper baseline with which to ascribe Biscayne Bay Health as the standard? Let's just keep this particular baseline in mind. Is it the intention from RAP that upon the analysis being completed, will it also include an assessment of whether or not it will actually be feasible for Miami-Dade County to implement these different technologies, efforts, et cetera, across the county, to get us on a trajectory to achieve baseline health conditions as being put forward in this 1995 through 2007 period? And then my follow-up to that, Pamela, is, is it the intention of the elected officials of Miami-Dade County to commit to that plan replete with the funding that would be required to get us there in an established time frame that is reasonable and that doesn't have us drift further off course as we try to move toward that end goal? Thank you very much. As a matter of policy, rather. Thank you. Excuse me for interrupting. Yes, no, it's an excellent question, Mr. Cooney. And that takes us to the management and adaptive approach of the Reasonable Assurance Plan. So its nature is collaborative. The parallel path, as you all have heard, of course, is the state assigning and attributing, essentially doing the same kind of work themselves and assigning a total maximum daily load for each parameter we're impaired for, which is nitrogen, phosphorus, and chlorophyll, and then coming up with a basin management action plan, the action plan to get it done, those projects that you mentioned. The Reasonable Assurance Plan is essentially, for all intents and purposes, the same, except that the collaborative nature of this with those entities subject to the RAP, we have to agree. We do have to agree. We have to buy in. And the nature of the document would be such that as those projects that Marcy talked about earlier are listed in the Reasonable Assurance Plan, and as we visit the allocations that Pradeep's model will produce and we sort of match those up, look for shortcomings, fill those in, certainly the county will probably have to step up to a greater degree, and probably some key municipalities as well, that collection of projects is committed to you by virtue of it being in the RAP. It's signed as an order of the Secretary of the Department of Environmental Protection, and so long as we are moving in a direction year to year, and we estimate, as we understand other RAPs in the state, about five years in, we'll be required to submit a report, but we would submit probably internally to you all and our county commission and the Biscuit Bay Commission an annual report to see how we're trending. And as Marcy mentioned, of course, it takes a bit of a lag to see certain projects realize a benefit, but the idea is that you're trending toward success. You're trending toward pushing those nutrients down. If we don't meet that goal, if we don't achieve that, certainly by approximately a five-year period, being outside of the impaired waters process with the EPA, which is, of course, a program that's delegated to the state of Florida, we go right back onto that impaired list. We go right back onto the track of a BMAP and a TMDL, where the state will come in and tell us that we have to do these things. And so our communications with our stakeholders have very much, I would say, revolved around that concept, that we're in this together. Mayor Levine Cava's commitment to, and our Board of County Commissioners' commitment to taking on this load of the technical lift, and this kind of speaks also to Mr. Crawley's question, this is a very high bar that we have to meet from a technical perspective for this to be accepted by the state and EPA. By taking that on, it was our leadership's perception that we would give a little bit more financial freedom to the municipalities and those entities to use those dollars where other RAPs in the state are collectively funded. The county took on that financial burden of several million dollars. You hold that money back. You start to think through these projects, take advantage of this talent that we've brought in. To the extent that the county can partner with municipalities on projects, we will. We've also made available and will continue. In fact, June 16th, we'll be featuring a short presentation on the state's grant portal that's going to be opening later this summer, which opens up funding opportunities, and those of us who are in a BMAP or a RAP across the state are prioritized. And so funding, and even at the federal level, through the EPA's grants, you sort of check a box and you're prioritized for funding. And so this opens up a funding spectrum that otherwise we wouldn't be as competitive for. So it's not so much the county's commitment per se or the county funding the projects. We have our own projects we've got to commit to. So there's that aspect of the commitment. What I will say, though, and what I think we saw during RAP day and what we've seen over the course of our, at this point, probably close to 100 meetings with our stakeholders is, we are really behind the eight ball as a community here. Other communities in the state that are either subject to BMAPs or RAPs, when you attend meetings with them, they can shout out and spout out different technologies or the extent to which they use their light items in their budget. Like, well, we already street sweep. We already back out our systems. Let's just do that 10 times more each year, and we're going to drive nutrients down X percent, and we can't afford much else. So wherever you are in the spectrum in other parts of the state, this is vocabulary. These are activities that are very familiar to other entities. So much so that on RAP day, our engineer, Carino Cordero, set aside some slides just in case people had questions about those kinds of projects Marcy mentioned because I had a stinking suspicion that that list would be foreign to folks, and, of course, we share a greater list with very specific line items of kinds of projects to get credit for, extremely unfamiliar to our constituents here, our municipal partners. We understand what a baffle box is for the most part. We know street sweeping. We know backing out our systems before storm season. We do not understand smart sponges or eco-vaults or bioactive media. This is really new, and so we're educating as we go to an extent greater than I even imagined we'd have to, and so we also were talking about bringing in partners from St. Pete. Mr. Ed Sherwood from the Tampa Bay National History Program came and spoke at the summit that Dave and his team hosted. And just share with folks how other communities are doing this so they can envision it for themselves and just how did they meet that threshold because you're right, that is a concern. That's the biggest concern, but we've got to educate ourselves. There's lots of resources. There's the Florida Stormwater Association, of which we are. The county is a member, and some municipal partners are members. That's a great opportunity to learn, but really what we're doing is my team and our RAP team are largely educating our own internal county departments and what these technologies are, and also our municipal partners because we are just behind the eight ball. So funding exists to help us with those projects, but you've got to know what they are. You have to build them into your design plans, and you have to have the political will, of course, to shift the paradigm through what you're seeing, your stormwater management. Kevin, do you have any more follow-up? No? Okay. I know there's a time limitation with the consultants that are on via the Zoom, but really quickly, I know that we've spoken, and you kind of gave a segue when you mentioned the municipalities. Have municipalities all been participating, or what's the plan for those who haven't yet participated? So we've had touch points with most of all of them. There was a lot of turnover at the end of last year. We've made new touch points, but we still are short about 16 or 17 entities of the close to 50, and those are places where we need to get more headway. We're also going to see what the allocations tell us through Pradeep's model because we want to make sure that we're also focusing, once we know where some of the major issues are in those parts of the watershed, we can dive a little deeper and invest our time and energy there. Some cities are so small or tiny that they just don't have the infrastructure or capital plan to even offer us to kind of pick through. So we may just simply not get some results from some of our partners, but those that we haven't reached out or that rather haven't reached back out to us, we're literally visiting their offices, and so we're inviting them to many different meetings and opportunities. Thank you. Yeah. Well, Mayor. Just really quickly, what has been your engagement with the engineering community, the firms who are designing these projects, and how receptive are they to commitments to water quality improvements? I would say we're a few steps removed from the engineers who may be putting the infrastructure in, but by way of our own vendors that we're engaging with through our pilot programs to implement some of this technology, we've done a lot of sort of education of our own internal county department staff, and what came out of RAPDATE, in fact, was we offered up the opportunity in seeing this deficit of knowledge. Hey, would it be helpful if we had at least our vendors host sort of a forum where you all can just tune in virtually and hear about our programs, and you can ask these engineers exactly how they're doing this and how they've been designed? Because, of course, it's very unique to what is your elevation at that intersection, what's your stormwater need? So that's a little tricky. It's not a one-size-fits-all, of course, but we're sort of a step removed from engineers per se, but we have public work staff attending. Sometimes engineers of record for departments are attending, but I would say that the learning curve even still with those folks has been pretty significant. Yeah, that's why I asked the question, if I may make a recommendation, doing targeted outreach with the engineering firms who are in the pools for our municipalities, who are EORs on all of these projects, who are operating in South Florida, advising them about this process and of the importance of water quality improvements as they're doing their design, not just to meet the county's standards, but obviously to help us with the wrap and the overall goal, I would strongly recommend that you guys engage at that level with these firms in the private sector. Thank you, Madam Mayor. So with that, do we have any other final? I know this is an important issue, and I thought we needed to take the time today, and actually this will be a standing item, not the next meeting, but the one after that one, so in about six months, we're going to get another, I think, update from you. Is that correct? Of course. Yes, that would be great. Yes, final comment? Very briefly. It occurred to me that not only can you use historical observations of water condition to set targets. Some of the most authoritative targets that have been set statewide come from surveys of the soil cores and the sediment process, where you can observe the historical rates of nutrient and carbon accrual and compare and contrast them to modern rates of nutrient and carbon accrual. I think that will really provide a definitive answer to the shifting baseline question and allow everyone to recognize that Biscayne Bay is probably one of the lowest nutrient systems on Earth. This is what years of academic exercises have allowed me to observe, and I just think that it's important that we start with a clear understanding of how special the system that we live in is, and then we can work together to maintain that special status and really connect with it such that we can realize how special we are through our connection to the natural system that we are blessed to live within. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Irwin. Thank you, Pamela. Thank you to our guest presenters this morning. We really appreciate it, and we will see an update in six months. And with that, we're going to move right into the next item, which is the recap of the Biscayne Bay Marine Health Summit. Dave? Yes. Hi. If the IT folks can bring up the – I don't know if everybody got a chance to see it in their board packet. It is at the end. And ten years ago, I got a phone call from a good friend of mine, Luis Rodriguez, who is a clean water advocate. And he said, Dave, the bay is dying, and it's full of trash, and we've got to do something about it. And so we held our first Biscayne Bay Marine Health Summit as a pure volunteer group where we brought together the science, government, and nonprofit communities together in order to raise the alarm for a dying Biscayne Bay. And we just held our – and that is basically the start of this Watershed Management Advisory Board and all of the actions here that resulted in the Biscayne Bay Task Force, which generated a report, which is our guiding roadmap to Biscayne Bay recovery. And so we just held our sixth summit – I know a lot of you folks attended, so thank you for coming – where we had two days and over 450 attendees participate in this convening. The first day was the – what we called RAP day, and that was a closed-door session where we invited Durham, our consultants, and all of the municipalities to participate in a working session on what the RAP is and to help identify and workshop opportunities for projects that will go into the Reasonable Assurance Plan. We had very strong showing from a number of municipalities. I think we had probably about 22 to 23 municipalities represented. City of Coral Gables, Cutler Bay, North Bay Village all showed up ready to go, and so I appreciated their participation. I mentioned those only because you guys are sitting here as mayors. And so that was an incredibly exciting opportunity to convene everybody together. There has been historically a challenge with getting everybody into the same room and getting the municipalities to understand the Reasonable Assurance Plan and to develop the projects necessary. We identified stormwater as the low-hanging fruit for every municipality because even when they say we are in compliance with state requirements, that is not nearly sufficient. And so I am angling for cleaning the storm drain systems at least once a year before every rainy season. So the RAP day was really positive. The second day was the full summit, and we had over 425 attendees representing government electeds, government staff, community members, the science community, and clean water advocates, as well as business, to discuss a wide range of topics. We heard some inspiration from the Tampa Bay Estuary Program, which was 30 years earlier. They started their BMAP, their restoration, and they have had tremendous success through convening together and continuing to talk about these conversations. And so I did a summary document of some of our key takeaways that are in your board packet that I found really, really important. All of the presentations are up and live on our website, and so if you missed the summit or if you missed any sessions, please go to restorebiscaynebay.org, and you can see all of the presentations on YouTube. We're very proud that we were able to document that, and that's quite a lot of work, actually, recording all those sessions. And so some of our key takeaways, we fall into four categories and buckets. The first is the water quality continues to have persistent challenges, and despite ongoing efforts, the water quality remains critically impaired. And there are four primary pollutants that we're concerned about. One is the nutrient load and the runoff from aging septic systems, with scientific evidence directly confirming that human wastewater is a primary source. So that answers your question earlier. That session, you might really find one of the science panels afterwards. Very interesting on that. Organic debris from leaves and grass clippings are accumulating in the storm basins, and as they decompose, are releasing significant amounts of nutrients. Heavy metals from industrial use and roadway runoff are requiring active filtration before reaching the bay. That is not part of our reasonable assurance plan, but that is a concern. And then we have emerging contaminants, including PFAS and microplastics, which are being increasingly detected in Biscayne Bay waters and represent a growing, largely unregulated threat. FIU has been doing some really interesting work in understanding the conduits for microplastics entering Biscayne Bay. I think UM is also doing some work around that, but I'm not as familiar with their work. And so we had, there were three real recommendations that came out of this. First of all, is that we approach this as a watershed scale approach. We need to be looking in totality of our entire watershed from the Everglades to our stormwater systems to our, the canal systems and Biscayne Bay. And so taking a one water approach, which, uh, Mayor Levine Cava, uh, was championing, I think introduced about four or five years ago as a concept. Um, and to focusing on stormwater infrastructure by prioritizing upgrades and maintenance as the single most universally actionable opportunity available to every municipality in the watershed. Um, whether it's storm drain grates, uh, street sweeping or, uh, vac truck and accelerate the BBC or to restore critical freshwater delivery. Um, the second main theme was on land use development pressures and the CDMP, uh, and our recommendation, the rec recommendations that came out of the summit. Uh, the first is the CDMP integration in 2020. The Biscayne Bay task force recommended that we formally institutionalize, um, the, the task force report into the CDMP through the evaluation and appraisal report process, the year process that's happening right now. Uh, and I do have a motion, uh, for that, uh, after, uh, after this presentation. Um, this is a tremendous opportunity to institutionalize the task force recommendations. Um, proactive land acquisition, uh, we need to acquire land within the Everglades restoration project. Uh, so the, the, uh, restoration can accelerate project timelines and protect taxpayers from future cost escalation. Um, the third, uh, main, uh, uh, bucket on the next page of it can fast forward, uh, to the, uh, to number three is leveraging innovation. Uh, new to including new tools and policy frameworks. Um, there was a recommendation of a new term. Uh, I don't know if this is a new term that, that, that, uh, that I coined or if this is an official term, but it is net benefit development. So, um, basically it's requiring all new coastal developments to yield a net positive ecological effect. Through integrative green infrastructure technologies, such as oyster docks, living seawalls and mangrove planters. So instead of just putting a flat concrete, uh, seawall that does no, that provides no habitat. Um, all coastal development should integrate some of these, uh, very inexpensive techniques and technologies. Uh, leveraging the new state's eco engineering authority, uh, passed in Senate bill 302 that Senator Ileana Garcia's bill for nature based solutions. And, uh, Derm and Laura Eldridge, uh, provided a really good, um, working document, um, in, in our packet. Um, commercial charter regulation, uh, we have a rapid growth in commercial boating charters concentrated along the Miami river specifically. And that was fat, uh, flagged as a post task force gap. Uh, and then, um, leveraging, um, smart navigation technology. Uh, there, uh, there are new digital navigation market markers that, uh, light up and they also have, um, water quality testing mechanisms in there. And so as I look at some of the, uh, recent incidents that we've had, um, the channel markers are like 1950s technology. And so we have an opportunity to leverage new marker technology as we're looking through this. Uh, the fourth main takeaway is on funding. Um, we're going to have, we need sustainable revenue mechanisms. Um, there's no way we are going to do all of the restoration necessary, uh, without any money. And so, um, one of the recommendations that I thought was really interesting is a private construction mitigation fee modeled after the part, uh, the art in public places framework where new building development, uh, has a 1%. Uh, I think it's 1% or 2% of, of art component in that. And so that is an interesting, uh, mechanism for, for generating new revenue. If you're going to be building on the bay, then you should be, uh, contributing to this, to this fund. Um, and then, uh, see how we might be able to capture, uh, a dedicated portion of docs, stamp tax revenue to fund land acquisition. It's part of the Florida forever. And can we, you know, if they're not going to give us our money back, then can we get some of that money and just earmark it? Um, and then, uh, uh, general obligation, uh, bond. So, um, we had 70 partners who sponsored this summit. Uh, and I do want to give a shout out to Miami-Dade County, Ferguson Water Works and FIU, um, who were tremendous partners in this. And I also want to thank the Florida Inland Navigation District, um, Commissioner Mickey Steinberg, Commissioner Natalie Milan-Orbis, Commissioner Vicky Lopez, Commissioner Danielle Cohen-Higgins, and Commissioner Regalato and North Bay Village for also sponsoring and supporting the summit. Um, and so, uh, that is, um, a summary of, of the summit, if anybody has any questions. And, uh, Madam Chair, there is a motion that came out of our summit that is, uh, I'm not sure that this is placed in the appropriate place in, uh, in, in future discussion items, in future agenda items. Um, it was sent out late last night, and so I do want to make sure that I have space to, um, make that motion. I can do it now or later. Okay. Um, I guess, uh, thank you for the summit, for the summit. What did you say? You called it the, the summit recap, the summit summary. There you go. Um, say that three times fast. Does anybody have any comments or questions that they'd like to, um, all right. So, yeah, go, go for it. I don't know what your motion is. Okay, great. So, um, the, um, in 2020, the Biscayne Bay Task Force recommended, made a series of recommendations that, uh, were supposed to be integrated in the Miami-Dade County CDMP, the Comprehensive Development Master Plan, um, via the evaluation and appraisal report. Um, and so the task force report had 35 recommendations, uh, in, and one of them was to explicitly calling for elevating Biscayne Bay watershed management planning elements into the CDMP. Um, and so, um, because the CDMP and the EAR Task Force is wrapping up right now, uh, this is incredibly time sensitive. Um, and my motion is to recommend, uh, that our board, that our advisory board formally recommend that the Miami-Dade County Evaluation and Appraisal Report, uh, task force, that's the EAR, uh, incorporate the 2020, uh, Biscayne Bay Task Force report and recommendations into proposed amendments into the CDMP. So, basically, all I'm asking is that the EAR, uh, factor in and, uh, uh, look at the, uh, task force recommendations and apply the appropriate ones into the CDMP. I don't know that that's been a topic. I'll second your motion. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Uh, first and foremost, I'd like to congratulate you on your efforts over the last 10 years. It's amazing. Uh, and it's really, uh, pushing for this agenda that we so respect and appreciate. Just to give you a quick idea, um, of the importance of what we're talking about, uh, 40 miles of waterways is what we have in the city of Coral Gables. And 25% of our tax base comes from properties on the water. So think about that. If property values are decimated as a result of the bay, we put ourselves in a position again where impending doom. I don't have an issue voting and I'm going to vote in favor of recommendations, but I have serious concerns that I want to put on the record. I have for years been involved in transportation efforts since I got elected 13 years ago, um, to the city of Coral Gables as a commissioner in an effort to try to get world class transportation here. I'm not a believer in the BRT. I adamantly opposed the BRT, uh, going to, uh, homestead where I believe that what we should have done is obviously overhead rail. Uh, the less modalities, it was stated very clearly in the millions of dollars that were spent in reports that the less modalities we have, the more ridership we have. As you can see, the BRT efforts of homestead are getting less and less ridership. How do I know that? Not only has it come out in the reports, but also my father is the owner of Kendall Endoscopy Center, which is adjacent to Williamson Cadillac, where the BRT site commences. People are not using it. I'm there all the time. So that's number one. Number two, I also oppose the Kendall. Uh, I forgot the name of it. The Kendall Parkway. So I haven't made many friends, uh, in the transportation efforts. I believe in investing. Yes. I believe in investing. And I also sued the CITT, uh, in, in regards to the way the monies were being spent. That's a conversation for another day. Okay. I believe in real transportation, investing the money that's necessary. The reason why I bring this up is because I have concerns that people have a bad taste in their mouth. As a result of what's happened with a half penny in the, in the last two decades, as you can see, uh, people can't tell me all the time. You know, you were correct about the BRT issue. You were correct about the Kendall Parkway. I'm a spear fisherman. My house runs on solar. I'm buying parks everywhere I can. We've invested millions of dollars on not only doing studies, but ensuring that our waters are as clean as possible. And by the way, with the gentleman mentioned here before about the algae blooms in regards to sargasm, it's out of control. Topic for another day, but it's something that I think needs to be really reviewed. I think we need to, if we're going to ask for tax tax funding, if we're going to ask for additional half penny monies, whatever that may be. Okay. Uh, a mechanism of that magnitude that as for the public trust, I think we need to do a lot of work. We need to do a lot of work where there has to be a lot of oversight. Uh, the CITT was the oversight mechanism that was used and it was only supposed to be used for the purpose of buying properties to ensure transportation was viable. And number two for infrastructure. We know we're not going to discuss that here that it was not used for only that. So I'm in favor. I'm going to support it, but I just want to put it on the record that we need to do our part as a county. We need to do our part as a board. If we're going to embark on this and say tax revenue that of properties on the water or some sort of half penny mechanism is going to be considered. And I apologize, Madam Chair, for taking too much time. I've saved my comments for this because this was when I read your recap, when I read the recap and I saw my stuff, I put a note that this is something that we really need to discuss. I would like to be able to have this conversation with you and the board and have the board lead. Let's not just put together a great plan to address the bay, which is dire, dire, but let's also work on a funding mechanism that starts that discussion now. Because in the construction business, which I'm in, imagine, developer, contractor, realtor, and environmentalists, more important than anything else because we can't conduct business in this community without having a healthy environment. We start addressing construction costs at the moment the design starts. We don't attack the design. We don't attack the cost at the end of the design because by that time the cost is already pretty much baked in. So if we want to chase monies and chase dollars in this community using public funds, I think we need to build back trust. That's my only point. I'm in support of your efforts, especially your work over the last 10 years. Count me in as a loyal soldier for you on this effort. But I think we need to really, really have a real conversation about how we're going to get that money. Because if we wait to the last minute, I promise we're not going to get the buy in because people don't want to hear more taxes. People don't want to hear more diversion of taxes. We're facing that right now. I agree. I agree. I apologize for being long winded. I apologize. I wholeheartedly agree. My motion does not factor in any of the taxes or the funding mechanisms. So I think that that is a really good conversation that's not part of the motion that I'm making. The takeaway is that in order to do bay restoration, we're going to have to figure out how to pay for it somehow. And I thought that the model of the art in public spaces model is an interesting one. But also asking developers to integrate oyster reefs underneath their docks. Living seawalls and shorelines are ways to completely circumvent the need for increasing taxes on anybody. It is basically a concept of ensuring that any development that happens on the bay is a net ecological benefit. First and foremost, I agree with you 110%. We have an additional similar art in public places funding mechanism in the city of Coral Cables that I created. So that on every single permit, you have 1% for a parks trust. And we've been able to buy dozens of parks in the residential neighborhoods using the money that's garnered from those permits. So my only issue is this is billions and billions and billions and billions, tens of billions of dollars that we're going to need here. But every time I talk about the watershed board and the incredible work that we're doing here, and I talk about the plans, everybody tells me, what about the outfalls? What's going on with all that work? What's going on with the efforts that were mandated by the federal government? Where are we on those points? Again, I'm not a biologist. I studied engineering at FIU. I got my master's at FIU. I respect everyone that has a DR in front of it, including my father. But we need to really get ahead of this and have this conversation. Because when you're going to try to pitch or sell to this community a plan similar to what they did in regards to the metro rail and transportation when they came in with a CITT and they came in with a half penny, now we realize the actual situation that we're in. And to me, I think that this is more important. And I may go on a limb here. People may disagree with me. But I think that this effort here is more important than anything we could even discuss. It remotely comes close to transportation. Okay? Don't get me wrong. I don't like to be in traffic for an hour and a half. Nobody does. But a healthy bay, without a healthy bay, the economic implications are disastrous. Disastrous. Thank you, Madam Chair. I apologize for taking it. Thank you. I have a motion in a second. So let's get that voted on. Hold on. But yes. Yes, Spencer. Thank you. Yes, I don't support the motion. And I'll briefly explain why. When we talk about, you know, amending the CDMP and levying fees against developers and other, you know, other issues that I think are not very well thought out. I believe this movement, if you will, to help protect Biscayne Bay starts to generate detractors and enemies and people who are not supportive. Um, there's, there's a lot of things that need to be done, um, by the government in order to help make Biscayne Bay healthier. And those are things that need to be addressed first. Um, developers are, um, you know, constantly, uh, hit with fees, with, uh, requirements, with new, new code changes, um, that really put the burden of, um, you know, making things better. And, and I think a, you know, uh, feeling that this development community has is that, you know, they, they're made responsible to bear the burden of, of these, um, impacts while, while others like the government, uh, aren't doing their share. Um, Dave, you talk about, um, oyster gardens, living shorelines. Um, a lot of those things aren't even legal to do. A developer couldn't do it if they wanted to. Um, I know there was a change of state law. I know that, you know, the county is supposed to have a living shoreline manual that I haven't seen yet. Um, there are, there are some, um, other programmatic authorizations and, and, and, you know, federal law that, that could help, but it's not just as easy as saying like, oh, you know, go out and build a living shoreline. It's, it's, it's a very complicated, um, endeavor that in many instances is not even legal to do. Um, and so that's just one example. Um, the fees are another example. You know, there's new changes in state law, which limit the government's ability to, um, assess building permit fees based on the value of construction. And in doing so, they limit the, the ultimate burden of, of paying fees, which this could run a foul of. Um, if you're talking about assessing new fees, there's, um, statutes and common law that, that, you know, specifically tie the, in any sort of exaction to the impact of development. And that I think is not something that's been fully, uh, thought out here. So I, I don't, I mean, to be honest, I haven't really read, um, any of the, the backup that would be supporting this, um, this motion. I don't really think it's appropriate at this time, but certainly I'm not going to be supporting it. Thank you. Thank you. I just want to make a clarification. I think there was some conversation about, um, some of the other aspects that were brought up in the summit that were not, are not part of this motion. From what I understand and clarify for me, um, please, as the maker. Sure. This is simply a motion to recommend that the evaluation and appraisal report, the Miami, the EAR. EAR. E-A-R. Task Force incorporate or look at the 2020 kind of Biscayne, uh, Bay Task Force report and recommend those, um, as a potential proposals as amendments, but nothing to do with any funding source or anything just incorporating like what our quality, um, water quality standards are, what the coastal development standards could be potentially, or a stormwater infrastructure requirements. Because obviously we can't run a file with any state regulations and this doesn't contemplate any sort of financial mechanism. It's more of a, like an advisory. Like we want you to take a look at this and if feasible, maybe try to incorporate as a proposed amendment, but then still has to come back to many different parts. This is just that, that working group. Is that correct? Correct. The task force, uh, and I'm going to pass it to, to, to, to, to answer this because he was on the task force. Um, no, nothing in this motion has anything to do with the funding has nothing to do with requirements of new developers. Uh, it, uh, there are six components within the task force report, including water quality standards in land use planning, stormwater infrastructure requirements, coastal development standards and natural infrastructure, Everglades restoration coordination, watershed scale governance and, uh, coordination and climate resilience and adaptive, uh, and adaptation planning. These are specifically items called out for by the task force report that should be included in the CDMP. So there is no funding mechanisms. There's no new burden on developers. This is just, uh, looking at the task force report and making sure that any items that are in the task force report that belong in the CDMP are considered. Uh, and. Thanks, madam. Sure. Yes. I, I did serve on the task force and, um, I'm also monitoring the process, the county department of regular regulatory economic resources planning. I'm not sure we have anybody from that department here. I'm looking in the audience. I see Durham, but I don't see RER. So I, I'm going to have to, with your permission, I'll describe what I think is happening because I, they are at the end of their review. Uh, and I think, um, it's a committee appointed by the mayor, not by the commission. So these will be recommendations if, if they're adopted by the task force that the mayor will send to the commission. Everything that goes into the CDMP requires approval by the commission and all the processes you guys use. So it's just our recommendation to this task force isn't going to, is not the end by far. It would, there's plenty more to be, uh, reviewed. So I, I think you will just want that, add that from what I know. All right. So these are recommendations to this particular task force to review and potentially recommend. Got it. All right. So do we have a, we have a motion. We have a second. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? No. All right. Show that, um, passed with one in opposition. Thank you. Next item. We are looking at, okay. Voter safety and Bay education task force. Nancy. My partner in crime, Katie Oswald is also joining. Thanks for putting up the, um, slide presentation guys. Great. Um, thank you for inviting us, commissioner Steinberg. Um, while we work with you guys as well throughout the year, Katie and I have been busily, um, launching and hosting, uh, seven meetings of the mayor's boater safety and Bay education task force. Uh, can we go to the next slide? Um, the task force was created by a coming together of a really special family. Um, the Lucy Fernandez family, um, Mellie and Andy Fernandez. They unfortunately lost their daughter in a tragic boating accident, um, a few years ago. Um, they reached out to the mayor and the mayor's team to talk about what could be done to address these terrible tragedies that unfortunately to this day continue to happen on Biscayne Bay. And the mayor went forward and said, yeah, we, we need to do something. And so she pulled together a task force. Um, if we could go to the next slide, I'll show you who was there of various folks representing the marine industry, the boating community, um, communities on the water like Key Biscayne, which have been heavily impacted by the accidents. Um, we also had the state attorney, Catherine Fernandez-Rundell, representing law enforcement. And we had Andy Fernandez as the, um, chair. And, um, I have to say it was an incredible privilege working with the Fernandez family and their foundation. Uh, and I think their dedication and their bravery, their courage, um, and their compassion really brought people together and made the, um, task force very successful. Uh, if we go to the next slide, you can see we had, um, we, we met seven times. We had 16 presentations from all sorts of agencies. We actually had people from FWC based in Tallahassee come down to Miami-Dade to present in person or to, to be present while their staff were presenting. We had the Coast Guard Southeast Regional Education Representative. Um, Scott Syspanik, who is based in Georgia, come down. And I always told Andy and Mellie that, you know, it's because of them. They, they're people who really bring people together and, and really get results. Um, so it was, it was excellent, um, to work with them. Um, and to feel so much the, the real dedication and input from all of the members. A lot of it related to law enforcement, of course. So we had the Coast Guard. We had FWC. We had our own Marine Patrol, the, the Miami-Dade Sheriff's Office. And, of course, the City Marine Patrols. Um, and we, for example, we had, um, uh, Major Massa come to several meetings. And then Captain, uh, Ralph Almagro came to every meeting. Um, we also had good support from our friends at the Biscayne Bay Aquatic Preserve. Um, so I just really wanted to let that be known. Um, and also then to kind of go back in time a little bit to really thank this board. And, um, specifically Commissioner Steinberg and our former chair, Commissioner Cohen Higgins. But you all really pulled together a lot of legislation, um, and resos related to boating safety. Because there was such, obviously, a gap. Honestly, this advisory board isn't really meant to be focusing on it. It's not really in the task force recommendations. But because of everything that was going on in the Bay, you all stepped up and, and filled in that gap until this task force was pulled together. So, you know, we had motions around increased funding, which were successful thanks to Commissioner Steinberg. We had the, um, report on the, um, unlawful activities of the jet ski rental businesses. That was also sponsored by our three commissioners at that time, Commissioner Steinberg, Cabrera, and, and Cohen Higgins. Um, we had a resolution about the year-round boating restrictions. Uh, we ended up focusing north of MacArthur Causeway. And the Sheriff's Department are, at that point, it was under the mayor, the Marine Patrol. They, they did special, uh, weekend, um, details and captured a lot of information and a lot of, um, and increased fines. I mean, they, they were able to give out a lot of tickets. It became known that increased details will help. But there's something missing there, which is this special, um, congestion study, uh, that would need to really help us direct where we need the resources. That was in the report as a recommendation. Um, and then also the famous business tax certificate process in Miami-Dade County. How can we use business tax receipts? The process that Dave has shared and that, um, Mayor Streitfeld talked about, um, that others are doing, um, like in the city of Miami Beach, for example. Can we get a grip on so many of the illegal activities that happened from the Miami River, which the Miami River Convention, which Jim is our representative here, are also tackling and talking about on a regular basis. Uh, there's so much illegal activity that launches from the Miami River. Is there a way we can get a handle on it land-based, um, and then do something preventative, prevent the illegal charters who go out and, and can cause some mayhem. So I just really wanted to list through that to let you know that many, if not all of the recommendations and resos passed by this board and then the Board of County Commissioners have also been included in the voter safety task force. So to me, it just speaks to the need and to how people are working together and, and seeing this together. Um, it's just a real good, I think, affirmation. And I also want to shout out Spencer because he is a huge, uh, bouldering advocate, also directly impacted, uh, by some of the accidents that have happened. He's witnessed how, how terrible it can be, um, for people recreating. And he provided a lot of support to the task force, um, uh, to the Fernandez family in particular and also presented to, for us. So I just really wanted to let you guys know that you all had something big to, to do with that. Um, can we go to the next slide? Um, so this is where I hand over to Katie and she's going to talk about the results and, um, give a little overview of, of, of what happened in our, in our meetings and what the outcomes are with the report. Thank you. Good morning. So the task force broke up their work into four separate pillars. Uh, we had meetings related to each topic, uh, voter safety, education, law enforcement, legislation, and waterway management. Um, I'm gonna do a little brief overview on some of the major recommendations. The report goes more into detail right now, the reports with the mayor's team and with the, in the mayor's office. So we should have that final report in the coming days and we'll be able to share it with all of you. Uh, next slide. So we had two overarching recommendations that were brought up in every meeting that we had for the task force. Uh, it was very clear that it's needed to establish a permanent advisory board. Similarly to how the Biscayne Bay task force created this advisory board. Um, a lot of these recommendations will take months, if not years to really accomplish them. And so the task force felt it was really important to establish a permanent board, um, that would contain just like all of you, different representatives from the different agencies. Uh, cause as you know, all of these different topics, um, you know, the county doesn't have jurisdiction over all of them. So it's really important that we have all the law enforcement agencies involved and different stakeholders from the community. The other overarching recommendation was to create a Marine enforcement group. Um, and this group would live within the county and they would be able to help us. Um, not only help with the coordination of all of the recommendations as well as staffing the advisory board. And, uh, hopefully continue some of the recommendations, push the recommendations forward. Uh, next slide. So the first pillar is voter safety education. One of the main recommendations that was put forward for the county to have a multilingual public awareness campaign. About border safety, um, our team Durham has piloted this. We're piloting this this summer in partnership with the parks, recreation and open spaces department. And we're working really closely with the Lucy Fernandez foundation. And the goal is to expand with the other agencies, um, that are involved. And as well as having kind of a space where we can collect all of the resources that have already been created. Uh, so that we're clear on the messaging that's going out to the community. Another recommendation was expanding the community based engagement programs. So our parks department runs voter engagement days throughout the summer at each of the county marinas. And, uh, we're gonna try to expand on that this summer. And then the advisory board would be helpful, um, in going forward with other ways that the county, uh, could expand these programs. Uh, next slide for law enforcement, uh, we were extremely happy to have all of our law enforcement agencies present for this particular meeting. Um, you know, Nancy and I spend our time hurting a lot of cats. And what was really great about this task force was people wanted to show up, people wanted to be there and it wasn't hard, uh, to get them all there. So we're really grateful for that. They, uh, these particular recommendations for this section were brought forward by our state attorney, Catherine Fernandez-Rundell and her team. Um, so a couple of things that I think have been brought up here before that were also brought up in the task force, uh, was establishing a unified marine radio communication protocol. Um, so as some of you may know, our law enforcement partners operate on different marine channels. And that was something that we discussed heavily on creating kind of a standardization for how that works. Um, as well as the standardized citation and data collection systems, um, which thanks to commissioner Steinberg, the sheriff's office is going through the process right now to move away from using paper ticketing and going digital. Um, and so really we feel that this permanent advisory board would be able to continue, uh, pushing these recommendations forward and really making them happen as well as being able to coordinate these things. Cause as I said, um, you know, the county can really do the coordinating, but, um, you know, the law enforcement agencies would really be in charge of a lot of these different things. Um, and then as Nancy mentioned, um, part of the law enforcement meeting that did get brought up in many of the other meetings was the county's BTR business tax receipt process. And so the advisory board would be, um, you know, looking into that recommendation and recommending to the county, how we should, uh, go forward with improving that process. Uh, next step or slide for, uh, legislation, um, similar to law enforcement, the, you know, county, uh, doesn't have jurisdiction over a lot of the law enforcement or legislation. Um, so one of the main recommendations was for the county to coordinate going into the next legislative session, um, and make sure that all of these issues that needed to be addressed at the state level, um, are included in our legislative, uh, priorities. Next slide. Next slide. And for our last pillar waterway management, as Nancy mentioned, the top recommendation was commissioning the vessel congestion study. Um, and then another recommendation that was brought up, uh, multiple times was restoring and standardizing the navigational, uh, markers and doing a countywide audit of all of the signage and mooring infrastructure throughout the county. Um, so we're, we're, uh, uh, very hopeful that the permanent advisory board would be able to push that forward and, um, as well as with all the other recommendations. Yeah, and we're really grateful for commissioner Steinberg taking on, um, all the legislation surrounding the report. So thank you for that. Yes. Thank you so much. Um, I think it's important for this board and this body, um, having that they have had an influence on what some of the recommendations are. To kind of get a brief update on where we're at and the summary of that. So thank you. Any comments or questions before we move on to the next item? Okay. See, yes, James. Oh, uh, thank you, Madam Chair. Um, two quick comments. The first one, I think, uh, it's a very imperative imperative that somebody address the issue of the channel where, uh, Lucy Fernandez, unfortunately lost her life. I navigate through that channel all the time. Um, that boat crashed into the southernmost green marker, you know, at the south end of the channel. Well, that marker is out of position and it's shorter than the rest. And I have no doubt that's what caused the boat to crash. The person driving the boat probably saw the red channel marker, did not see the green in front and crashed right into it. It needs to be put into position, uh, parallel to the red and replaced with a taller marker. I navigate through the time and I can't believe that's still where it is in that, in that size. It just makes no sense. Number two, were there any discussions of requiring a boating license or at least some kind of a boating course before somebody can operate a boat? Yeah, so, um, if you don't know, um, the Freedom Boating Act was passed last year, uh, by the state and the Fernandez family did include the requirement of a boater's license, um, in that package. And it was removed, um, so, you know, we're going to work very closely with them, um, and we're also encouraging, you know, our local partners to, um, also go to Tallahassee and advocate for that. Um, but we are working with them on providing more access to boater education courses and that would be part of our overall campaign that the county will be doing with the different agencies. Um, and, and we're aware of, uh, kind of the disconnect with the boaters licenses. I would suggest you make it, uh, more, stress it a little bit harder, that make it a requirement, not just on a volunteer basis. I mean, since after all, Dade County has a law that everyone has to own a boat, or at least two. I think we're at the point where people need to know what they're doing. I'm on the water all the time, and I see people driving these big fast boats, three, four, five engines, and they have no clue what they're doing. A few years ago, I decided to get my captain's and master's license, and I thought I knew everything, and I did not. I learned so much, and there's people out there that haven't taken even the most basic course. I'll give you just one example of an accident in that same channel where Ms. Fernandez passed away that could have been another deadly accident. My boat cruises at about 20 knots, and it's 34 feet long. I was cruising north on that channel, not a boat in sight. As I approached the north end of the channel to veer to port, to left, to turn towards Black Point Marina, I heard this huge thunderous noise right next to me while somebody running a 40-foot catamaran loaded with people, screaming and yelling and partying, whatever, nearly hit me, came within two feet of hitting me. I'm sure that person didn't know that the rule in inland waters is when you're going to overtake a vessel, you have to blow your horn twice if you're passing the port, once if you're passing the starboard, so you're going to let the boat that's being overtaken know that they're being passed. He did not. If that had happened two or three seconds later, when I made my turn, he would have crashed into me at 50 miles an hour. And certainly somebody would have been seriously hurt or dead. So that's what I'm talking about, that that person had no clue what they were doing. And yet they're running this fast cat with 20 people on board at 50 miles an hour through a narrow channel. That has to be addressed. I mean, obviously the county cannot make those rules, but at least take it up to the state to require something. Maybe take a safe voting course or a basic voting course, a navigation course before you issue the registration. That could be something done. Yeah, through the chair. Uh, there is a requirement in the state of Florida for boaters licenses, but it, you have to be born after January 1st of 1988. So, um, that is something that we're, you know, looking into and, um, hopefully the advisory board would push that forward to try to get that to Tallahassee to make a change to that. Thank you. Yeah. Great, great points. Yes. Thank you. Um, I just want to take a quick moment to thank Nancy and Katie and the work that you guys did. Um, it go, when this, uh, initiative started a couple of years back, um, there was, uh, you know, a daunting task in front of them and, you know, the issues that they're dealing with are, um, complicated and multi jurisdiction, jurisdictional and, um, you know, raw from, from, from families who have, um, who have, who have been part of this and, and, and you guys really did a great job. And I think the report that's coming out of this is, um, something that's going to be really helpful. And, you know, I'm involved in, uh, boating and waterway management in a lot of other parts of the state. And, and, and, you know, what, what happens here on our Miami-Dade County waterways is, is sort of like, uh, a precursor or harbinger of what is going to come on these other, in these other waterways, because, you know, the waterways are getting more congested. There's more people using boats. And so, um, hopefully we'll be able to, um, you know, implement some of these things and, and, and that will help not only this County, but also the state. Uh, and we're going to try to do that in a way that encourages responsible and safe boaters to be out on the water and, and use the water. Uh, but, uh, also discourages, um, irresponsible boaters and irresponsible behavior. So thank, thank you both. Thank you, um, Chairwoman for your leadership on the issues too. Thank you, Spencer. Um, yes, Miriam. Just a quick suggestion. And it's, uh, often difficult to get through things for the state level, but at the County level, um, allowing only people that have taken a voter safety course, uh, to use any County docs would be a simple quick fix. Uh, again, most people do go out to the County docs. We couldn't control the private docs, but at the County level, say, listen, I'm sorry. If you haven't taken the course, you can't use our docs. Real simple. Yes. And I think we're working on that actually. Yeah, that's the, that actually is one of the recommendations. Yep. You'll see it when the report comes out. Yes, James. I'm sorry. Thank you. No, thanks, Madam Chair. Thank you for your leadership on this and the study, which I'm looking forward to seeing. Um, look, we don't need a congestion study on the Miami river. It, it is a disaster area, especially on the weekends. Uh, it's a no wake zone, the entire way. Uh, and, uh, every time we build up on the weekends and the boats are moving, they're lifting the bridges. The grid moves the cars and their trucks and the emergency vehicles stops. We just have to move forward. And I think like the channel down south, the river, uh, we just need to move, expedite some of the solutions that you have identified and others are working on. Uh, these charters, in a lot of ways, they remind me, um, uh, several years ago when the Uber process came upon us. And it was declared illegal because we had taxis that were regulated by the county. And so we had to go through a process of figuring out how to make Ubers legal. In my mind, a lot of what we need to do is figure out a way to make charters legal so that the users who are of tours and, uh, understand what is a legal charter that, that is safe under command of a, of a boat captain that has all these credentials. And then it'll be a somewhat easier to go after the vast number of, of the legal charters. We could also perhaps create some revenue if we had that going on, but this is a major problem on the river. And I think we need to step up what we can do from on the, on the water enforcement to, uh, on the land permitting of where the boats are, are departing from. Thank you, Madam Chair. All right. So with that really quickly, because we have a couple more. Super quick. Thank you. Um, this is exclusively the, I think in fact, the watershed management advisory board passed a motion, uh, almost two years ago. And I believe the commissioner Steinberg was taking a look into it about how we can leverage a certificate of use licensing, just like a landscaper, just like an electrician. We have control over food service establishments, we can incorporate licensing requirements and a means of contact and communication with them to update new rules, regulations, what we want to see. They don't even have to be mandates. They can be like, uh, this is what we want to see, uh, from, from charters and then a review board. And then it makes it very easy to go after the bad actors because if somebody behaves poorly, that license can be revoked. And so it is not an obstacle. And so it is not an obstacle. We're not putting obstacles. We're basically, um, giving a pathway for the legalization. Everything is operating in such a gray area right now that we are just playing whack-a-mole. And so we really need to be doing this licensing somehow. Any other comments or questions before we move on to the next? Yeah. Just along these lines in reference to some of the charter operations, I think, uh, I go over the Rickenbacker Clauseway every day and you can see certain periods, holiday periods, weekends, the sheer size of many of the vessels that are operating in areas that are just not suitable for a vessel of that size in terms of there's an ecological impact to a lot of this. In terms of, you can see the bottom being churned up, right? And so that is something that if we're really looking at the earlier discussion, water quality, all that sort of thing, habitat restoration, there's also an ecological component to this as well in terms of, you know, illegal charters operating in areas that they probably shouldn't be operating. Yes. Thank you. Agreed. Thank you. All right. With that, thank you so much for the presentation and the update. And there'll be more. Stay tuned on that. Um, we're going to go right into the discussion items really quickly. The chair, well, actually, Pamela, I think you're going to be giving us more. Welcome back. You're back on. Um, a short background on the living shoreline guide. And I believe also that's in conjunction with Mayor Streitfeld who requested this discussion. Who wants to kick it off? Pamela? Okay. Thank you for the opportunity. Um, we wanted to provide today, um, a little bit of an overview of the document that you receive from Ms. Jackson and, um, a little bit of the history of it, um, and sort of how it's landing on your plates. Um, we're excited about this opportunity, um, to have one. And we partnered with the state for funding to create one. It's a long time in the running. I know the county and the state, even long before my tenure, we're talking about creating such a thing. Um, so to just provide a quick overview, what you see here, um, is referenced from, uh, the late Pete Harlem, uh, his master's thesis in 1979 called the Aerial Photographic Interpretation of Historical Changes in Northern Biscayne Bay. It's a mouthful. But what you see in green here and what Mr. Harlem, um, who was with FIU and, um, has since passed, shared and was trying to illustrate was sort of the historic, um, upland area in North Biscayne Bay. And this is adapted from, actually, Laura Eldridge's presentation when she was managing the aquatic preserve. And what you see here is mostly just that in that green area, that upland, you don't see any of that, um, black or dark gray or light gray on the legend yet because those represent filled lands, spoiled lands, um, or dredged lands. So imagine you're a boater, you're a fisherman. Um, this may have looked this way, um, when Mr. Torres was out fishing with his dad, um, but does not look that way today, of course. Um, and if you advance this to what we look like, um, at the time, um, that, you know, this represents largely what the time scale is now, um, that dark area in black is dredged areas. So, of course, that's areas where seagrasses, um, are no longer, um, you know, these are deep dredged areas. Um, gray and dark areas represent spoil or fill. Um, and, of course, we have causeways that change the hydrology, change the natural form and function of the bay, right? Um, so the idea when you think about living shorelines is obviously we're not going to be particularly at this place again, right? Um, so getting back to a quote-unquote natural, um, a natural state is not feasible. But what we did want to do was really think through how to maximize the benefits that living shorelines can bring while minimizing the further impact, um, on Biscayne Bay. Because this is a space, this is the people's water body, this is the people's bay, uh, where you have fishers and divers and boaters and, uh, kayakers and swimmers, uh, and folks that enjoy a visual view of the bay as their right as well. So why a living shoreline guidance document? Um, acknowledging that this came from funding from the state of Florida through their Biscayne Bay grant program, um, and was produced by Tetra Tech. Um, the first goal was to promote living shorelines for those interested in shoreline protection along their waterfront. And that could look like a mix of green and gray, as we call it. So hardened, you know, think of bulkheads, seawalls, um, T-piles, those kinds of structures mixed perhaps with some green infrastructure, be those mangroves or some sort of high rugosity, lots of, lots of surface area, newer technology, whatever that might look like. You could go through the spectrum, all green, all living, all the way to hardened. And we're just wanting to provide some guidance and a framework for folks that either want to do a little bit of both or just move down the green side of the spectrum. The second goal is to ensure that the nature and the design of the living shoreline actually enhances Biscayne Bay's natural communities and doesn't forego one habitat for another. So what we mean by this are habitats such as submerged aquatic vegetation like seagrass, macroalgae, live rock, soft coral, hard coral, things that are sessile, they don't move, they don't move through the water column. That is where they are if they are going to be there, um, isn't sort of extirpated by having, let's say, riprap placed on top of it or fill for a mangrove planter per se. Uh, what are, what are the things we're doing to help not forego one habitat for another, especially when those types of habitats also tend to provide oxygenation of the water column, nutrient reduction, those kinds of things. We did define resilience and restoration in the document. It's heavily referenced. There's lots of technical references in the document that helped us arrive at these and what would be, um, satisfactory for our community. Um, resilience in this context specifically refers to restoring and maintaining the resilience of the bay. We talk a lot about resilience of the upland and, of course, our critical infrastructure. The thinking of the bay as a, as a living, breathing being that needs to be maintained in a resilient, uh, capacity because this is, as Dr. Redwine mentioned earlier, our $64 billion economic engine and blue heart of the bay. Um, so in this definition, we wanted to make sure that we are, um, incorporating, of course, those kinds of activities like nutrient reducing projects helps with resilience. Habitat restoration helps with resilience, but restoring hardened shorelines also can help with resilience. It allows water and habitat a place to go and march landward as sea levels rise. It provides, continues to provide habitat for those who like to fish and otherwise enjoy the bay recreationally. Um, and it's just, can be a smart solution depending on where in the bay you are. We also defined restoration and in this context, it refers to ways in which habitat losses resulting from human activities and natural events can be mitigated and habitat returned, uh, to an improved or ideally pre-disturbance, as we talked about earlier this morning, condition. Though that's much harder to do, right? As you saw with Mr. Harlem's, um, earlier work. Uh, getting to that is, is challenging, but the ways in which we can think creatively and out of the box can help. And our third and last goal really was to encourage property owners to participate in the restoration of Biscayne Bay Health. Um, so, meeting the mark of having to protect your shoreline and to have public and private entities who do have that responsibility, uh, do it in a way that meets these other goals, but can actually participate in, in the process. And this was also, having a living shorelines guidance document was identified as a recommendation in the Biscayne Bay Task Force report under the chapter titled Watershed Habitat Restoration and Natural Infrastructure. So, this was a goal being met through grant funding out of our task force document. Um, so, the, the document itself has, um, four major, uh, phases or chapters. Um, the introduction, of course, just takes you through what living shorelines are, a little bit of natural history of the bay, uh, and sort of, uh, providing for the, the readers of this document, the users of this document, uh, quick references, um, as well as those sort of definitions and what the goal of the document is, how they can use it. We also, in the second chapter, provide an overview of what living shorelines are, the types of living shorelines that can be imagined, and, of course, the, the different design approaches. And we did the best job we could relative to where you may be in the watershed. Are you up a canal that's largely freshwater and non-tidal? Are you facing, um, you know, or near, uh, an inlet? Are you particularly susceptible to wave energy? Those kinds of things. So, we try to do our best to categorize those approaches, to help people envision what could be possible. Third chapter are examples of what these look like. So, reaching across the aisle to our municipal partners, our state partners, um, and looking at some opportunities to showcase projects. So, that folks can visualize what those could look like. Um, and these are projects, I should say, um, that don't do the thing that we're trying to avoid, which is filling in the bay further, um, for the reported benefit of enhancing. Using the bay or its utility or providing some habitat at the risk of sort of extra painting what's naturally there. So, these are excellent examples where that was not done, where opportunities were taken, uh, to do the best job of using the upland to the fullest extent to help protect the shoreline, but provide this added green benefit. And chapter four is, uh, all about implementing living shorelines. So, this takes you through the planning phase, uh, to consider, um, the site itself and go through the exercise of what works for you. A design phase, which, of course, takes you through different options, um, including vegetation, um, and specific technologies that could be employed. Um, community engagement phase. This is where, um, there are opportunities for folks to, um, look to resources, um, and learn more about living shorelines and how to implement them. Um, the permitting phase takes you through all the ways in which you'll have to walk through at the state, local, and federal levels. Um, my, one of my favorite illustrations, though, is on page 99, which focuses on the county's piece of the permitting pie, which actually takes you through the spectrum of, um, what kinds of projects you could do that you don't even need a permit for, what kinds of projects you could do through an expedited administrative authorization, what you can do through a short-form, uh, coastal class one permit, and what you would need a long-form permit to do, which means you're taking it before the board of county commissioners. Um, and we walk you through the state and federal permitting processes with graphics and colors, and it's stepwise where you can literally check off a list, and then just thinking through construction and management. So, how do you want to maintain that? How do you want to make sure that you're meeting, um, flood zone requirements? Anything that's sort of ancillary that you want to consider. And just to provide a quick visual overview of what this looks like, if you haven't had a chance to open this up yet, um, we wanted to make it very user-friendly, so we've ascribed some what we call aquatic friends. So, if you see, uh, you know, a manatee, this is where you're going to be looking for things like, um, you know, there's just something complex that you want to bring your eye to. So, if you see a manatee on the page, look a little deeper. There's a question we're going to ask, and we're going to want to make sure you have that answer before you keep moving, for example. Um, wanted to also pull out the process for installing a living shoreline. Graphically, we wanted to walk people through, again, through planning, design, um, that community engagement, so who you need to consider when you're building, um, and what resources are available when you're building your living shoreline, the permitting process, and, of course, again, construction and management. And a quick reference, this is sort of what I meant, quick reference, this is what we mean. And each of these, of course... Pamela, through the chair, just because we have limited time, and I kind of want to ask questions. Yes. Yes. Madam Chair, okay. Um, this is so exciting. I'm thrilled about this. I'm going to be doing all of the engagements on social and in our community. It's phenomenal to finally have this, and it's really comprehensive. I just want to clarify, because my colleague, um, Spencer, made a comment earlier that some of these oyster installations and some of these living components, he used the term illegal, and I was hoping you could just clarify that. No, I mean, living shorelines are not illegal. There is a permitting process, of course, um, but no, they're, they're not illegal. There may be, uh, types of shorelines or types of activities in the water that might be preferable over others, because, again, you might be extirpating something that's alive. Seagrass has nowhere to go. Soft coral has nowhere to go, right? But you can eat up five feet of your shoreline if you wanted to make a mangrove planter. So these are the kinds of toss-ups we want to have people engage with. Um, so there might be something that you, you might want to consider if you've got seagrass or coral right at your seawall. And what, what about oysters? So we talk about this, um, within Durham and with community partners often. Um, there's definitely an opportunity for, um, oysters to be used in habitat restoration projects to help filter water, just as we've done with, um, we're testing out sponges in the same way. We actually just met this week, um, with Miami Waterkeeper and, uh, somebody from private industry who's looking to think through where we can pilot a program to use these oysters as a habitat restoration technique. Um, but oysters do, largely due to, uh, changes in salinity in the bay over time, those changes you saw at the beginning of the presentation also, um, they don't really survive anymore. There's very little area where you have oyster reef per se growing on the bay bottom. And that's really limited to extreme versions of North Bay and some areas down South to some extent. But it's very rare for you to find oyster reef per se, but using them because it just won't survive, but using them as a restoration benefit for things like water quality filtration is something we're really trying to explore and where that's best done. And is there a regulatory framework that prohibits that exploration right now that needs to be amended? No. No, no. Depending on what you want to do, you would just have different, you know, avenues. Are you trying to put it on the bay bottom? Are you trying to connect it to a seawall or a piling? So it would just depend on the, the forum. Seawalls and pilings are probably the most applicable for, for property owners, right? Yeah. And depending to on how big it might be, you know, that either we as secondary canal owners or the district may have an issue with conveyance of stormwater. Or so just things to consider, but you would just come in, um, at the local or state level or federal level and have a pre-app meeting and we'd figure it out. Okay. Okay. Is there anything else you want to touch on before we go and open it up? No, I think that was it actually. There were just some visuals to represent, you know, what we offer in the document, but that's really it. Okay, great. That was, that was it. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you, Mayor Streitfeld for, um, bringing this item forward. Um, yes. Thanks. Um, do we have the whole, um, guidance document already in our, in our materials? I, I didn't see it. Um, is this. Yeah, I sent it, but I know someone. Right. But it was, it seemed like it was only like pieces of it. It wasn't like the whole thing. Right. So the two pagers, the summary documents that Pamela is showing, and then we have a couple printouts. I've sent those as attachments. I think I need help from it to figure out how to share it externally. You didn't get it either. So I'll, I'm going to work on that and, and make sure everybody, um, can have access to it. Cause that's what I was trying to do, but I think it wasn't successful. Okay. I was going to say, I did receive the entire document. You did. Yes. I received a, a link to download it. I got a passcode. I downloaded it. I read it this morning over breakfast and I appreciated you sharing it. Yeah. So I got, I got like the attached, the PDF attachments, but not the link. Yeah. Okay. That's good to know. I'll, so I know some Jim had a, couldn't get it. So I, I'll figure out what I did with Dr. Redwine and replicate it. I got it, Nancy. It's 160 pages with a ton of graphics. It's fabulous. Yeah, it is. Okay. I want to, I'll, I'll take a look. Yeah. You have to go through the link. And so make sure you, maybe you resend the link because it is such a large file. So you have to go into the system. I can't send the actual thing. Yeah. Okay. So, um, to, uh, address the issue, uh, about the, um, availability of these elements. Um, there's a couple of things here in Biscayne Bay that make these difficult to achieve. Uh, and, and, and, in my other capacity as a commissioner on the Florida Inland Navigation District, we work on these and provide grant funding for these because they're an element of shoreline stabilization, which is something that is, uh, available for funding assistance through our grant programs, uh, in Palm Beach County over the past 20 years, I've been on find. I mean, we've done countless numbers of these and, um, they're amazing benefits to the water body, um, here in Biscayne Bay. The attitude has been that you can't build a living shoreline into the bay, uh, because that's deemed to preempt areas that are, um, seagrass habitat. If you look at in, in quote unquote natural areas, if you look at the Harlan exhibit, it shows that most of these areas have been dredged anyway. Um, for regulators to take a position, which is unique by the way, in Florida, uh, that you can't build a living shoreline into the bay. Um, it effectively prevents, uh, development of living shoreline. Nobody's going to retract or excavate their uplands in order to build a living shoreline. It makes no sense. So in North Bay village, for example, um, you know, that, uh, all of those, uh, the, the seawalls that are there, uh, but state owned submerged lands. Um, and so it's very difficult, if not impossible. And, you know, which is why I said illegal to do projects like this on, on the bay bottom. Um, we'll see if the new legislation helps. Uh, I'm skeptical, but, but we'll see, um, when you're asking people from the private sector to do these kinds of things, which are expensive and time consuming, um, government needs to incentivize it. Government needs to incentivize the correct behavior and, and not disincentivize or, you know, make it, make it more difficult or expensive. And so until those things happen, um, I think we're still going to be playing catch up to what is being done in other communities and it's being done very successfully by the way. Um, and I have, uh, presentations that I can share with the board and I will, uh, showing the extensive nature of these features in other, uh, coastal estuaries and how beneficial they've been. And so this is, uh, a long time coming to get to this point. And I hope that, um, the government, meaning the state, the county and the federal government will not only, you know, come out with this, this document, but, um, really truly incentivize people to, to do the right thing. Because, you know, I mean, this is needed in North Bay village, just needed in Bay Harbor islands is needed in edgewater of Miami, like the highly urbanized areas of North Miami, North Miami beach through the chair. This is what is needed in the highly urbanized areas to help make a difference and help really amenitize the coastline. I mean, I think, I think it's, it's a no brainer, um, from a, um, scientific perspective. And so, you know, we just have to, we have to build the momentum on the regulatory side to make sure this is something that's being, um, promoted and incentivized. Thank you. Yes, Mr. Torres. Thanks, Madam Chair. One quick question. Do we know the, the cost of a living shoreline versus like non-living versus like putting up a seawall? Has anybody done that? It really depends on the location through the chair. Because I'm sure putting up a seawall is not cheap. No. Um, can I ask a followup question? Yeah. And I will say too, that there are people who, who use both the gray infrastructure, seawall or what have you, and compliment it with other blue and green infrastructure and create hybrids as well. Um, so you can have, you can look at all of those possibilities and there are probably a lot of cost savings potentially. It's what I think you're, you're hinting at. Yes. Um, Spencer, would you consider bringing this issue up at the Biscayne Bay commission? I mean, if we're talking about regulations in the Biscayne Bay aquatic preserve being obstructive to implementing these methods, the Biscayne Bay commission seems like a great forum to have that conversation. Sure. And I think the, the, the, the right, um, entry point for this is the new legislation that was passed last year that was designed to, um, remove some of the barriers, uh, at the state level to, to these kinds of projects. And so I think if we could have someone from the state and probably the DEP regulatory and state lands, uh, people come and do a presentation on that, I think, I think it would be helpful. So yes, I'll, I'll, uh, I'll ask for that. Yeah. Yes. I like that. All right. Yes. Dave. Um, that was, uh, Senator Garcia's SB 302. And so she may also be interested in participating at the Biscayne Bay commission to, sorry. Yeah. Maybe presenting. And, and I know Jim Mooney helped as well from, from the keys. So, and so I'm very, I'm, I'm very excited that the County, uh, is, um, is ahead of the state on this because the, one of the main directives is for DEP to, to create such a document that, uh, Pamela and Laura and Durham have spent so much, uh, time doing. It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a stellar, stellar approach. And from a cost standpoint, um, it's, it's, it's, you know, to add on, uh, seawall tiles or to use, uh, these concrete arches instead of rip rap, um, really the cost could be very negligible. Uh, and so this is a really tremendous opportunity if we can just, you know, make sure the permitting goes smoothly that, uh, that, that, that people understand, um, you know, what, what can be done. And I'm mainly concerned with, um, greenwashing of the types of concrete, uh, in some of these living seawalls, um, in ensuring that it does not cause more damage because of the kind of concrete and that also greenwashing where we don't necessarily know whether these types of concrete will actually attract. Um, and so I think it's, it's, it's pH levels. Um, it is the consistency of this. So maybe we can, uh, take a look and make sure that, that, that we are not allowing somebody to, you know, make something crazy, call it a living seawall or a living shoreline and then sell it on the market. It, so I would love to see a little, little focus on that, but otherwise I think it's stellar. So thank you. All right. Anybody else? Yes. I just had one question or comment as far as, uh, the, came up as, you know, the regulations regarding some of the oyster reef habitat. I do think that there are some challenges there as it relates to where that type of habitat restoration can occur given the current language, uh, with regards to seagrass. Because if, when you look at a lot of the benthic habitat in the Bay, a lot of areas that may be suitable otherwise for oyster restoration, you may have just a, you know, small clump of seagrass there. And given the way the, the regulations are worded, you have to be so far from any portion of that. It would automatically rule that area out. So there does need to be, I mean, when you look at a lot of these areas, these are areas that are largely sort of mud bottom. I mentioned earlier about large vessels stirring up the bottom, uh, that has an impact for trying to restore that seagrass area. But now if we come in and we say, oh no, you can't actually do any oyster restoration there because there happened to be a few little clumps here or there. Now we've ruled out sort of that tool in the toolbox, so to speak. And I think we may need to look at that further to see if we can, you know, have some, some viable restoration in those areas. No, and I, I think it's a, it's a, it's a viable question and, and, you know, I think opportunities for anything that can improve water quality, you know, obviously we weigh those things. I think the seagrass or, you know, the, the, the sessile organism community, right, seagrasses, live rock, coral, the reason why I think, you know, as regulators, we're responsible for kind of weighing those things is because, you know, we haven't really had oysters in the open bay since we were talking yesterday. I think my colleague, Laurel, just was talking about, you know, opening up the hull over inland in the 1890s, exposing the bay, um, you know, to, to salinities that are, make it intolerable or salinity regime changes where you have, you know, zero PBT salinity and go all the way up to 35 and come back down again in a day sometimes, it makes it challenging. So, you know, we have a responsibility to the people to make sure that we're, you know, and the person bringing the project. So, you know, if Habitat is present in there and providing an ecosystem service, but we may endanger it potentially, right, by having, um, a pilot program, a test to see if something could work and it fails, then wasn't the responsibility on the regulator to do a better job making sure that, you know, this, the science was sound enough to have a reasonable level of assurance that it would succeed. So just to give a little bit, I guess, of the, the, the lens through which we might see a project like that, it's not that it's illegal. It's not that you can do it, but obviously, you know, we're, we're holding both things at the local and state and federal level. And I would say also to the, the issue of, um, regulations around developing in the bay, you know, again, there's nothing that stops you from, from offering up a project like that, but that weight of, and that nuanced idea that, you know, my private property, well, I would like to extend it out further in the name of doing a living shoreline, but I know that Mr. Torres and Mr. Kunif also like to fish here and use the seagrass bed that produces this red drum and that produces these snook. Uh, I will extirpate that. I will, I will relieve the bay of that habitat that will no longer be there in perpetuity, but my private property now has the benefit of this quote unquote living shoreline. Very simple, oversimplified perhaps, but these are the things that, of course, regulators are contemplating when you're looking at the rights of private citizens and their, and their, the right to protect their property with, um, infrastructure with the balanced use of, of the user on the water. So absolutely not illegal, but this is what regulators will, will of course have to consider with those applications. Thank you. All right. Um, so I think we're ready to move on to the final discussion item, which I know was requested by Dave Dobler regarding the mobile pump out. So who will be giving an update on that? I just wanted, it had been impending for quite some time and it did pass, was adopted by the board. I shared the final report, has some great recommendations in it. Um, I just didn't know if anybody wanted to comment on it because I know Dave, you've been a big champion on it. If you wanted to mention anything about it. Um, I didn't know that it was going in front of the commission. Um, I'm thrilled that it, that it, that it, that it, that it passed and went through. Uh, I read in the, uh, in the summary that you provided in our board packet that there is a concern about funding, uh, that, that, uh, um, we might need to find 25% of that money. And I was, uh, want to specifically call out that I noticed that one of the potential funding sources I think that Monroe County is using is the Florida, Florida Inland Navigation District. Um, uh, what is it? It's the, the Waterway Assistant Grant. Martin County, not Monroe. Martin County. Yeah. Cause Monroe is not in fines, but yes, we do. We do. We can fund these. Yes. Wonderful. Thank you. Put that on your, uh, put that on your, uh, your radar. Wonderful. Thank you for, for all of the work on, on that. Okay. I hope we actually get one. Will we actually get one? Uh, what's the next steps? Yeah. Next steps are to work with the teams with Durham and parks to figure out how we would go forward, uh, to, because we need to apply through the clean vessel act. That's where we get the bulk of the grant funding to do. Um, and then it's good to know that fine could help, um, further that along. So, yeah. And through the chair, uh, do we have a rough timeline about when we might start seeing some kind of action or response so I don't harass everybody? Uh, not yet. Give me a minute to come up with the timeline. I'll give you 90 seconds. Sorry. Thank you. Yeah. Um, I, and you are actively working on that. I know. And because I know this was passed and we do expect it to come back in front of us in some form, hopefully in the next couple months, I hope. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. No, I, I'm talking about at the BCC. Yeah. That's, yeah. Okay. Um, all right. So, first of all, I want to thank everybody today. It's been a very, I thought, a very, um, productive meeting and great presentations and discussion for our future agenda items. We normally on this agenda have the legislative update from those who are in Tallahassee. They come back. They give us the update on, on, on the issues we care about and where they're at and what's happening. Um, but we weren't able to get that today. So, we're going to have it on the October agenda, which actually is interesting because it's during committee week. And so, it gives us an opportunity to hear exactly a recap of this past session, but also what we can expect going into the next session. Um, and I know, um, Nancy, I don't, I'm going to call you up for a moment, please. I know we had discussed, um, maybe bringing the choral discussion back or a presentation. Can you elaborate on that? Right. So, the, um, state right now, uh, is in the process of getting approval, FDEP is, for the Kristen Jacobs, um, coral aquatic preserve. So, that was expanded, the existing preserve. Uh, and so, that requires its own management plan and its own approval. They are doing that right now. So, I was in touch with the staff from FDEP who's in charge of that, and she's happy to come in October to present that management plan and what the Kristen Jacobs coral aquatic preserve is, actually, and with this new, bigger footprint. Okay. That would be great. And, of course, as always, any board member can email Nancy, um, to get an item potentially reviewed and discussed at our next meeting. And, yes, Rachel. I have two suggestions. Yes, please. Okay. Um, I would love an update on septic to sewer conversions. Um, I think it's been a bit since we had one of those. And, here in the North Bay, it's particularly dire. So, would love an update there. Um, I'd also love to hear from water and sewer, and not just on the septic to sewer, but on their, sort of, maintenance plan for, for failing systems, um, that are, are currently underground. And then, the second item I'd like is to hear from the Department of Transportation and Public Works, what they are doing in their, their roadway plans, um, and, and their required details for curb, gutter, uh, great drains, all of these things. Um, the DTPW, uh, details are, like, 50 years old. Um, they exist in a PDF that's, like, kind of scattered across multiple places. And, that doesn't seem helpful to our purpose here. So, hearing from the Department of Transportation and Public Works on how they are contributing to our progress on the RAP, um, and the overall Biscayne Bay, one water philosophy would be really great. Yeah. Noted. Thank you. Yes, Jim. Thank you, Madam Chair. Um, an item, uh, it looks finally like the city of Miami Beach has, uh, broken the code on water taxis, or at least made some progress, uh, in operating a water taxi from the, from the island back to the mainland. Um, I'd love to see if there's information that we could be briefed on, uh, and there may have been a county directive on this at one point, but, you know, water taxis, it runs into a whole bunch of regulatory issues. But, uh, you know, if we could figure this out, we could serve the ballpark, we could serve the soccer stadium. Yeah. So, if, when the study is done, or whatever is the appropriate timing from your perspective, um, I'd like to see if we could explore that. Thank you. Yes. Dave? Uh, thank you. Um, about three years ago, our board passed a stormwater, uh, a stormwater plan that, uh, required increased design standards and updating, uh, increased maintenance schedules and, uh, integration of an asset management system. Um, as Mariana from Waterkeeper, uh, brought up, um, I would love to get an update on, uh, that policy that we proposed, um, and what the status is of all that. Um, the second is, uh, I noted in our board packet that we did get funding for the watershed management plan. And so I would love to, I believe we're supposed to play a role in that and I'm not sure what our role is. So I would love to, um, make sure that we are moving forward that, uh, water management plan. And if possible, uh, we can get an update on the marine debris reduction plan, uh, that was created, that, uh, was being worked on, uh, at the next meeting. That'd be great. Thank you. Yes. All right. So, um, with that, I guess Nancy will go back and see what you think. I think that's enough for two meetings. Yeah. Yeah. We'll be doing that so we're December split it out that way. That was a lot, but those are all good ideas. Thank you guys. All great ideas. I want to wish everybody a very good summer and safe summer and hopefully, um, no major, no major, uh, incidences. Yes, Nancy? No, that's, I was agreeing with you. Yes. Everybody stay safe. Yes. Thank you so much. Meeting adjourned. Thank you so much. Meeting adjourned. Thank you.