- Well then, we're gonna go ahead and move on to our next item. Hopefully we all have a chance to approve
- the minutes, which were the exciting recap of our annual planning meeting. So I don't know if we'll
- be receiving any edits, whether we're in the end of that. Is that a promise that's supposed to happen?
- I believe that we approve the minutes of everything. Second. Thank you, Matt. Thank you, Shane. Yes.
- Adam Budifer? Yes. Painting Guy? Yes. Adam Arquina? Yes.
- David Parker, period, all right, motion passed. Excellent, well thanks, and thanks for being part of
- our meeting. It was a lot of fun, and I'm super excited, and we all want super race. Great, okay, well
- we've got, like I said, a couple of things happening at the beginning of this meeting, so we're gonna
- go ahead and just jump right in. We have Dylan here who's gonna just talk just a little bit more about
- the Hoosier River Watch program. I'm sure that some of the sort of more, kind of,
- old school Indiana or even doing meetings with residents may be familiar with it, but it's a really
- cool program. So I'll hand it over to you, Tom. Thank you very much. Yeah. I've sat, I mean, Dylan Allison,
- the coordinator for the Hoosier-Ripawanna program. I've been in that position for a little over three
- years and I worked alongside Mitchell Owens, you may know. And he actually talked to me when we were
- here earlier in the year doing the Bloomington Bug Fest, which was my first time doing an event, incredible
- event to be part of.
- So definitely be coming back to that, but I just wanted to take the opportunity to talk about the program
- as a whole and talk about how it can be used in the Bloomington area. And fortunately, we actually have
- a lot of folks who are already involved in it in the city here.
- There we are. So what is Hoosier River Water? It is a volunteer stream monitoring program. We have office
- of water quality. We have staff that check the water quality of all of the state every single year.
- But we don't have the staff to go to all of those stream miles. And that's where Hoosier River Watch
- kind of fits in. It fills the gaps in data in water quality across the state.
- We offer workshops to train individuals who are interested in learning about the techniques on the monitoring
- there. And then once these volunteers go out into their neck of the woods, they can gather the data
- and then send it back to us. And we have a database. And this program is actually turning 30 years old
- next year. So we have three decades of data on water quality across the state. So it's a great opportunity
- to see some trends in water quality.
- And we're all about involving Hoosiers and I love this word stewards. We want everyone to show stewardship
- of the water and really try to protect the water resources as a whole. So how did the Navy get started?
- So back in the early 90s, there was actually another program that was under the DNR at the time. It
- was called Hoosier River Peepers.
- And it was more of a cleanup program. It was kind of a precursor to the about the stream. You might
- have seen the signs still in different waterways. But they were about cleanup. They were pulling tires
- out of the rivers. They were cleaning up the banks. In 1996, they added the river wash component, which
- was really about actually testing the water and monitoring it. So between the two programs, you had
- a cleanup side and you had kind of a testing side.
- But they said that it's all kind of, you know, it's a miracle to have both of those. They kind of combined
- it just in the Hoosier River watch. And they hired a coordinator with the Clean Water Act funds. And
- that's actually still what funds our entire program today. It's Clean Water Act funds from the federal
- government. SED-IDEM manages this program and then also offers a lot of watershed grants to put best
- management practices in the place.
- that goes to different market groups around the state as well. So that's all kind of coming from the
- same cloud model there. And in 2001, we actually had a volunteer instructor training. And till that
- point, one coordinator, in my role, would actually be in charge of training everyone who wanted to be
- involved. And that's a huge, huge, huge profit to be a part of. So now we use the model of kind of a
- train the trainer. So we have volunteer trainers around the state.
- who will in turn put on those workshops. So it's not just myself leading those workshops. And by doing
- that, we're able to really increase our scope overall. And in 2012, it went from the DNR to IBM. So
- still within the state, but it jumped different agencies. And like I mentioned there in 2026, we have
- our 30th anniversary there. So really we kind of built on first off the foundational knowledge, right?
- program leads up into those concepts of watersheds and water pollution. And these are concepts that
- are great for children. As you see here, I do a lot of outreach with schools there. I use like a little
- tarp, and we kind of talk about the principles of watersheds and how the water flows across the landscape.
- We talk about, we actually do sampling for macro invertebrates there. So the kids love getting their
- hands wet and looking for little creepy crawlies in the water. But it's adults as well.
- We do all sorts of outreach from kids or 12 college students and beyond. And, you know, sometimes you
- think, okay, that's, you know, building that foundational knowledge with the young kids and stuff is
- great, but sometimes I think even adults need a little bit of work pressure at times. I actually saw
- this, this quote, it's kind of getting covered up there, but this is actually a quote at an UJER national,
- I think it's Hardin Ridge. There is this interior sign,
- overlooking a beautiful vista. And I'm a sucker for those signs. I love reading everything on this.
- So I first went up to a server reading it, and it had this, a quote on there that talked about, over
- half of the world's water originates in forests. I thought, conceptually, that is just false, right?
- So why is that false? What's wrong with that? Over half the world's water originates in forests. I think
- there's a lot of talking. True, certainly. Yeah, there are a lot of comments.
- But I found troubled by the word originates, right? There's a water in it, it's swimming, right?
- There is, what's the important point of the circle, right? It's all just moving, it's always kind of
- moving through the environment. So I thought that that sign is a little bit of an update. So the forests
- have the, you know, incredible role to play and filtering the water and allowing the red water recharge
- and everything. But I wouldn't say it originates there, it just moves through it, right?
- And that's one of the things we learned when we were in elementary school, the water cycle, right? We
- learned how it moves around the globe. And I think there's, surprisingly, always something to learn
- or new things being discovered. You know, even with the simple water cycle, in the last 10 years or
- so, there's been discoveries of water trapped deep, deep, deep in the earth.
- deep beneath our feet, 400 miles deep in the mantle of our planet. And it's bonded to a mineral down
- there called ringwoodite. And through the pressure and intense heat at that depth, the water molecule
- actually breaks up and binds to the mineral. And it actually becomes almost this fourth state. It's
- not a liquid, it's not a solid, it's not a gas, but it's kind of bind onto the ringwoodite.
- opens up, that discovery kind of opens up all these questions for, okay, is that water cycling up?
- You know, has it been trapped down there for, you know, for a long time? You know, we're just starting
- to kind of scratch the surface of that. So even a concept like the water cycle where we think, oh, simple,
- we learned it in third grade, we're still learning stuff about how the water's moving across our globe.
- And I love talking about this slide in particular, especially to the kids. It talks about the average
- length of time that a molecule of water, a drop of water, is in all of these locations. So if we drop
- water in the ocean, it could actually kind of bounce around and be caught in that ocean for 3,000 years.
- And the atmosphere is much, much quicker, you know? It evaporates and condensation and falls back down
- as rain. It's only there for nine days or so. Generally, ice caps, you know, could be a thousand years,
- but there's been ice cores in Antarctica that are a couple million years old there.
- So groundwater couple of months, lakes, 100 years depending, Great Lakes obviously more time than a
- smaller lake, right? And the rivers are about three, two, three weeks or so. So I always point out to
- the children when we do the outreach with them that no matter what span of time we're talking about
- here, it's dwarfed by the amount of time that dinosaurs run when. So you killed that statistically,
- almost every drop or every drop of water that you drink,
- has actually worked its way through a dinosaur bladder, right? So I'll sell it in the case. You can
- bring me a dinosaur feed, all right? And we talk about all watersheds as well. This is a map of watersheds
- that I have identified. So you can see a name and a number there. Those numbers are confidential,
- a unit code. It's how we identify our watersheds there. But it's just another part of that foundational
- knowledge that we,
- uh, kind of show off for our kids. But the next, hi, whose river watch is so well, so kind of important
- for, you know, especially outreach and engagement with communities is the hands-on experience. Uh, so
- of course, I didn't have a lot of colleagues who go out and monitor the waterways. Uh, but often times
- they use fairly expensive equipment, data, saws and whatnot, which is essentially just a pro that they
- toss out in the water.
- It's attached to a handheld device and it will read dissolved oxygen and the pH and all these different
- parameters that they're measuring. But it's quick and efficient and effective for our purposes. That
- wouldn't be much fun for kids or for people who want to get out in the stream and spend time and connect
- with nature, right? So the hands-on experience of the program is really something too. We actually are out there
- catch the macro invertebrates, you know, we take meats out, like at the top left there. We, after we
- catch everything, we try to identify it. We are using keys like this mother and her children there at
- a tabling event. So we're getting hands on with the creatures in the streams and with our chemistry
- tests. We're again, hands on with all of these. I'll talk a little bit about the tests that we use a
- little bit later on.
- know it's so crucial because clean water is important to us all right we need clean drinking water we
- need it for recreation we need it for wildlife habitat and irrigation and certainly just the aesthetics
- of it right so we we need to have these monitoring programs in place to kind of keep track of that because
- there's a lot of uh challenges around water quality right we see issues with
- sedimentation like here at the top left. A lot of erosion happens and if that sediment settles into
- a stream bottom it starts to smother the gills of the aquatic creatures there. It starts to cover up
- all the little spaces in the rocky kind of stream bottom there where these macron vertebrates like to
- live. So sedimentation is a big problem. At the top right there we have invasive species. Those are
- the silver carp
- that when they get agitated, they jump out of the water there. It can be quite the hazard if you're
- boating, right? So we have invasive species of different kinds. We have both litter, we have some litter
- in that, but also it shows a little bit of algae, which itself is totally fine. But when you have an
- excess amount of nutrients in the water, sometimes you get those algae blooms, and those can cause a
- problem for the ecosystem there. And then on the right kind of shows this cattle pasture, which is a
- common scene in much of the state, right?
- And a lot of times these pastures will have some sort of drainage ditch leading right through perhaps
- the cows. And anytime that cow will leave a cat patty behind, right? Next rain washes it down the ditch
- and eventually it's going to make its way to electric water. And then you have issues with bacteria
- in the water, like E. coli, right? So while we monitor, there's all sorts of reasons why we might want
- to monitor, but we want to identify pollutants and where they're coming from.
- If it's a site that has not been tested before, we can establish some baseline data. If it is a site
- that's been tested before, like I said, you know, 30 years old, this program, so a lot of sites are
- in the state, and we can actually document the changes in strands and water quality there. And we can
- also measure the effectiveness of a best management practice, a BMP. So, those watershed groups that
- I mentioned earlier, if they get a grant to put in
- strips along the edges of agricultural fields to cut down on nutrient runoff. You can test before and
- after those practices are put in place and see if it's really working. So when it comes to kind of what
- we look for because there's all sorts of parameters what we can measure but I call it the big three
- that we can look for. We look at the physical makeup of a stream that's going to be a habitat evaluation
- We look at water chemistry and we look at the biology. So, IAEA actually has a fish crew and a macroinverter
- crew. With future Overwatch, we just focus on the stream bugs, I guess you could call them macroinverters.
- So, if you were to, you know, the first part there, the physical makeup and the habitat of a stream,
- if you were to close your eyes and kind of imagine this pristine stream and you hear the water kind
- of battling by and, you know, you're sitting in the shade under a tree,
- And you can imagine what that looks like. Hopefully, it's going to look a little bit more like this
- illustration on the left than on the right. There's a lot of characteristics that a really healthy stream
- should have. It should have a meander in shape. We like to see that natural meander. And through the
- meander, it's actually going to cause different depths within the stream. You're going to have some
- deeper slender areas where we call it.
- maybe get some more fish that like to sit in those areas where it's a shallow area that has a lot of
- kind of the rocks breaking the surface and a lot of water kind of bubbling around that and getting oxygen
- mixed in. Our macro invertebrates are going to like that area. We call those the riffles. So having
- some variety in the stream, the physical make of the stream is actually going to help the biodiversity
- of the stream overall. So we also want to have a lot
- that riparian vegetation or riparian zone being the area just adjacent to the stream. We have there
- the left soil because the roots hold onto the soil there. Now you're going to have almost a buffer strip
- for any rock making its way towards the stream there as well. What you were imagining ahead, hopefully
- it looks a little bit more like what we have on the left here as opposed to the right. Whenever you
- get channelized,
- and you try to straighten the stream out and kind of work against nature. The water moves very quickly,
- so then you see more soil erosion issues, so then you have to put down different control methods in
- place, like using riprap along the banks of that channel. You don't have, usually they'll have sort
- of a buffer strip along those as well. So all, we're able to actually go into the stream and take a
- look at some different
- parameters and actually test and evaluate that physical or habitat makeup. And we're looking at the
- substrate. What kind of rocky bottom is it, or is it just kind of mud, you know, that a lot of sedimentation
- has happened? Is there places for fish to take cover and hide? Is that stream shaped natural and meandering?
- What's the riparian area like? Are there different areas of depths and different speeds that the water
- goes that kind of
- offers that biodiversity later on. And we actually are able to, we have a data sheet, so we actually
- physically scan there in the creek, we check boxes off as we go along and say, yep, it's got, you know,
- a fish cover and it's got this type of substrate, and then we're able to score it at the very end and
- give a habitat evaluation score to our stream. There's some other things we can
- to evaluate the physical makeup and the other is flow or how much water is moving through a system.
- And you can actually at the USGS site, you can actually find a lot of stream gauges online. And we have
- quite a few in the state that you can actually find nearly up to date. It actually updates every 15
- minutes. So it's nearly a lot, but it will give you the different flow or the height of the stream or
- river that you're looking at there. So that's a neat tool to have.
- to get out and use our a lot. It's great because there's a lot of STEM involved with this, so I like
- doing this with the school groups as well. We just take all the measurements and plug them into an equation
- so we're finding the different widths of the stream there at the top, multiplying that by the average
- of the depths at nine different locations. We're actually measuring how fast the water's moving the
- velocity using a floating item and
- timing how long it takes to float down to a partner downstream. And we're plugging this onto equations
- and we're essentially figuring out in cubic feet per second, how much water is moving through a system.
- So this is a great one to do every day towards all ages as well. So when it comes to the chemical side
- of things, there's actually quite a few, like eight different parameters that we can measure. And it's,
- again, more of the,
- hands-on techniques that we like to use that have been just thrown out, you know, a probe into the water
- and reading off of our handheld device, right? So we're going to, you know, take water temperature into
- consideration, and that's going to affect the dissolved oxygen, the pH of a system, and the phosphates
- and nitrates. Those are the two nutrients that we measure as well. The turbidity, which is the clarity
- of the water, and then we actually measure
- was called the biochemical oxygen demand. It's a test that takes five days. It's essentially a dissolved
- oxygen test, but it's tested five days later to see how much oxygen is being used up by the bacteria
- in the water. And if there's a huge difference between day one and day five, it means you have a lot
- more organic pollution, a lot of bacteria eating that up and using up oxygen as it does so.
- And then the E. coli, we mentioned the bacteria earlier. So we have an E. coli test that you can
- do as well. So we have a data sheet for this as well. So all of our hands-on tests can be done in the
- stream on-site, except for the full hours takes, the 48-hour incubation period, and then of course that
- five-day test with the oxygen test that we do as well. What's interesting about
- our tests they have different units you know our transparency for example here we have this transparency
- two we measure it in seven units right but that's a totally different unit than the parts per million
- that we measure our dissolved oxygen in so how we compare apples to oranges is we have to convert every
- answer that we get to what we call a q value and what's helpful to our volunteers is that every single
- volunteer that goes through a training workshop gets
- user Overwatch manual that is there. So take home and they can refer to it when they're out there in
- the stream. And then it will have these charts and these graphs that you can see here that converts
- their answer into a Q value. So all you do is simply find your results on the table and you can kind
- of plug in the Q value there. This graph illustration here on the left is actually showing the Q values
- for dissolve.
- oxygen saturation and you might think more oxygen the better, but for this particular test, you can
- see once it goes beyond 100% saturation, our Q value of 100 actually dips back down. So it's not a good
- thing to have too much oxygen. Has anyone gone scuba diving before? Yeah, so has anyone heard of the
- bends? So if you call too quick from diving, it has an effect on your
- system, right, your body, right? Similarly, when the system in the water system is basically super charged
- with oxygen, it has an effect on the critters that are living in that water as well. So that's why we
- actually consider it not to be too good if we have more than 100% saturation. And, you know,
- Mitchell Holmes, who sits on the commission here, he's actually in his testing has found
- of streams that have had 200% oxygen saturation, mostly because the algae is photosynthesizing and pumping
- it full of oxygen. They had an algae overgrowth at that particular stream. So for pH, we have assembled
- test strips. Who's done the pH test strips before? Maybe it's been a while. Easy to do, hands-on. I'll
- actually show this illustration
- workshop participants because it's got a lot of items that you might find at home or in your own house
- and where they fall in that pH range, right? So, of course, distilled water is right there neutral in
- the middle, but, you know, lemon juice, watermelon, and then there's bleach on the other end here,
- very basic. But down at the bottom there, there's different kind of bars there showing where those organisms
- can survive, what range they can survive at. So, if you like to go
- and try to catch catfish, for example, their pH, they're not really going to be found outside a six
- to a nine and a half. If your pH is outside of that range, your fish are going to have trouble surviving
- in that system. Whereas the bacteria, incredible organisms, right? There are some bacteria that can
- actually live in lemon juice at two on the pH scale, and some that can actually be served in bleach.
- And you're thinking like, okay, bleach is supposed to disinfect everything. But if you read the bottle, 99.9%
- of bacteria, this can work. So it's talking about that, you know, bacteria can survive that. So that's
- something that we can easily test at the stream site as well. And then we have a couple of nutrient
- tests. Our nitrate test is also a test trend. Then we have a color comparator for our phosphates.
- And it's similar to our dissolved oxygen test here. So with dissolved oxygen test, we actually have
- these little glass, what we call ampules, and they have a reactant inside. So we actually snap the tip
- of it in a little collection cup with our stream water and the vacuum inside. It sucks the water, mixes
- with the reactant, and it starts to turn blue. And the darker the water, the more oxygen you have in
- that water.
- use a comparator like this one here. So we just simply hold our our annual up to these and see which
- is the closest, right? And it just is an easy test to do, you know, kids, adults, everyone can do this.
- You know, we're going to get pretty close to the same results overall. So our nutrients that we test
- are the nitrates and the phosphates. And they can come from, you can see on the slide, they can come
- from everywhere. They come from
- a sewage system, or a faulty septic tank, or ag fields, or even your home lawn if you're spreading different
- fertilizers in it, right? And whenever you get too much nutrients into an aquatic system, algae tends
- to grow out of control because algae bloom. And when the algae dies, it starts to decompose and actually
- sucks the oxygen out of that water. And then you get things like fish hens.
- up on the shore. If you ever see anything like that, then it means that there's likely just not oxygen
- in that water to survive. And that's actually a dead zone in the Gulf. That tells right where the Mississippi
- leads out there. And the Mississippi River is such a huge drainage. A lot of our state actually makes
- its way in the Mississippi River. The water is close to Indiana.
- we contribute to the nutrient problem that the Gulf sees there. In fact, the Wadash River, beautiful
- river, it's great for recreation and whatnot and songs over in the area, so it's an important waterway
- here. It is notorious because landmass wise, it's only about 3 percent of the Mississippi River watershed,
- which is a huge amount of land.
- contributes closer to 12% of the nutrient load that ends up in the gulf there. Part of it is because
- there's really no dams on the Wabash River, so a lot of the nutrients cling to sediment, and if that
- water rushes down the Wabash River with nothing to slow and stop the sediment and have it kind of sink
- out to the bottom, it just makes it to where it breaks the Mississippi eventually and down the gulf there.
- And we contribute to the problem. And we actually have a task force for the state that is focused on
- reducing our nutrient level that we contribute to this. But that's when we assess the health of nutrients
- there. It's a big issue. I mentioned the turbidity. And I had to show off the turbidity too. We would
- simply kind of fill this up with water. And we'd stare straight down. There's a little kind of a checkerboard
- pattern right down at the bottom of that tube.
- If it's very clear water, we would be able to hopefully see that pattern and we would know we got some,
- you know, clarity to our water. But if it was very turbid or very cloudy, maybe you wouldn't be able
- to see that, and you'd have to actually release water at a valve at the bottom until the water gets
- to a point where you can see. And I've had some events after rain in particular, when you have more
- soil erosion, where, you know, a typical stream
- would be no problem having very clear water, but after a rainstorm it's, you know, 10 to 20 centimeters
- of foot clarity just because of all the sediment that gets washed in there. And then on the screen there
- you see different petri dishes there. Those are our E. coli tests that we can do. So we culture E. coli
- and there is an incubation period of a couple days, but we can start to read that. And it can get pretty
- tedious as you can see here where we would be
- having the kind of violet or the dark blue. If you see pink dots, those are bacteria, but they're the
- non-E. coli bacteria. So we pick out all the dark blue dots on there. And as you can see, some of those
- would be a lot of counting, right? So that's one point where IM's technology could help. When I'm doing
- E. coli testing, they simply push their results into this machine that counts them for them. Very easy for them.
- volunteers have to do it, kind of the tedious man in there. But, you know, this is an issue that we
- find across the state, E. coli in our waterways. So it's something that we definitely want to contribute
- to the data being found there, because a lot of times you'll see DNR beaches, for example, a lot of
- reservoirs around the state, the beaches have to close certain times of the year because of E. coli
- in the water. And island is the testing to
- basically make that, make that known to the DNR who then shuts the beaches down. And then the third,
- the big three kind of categories that we look at are the macro invertebrates, the stream bugs,
- if you will. So the chemistry is great. You can get a lot of information, but it's a very much a snapshot,
- right? If you've been before and after a rain event, because the runoff that comes into a waterway,
- your chemistry test could be
- totally different, you need completely different numbers, because the macroinvertebrates are a little
- more stable because they're in the waterways, they can't move very much, they spend their lives in the
- water. And then the kicker is that they have different levels of tolerance to pollution. Some can handle
- it and some cannot. And that's why we look after our macroinvertebrates. So we'll actually go out on
- the stream sites, we'll take kick nets and dip nets,
- This is a big part of Mitchell Allen's position with IDEM. He's an actor and very big crew. We try to
- identify what we're looking at when we catch these little critters. We'll actually bring them out and
- in our tips that we make available to our volunteers, we have these little white bus tubs or dishpans
- essentially. We'll pull the critters that we find into the dishpans and we'll start looking through
- the water and picking them out, looking at
- very well magnifying glass. And trying to determine what we're looking at. And this particular dichotomous
- key is a nice one because there's 50 or 60 different macros on here. And all you have to do is start
- at the top and ask yourself one question at a time. And the top question says, does it have a shell
- or no shell? Simply look at your critter. Answer, if it doesn't have a shell, you come down. Does it
- have legs or no legs? And work your way further down and ask, how many legs does it have?
- Does it have wings? How many tails does it have, if you can see any? So you can actually kind of narrow
- down your search for when you're looking at your macro invertebrates from, you know, 50 or 60, well,
- you know, five or six. So it's a big help for that. And I'm gonna show you a couple of things here because
- the key that he uses for IDIDM isn't just nice one page, it's like a dictionary. Because he has to go
- much further in tax open than we do. We go to the order level and he's looking for
- genus, maybe the species of dogs. But once we know what we're looking at, we can see if it's intolerant
- or tolerant of pollution, and that gives us a clue to the water quality overall, right? So the top group
- here, group one, we love to see them. They're very intolerant of pollution, which means it has to be
- clean water if we're finding them, right? Things like stoneflies and mayflies, water pennies. But as
- you work your way down through the groups,
- they get more tolerant of pollution. So if we find something down at the bottom, it's kind of cut off
- here, but, you know, there's leeches in Group 3, for example. They're pretty hungry. They can survive
- a lot of different waterways, even if the pollution, you know, is found there. Now, we don't necessarily,
- you know, freak out and say, oh, we've got bad water quality if we find a leech, because even though
- they can't live in polluted waters, it doesn't mean that they
- can't live in theme water, right? So we're not really looking for whether or not these lower groups
- are found. What we really want to focus on is can we find the top groups? And if not, there's an absence
- of those, then maybe we have up to looted in Y1 here. And we're actually able to, just like the other
- two sections, provide a grade for our waterway as well.
- we actually give a little bit higher kind of a weighting factor to those clean water critters,
- those Mayfly, Stonefly. So we count out the tax of that we find, and then we multiply by the weighting
- factor, and we essentially get a score for our waterway. So it's a nice way to really get hands-on,
- but then you're able to actually collect that data and get like a final results or grade right there
- at the stream, and you don't have to
- It doesn't take collecting the macro invertebrates. After we're done, Hoosier Riverwatch actually releases
- everything back to the waterway. So it's a great way to sample and get real-time result right there
- on the stream. So I mentioned the data. Whenever our volunteers collect these data points, they share
- it with us. And we have a website, hoosierriverwatch.com, that has
- space to interpret it. And then what's great is that it's publicly available. So anyone can go on to
- visualreports.com and look up data for their waterways. They can search by watershed or by the name
- of the river or county or their organization. If it's maybe like a school where we have a lot of teachers
- who go through our workshops. So you can navigate them that way. And then instead of pulling up, you
- can get a whole bunch of raw data tables there.
- that you can export to a PDF or, you know, a CSV to follow up. But we also have a visualization program
- built into the site as well. So you can start to see kind of the graphs and whatnot change in it. It
- helps just kind of digest that data a little bit easier. So kind of our data visualizations for our
- after invertebrates there. And you can see some of these, you can start to,
- paying for the county you're looking at, getting the watershed, the time frame, you know, if you're
- looking, I just want to know for the last five years, what has our macro and burger community done as
- a decline, has it stayed the same? You can filter all that out with our visualization tools. So let's
- have an overview of the program and share just a few slides on kind of the direction we're going overall.
- We want to offer,
- Over the course of 30 years of the program's been around, we have over 4,000 people who have gone through
- a training. Every year since I've been here, we've had approximately 250 people become trained in Hoosier
- Overwatch, monitoring techniques, and we want to be able to offer them a continuing education. We have
- in place two what we call advanced workshops,
- So our normal training, our basic training we call it, it's not nearly a full day thing. It's half a
- day in the classroom, half a day doing the hands-on work in the stream. But we actually have two half-day
- VIX workshops that people can take advantage of. We have an entire ECOBOT training focused just on that.
- And then we have the macro and vertebrae training. It's brand new. I just loved the first one this fall
- and it was great. We take out dissecting scopes and we look at these pairs up close under the scopes.
- and really get to go further than the orbit level and the taxonomy. So we do have some additional training
- that people can take part in. Weird training videos online, which are just for a reflection. If it's
- somebody who's already done the training or if somebody who's thinking about their workshop and want
- to see what it's all about, they can check out our videos to see if it's something that might interest
- them. Right now we just have most of the chemistry tests.
- But in the next year, we're going to be adding training videos on the macro invertebrates and the PATAT
- evaluation as well. And then maybe the most exciting thing that's happened this year is that we've released
- a Hoosier River Watch junior program. So all of these workshops that I've been mentioning are geared
- towards the dentists. So we have a lot of teachers who will go through it and they'll turn and we'll
- lead the monitoring events for their students
- but the actual students haven't been through an official workshop themselves, which is why I wanted
- to create something that our K through 12 students could participate in. So Hoosier Riddles Junior is
- an activity guide with low to no cost activities. It's something that can be done any place in Indiana
- and it invites teachers and educators to go out to these outdoor locations. It's not required.
- A lot of schools don't come from Indianapolis and a lot of schools don't have this beautiful outdoor
- lab or space to be going and exploring. But these activities can even be done in a classroom setting
- and you still learn a lot of those concepts that we cover in our adult class. And they're all tied to
- education standards. So that really helps when teachers need to kind of show that, hey, this is really
- worthwhile. It's directly tied to the standards we're covering in class.
- site as well. But if anyone has any questions about the program, I'm happy to take some questions. But
- thanks for your attention. I just thank you. It's a great way for engagement in a community because
- that's what it's about, right? It gets the community involved in the data gathering. So we've had quite
- a few people go through the program. But we have generally workshops usually like April through the
- end of October.
- So if you have a golf course workshop, I'd definitely encourage you to do so. But if you have any questions
- or anything else, there's more contact information, and please reach out. Thank you. Thank you. I know
- that we've got a lot on the agenda tonight. Is there anything specific that folks want to ask the program
- or about anything we've covered? It's Christine Lindberg, the CBU trainer. Yeah, sure. So we've had
- a couple different in the building scenario.
- Yeah, she's been in the program for years, so she's a very knowledgeable one. Oh yeah, her network's
- at the city, so she's been in the city. Yes, yeah. Yeah, and she usually does at least one workshop
- a year or two, so if you're interested in that, definitely talk to Chris. Thank you. So if you can do
- it with a stream or river,
- Great question, yeah. So, you know, we actually don't direct people to a particular area. We kind of
- let them go wherever they'd like, which is a little different than some other programs. In the Indian
- Atlas area, we have the White River Alliance, and they have their monitoring program, which is a little
- different. They do a couple more chemistry tests. They don't do the macro invertebrates. They send stuff
- to the lab, they get tested. But they're very like, go test here, go test there. Whereas, through the
- RiverWatch is, we'll take data
- wherever you're in the state. So it could be a stream that runs through your backyard. It can be your
- favorite park. It's wherever you'd like, as long as you're following, you know, directions in the manual
- that you get. So everyone's doing the same tests overall. So it's kind of that quality control built
- in. You can send us data for more of it. All right. If that role has been interesting for you or someone.
- So we've had some people certainly submit data for seasonal streams that kind of disappear in the summer.
- Generally, we just ask that you make a comment like that if you know that it's generally not flowing
- in the summer months. You could say, hey, this is flowing this time of year. All of our data sheets
- are dated and whatnot. So if I see a site that has a high flow in the spring, but in the summer they're
- telling me there's not a lot of water moving through,
- You know, I know that that's an example of a seasonal stream like that. But again, we, I'll take data
- from anywhere. If it's, if you follow the protocol and it doesn't have to be all of the data that I
- mentioned today. You know, if you go out there and you just take a one dissolved oxygen test and send
- that to me, as long as it's the same way out of the manual that everyone else does and you've kind of
- done it correctly, that's good data. So we'll take it.
- them for the pandemic. And as I was pulling some of the kits, take them to the river. Yeah. Then during
- the pandemic, the kit moved to like a building that was blocked. There was nobody available. Everyone
- started to block their houses. And sure, I've done a lot about it. Yeah. How do I get the kit anymore?
- Yes. So on our website, we actually have a map of our instructors and our lunar kids. So if you're talking
- about, we have different ways that we want to get
- uh the equipment into the hands of our volunteers uh and that's through a loaner kit so you can go to
- an office sometimes it's like a nature center or something like that so you can check out the map on
- the idem river watch site and that'll tell you where those are at but all times we have uh educators
- and teachers go for this program and if you are a school a non-profit or a government agency you can
- actually get a grant kit so the learners are usually like maybe somebody keeps it for a couple weeks
- a month or so and they go out once or twice but the
- It's actually a two year period. So if you're kind of thinking you want to do it with like your group,
- your school kids or something like that, you can actually do that kind of a longer term kit as well.
- And we do all this, the workshops and the kits and all of this, it's always free. It's always that Clean
- Water Act funds. And we really want to eliminate the barrier of costs that might be in the way for some
- folks. So we want anyone who's interested in the program to be able to get involved.
- Great questions. Thank you. Yeah, I really appreciate you coming down and sharing with them. Well, travel
- safely on your way back. Don't get washed away. Who knows what that meant.
- All right, well then we can keep proceeding through the agenda tonight. So as Matt mentioned, he is
- here to talk a little bit about some of the conversations that have been cropping up as far as the residency
- requirement. So yeah, feel free to join us and I'm glad to hear your thoughts. So yeah, this can be
- like a very quick discussion. And what I'm curious to hear your all's perspectives on a question that
- our council committee on process has been grappling with. And so that is the question of,
- Most boards of commissions in the city have city residents with requirements. Some of the statutory
- boards that are defined by the state, we can't change that. Of course, that's a given. But for our advisory
- boards and commissions, which the environmental commission is one, that's something that we can't change.
- And this comes up occasionally, I think, both in the context of folks not being aware of the requirements,
- despite the fact that we asked about residency, like when they're applying. But that can probably be
- improved from an administration perspective.
- recently was from the Earth Commission basically making the case for wanting the ability to appoint
- a non-city resident. A lot of folks can't afford to live in the city. There are other reasons why you
- might want to bring in perspectives from urbanized areas or rural areas that are in the county, but
- not in the city. We've been looking at that question and I can just share committees. I think our initial
- thinking was,
- probably do it uniformly. And I think we've actually moved away from that. We think some commissions,
- it's probably best for them to be city only based on maybe funds they administer or the policy questions
- they're looking at. And for others, there might be unique cases for involvement or the possibility of
- a non-city resident being appointed. And so that conversation has mostly been narrowly-spoken
- a little bit reluctant of opening that door, but open to it based on the case that our commission made.
- And that would probably look like a maximum of one member in the Mount City resident or something like
- that. We've also talked to the folks in the Office of the Mayor a little bit who have expressed some
- mostly reluctance or resistance so far on the basis, I think, of administrative difficulty of tracking
- that type of thing. And also, again, a question of if
- Commission's administrative bonds, you know, is it suitable to have a non-city resident be part of the
- decision making for that? And some of the questions, I don't know if the CEC does, but our commission
- does, for instance. So basically, we're talking to a number of the advisory boards and commissions to
- get their own input on what you think about this. And maybe what I mentioned is the Minerva
- County Environmental Commission, of course,
- Resiliency, I think it was the Environmental Commission, now it's the Resiliency Commission. There's
- probably some overlap there. The Commission on Sustainability here in the city also has had two ex officio
- seats, one appointed by the Monroe County Commissioners, which has included, you know, has, as a matter
- of convention, then as someone who's seated on that, what was the Environmental Commission of the county,
- and then also someone from the SustainIU. And that's all, like, I used to serve on BCAS, both as a staff
- member and a forehand, and like, that felt like, okay, that's it.
- those seats are unfilled. And, you know, it's been a little bit tricky to administer. So maybe our Resiliency
- Commission, and that's all the, you know, interconnection you need. Maybe you see this case for this,
- and that's really why I'm here, is just to, like, bring you the question for your input about
- the Environmental Commission specifically. Do you all think you could benefit from the option of appointing
- a non-CITIC to the Commission? Like, is there a unique case to be made for that? Or, again,
- against that, also, if you feel like actually that's well covered.
- should be the same, because that's our permit. So just put it for some discussion. And if it is beyond
- the scope of what the agenda allows for today, you'll all be welcome to think about it, deliberate it
- at a future session. And what I may recommend is if you are in favor of that, which would be a change
- from the default in city code, probably formalize an ad request or position your resolution would be
- a whole lot. But if you wanted to do that and think why,
- it is some you know signal of like the commission decided we think this yes um if no change uh probably
- no need for that because that's the status quo and just reporting maybe from the chair back to us on
- what you know what you have concluded that you find here so that's all i got with happy answer questions
- okay i was going to just double check does everyone understand kind of what that's describing or have
- any questions on the concept that we're kind of going to dive into permanently does it mean just this
- board or all the boards are
- We're looking at a number of these rewarding commissions. I think about 10 or so of them, and I forget
- how many there are total. And a few that I think you've already allowed for, you know, either whether
- it's that's an ex officio seat, like because that I was describing, or I think there might be one or
- two others that allow for non-city residents to serve. But the default in city code is city residents.
- So for this discussion, it's just a minute here. Systems level question, great. But my real question
- for you is specific to the city center.
- that should be allowed up here. It seems to me, it makes sense occasionally to have a county person
- on the commission who is looking at the sources of water that are coming from outside of the city, but
- affecting the city or things like that. So occasionally a county person
- you talk about like the watersheds kind of, kind of a, I think he, I think he said perhaps it's being
- strictly on the city population. Oh, you, how do you come? Oh, no, I'm not sure. The part of the chair,
- the process. Yeah, that. How do you come from people who are in those areas that are kind of being inargued
- about being at next, whether they do well or not? Do they have a link in the address? Do they have a
- link in water?
- Good question. They are not city residents. They're not part of the corporate grant boundaries. Someone's
- saying Bloomington is more of a postal convention than a municipal government voting constituency
- perspective. And if any of those areas were ran up, then they would be so best at determining boundaries.
- Just are you in the corporate city boundaries of Bloomington? Good question. Just had a question. So
- what happens if someone is a resident when they come on the commission and then they move out?
- side of. So that doesn't always happen. These things and so that's part of maybe some of the conversation
- here too. It might have been somebody on the earth's portion was moving outside or. But, um, but yeah,
- I don't know about that. So yeah.
- Some cities have the ETJ, the five miles that three or other city limits where things happen. You know,
- formal, there used to be the interning kind of annexation, which was like a sort of like a two-mile
- fringe type of concept that's formalized anyway. So I don't think that the kind of work we do, I actually
- think having, you know, a member that maybe is in the county enough, the city makes sense for the reasons
- that, I mean, not that we need to mandate that, but we don't get out,
- grants like the Arts Commission or other commissions. So it's not that the people on this committee
- are making funding decisions necessarily. I mean, we make very few funding decisions, don't we? And
- I think it's more like efficacy type work, which when it comes to the Monroe County level, we don't
- do a ton of overlaps with them on a regular basis, but I think they have a pretty open relationship
- as far as if there was something that came through
- I can remember what it was, but we basically said this seems more like a county level decision to weigh
- in on or whatever it was, because it was outside of the city limits. I do think that kind of starts
- to blend that enough to our conversations then start going outside of the city as well, as far as things
- that, you know, we're weighing in on or anything like that. I don't know if it's endorsements both ways
- in that way. If we invite, you know, doesn't look within the city limits to our conversations, then
- extend beyond the city of Bloomington and we'll
- we're doing because we have our presentation board for the last day. So I would say that I don't think
- advocating for going as far as to invite non-city residents to be part of the commission, but I also
- personally don't see a problem with if someone were to move out of the city.
- see how that would necessarily be a conflict of interest. And so that would be problematic for us. And
- I understand how it could be, potentially, but. Well, it creates a flexibility if it's an option, but
- it's not filled, and then someone does move out, then they don't have to resign and build their car.
- Yeah. And that was the chair before me. Oh, gosh. I'm hearing his name. But he did. He bought a house
- right outside of the city limits. And so it's just kind of a painting in the general counsel. So a while
- ago, I had a dad.
- So yeah, I think that that's a good point. And this is something that people can think about a little
- bit. As Matt said, if we want to support that change, we can take a step, you know, that's perfect for
- us to share that and be open to it. And if it's something that we don't feel is necessary for our group,
- I think it's safe for them.
- County Environmental Commission changed its name and a little bit of what it did. I kind of thought
- it wouldn't make any sense to have someone from outside the city and because there was a comfortable
- committee there. And I think we meet at the same time. So it wasn't even possible. You know, it was
- what we tried to at one point and then immediately it was signed when he realized he couldn't be in
- two places at once. Yeah, now that they have a little bit of a different scope
- I suppose, be open to it. But I don't feel like we need to make any change at the time. That's just
- my opinion. Or just the official decision. I'll appreciate your work. OK. Any of us have thoughts that
- they want to make sure are full of their questions like that? What if I'm hearing short of anybody making a motion?
- What I mean is open this to a slightly favorable orientation as an option, not as a mandate. And there's
- some reasons having to do with the environmental boundaries for watersheds, airsheds, things like that
- that are especially interesting. Sound about right. Okay. Great. I can report that. What are we doing
- in a year? And keep you posted if there's any actual legislative proposals. So no guarantee that this actually
- close their path is sort of slow moving, but we're getting there. And conversation again, and you're
- reading and doing the very right. You get something else. I just want to note too, I don't, I didn't
- want to like, uh, effect any discussion, but to Dave's point, if he, if this doesn't go through,
- if you have, um, if you want to invite, I'm happy to reach out to the county, you know, representatives,
- we're representing the watershed or friends of
- whoever to come and work on that partnership with us. So I wanted to throw that idea out there as well.
- Do we want to put discussion with this on next month's agenda just so that we thought about it in between
- and we can kind of decide then if there's anything we want to throw there, right? Yes, I can. Perfect.
- Great. Thank you all. Thank you. Thank you again. Thanks for coming. Yeah. Good to see you all. Yeah,
- you too. Thanks for your service. Good question. All right.
- Well, thanks, folks. And yeah, keep thinking about it, and we'll get some time to circle back on these
- in-house meetings. As we move through the agenda, we see old business. I said it was a bit dismissive,
- but it's not. It's exciting in new business as well, but it's officially old business. I'm going to
- push this little container and feed these past the group, because they are still hanging out. So please
- help yourself. I make a motion to muster police. Literal motion.
- So now we're going to jump into the working group updates. We've got a bunch on here, which is super
- exciting. So I'm going to pass it to you. We'll see if you choose now. Headed up by Mateo. Biodiversity
- did not meet. Even the holidays, I find it a little bit unlikely that we'll meet before the January
- meeting as well. But we will get back going in the new year. Love it. And I think
- I'm going to interject with the B city meeting. Is there anything that you want to share about that?
- I think it was like a data. It was like a lunchtime meeting, so it was. Well, we were the B city committee
- that that is kind of run through the parks department and it's first meeting and so there's kind of
- a chance to chat with everybody and start to talk about what it will look like for the rest of the year
- to be part of that partnership and start kind of
- aggregating projects we're working on and things like that. Yeah. Yeah. So we're just kind of kicking
- out. And I think we have our first official meeting in early February. That's sort of our kickoff, but
- we'll get moving out of here soon. Great. Okay, cool. Next up is Ego Heroes. And we had a meeting, which
- was super fun. So if anybody wants to chime in on what this meeting entailed, I welcome you to.
- The biggest announcement is that the website now has language about the Eco Heroes event, if for no
- other reason, because Matt wonderfully sent out an email to all the educators, kind of giving a heads
- up on our plan for this coming year's art contest. And I know that, Adam, one of the things that you
- had offered to do was kind of like put some thoughts onto what all we can do on the website, but it's
- still very much open, but this is kind of the summary of the job.
- what the theme is. People go to the website, they'll be like, make sense of it. But we've, we've, yeah,
- yeah, Matt sent out the email that went to all the, you know, educators that we had emails for, basically
- invited them to start thinking about the theme and gave some language to that. And then we have a plan
- for a meeting, I think, early in January to really solidify some of the other details for the next stage of
- sharing flyers that we can put up, handouts that educators can give to kids to take home or put in their
- rooms, some of the different resources and ideas that we can provide for people to start thinking about
- it and then start making some progress on what outreach looks like. Because outreach for participation
- in the Eco Heroes Art Contest and also outreach for donations and
- support that we could get from businesses in the area. So we started to kind of dip our feet into that
- in our last meeting and then our plans to sort of solidify that. That meeting is January 6th, 5.30,
- is that right? Yep, looks good. January 6th, 5.30. I don't know if we know where it's at. McLaughie.
- Are there any other updates from Ecovirus folks that I missed or that you'd like to enthusiastically
- shout out? I have an update, okay. So, not an update, I don't think anybody really wants to be here.
- So, any matured office of the mayor had their communications director speak to planning and transportation
- earlier this week. And so, basically it was just
- I think the status is given to all board information being given to the directors and other departments
- as well. For website updates and kind of what we're putting out for the media and whatnot, moms would
- like to review it. So there's just, so whenever you're distributing materials or please plan for an
- extra, I don't know what their review timeline would be, but you know, it's an extra time just to get
- that review going.
- and please be open to suggestion. Do you have a sense of what all that means? Like our native landscaping
- handouts, like what we put up, like stuff like that, or just like those things that we want on the website
- or from our social media? I think the brochures and stuff will be infected. As far as like the website
- and social media, definitely. Can I answer the first part of your question?
- I think you asked about brochures and something else. Yeah, brochures, like, yeah, flyers. Yeah, like
- the materials that we table with, things like that. Yeah, I think most of the stuff is going to be fine.
- Does it need to be reviewed now, even though we've had it forever, or does it need to be reviewed? We'd
- say probably, but I can, I'll look through the outreach materials box and that stuff up to columns and
- see what they have to say.
- This is something that you're able that if we send it to you, you will just get to that. Yeah. So I
- was creating a list of resources. I'm not sure. That will go on the website. Yeah.
- Education. Okay. So it's just regarding nature at night. Okay, here's some information about bats in
- Indiana or constellations that you can find. Yeah. Yeah, we're talking about the fever like it's so broad.
- Do we try to give people ideas of how to narrow it down? It's like, I think it's helpful to give them
- some place, but yeah, like giving them lots of different options, I think is a fun way to think about
- the theme, so yeah. Hello, anything else from the e-government response? Great news. Okay, so we're
- gonna move on to the ECPC. Rachel, is there something you want to update on? I'm insured of that one, I guess.
- I think the gray star at 503 North Rogers and I know it was the board of zoning appeals tonight. So
- the letter was included. Obviously, I don't know how that meeting is going currently. But it was received,
- I believe the letter will also be sent to the commission member. So I think it'll go in January.
- Um, so that has fun. I did want to ask, um, before we, there was another, whenever we met, um, a few,
- there was a last speaker the week before, um, recently, it was a snowy day, um, that another property
- was discussed at 2511 North Dunn. It was basically a four acre lot, I believe, um, that's going to be
- subdivided, um, with some common area lots and lots eligible for, um, to felt like single family housing.
- I wanted to ask, no one has been written at this time that the ECPC wants to meet in a scheduled meeting
- to write a letter. What is the time for any of the sounds like, wildly fast? I think it's coming up,
- I think it's the 29th. Let me see what I, I think I put it in the email, but I can't remember off the
- top of my head. I think it's the 29th of this month.
- For many people, it's the holiday season, which makes it just inconvenient and also difficult to have
- time to get together. So I will defer to members of the ECPC for how we will handle that. Okay. So for
- that property, it's going to go to claim commission on January 12th and the Board of Zoning and Field
- from January 22nd.
- We, Planning Transportation, can share comments with the petitioner before the final revision deadline
- of December 29th, which is the Planning Commission's revision deadline. So let's see. So if you would
- like to have the petitioner to have it, having a letter prior to December 29th so they can maybe incorporate
- those changes, that's an option that you
- don't necessarily need to do that option, but you just want a letter submitted to Planning Commission,
- we would need that. I wrote January 2nd on that. And then if we want to just take it with us to be heard?
- Yes, that's an option. You can make a public statement after the meeting and read your letter. Is that
- the 22nd? Planning Commission's January 12th.
- in the 27th or two meetings. They will be getting a plan approval as well as variances. So that's why.
- Do you know with the last letter we submitted, so I believe we got that to petitioner. Yes. Did anything
- happen with that? They modified their petitioner statement. I think they addressed
- each of the four options or recommendations for the tree preservation. And I believe they said something
- about the soil remediation. From what I remember, they were more, I think there's something else happens
- that I think I recommended recommendation three, from what I remember, they were going to do
- They're going to do something like that, but I think they were going to stick with what they have proposed.
- So, um, and they wrote some sort of response and that was included in the PTA packet. What was the address
- again? Um, for the upcoming one, 2511. You said it was being subdivided for to what do we know?
- Yeah, so there'll be, I think, two to three common area lots where most of the trees in the stream is.
- But it's going to be, I think, single family homes, the fifth of the development. There's a question
- from a member of the public. Are we answering that? Yeah. Go ahead. Chris, what it's now? Is it woods now?
- Yeah, partially good. I don't have the calculation off the top of my head. So it's being proposed with
- the variance is needed because the tree removal and the exceedance of what our standards allow. So it
- is partially good. And then there's a stream on the western part of the property. Yeah. And there's
- no longer any cycle.
- Oh, so an example has been removed. That was also not part of the tree canopy population. So what do
- folks think about wanting to get together to potentially arrest something after this? Again, the deadlines
- are the 29th of December is the day to get it to the petitioner. And then by January 12, right? The
- planning commission. Um, let's see. January 2nd.
- Yes, we would need it by January 2nd. The packet will go out January 2nd. So it's a tight timeline.
- And if you submit it on December 29th, that's fine. The petitioner doesn't really have time to make
- changes. So we would need it before the 29th if you would like the petition changes. What do folks think?
- holiday season makes that one really challenging. I would kind of like to see what their plan is just
- you know really agree but um and then after that I can decide if I feel motivated to try to write. Yeah
- I will say PC does have Bobby's at the plan. Yeah this is the one that I think has maybe been up for
- a couple months now right? Yeah. Is it the one that's been considered in the past? I don't know I'm
- sorry that that this is the first time it's being thought out. Okay.
- But I did send out on December 2nd, just kind of summarizing names. What do you think, Adam? This was
- the one at the launch time, right? Yes. And Daniel Butler. Yes. Fire name. Not the fire name. No, it's
- not the fire name. The exit. Yeah, thank you, sir. I didn't find it very egregious personally, and that
- combined with level
- I wasn't at that meeting, so I hadn't seen it. But if my fellow commissioners who were at that meeting
- say it's not worth trying to write something over the holidays, that's okay with me. I'll take you guys
- if you were. So, Rachel, would you be able to resend to Matt the materials that the ECAC has? And then,
- Matt, if you look at them and then decide that we want to
- set a meeting to write a letter then. Yeah, it's a silly time of the year. If it isn't pretty egregious,
- I'm pretty happy to let this one pass, but I would like to see it since I wasn't able to attend that
- meeting. So thank you. All of these teams should ask their feedbacker to say if there's a variance.
- That's another question. So I believe where we landed was environmental variances are after requested.
- So whenever there's an environmental variance, I'm usually in the loop on it. If it's pretty substantial,
- that's when I bring it to ECPC. If it's something that I'm not feeling like it's not warranted for like
- a staff presentation with ECPC, that
- I don't necessarily offer it, but it is included on packets. It's always included either in the hearing
- officer or VBA packet, and that's open for anybody to get all those downloads. And so public comments
- can be received in those meetings. If you like, bring certain filters to the environmental commission
- just to get more feedback or? I think it's just in the interest of the environmental commission. I think
- others can...
- other than speaking about the history of it a bit more than I can. But it seemed like the EC had a role
- in development in the past. And then because of that role of development, environmental regulations
- were baked into our code. Though I think that's why the department let it briefly die, because they
- felt like some of the administrative burden as well as the recommendations EC was providing was already kind of
- baked into the code, but I think they were still interested in doing more than what they took. Is that
- pretty reflective? I think that sums it up pretty well. We used to be involved in just about all of
- them, and now I think that would be excessive. So we appreciate Rachel bringing us the ones that are
- significant so we can decide if we want to weigh in, knowing that it's just an advisory board trying to
- nudge people towards feeling a certain way about environmental features so we're not going after every
- every single issue but the significant ones. And do you think our opinion matters with the developer
- to the people approving the development variants? Like who does it matter most to? Ultimately they have
- to get approval from zoning so I guess I would say those are the people we're trying to influence the most.
- And again, I'm not looking at it as anti-development or anything in any way. I mean, sometimes people
- say there's, we want to clear every single tree on this lot. And, you know, that's kind of extreme.
- So we, we would have feelings that we would hope would influence those individuals, but that it's, we're
- just choosing to be engaged in this process. Even if it's a note that says pretty, please carry up trees.
- And I do think that, that.
- meant a little bit different now is that previously when we were weighing in on lots and lots
- of developments, and sometimes it was just little things. It was like, oh, more natives, just little
- things. I do think the fact that it is a much more selective group of developments or variants, request
- things like that, that we are weighing in on, I think it does increase the significance of us saying
- we took time out to really look into this, to really think about what we're concerned about, the solutions
- we consider,
- to share with you, I think that that gives it a little bit more weight now than maybe food or rain on
- every development. Yeah, before if it was true. How could you do rain on every development? It was chaotic.
- It was about, yeah, the administrative burden, as was mentioned. But yeah, it became pretty repetitive.
- It became, you know, these canopy standards are important because these impervious surface standards
- are important because, and so I think now by
- selectively chiming in on some of the either the ones that are the largest or the ones that are the
- most extreme variances is um is prudent for us yeah kind of echoing what's been said having the same
- lawyer provided to every meeting to the bca it kind of loses i mean i don't want to speak for the bca
- but sometimes that can lose the important the importance of what's being said so having a very select
- like putting in a lot of thought and and review and recommendations into this
- a selected development that does have strong environmental implications. I think maybe those words are
- a bit a little bit more. And also separately, because the new way that we're doing the memos is coming
- from just the ECTF. It's not coming from Rachel. Rachel is weighing in as an environmental planner.
- And then there's a separate body of our group that are also weighing in on our community.
- increase in the number of places. And instead of it being previously through the environmental plan,
- it would automatically come through. And sometimes it was like primarily driven by the planter because
- our community couldn't meet as much or something like that. So it kind of, I feel like the splitting
- it out, while it is additional time and energy from our wonderful one for commissioners who were dissipating
- in it, I think it does build up the strength of what we're saying back. That's all the update. I have
- any other questions about DCPC?
- Okay, I will hear from you Matt and just look at the entire separate networking group if you think of
- trying to get to me. Okay, now we're on to light pollution, which is our friend over here, Edda. We
- have not met, but now that it gets dark, so do we really not look this one on me again?
- You're looking up at 6 p.m. and it's dark, but I can't see the stars. I know there's been so many things
- happening in the skies lately. Sure. Do you want to consider trying to schedule a meeting for January?
- Yeah, I was going to say, I'm going to reach out sometime in January. I was watching a movie the other
- night, and I thought it felt like solution working group. The movie was set in a pretty urbanized town,
- and there are so many stars in the sky, and I thought that's so unreal.
- Okay um so moving on we're now to the outreach and education uh working group. Shannon so we just met
- we made a plan for the next month we're going to share the website um then we're going to go through
- you. Super fun thank you uh special projects we have not met or taken any next steps on some of the
- grants that we talked about those are
- I'm just continuing on. And I got an update from Mitchell. Does anybody have any water quality details
- to contribute? I don't think we do. Okay. All right then. Thanks for the updates, everybody.
- Moving along, we've got we are on to number six, which is our time for public comment. So members of
- the public, you have five minutes to use as they like.
- James, have you been hanging out with us or anything you'd like to share? Sounds good, sounds good.
- Thank you. Of course. All right. And now we are onto the staff update, which are two items that I will
- pass over to Rachel. Okay. I've put together, it's not as pretty as last year's, and I'm starting having
- trouble figuring out how to do it. Is this how you do it, Al? Okay.
- It's plenty pretty. Last year, I put working group updates for each meeting. Really didn't follow that
- this year, so I removed them. I'm happy to add them back with you. I also forgot to add the annual planning
- meeting to the November meeting. Still going to be happening.
- draft schedule I'd like to propose to you all. There are two dates that are not on the third Thursday,
- that's March 26th, I think that's on the fourth Thursday, and June 11th, and that's on the second Thursday.
- So, proposing that, and then I also wanted to kind of get a sense of, this year we canceled the July
- thing, and then last year we canceled the December being
- I kind of made the executive decision about the Seminole-Washington reform, but I'm so sorry about that.
- I think we heard that communication stuff out. And then this year, it seemed like December has kind
- of been not as high of attendance as what we previously had in other months. So I'm gonna throw the
- idea out there of having a summer with your recess with the caveat of
- Maybe those are months where it's more working group heavy because December is right after the November
- meeting. So I thought I'd have time for working groups to meet at the time that's available for that
- group to assess what the goals were based off November, planning for 20 for the next year.
- And then summer, it seems like either June or July is a little bit chaotic based off vacations and whatnot.
- I'm happy to keep all fall on the calendar, but I also wonder if there are any sets of ideas out there.
- I'm thinking about kind of the arc of our activities. I have a tech and activity plan and biodiversity
- stuff a lot of times spring-heavy. We obviously know the eco-hero stuff is in the spring. Are there
- any other major events that we can consistently have on our books? The bug fest we table at,
- which is what, summer? Early fall. Early fall.
- And you also do a spring or fall recess, and that's better. You know, if March, if it's like, that's
- the year's time, we're spending so much time into that, we can do March and then kind of subsequently,
- maybe October, we can prep for it, then November meeting. Rachel, is it challenging for you if it was
- more based upon whether it's gonna be a life agenda or a lot of absences? Like, is it definitely easier to plan
- a recess in advance or is it not too heavy of a lift? I mean, I can cancel the meeting, but yeah,
- it's more, so, I mean, this is part of my job. You guys are all volunteers, and so I want to be cognizant
- of your planning to be here and if you're, I guess the cost benefit analysis of making other plans to be here.
- So I start like, answer your question. I don't want to like, the plan book said, I think it's supposed
- to let me know 10 days before our meeting of whether you're going to be here or not. I don't enforce
- that. I mean, things happen, things come up. And so I don't, you know, I'm not reaching for it in a
- day. So that's the only problem I have. Okay.
- What do other folks think? Folks that are in academia or have family obligations, stuff like that, are
- you looking at this calendar to have any clear plans? I would say we just leave them all scheduled and
- then, yeah, we can decide at the month before if we don't have a lot to do. I do appreciate that folks
- have been pretty clear about, if they've got something they're going to be going next month or in two
- months or whatever, and that we can start to see it down the road that that will be getting around.
- That's been nice.
- I will get everything on the calendar then and set up according to the schedule. And then the outreach
- and education group will meet at 530 on these dates as well. Unless there's another time you all would
- like to meet. Does that have anything to say about that? I think that's all. Any other comments about
- this? I was going to chime in really quickly. Then do we have the dates?
- popping up here. So last year we talked about having some different presentations, like the ratchet
- you're kind of like feeling today tonight. I know Adam, we talked about if you want to do like a little
- share about, you know, invasive animals or whatever it was that you want to, that would be fun for one
- of the regularly scheduled meetings. We talked about having Joe Cottle from DNR talk about state,
- you know, deer issues. We talked a little bit about following up on the lawn,
- guidance or something like that that Norma's been talking about. I think we talked about maybe having
- some fancy iris or somebody come in. So there are a few. Oh, and then we also discussed potentially
- if we wanted to have like a twice yearly, bi-annual, twice year conversation sort of schedule about
- UDO changes and specifically maybe doing like one, you know,
- some of the environmental sections of the UDO, and then, you know, six months later, whatever, covering
- another section, because it's a pretty intense document, and so maybe do some of the break it down and
- intentionally add it ahead of time. That'd be helpful for us. I had notes on that, so I kind of wanted
- to see what
- You mentioned video changes in January. I invited our senior zoning planner to talk about the video
- changes that are going to be brought to council in February. Okay, great. So January's booked. Yes.
- Would it be possible to also have like a sort of, not a key schedule, but a schedule of like eco-hero,
- to add the dates, like eco-heroes and bugfest and things like that. But, I mean, do we know like the
- dates? I mean, eco-heroes we know.
- or when we give out the prices. But I just think that we'll be in a similar situation to be able to
- put that in my schedule now as it's starting to come up. So I think that's the same thing. Administratively,
- I could add, you know, maybe not just in form. I can't add it to the environmental commission calendar
- because then I have to notice it. And then it's not necessarily like eco heroes, things like that Earth Day,
- and I don't know how like minutes work, but like because I'd be putting it on our calendar. Yeah, but
- I can't be on the day. Okay. Wait, can we, we can't put it on the day? I think we can put it on the
- day, yeah. Just like, put it on the day. But not on the official day. Yeah. This calendar or whatever,
- I don't think we can share. Yeah. Okay.
- I think the months that you proposed meeting in a different time make sense. I appreciate you putting
- the document together. This doesn't require a commission vote, does it? No, I don't think so. As far
- as the events that you think for, so Eco Heroes, BudFest, or some other events, would you like the NCIRs,
- like Angel of the Nightingale Trail over there?
- Um, yeah, because I can make it. Are there any other events that would be helpful just to have like.
- A reminder about these things coming up. Yeah, they don't sneak up on us. We know about them months
- in advance. I don't worry about them for now, but if there's events.
- that you know that are coming up for next month or two, please shoot me an email or find me and I can
- put it on you just as a reminder for everybody. Okay, the sixth calendar. Oh, secondary about the calendar.
- For working groups, if you all, it would be great if working groups had like a monthly standing meeting
- or every other month, whatever, and we could easily cancel, but then I can reserve rooms and whatnot
- and sign up for a public notice we sent out.
- You can make an effort when we start meeting in January to see if there is a set time to project in
- the future. I know that every month will work out. Basically, none of the working groups but outreach
- have that planned yet, but we can aim to. I think UCPC and outreach, they both are good for 2026.
- Can you remind me of what the terms are for having a virtual aspect for a working group meeting? Yeah,
- so the virtual aspect, the biggest thing is I have to be there. Okay. So then I would need to ask if
- it has to be recorded because this is publicized by CAPS. So then,
- there's new state laws on putting those recordings up on our website. Right now, all of our recordings,
- you don't necessarily have a section for like recordings on our website right now. And then what is
- that? So there's just a lot of more administrative things to work out rather than, I guess, having that
- virtual option in general. So the department has said as of right now, like for the ECPC lunch for the
- main bowl,
- That's the one sessions that they're all in person is that I know that when we did that, there were
- multiple people who are doing in with that before the rules came up the staff. So the the numbers have
- to be in person about training the presentation. Oh, yeah.
- Someone had told me the other day about the Residence Academy. And I did a tour of the water treatment
- plant and the wastewater treatment plant. And I could ask about that. I did a tour about a month ago.
- I don't know about the Residence Academy though, that's on the left one.
- I think that the Housing and Labor Department hosts that. I think it's, I don't want to say incentive,
- but the multi, like, non-week introduction of Wilkinson. And it's not necessarily just environmental
- stuff, it's like all sorts of things. Right, yes. Yeah. That's an interesting idea, just like getting
- along comfortably with this thing. Kind of like we did our own Weed Rangle, you know, if we had a tour
- arranged for admission, that'd be cool.
- Before we move on, just a quick check. Adam, I know I threw your name up. Do you want to do a presentation
- for us with that? Sure. Do you have a preference of any month in particular? After January. I really
- don't care. If I saw you for March, would you do it for March? I think so, yeah. Okay. I'll keep it
- to 15 minutes. Okay. Got it.
- March, someone remind me. Okay, great. Any other thoughts or questions about the schedule? Cool, then
- moving on to attendance requirements, the most fun and interesting part of this meeting tonight. So,
- in our handbook, I don't have a handbook pulled up right now, but in our handbook,
- I think the attendance requirements are mostly about the COVID error rules, like how often you need
- to come in person versus a virtual meeting. I have since learned there's actual rules in the clinical
- medical code. And so I do have that pulled up. So there's something about you cannot miss three consecutive years.
- You can be removed if you miss three consecutive meetings or four regularly scheduled meetings within
- an eight hour period. So there have been a couple of issues. And whenever I do this, I'm obligated to
- report to the appointing group, whether that's council or office. So I wanted to provide something about
- it. I wanted to bring it up to everybody that this is a rule.
- And Perry mentioned, you know, having this in our handbook. So I wonder if we'll check on if this would
- be helpful to have in our handbook. And it's not because we're adopting it as our language, because
- it is what it is. It's more putting it in the paperwork that all of us have access to when we're onboarded.
- It's in, you know, I reference the handbook all the time for just random questions. So it'd just be
- more incorporated into that document. I feel generally supportive of putting it in that document. This
- is always accessible, too, but no one's
- going to go digging. So I think it'd be good if our documents reflected this. The question is, it's
- removable for cause. Is it required or is it something that someone, a commissioner, can be removed
- for a cause? And this is an example of a problem. It's up to the expression of the mayor or the common
- council. So I think I also want to ask if we can fit in a handbook because
- The guidance that I received from the court's office was the EC kicked somebody off. So I don't know
- if that being in the handbook would be like an EC rule, like that's misleading with that, the EC has
- that power, I guess. So I do, I just wanna make, I'm happy to add it and I'll propose that change in
- January if, I don't think we're allowed to do that. I think it would be in the same section of
- if you're attending virtually this is this is how it is and we're not going to kick you off anyway it's
- always just going to go back to it it's not it's not saying that we'll do it it's saying you can be
- removed for cause here's what that is i do think that would have some value you know within our document
- i think it's helpful too just because when life gets busy and you start to see what you can come to
- and not it starts to become a little more important if they start right yeah so just
- except for appointees who serve at the pleasure of the mayor. So if you serve at the pleasure of the
- mayor, this doesn't apply? It's up to the mayor's discretion. Because like half of us, we don't have
- the mayor of it? It's all the doughnuts before that. That would be very strange if you were appointed
- by the mayor first. I mean, it's too massive. It's just like administrative. I think this is really
- saying the mayor's office and the mayor
- She can remove for any cause. But then maybe other, like the council maybe has specific causes. So,
- two mayors will determine many, many causes.
- I think everyone knows that I'm not the expert on the municipal code. I'm happy to ask questions, but
- I can only say what the code says. Thank you for bringing this to our attention. It's been years since
- we've had an issue with it, but we have had issues before regarding attendance. I do think having the
- municipal code reflected in our document is probably a good idea, or at least a paraphrased version
- of that that's applicable.
- Basically, it boils down to, you can't miss, what is it, four? Four within a year. Four within a year.
- Three in a row. Three in a row, or you can only attend two virtually in a row. The third time you attend
- virtually in a row is a problem. And you have to attend more than half of the year in person. Right.
- So it's a few of those things that, you know, you start to kind of
- you know, and, and, and genuinely believe it's like, life picks up, you know, people's health comes
- and goes, weather comes and goes, vacation's coming, like all those things. So I think any level of
- transparency that we can add to our existing handle will be really helpful in the long-term future.
- I also want to add administratively, this is not going to be traffic. So, um, these are, these aren't
- rules that I'm creating. So, um, I appreciate you all for seeing and acknowledging that.
- I did want to also remind everybody about the name tags. We've had one commissioner turn them in. I
- don't know who else has them, but if you do, please turn them in. I probably won't remind anybody in
- the future. That is all I have. Great. Thank you everybody for laying on the stuff and asking your questions
- and being ready to figure it all out.
- We are at the point of our evening where we talk through reports from various other groups that are
- represented by EC members. So I'm going to jump right in to David. Do you have any updates you'd like
- to share? Yeah, well, street commission meetings usually start with, unless there's business about things
- that the street department wants to do,
- moving trees around and stuff that we want to talk about. Usually, Haskell Smith was the city foresters
- meeting off by giving us a progress report this year, or this last meeting this past Monday. He mentioned
- that in the past year, he had pruned about 1,800 trees
- It's remote 308 and it's 786. This inspection on inventory has, I'm not sure what exactly what this
- number is, 5,692. There's an additional 1,361 trees in the inventory. And that's pretty punchy.
- total trees worked on or inspected were 1,665. Overall, we've hit almost all our goals in the third
- quarter, still letting catch up on the tree planting. Overall, a great year with sound staffing issues
- and equipment issues. Then he mentioned that he has
- $50,000 received for ash tree management, and there are 16 applicants for tree assistance. We then moved
- on to, um, now, Mayor Williams, who's the new representative there. They will have a tree inventory
- out soon for IU.
- And they had plans to plant new trees in the athletic district, but that is told to be careful not to
- get in the way of tailgating. Julie Roberts and the people of Newton had no report. And under new business,
- George Higman came up with the possibility of tree tags
- that we would make available for new trees. I think this is likely to happen. It's going to be $500
- to $600 lost. I'll pass around this list of three possible tree tags. And my other piece of pre-commissioned
- business is this thing. I wouldn't have to do it anymore.
- Is there anybody who would like to be in the presentation? This has the disadvantage or the advantage
- for a retired person. The meetings typically last one hour and not longer than that. They start at 9.30
- in the morning on the third Monday of the month.
- on that commission, we plan to be able to go to those Monday meetings. This is the third Monday of the
- month at 930s? Yeah. Are they here and selling? No. Up until now, they've been up on every office of
- the city forestry, which is up by a row ship cemetery, but I think
- They've just decided they can't do that anymore. And they're going to start meeting in the city hall.
- So somebody else will take it over. I would appreciate it. OK, that question, when is the next meeting?
- Do you remember? January 19. Oh, thank you. OK, so January 19. I assume that's not the holiday.
- Which it is. Yeah, usually they're on the
- Monday, but on sometimes because of. It's not my commission. Because of all the days, the various sorts
- that we looked at other dates, but. The next meeting, I think it's going to be on the second. The second,
- okay. I believe that they fought back a week.
- Okay and then if anybody thinks about it like typically 930 on the third Monday of the month but the
- January the second line so the folks are interested you should reach out to maybe Rachel to verify the
- location of it and Dave thanks for being the tree
- mission representative for so long. I really appreciate how much I've put into it. Okay, do you have
- any, are there any updates for ERAC or the others? ERAC met last Wednesday, the week from yesterday.
- And we met in the Manifer Community Center, where I had never been before.
- It's out on West 7th Street, and apparently it was once a black school. A funny building, and it was
- not met up on the fourth floor. I misplaced my notes, but I have a few things left in my head.
- Deer this year, deer hunting.
- Last year, they got 35. I think this year they got maybe 49. They got more deer in the deer hunts this
- year than they did last year. There was a report on, I forget what the plant was.
- not doing better than it has in the past. And they think that's because they were nearer than they have
- been in the past. Let me discuss the report on the treatment of the actual water. Oh, that's right.
- Yeah. Yeah, there was a report on actually the treatment of the water.
- really like. I didn't bring my notes either. Things are going well, right? And they're going to continue
- treatment for a non-native micro-imperibrate, or actually it's a plant. It's a plant. Plant, yeah. I
- forget which plant it is. InvisPlan, yeah. Studying it. I don't know. Yeah, it's going well. Right.
- And then I have to leave early, so I missed the last part, which is important. Or there's developments
- that I don't know anything about. And Bernd, you said nothing new. All right. Perfect. Thanks for the
- updates and thanks for the year additions, too. As far as because goes because, Matt,
- a week earlier than usual, and I was caught off guard by that and had a kind of crazy week last week,
- so I will watch it and report on it next. All right, so MC Iris is the next one on the list, and I think,
- Rachel, you've been trying to touch those meetings, is that right? Yeah, I was at the Urban Forest Tree
- Symposium from DNR during that time, so I was not able to attend the MC Iris meeting and
- and Jay Park did not pass along the magnets. She's usually really good about it, so something came up.
- She wasn't able to pass them along right after the meeting. And then the Clean Community Program under
- the Mitchell often weighs in on this, but, Rachel, are there any updates for that? Oh, good question.
- Let me see. I think Christine Lindbergh sent an update that we are one submission away from the silver status.
- So we're really posting feeds and verging all the trees to try to get them something so we can get that
- status for the city. Okay, so that's all of the different reports. We've moved along to commissioner
- announcements. Norm's not here tonight, so we can skip him on the list. Are there any announcements
- from any other commissioners that they'd like to share?
- The Monroe County Christmas bird count is happening on Saturday. What does that entail? Five thirty
- six. And you went to the goose. Okay. All right.
- lot of good birdings that apparently you've been to. I was excited to see, I can't remember exactly
- when, but sometime in the last few weeks that our urban forester Haskell has planted some trees in my
- neighborhood. It was something that I've talked to him about well over a year ago and it was supposed
- to happen like last fall or something and I would
- I was joking with the friend that I feel betrayed, but then, you know, one day it was driving home,
- like, oh my God, these are nice and they're in more than just this one person's yard. So I bet you it
- was the city's doing. So that was a cool surprise earlier this month. Anything else? Yeah, that's great.
- All right. Well, I believe that brings us to the end. Our next meeting is going to be January 15.
- 6pm. If you can't make it or you think you may not be able to, please reach out to Rachel and myself.
- Let us know. But otherwise, that's that. Motion to adjourn. Second. Excellent. All right. 7.52. You
- have seven and a half minutes to do whatever you have in mind.