- I apologize for the delay. I'm going to call to order this meeting of the Monroe County stormwater management
- board. I will note for the record that Commissioner Medeira is joining us via Teams. We have Commissioner
- Jones present and Surveyor Tron and Wright Randolph and myself, Commissioner Julie Thomas here in the
- NatU Hill Room. And we do have a time crunch.
- Is there any public comment on items not on our agenda? Raise your hand on teams or come to the podium.
- All right. Seeing none, we'll move on to the next item. If we could get a motion, please.
- We have a motion and we have a second. Since we have a member who is joining us via Teams, we're going
- to have to do a roll call vote if you would please, Ms. Spana. Madira? I, but I'm driving. Do I have
- to turn on my camera to vote? Yes, you do.
- I just hit a red light. We could take the rest of. Aye. Okay, great. Thomas? Yes. Jones? Yes. Randolph?
- Yes. Great. South area. That's approved. What about them? Great, thank you so much. Next we will move
- on to our stormwater expenditure report for December of 2025 and January, February of 2026, if you would please.
- I have a recommendation maybe we could delay the overview this month and review it next just since we
- need to be out by 4-15. All right. Well, is that all right? Anything big? Okay. I would say I would
- just ask members of the board to review what's in the packet and if they have questions to send them
- forth with and we will take this matter up next month, April 22nd.
- All right, next we'll move on to new business and we have the Lake Monroe Water Fund MOU on water monitoring.
- We do have Michelle Cohen is here and we have a brief presentation.
- Good afternoon. I'm Michelle Cohen with the Lake Monroe Water Fund. Thank you for listening
- to my presentation today. I just wanted to let you know that I've also got a colleague here,
- Amalia Schifras. She's also with the Water Fund and just kind of came to observe. So in the past, you've
- generously funded some data collection on South Fork Salt Creek with a stream flow gauge, and that's
- what I'm asking again for today.
- Most of you have heard from me before, so you can advance the next slide, please. Just want to do a
- quick review, and I know you're in a time crunch, so I'll try to make it snappy, but go ahead and yank
- me off the podium if you need to. So we're a water fund, and the basic idea behind a water fund is to
- take resources from the watershed, and particularly to focus on downstream users.
- of, in this case, drinking water in the city of Bloomington and to put that money and resources into
- upstream conservation activities to help with water quantity and or quality. In our case, we really
- focus on the quality aspect. So some of our other programs, we deal with healthy forests, fertilizer
- mitigation management, I should say, and septic systems.
- In this case, we are working with several other groups who are the funding source for the stream flow
- gauges operation every year. Next slide, please. So the Water Fund has been around since 2021, and we
- cover multiple counties. The watershed stretches across mainly Monroe, Jackson, and Brown counties.
- The water fund model was started by the Nature Conservancy and we're the only one in Indiana. As I mentioned
- before, we focus on several different aspects of being able to reduce nutrients and sediment pollution.
- So for this particular stream flow gauge, the U.S. Geologic Survey is in charge of it. The total cost
- in the past has been $14,000 and they cover half of that.
- And we're taking responsibility for raising the other half. I did just find out that this upcoming year,
- they've raised it by $200. So now it's a little bit more. But you're all very familiar with watersheds.
- And so there's just, on the next slide, there's just a map of exactly the watershed that we focus on.
- And we're fortunate that most of our watershed is not heavy industrial use at all, not heavy, heavy ag.
- and over 80% forested. Next slide. Thank you. I just wanted to give you a little kind of picture of
- where we're talking about. The gauge is located on South Fork Salt Creek in northwest Jackson County.
- And it's, if you've never, you probably have, you're really heavily involved in storm water, but looking
- at the data that's available publicly on the USGS site
- You know it's a continuously monitored level so you can go back to any point in time and see what that
- flow of that stream is and it's really important for other groups like Friends of Lake Monroe to use
- that information and feed it into models so they can calculate sediment load and other pollutant loads.
- Next slide please.
- So I just wanted to give you an actual picture of what the gauge looks like. We hosted a little kind
- of show and tell situation in the fall and we had a roadside cleanup in conjunction with that. So those
- are my board president and our work study intern who helped out at that. So next slide please. So I
- just wanted to say thank you. We bring a bunch of people together to make this happen.
- The Jackson County Soil and Water Office is the fiscal agent who helps us be able to pay for this to
- the USGS. We've gotten funding from Duke Energy Jackson County, from this board. We've put in a little
- funding ourselves. And the Community Foundation of Jackson County also supported that gauge last year.
- So with that, I will end. Any questions?
- Thank you so much. Any comments or questions from my colleagues on the board? Just a quick one. No,
- thank you. Just a comment. I had to pull this out because I attended one of DNR's water stakeholder
- meetings just recently, and they gave us about a bunch of iterations of like maybe what regional
- collaboration district might look like in
- what you were explaining kind of I think is the intention and reflects what a good collaborative effort
- is with like they were focused on like river basin commissions or water development commission and a
- drink water collaborative is kind of some of their focuses and they highlighted areas in the state are
- doing well. We might want to bring some attention to our little area so we get highlighted on their next
- iterations of maps and proposals. High support of this and also I'll kind of just leave it with what
- I say all the time when we look at this. I think this is one way that we can do water monitoring is
- by creating these partnerships and not necessarily taking on all that effort in-house. So I appreciate
- the opportunity to support these efforts. Thank you. Commissioner Jones?
- I appreciate that this is information that's really needed in order to get other information that's
- going to be really important and that maybe people will understand the importance of more than they
- do this, but this is the kind of stone it's all dependent on.
- I'm sure that this information has guided you in some of the programming that has gone on in the area.
- Yes, and we're grateful that, you know, friends can take the information and feed it into their models
- and that we serve kind of as that funding mechanism for it through generosity of people like you. Great.
- All right. Let's see. We need a motion first and then we can take public comment. Move approval of the
- lake water lake
- Monroe Water Fund? Second, and I'll state the amount that was at 3,500. Right, and we have a motion
- and we have a second, and this fits into our budget, yes? Yes, it's already accounted for in our budget.
- But I thought, thank you, just verifying. Let's see if, thank you again for being here. Let's see if
- there's any public comment on this item. You can come to the podium or raise your hand on Teams.
- Seeing none, would you please call the roll, Ms. Penna, on the Lake Monroe Water Fund MOU water monitoring
- for $3,500? Madira? We couldn't hear you, Jody. You're muted. Yes. Thomas? Yes. Jones? Yes. And Wright-Randolph?
- Thank you so much. Thank you. All right. Next we'll move on to the soil and water conservation district.
- We have two separate items here. We have an MOU for the grant partnership and we'll start with that.
- We'll just start with that. Okay. Part of what we do when we get this $35,000 is we offer a quick snapshot
- of what happened.
- We're gonna roll through that real fast. Overview, been going on for about 12 years. I can't see the
- big number because old. You can turn that if you'd like toward you. On to the next slide. So quick rundown
- is in 2025 we paid out $49,500.
- in cost share to landowners that went directly into Monroe County landowner's pockets. The reason that
- number's a little bigger than the 35,000 is because when we get to the end of the year, we have ones
- that we hold over, so that was that. We also approved 12 projects this year, this past year. So we've
- allocated all the money this past year. We actually have three or four? Yeah, they're on the waiting
- list, ready to go. So yeah, all funds were allocated, okay.
- These are the kind of projects we had, pollinator planting, invasive species, heavy use pads, watering
- systems, cover crops, log jam removal, which we worked with stormwater on that one, and a flood mitigation.
- That's just the percentages. Okay, so Erica's gonna talk a little bit about some of the projects.
- Yeah, I'm really excited to highlight just a few of our projects for this year. This one I was particularly
- excited about. It's a tree and pollinator planting. There was a new culvert put in and a ditch installed
- to help mitigate flooding from a neighborhood development across the street. And when they put the ditch
- in, they took out some native species. There was native golden rod and yeah, there's a lot of native
- species. I'll try to make this faster. Anyway, so we can go to the next slide.
- So these landowners actually went and bought 450 native species and they planted them themselves along
- this creek bed along with 75, you can go to the next slide, along with 75 different oak species as well.
- Yes, and bits of everything, they were impacted by the tornado and even through that they were able
- to get their lawn cleaned up and complete their project.
- They also spoke at our annual meeting this year, and they're just really enthusiastic to talk with people
- about their projects, so really, really cool one. Okay, we can go to the next slide. We did some automatic
- waters for livestock. They just had hydrants for this, and they wanted to put in automatic waters so
- that the livestock had access to fresh and clean water. We can go to the next slide. They put in new
- heavy-use area pads and waters, and I thought this one turned out really nice.
- We can go to the next slide. That's a quote from the landowner. They love their fresh water. We can
- go to the next slide. This was a bit of flooding mitigation. As you're aware, we've had a really big
- uptick in erosion and floods happening in Monroe County. So this was more of an urban, I guess it's
- not urban, it is on a farm, but it's near their home. It was flooding their home. We can go to the next slide.
- So they actually added a drain in at the end of their driveway and it led out into the field and drained
- and it's no longer flooding their home. But they also put a berm up at the top where the water was coming
- to redirect the water flow into the drain. And they put some native species in there as well. We could
- go to the next slide. This is a project up near the lake. They bought property where there were some
- old logging trails.
- and they just have Japanese stiltgrass just covering everything. So this particular project actually
- has a contract with Ecologic. It's a very big project that's gonna take at least three years, but we
- helped a little bit and helped them get started. You could go to the next slide. It doesn't look pretty
- now, but that was all invasive Japanese stiltgrass that they were able to eradicate, and then they're
- gonna put some native pollinator plants there.
- Those are just a few. If you ever want to hear about more, I'm happy to share. Thank you. I'm going
- to just quickly tell you that she actually did a site visit yesterday. We have four landowners in conjunction
- with one another who are working on a project to control Asian bush honeysuckle along one of the channels
- into Bean Blossom, which is a focus for us. So yeah, so anyway, that's that's what we're doing. Nice. Wow.
- Great projects. Which leads us to the MOU. Which leads us to the MOU. And let's go ahead and get a motion
- on the floor to start with. I move for approval of the Solid and Waste Conservation District MOU 26
- through 2028 grant partnership. Second.
- with an amount of $35,000? Correct. I'm sorry. Oh, you're fine. Okay. So we have a motion and we have
- a second. So is there anything different about this next grant cycle? Yeah. I'm excited that you guys
- agreed to do a three-year MOU instead of a one-year MOU, which will help us because some of our projects
- overlap years, and that's just beneficial in that respect. So we'll give it our best to continue on as
- and build. Great. Any comments or questions from my colleagues here in the NETU Hill Room first? Yes.
- I will repeat a comment that I made last Thursday at our meeting where a pollinator garden came up,
- which is hopefully more people will be listening.
- And we'll hear that we have a worldwide problem with crash in insects. And this of course affects our
- food security, but also before we're affected, a lot of other things are affected. And the bird populations
- are falling because of this. I'm sure the same is true for many reptiles. Insects are kind of the
- ground level for many, many species, eating chain or food chain and more pollinator gardens that people
- can plant and hopefully teach, help teach people that insects are not scary, that insects don't really
- chase people down to bite them. At least not in most cases.
- And they really need all the help we can give them at this point. I'll start with, I hope CATS features
- this on their Friday recap comment there. And then also, I do have a question with the three years,
- we're giving three years to complete these projects, but you will still be coming back annually for
- the dollar amount, correct? Yeah.
- The the goal is just that we would have three years to kind of put these projects in place and get them
- done if we need to We also did as Julie asked if Commissioner Thomas asked if we had anything else we
- did lower the two-year mark Instead of three year to do a project But it can't be a consecutive project
- So like if you come in and you want to do invasive species removal, we can do that over a three-year
- period but if you come in you want to put in a
- a watering system, you gotta wait two more years before you can come back and do that again. So yeah,
- it just made sense because there are some people who wanna do things in... Injunction. Sequence,
- thank you. And that just made sense. So we are very appreciative. I will say quickly,
- Being moved into a county office has been a game changer for us. It's huge. We're seeing more influx.
- We're seeing more people who are asking questions. We're able to work with storm water closer. It's
- the best thing that's ever happened in my opinion. Awesome. It's great to have you. Yeah, it really
- is. Good, good, good, good. Well, you know where to contact us if you have anything you need.
- I do want to make one clarification. I think the intention of the MLU being three years would be that
- we dedicate those funds for the next three years, and they don't have to come back to us each year.
- They'll come back each year to give us a recap of the previous year, but we don't need to re-approve
- the funds each year. It'll just be incorporated into our budget. Right. That's correct. But at the same amount.
- Same amount. 35,000 a year for three years. But we can obviously budget now for year two and year three.
- So Commissioner Madera, do you have any comments or questions? No, I do not. Thanks. Thank you. And
- I will say thank you again for being here. Thank you for your hard work. I've got three out of
- four of those things going on in my, that were on your list in my yard. And if you could send us the
- presentation via email, we'd appreciate it. That'd be great. I can share that with you. Great. Thank
- you so much. All right. Let's see if there's any public comment on the MOU for the grant partnership
- with the Soil and Water Conservation District. You may come to the podium or raise your hand on Teams.
- Seeing none, Ms. Penna, would you please call the roll on that grant partnership MOU? Yes. Madera? Aye.
- Yes. Thomas? Yes. Jones? Yes. Randal? Yes. Motion carries.
- And we'll now move on to the next item please, the part time staff. Oh, I'm back again. Sorry.
- Martha Miller. Yeah. So we did a summer program. You guys gave us $5,000 last year to do summer education
- focus and that sort of thing. We're bringing it back to you again. I do believe it's already in the budget.
- We're hoping to take a little bit of a turn on this one just a smidge. We actually have a retired MCCSE
- teacher who has reached out to us and is very interested in working with us this summer and possibly
- maybe doing some things in the fall. We've met and talked and waiting for your approval and then we'll
- talk with the soil and water board and see how they're gonna feel about this. But the goal right now
- would be that we would develop like an eight week session that deals with
- food and why water and soil are important to that, and we'll be dealing with the pollinators and addressing
- that. We will be working with Carson Farm Park. We are potentially gonna work with Banneker again.
- And then, depending on where this goes and how we can build it, maybe getting into schools in the fall
- some, so we'll see. Great, okay. And let's see if my colleagues have any questions. We'll start here
- in the Nat Yohill room.
- I was just wondering if you wanted a motion? Sure. For approval of the MOU-2026 summer part-time staff
- with the amount of $5,000. Second. All right. We have a motion and a second. Do you have any comments?
- I'm excited to see how we can tackle the K-12. I think education, like Commissioner Jones just mentioned,
- is very important to kind of achieve big impacts on our efforts. Commissioner Medeira, do you have anything
- to add? No, I do not. Thank you. All right. And we have the budget space for this.
- It's already in there. Sometimes you ask a question when you know the answer. That's one of them. Okay.
- All right. Let's go ahead and see if there's any public comment on this item. You raise your hand on
- teams or come to the podium. All right. Seeing none, Ms. Pena, would you please call the roll on the
- MOU with Soil and Water Conservation District for summer part-time staff?
- Madeira? Yes. Thomas? Yes. Jones? Yes. And Randolph? Yes. Thank you all. Thank you so much. Thanks for
- being here. Appreciate it. Thank you. Motion carries 4-0. And we will now move on to item C, please.
- Yes. So we already have a task order with HNTB.
- for performing an analysis of our couple of county owned detention basins. And so this is an amendment
- to that to assist us in putting together a work plan to now perform the work needed to bring them up
- to a better working capacity. Thank you so much. Can we go ahead and get a motion on the floor and then
- we'll take comments and questions.
- Move approval of the HNTB task order number two, amendment one, detection, best managed practices,
- maintenance. Second. This is for a fee estimate of 13,500. 13,500, which we've already accounted for
- in the budget. Yes, so we have a motion and we have a second. Now comments or questions here in the
- Net-U-Hill room? Just one quick question.
- As far as the work plan goes, is the goal to use in-house efforts? It's potentially a little more than
- we can do in-house, also accounting for the projects that are already on the list in-house. So we would
- probably, we would contract that work out for completion hopefully this fall. Okay. Or by this fall.
- I think having a work plan is necessary and maybe forward as we
- it out. Commissioner Madera, do you have any comments or questions? No, I do not. Thank you. Okay. Any
- public comment on this item? You raise your hand in teams or come to the podium. And seeing none, Ms.
- Pena, would you please call the roll on the HNTB task order number two, amendment one?
- Madeira? Yes. Thomas? Yes. Jones? Yes. And Randolph? Yes. Motion carries 4-0 and we will move on to
- the next item please. So this is also with HNTB. We have task order number three. We believe had discussed
- this with you previously. This is to support our efforts
- for the emergency watershed protection program. So I will provide an update. So we submitted this application
- back in September as related to the May 16th, 2025 tornado. We did receive the funding. So the total
- estimated construction costs are $65,000. 75% of that will be covered by the NRCS.
- which would be $48,750. 25% of that will be covered by Monroe County in partnership with City of Bloomington
- Parks. That will be $16,250. The funding also provides for technical assistance, which will be up to
- $3,250 reimbursed to us. So the total NRCS agreement is $52,000 will be reimbursed to us for this.
- And that work will need to be completed by November 16th, 2026. And so as part of the technical assistance
- that allows for us to use that funding towards these support services with HNTB to help us administrative,
- deciphering everything, all the forms, just support in tracking everything as well and providing that
- documentation back to NRCS. And so this is the not to exceed amount of 25,000?
- So initially we thought that we might need them for some engineering services as well. That's why that
- amount is a little bit higher. But I don't we will likely not reach that high. It's a little
- more straightforward. We weren't sure if NRCS would need to do any engineering services for the stream
- bank or not. So the not to exceed amount is
- 12,400? It says 25,000 in here for task three. Yes, it is 25,000, but we don't anticipate it going that
- high, yes. But that's a not to exceed, so that's correct. Okay, all right. Oh, I see in section C. Yeah,
- I was gonna say, I don't see the 12 number anywhere. Okay, got it. Okay, great. Can we go ahead and
- get a motion on the floor? Move approval of HNTB task order numbers
- all grant administration and emergency and an amount of $25,000. Yeah, not to exceed. Not to exceed
- $25,000. Do we have a motion? Do we have a second? Yeah, and I think you touched on it. I just want
- to Is that your second? Oh, I'll second.
- Thank you. Yeah, so now we'll go to questions in the net room first. So I guess what I was looking at
- was water resource and plan review on call. That's what we're on, right? This is page 16 of your packet.
- Task order number three. That's where I got confused. They're all the HNTD. Okay.
- Sorry about that. Yeah, my one is just a comment. I'm really excited that we path to kind of try to
- provide some assistance and remove some of the log jamming, if you will, or debris out of these waterways.
- Also, just a side note, I've seen recent videos of some homeowners that were really close of having
- to experience some significant flood damage, even the roadway being impacted and even that road bridge
- almost over topped with water. So I'm hoping that with this removal, it won't restrict the water so much and
- Hopefully if we see some type of storm event that we just recently had, hopefully they're not in such
- a high risk situation and I'm excited that we're gonna be able to provide this relief and that's it.
- Comments or questions, Commissioner Jones? No, I don't. Commissioner Madeira, do you have any comments
- or questions? I'd just like to thank everybody for all the hard work. I know it was a lot of planning
- and a lot of
- and thank you so much. This is going to be invaluable as someone who lives in this area and there's
- a lot of people personally uses these trails. There's a lot of stuff down there that needs to be cleared
- out and this is going to be transformative for that area. Yeah, I agree. I'm glad this is this is going
- forward. Alright. So let's see if there's any public comment on this item. You raise your hand on teams.
- There's no one here to come to the podium, I don't think. All right, Ms. Pena, would you please call
- the roll on HNTB task order number three? Yes, Madeira? Yes. Thomas? Yes. Joe? And right, Randolph?
- Yes. All right, motion carries four zero. And let's move on to the next item, please.
- All right, so last one with HNTB. This is, do we need to do a motion yet or should I jump straight into
- it? Go ahead and start. So this is for drainage evaluation. We have an area where there's just recurring
- issues. We've tried to solve it by opening the, widening the opening and the structure and it's still
- just not taking, not the correct sizing. So this is a drainage evaluation to
- help us do a small redesign of the infrastructure between two homes that drains down into a detention
- area. All right. Thank you so much. Let's go ahead and put a motion on the table. Move approval of HNTB
- test order number five, drainage evaluation. We have a motion. I'll add the 12,400 on that and second.
- We have a motion and we have a second. Is there? No, I just wanted to make sure we weren't passing the
- draft. It says it's a draft version. Sorry. The draft version, I didn't have the final version yet from
- them that was signed by their staff, so I have that copy here with me today. So the draft version, nothing
- has changed from it, but that's just to make sure it got into the packet. Got it. Yep. Thank you. And
- the amount of $12,400. Do we want to revise that?
- We're passing the official and not the draft. Okay. Okay. So let's see if there are any comments or
- questions here in the Net-U Hill room. Commissioner Medura, do you have any comments or questions? No
- comments or questions. Thank you. Yeah. So this most likely will be able to be completed in-house once
- the evaluation has been done. Yes. I assume. Yeah. Okay.
- All right. Let's see if there's any public comments on HNTB Task Order Number 5. All right. Seeing none,
- Ms. Pena, would you please call the roll on Task Order Number 5 from HNTB? Yes. Thomas? Yes.
- Yes. Motion carries 4-0 and can we do these two items together? But if you can just explain them both
- since they're related. Yes, so this is related to our Redbud Heights drainage improvement project. We
- have a couple of change order requests. One to replace turf grass seed and straw instead of sod. And
- then the second one is there was
- missed design in the design, the water line was located slightly differently than when they went out
- to scope everything. So we had to do a pipe material change to meet water line material standards, close
- proximity to the water line. Great. Thank you so much. Let's go ahead and put a motion on the floor
- for both items.
- to approve Redbud Heights Drainage Improvement Project Milestone Change Order Request Number One, Surfgrass
- in Louis Sade and Number Two, Waterline Impacts on Pipe Material. I'll second. Great. We have a motion
- and we have a second. What is the total cost change here? So we have a savings on one.
- The shift to seed and straw saves us $2,210, and then the pipe material change has a cost increase of
- $14,263. Okay, thank you so much. All right, let's see if there's any other comments or questions. Yeah,
- that was my question. My comment is, and I know that some of these are just really hard to create a
- packet with the survey, but
- I don't know, maybe I just want to zoom in more and get some of the details, so I guess I just wanted
- to point out that the resolution doesn't hold on those, and maybe we can figure out a workaround to
- share those. Oh, you mean the plan set? Yeah. Sorry about that. It's fine. Item number two, request
- number two, was already taken to the commissioners so that we could have that and keep the project moving
- quickly. So that was just the full part of that packet.
- I understand. Just a comment. This right here catches my eye and I would like to dig into it a little
- bit just for my own interest. I have the plans if you want to look at them more closely. See the original.
- I understand. Just a comment. We don't have to go into it. Yeah, and I appreciate, you know, making
- sure that we move these in a timely manner since we weren't able to meet last month. Commissioner Jones,
- comments or questions? Commissioner Madera, do you have any comments or questions?
- I do not, thank you. Okay. Let's see if there's any public comment on these two change orders for Redbud
- Heights. Raise your hand on teams. All right. Seeing none, Ms. Pena, would you please call the roll
- on the milestone change order request number one and number two for Redbud Heights?
- Yes. Thomas? Yes. Henry Randolph? Yes. Thank you. I was going to recommend maybe we could have a staff
- report too so no one has to be rushed. We're getting pretty close to time and then we could move to
- adjournment if my colleagues are amenable to that. I need to first say that the motion carried 4-0.
- Oh, sorry. That's all right. How long is the staff report? I think we've got I don't think we have enough time.
- Yeah, we have to be out by 4.15, so we've got, I think, one more minute left. So that is okay. We can
- do that next month. Their meeting doesn't start until 4.30, so I can give us five minutes, but I think
- we need more than that. We need more than that. Okay. Sorry to do that. I know everybody puts effort
- into, you know, just as the Soil and Water Conservation District did and the Water Fund did, they put
- time and effort into making a report, and we're like, hurry up. So, but I think it's better if we take the time
- I will just note that it's for annual report and the annual report needs to be submitted to item by
- April 1st. So I will be getting that submitted. This is just the synopsis of it for you all so that
- you know what we did in 2025.
- I sign it, yes. You sign it. Yes. But we don't sign it. Correct. So that's fine. All right.
- So with that, our next meeting is Wednesday, April 22nd here in the NatU Hill room at 3.30 p.m. And
- unless there's anything else, we are adjourned. Thank you all so much for putting up with our crazy
- schedule today. Thank you. Thank you.