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.