##VIDEO ID:3HPPxu8lbQk## [Music] [Music] today's Wednesday chairman of our board today's Wednesday it's 4:30 this is the water quality management committee hopefully you're all on the right location um we we go for two hours uh those of who have attended in the past know that we get out of here by 6:30 um irregardless we get through the entire agenda or not I noce a number of people who have not been here before so just a little ground roll if you're going to speak or talk you have to get to one of the microphones cuz we are taping this and you have to identify yourself the same as in any other public forum um we're going to start tonight with item one which is uh a discussion or a presentation from John Ramsey who's from sustainable Coastal Solutions John has been a consultant to the DPW relative to the inlet widening and the replacement of the bridge uh at BN Pond we invited John to come in and explain a little bit of the where he's at or what he's been looking at because a couple members of this board a month or a month and a half or so ago uh wanted to ask a couple of questions since then I think we've educated ourselves a little bit that a the bridge is in really bad shape so it's got to be replaced no matter what um and it's a DPW project at this point it's not necessarily a project of this group group but this is a reasonable Forum to collect information find out a little bit more about how we got to where we got to sure and I was uh so again I'm John Ramsey from Coastal Solutions so I just wanted to go through a little bit of background on how we got here but one of the things I wanted to was asked to by Peter McCary at DPW was to actually talk a little bit about um some of the the more recent data that we've had as far as total nitrogen information and kind of see how that looks relative to um what we based all of our design stuff on in the first place so could you give a little setup what some people may know that the permitting has taken a long time so we got into a second round of yeah so I maybe just giving you guys a quick assessment of Permitting so um you know we started permitting this uh many years ago probably around uh 2014 I believe we started permitting this whole process um you know at the time uh you know the bridge process went uh I will say did not go all that smoothly um you know we did have some issues with uh some neighbors that appealed the project and it kind of dragged things out we eventually got the bridge permitted but by then uh you know the the bridge the uh Beach on the West Side had been eroding pretty uh significantly um and so the town had decided to make sure they wrap the two two projects into one and believe it or not it took us four and a half years to get our M core permit for that that portion of the project so we finally just got all of our permits last summer um so we're putting together the bid package to go out um and now I believe it's in Mass Do's hands to try to get that that bridge um I know how that goes we're trying to get the whole Bridge uh um the whole package put together as one project so it can be all done at once um and you know people should realize that when this project is done that it's going to be you know likely closed the the roadway there the across the bridge for two years um so it would be started in the fall and then would be closed for for two full years uh in order to get the the bridge replaced uh it's a significant project and with widening the inlet and rebuilding the Jetties uh and also putting building groins and a beach nourishment project on the east side to make sure we can maintain the road uh that's really what the Project's about but I would would point out that the obviously the road's very low um as you've mentioned the the the bridge is not in the greatest of shape as you drive up to the bridge you can you know see that the the area on both ends of the bridge have settled pretty significantly uh and so you know obviously this we to bring that back up to where it needs to be um people had asked again I don't want to go into all these things in great detail people always ask you know sea level rise should we Elevate the road it was the town's decision at the time to not Elevate the road uh to make sure people with boats would not start getting up into the pond uh Etc and keep the pond the way it was so that was the decision was made so uh you know whether there might be a way of getting a little bit of elevation in the roadway but for the most part the the bridg is going to be at the elevation we see uh so just to give you this is actually bnes Pond Inlet I know it looks just like a nice P picture on the coast and a wavy day but that's actually during Hurricane Sandy back in 2012 so kind of when we started all this process of the permitting um so you know first off uh I'm also besides doing the the work uh relative to a lot of the permitting and engineering design for this I was also involved with the massachus SRO project uh originally uh we did the work with with smass to do all the modeling for the system and this is uh you know just the the model grid for for bournes pond I believe that was done around 2006 2007 so that's been around quite some time um but this was the basis for a lot of the uh modeling that we did uh going through this system and uh you know again that's just showing the beety the water depths so you can see the water depths deeper offshore and and the going up to the red colors is where it's the shallowest but again this is a very shallow system uh but it also has a very small tide range as well um so as part of the the design project that we did we actually went out and collected new bethem got in there did more detailed work so that we could have a really defined uh process for widening the inlet and coming up with exactly what the impacts of of widening the inlet would be this is again existing Petry you see the if you go out there you see that sh that's offshore that's shown there in yellow it's a pretty consistent uh absh that that sets up the town dredges through it on occasion to reopen the inlet on the inside you see that very scour hole in the shown in the blue um just north of the bridge uh people seem to think that is the best fishing hole going so I mean if you want to catch some nice straight bass it's a great place to go and actually fluke as well so um but again we did some some of this just to make sure we had a good updated model for looking at um various Alternatives and this is just the updated model grid uh that we use to evaluate the the work um to make sure that we are evaluating the the tital currents and water quality uh properly this is just a quick uh synopsis showing the a wide the widen Inlet version The W the inlet is uh going to be widen to almost 100 feet um and what we're looking at is uh for the max flood currents and Max E currents and I'll I'll show this in a minute one of the things we want to make sure is that the the inlet itself can can maintain itself without having to be dredged the inlet you know obviously inside and outside may have to be dredged occasionally but we want to make sure the inlet itself didn't need to be dredged and the way you set that up is you want to make sure that sand is mobilized and moves through so typically what you do is you try to make sure that the at some point during the tidle cycle that you're getting uh currents on the order of 3 feet per second or greater to make sure that the the sand keeps moving along so that's kind of a limitation so you you know the concept some people think you just widen the inlet to the maximum thing that you can which is kind of a great idea in the perfect world but if you did that what it ends up doing is Shing in so there's kind of a limitation to how wide you would want to build your Inlet um and this kind of goes to if you look at Great Pond uh and green pond those inlets are actually wider than they need to be hence why you have to actually dredge in the inlet occasionally just to keep them open um because they uh the inlet actually wants to sh itself in uh so this is just some Model results and again I don't want to go into it in too much detail other than if you look at those Dash lines those are those magic 3et per second lines um and so if you look at existing conditions that's the highest and lowest curve the most uh uh Excursion you get and and uh during some of these Tides we actually get in the existing Inlet about 6 feet per second I mean if you go down there that the tide is screaming through the inlet it's stronger during the flood a little bit weaker during the e um but if we widen the inlet we can run those scenarios in the model um and come up with the different uh Peak flows and what you see is this is kind of going through all that series the series of different Inlet widths we did existing 75t 100 foot 125 foot just to get an idea of what the various scenarios would be and this is kind of putting it on one plot where you have the the top the blue is the flood tide velocities the bottom is the E tide velocities and on the the x-axis there is the inlet width so you see as we widen the inlet the peak velocities get lower and lower um and then we have that sweet spot right around 3 feet per second and you see that's pretty close to the inlet width of 100 ft um so around 100 ft we get to that spot where we can basically make sure that the inlet will maintain itself so that's where we target the inlet width and then we went to the standpoint of well how much would this improve water quality and so this is the the results the L quality model looks very subtle here but I'll I'll talk about the numbers in a minute on the left is existing conditions on the right is with the inlet wind uh the colors don't do it justice the lines do better but you do get quite a bit of shift in the lower part of the estare of some pretty good water quality numbers moving much further north obviously the north part of the of the pond stays very high nitrogen it's it's uh does not flush nearly as well so the effect of widening the inlet does not really reach all the way up there but it reaches part way up can I ask what are we looking at between the difference of those two yeah I'm not going to talk about that just a second here okay okay so and just to point out what the difference is um so this is this is with the in Inlet approved and so we were focused on is the the station in the middle of the the estor um which is the The Sentinel station for the EST project that station B3 uh which is that pointer poter sh okay so it's right up here in the middle um so that that is where we we're targeting the the water quality improvements to see what we do we're getting about an 8% uh Improvement in the in the total nitrogen concentrations um and if you go further south you get you know you're getting up to around 15% Improvement as you go down the esary so even though it shows very subtle that's it it is a market difference and one thing that that is important to think about that it may seem like it's not much but what that equates to is if uh would be the equivalent of a 50 57% reduction in the total nitrogen load to the Watershed that's right directly adjacent to Born Pond not the river but the the Watershed that's adjacent to the pond so this would basically be equivalent of of soaring 50 7% of the houses in that Watershed um so that's that was the sort of the basis for why we came up with this why we're widening the inlet U for from a cost benefit standpoint that that that seemed to work out uh you know the the numbers were written were done as far as what the cost benefit was I did not bring that but that is the the basis for it that this doing this Inlet widening is much cheaper than um that and the other thing to point out the one thing I think is important for the town and for everybody else here is when you do an inlet widening that Improvement is immediate you you don't have to wait for the for you know when you do the sewering it takes time for that water to U you know the water that already been in the in the groundwater uh to seep into the esary this is an immediate effect so as soon as you widen that Inlet you get this effect instantly this reduction in nitrogen um so and I know there's probably going to be questions when I just presented but I did want to kind of sort run through this this data because one of the things I was asked to look at is is some of the other data sets that exist and why you know how does this compare to what we had in the first place the assumptions we had um so we looked at uh you know both the um Center for castal studies stations those are generally further offshore but they also have one in bornes pond um you know it's uh I put these as Vineyard sound and Tucket sound and then there's a one that's off pessa Bay and then the blue dots are that that B3 um and uh the vs station which is the vineyard Sound Station that the pond watch uh group has been monitoring over the years and just a quick uh look at the offshore stations that the that uh the center for Coastal Studies have been monitoring this is data from 2011 to 2023 I will point out U that uh the the center sometimes collects uh samples outside of the summer so I we tried to exclude those because everything that we're doing all the analysis that we've done is is based on summertime only um so the the gray bands You see there are the the various SU sum through through those years of the monitoring it just you know shows you basically the data but what it really comes down to the offshore data and this is again far offshore uh according to them the the the uh total electron concentrations are about 0.16 milligrams per liter which is very low it's basically like the Atlantic Ocean um not really surprising um and then if we look at PP those that station offshore pompes Bay uh and then also the one in bournes pond um you get a little bit different numbers but the the one off off of pomp Bay is actually still the mean is around 0.16 milligrams per liter and again it's not right off the mouth it's it's kind of far offshore um but then in uh bornes Pond the TN is about 0.57 milligrams per liter which is pretty much what we monitored back uh in the early 2000s for uh that station B3 so that's pretty much the exactly what we expect it to be going to the pond watch data this is a little trickier to analyze and I I would encourage the town Amy corol um to you know maybe do a little bit more in depth analysis on this um I just took you know I just got this data the other day and I just we started looking at it and one of the things that pointed out to us is some of the surface samples have some very high kind of outlier numbers uh you look at some of the um ammonia or um salinity you realize there's some stratification and uh so the one thing I like to point out about this station it's in Vineyard sound but is immediately off the entrance of waren pond uh so when you're on a calm day and you're on an outgoing tide when these samples are done chances are you're catching quite a bit of the water that's coming out um so a better way to probably look at some of this uh information is to look at the nonsurface part the non just not the non-surface you've got two samples below that the one meter and 2 meter samples um it would be better just to focus on those rather than the surface samples because they do have t tendency to have quite a few outlier data points um and so I looked at all of the data and we're getting uh somewhere around 34 milligrams per liter offshore um but if I uh you know get rid of the two standard deviations away it only BL drops down to about 34 offshore but I'll talk a little bit more about this in the uh in the EST but but again we were using uh between 0. 28 and3 for our boundary condition when we're doing the est's project this is about uh sorry 33 milligrams per liter so they're pretty close to the same um so we again far offshore you get 0.16 close to the EST we're getting somewhere in the low 3ish um and because we know there's some intermixing and when the estay flushes out it does return some of the water on a windy day it returns less but on a a calm day it returns more so overall it's not bad to use you know the the average here uh to look at and so that matches really well with what we used as an offshore boundary condition um and then going forward to bornes Pond uh kind of a similar problem and I don't know why this is but again that's I think there might be some surface alergy blooms and we have if you look at some of this data we actually have surface samples that show and and I know I talked to the people at sast uh they're confident that the data is correct um you know they they went through it with a fine tooth comb um but when you have a 3 milligrams per liter TN concentration um that really does throw off your Your Meme and that's uh obviously some sort of alga Bloom that that's going on at that time and even stuff it's it's up around two is is kind of questionable so you know generally in the in the system you know we'd see surface samples that are are closer down to one or below um when we were doing our our sampling uh we we found you know again if if I look at the uh Center for Coastal studies they're getting 0.57 milligrams per liter uh if we go and uh get rid of the surface samples and actually do the the uh the same thing just to be consistent and get rid of things that are more than two standard deviations above the mean um we're actually getting 0 .61 milligrams per liter so again this data is really coalescing right around the same thing that that that the Estero project used and what's being shown uh by the the uh Center for Coastal studies so I'm you know confident that the data really hasn't changed and the effect of this Inlet widening is going to be what we expected it to be you know just kind of summarizing that you know with the original me analysis which was data that I believe went went through the 1990s up to around 2006 um then we have the center for Coastal studies data 2011 to 2023 then Falmouth Pond watch 2016 to 2023 um and if you look at the table Vineyard sound uh the MEP was 0. 28 to3 the F pound watch is. 33 the further offshore station at Coastal studies was much lower I'm not saying to use that it's that would be you know that would make the Improvement drastically higher which would be great but it's not it's not uh probably a valid number to use but I think the numbers that we're using are within the range of what what we expect um and then born Pond just to see what how born Pond is is it getting a lot worse or is it it's staying the same or is it getting better um again it seems to be spoton um the me analysis 0.58 uh Coastal studies 0.57 found with Pond watch the the newer data 201623 is if you get rid of the outliers which we would have gone and done an outlier analysis to do the original stuff anyways um is coming at0 61 so it's pretty consistent so that's sort of where we're at um and I just wanted to you know certainly answer any questions you guys might have I just didn't want to I know you only have two hours so I don't want to do no no no no I just there's more people here than usual so I just want to let them know sort of the format we had at the beginning I typically allow board members to ask questions first and then turn to the audience um everybody needs to I think Tom had his hand up rather quickly um one of the key things I think we're looking at is is what changes there might be in our various embayments over time and this indicates remarkable almost kind of crazy consistency in Bourne's Pond over the length of time that these samples have been taken right because you mentioned that that one set of samples was really the last few years I forget the timing um yeah so I mean so you have 2016 to 2023 is is the pond watch data that that that we just uh you Krist just sent me the MP data is back to 06 or something it's it's 1992 do I believe when the report came out 2006 might be 2005 but so to me this is almost scary you know given what we think is going on in our ements I just wanted to to make that point here to to the group that this is remarkably consistent over time yeah and I think you I mean obviously you guys have other estories if it sort of depends on how much development's been done in the EST um you this I'm sure there's been some development this watershed but it's certainly not one of the more aggressively developed areas so that may be some of the reason um I think the town has also done a u in recent years I think they've done a better job of of keeping the entrance open um because that because when it schs obviously it flushes more poorly and that so so it's not surprising I think if you know that'd be one thing to make sure that the town is always has the funds to make sure they maintain this until we get this constructed go ahead Steve can you go back to the last map you had up there now you're now you're quizzing me here that one no before that sorry yes where is the northernmost Sentinel station the the northernmost station so our Sentinel station for the this s is here the northernmost station is almost all the way up the North End and if if you do I'm approaching this the effect maybe a slightly different way if you did the inlet widening there would be um some improvement in the nitrogen concentration at the Sentinel station just from that alone correct and and most the Improvement would be south of there right to be fair right if you then went and did the um necessary sewering and perhaps IAS north of there to bring the northern part of the estor up to standards MH then now go back and pretend you did that first okay before you did the inlet Ling because you know you're going to have to do it anyway in theory right and I think one of the things that we did for this and I don't have the graphic but so in order to come up with how many how many um that 57% number of how many sewer how many houses this would eliminate we actually did a Model run where we were removing things from the Watershed until we got there so we sort of did a scenario like that and what that does is it tends to improve the EST you know further north the S gets improved uh more so than maybe down down at the south end so the inlet the inlet stuff really does a great job at the south end but maybe doesn't reach all the way up as far north as you go but if you did the North stuff first that would just increase the Improvement of this this is just a thought experiment I'm not actually proposing any order of doing things but I'm saying since you know you're going to have to do this upper work anyway imagine doing that first enough of it to bring down the Norther to improve the northern part of the estro m sufficiently to be acceptable now having done that now we bring in the inlet winding as the marginal condition instead of the other way around how much of an improvement does it make since you've already done this huge Improvement that you know you're going to have to do anyway I mean if you did all that you would probably have over seed or over removed nitrogen because you would actually bring it back to a to beyond what you needed to the other thing I would point out is way up in this northern part no matter what you do you know it's just the natural part of the system that is going to be a very difficult area to get you know it's not it's never going to get achieve what's down in the middle even if you remove pretty much everything you know just just people's lawn fertilizer is going to keep the nitrogen way up the Northern end relatively high it's just it's just a natural condition but but I'm saying if you have to do that anyway and it's got to be substantial to fix the upper Estuary then maybe the lower Estuary is perfectly fine without any Inlet wiing oh yeah definitely and there are there are searing Solutions or or uh Wastewater removal solutions that you can do for this EST not widen it and and achieve your target so the I'm saying ones that you're going to have to do anyway even if you do do the amount Ling there are going to be some yeah I mean so I'm I'm going to try to walk them through this a little bit again so what what you're saying is if you sue if you take care of the upper portion of the inlet doesn't it make the lower end good again what you're leaving out is the fact that those 57 homes are still contributing nitrogen to the lower end because they're not sewered right but but the level is acceptable do matter but won't it won't the the original model work and everything points out that you you still have nitrogen coming to the lower end you still got to knock more nitrogen down yeah so I mean we did do a series of of alternative not as much I mean the the inlet takes care of a certain think of it this way the inlet takes care of a certain percentage of to sewer those 57 homes and that's a bit greater cost than the inlet widening can okay I I won't waste any more time can I make a a quick spin on this while we're on this topic is is this presentation makes us think of the quality improvement in a planer sense and what we need to think of in a volumetric sense because the lower part of Bourne's Pond is probably 80% of the Vima water that's in that embayment I don't know the numbers John you probably know them but the point is is if we looked at volumetric Improvement as a percent of the total you'd see that I'm guessing because I haven't run the numbers but I'm guessing that you would see that this is a really big deal because it's such a tremendous volume of water relative to the entire embayment that's being improved and I would point out that I mean you know part of this from the Ester project standpoint we always had the Sentinel stations that we were looking at and in this case B3 that one halfway up is is the Sentinel station and we're trying to the the idea was to improve that um and I believe in this case at some point uh you know the Eel Grass would be halfway up to that uh just because the natural ements here if you before there was development you know some data indicates that in the lower basins there was Eel Grass but the expectation that you would get Eel Grass all the way up to the upper end is just not something would never ever have naturally existed there so you know so we targeted this to kind of go back to what be close to the healthy sense of the system so again we're not uh I don't think there was any effort to um look at you know how much improvement we're going to get at those two Northern stations but it is the understanding if we improve at the uh that mid station to the level that would be very healthy that the upper portion would be at least its its natural uh nitrogen concentration up there that would be uh more similar to what it was before we did a lot of development other other board members comments questions the the number I'm having a little trouble understanding how you got to a 50% reduction excuse me in total nitrogen 2,000 kg a year which represents approximately 40% of the tmdl number we've got to get to as a town y but from the percent changes you know you must how did you come up with 2,000 kg so what this so what we ended up doing so so we did two model runs we did this model run with the inlet widening and then we did a separate model run uh where we kept lowering the the the uh Wastewater loading coming in until we came up with an equivalent uh percentage incre this kind of basically the same table um so um and and that and then you do the comparison and then you figure out how much nitrogen you ended up removing in order to achieve these same the same uh uh concentrations of of nitrogen okay so you were kind of working backwards to how many pounds or kilograms you would have to remove in order to get this scenario get to that concentration and that backed into the 2000 I mean that's it's an impressive number when you think wow that's that's 40% of the reduction we need to hit tmdl and it is I mean yeah and this is and I will say it's this is probably one of three systems in all the EST project where is worth widening an inlet there are very few of these this was a fundamental conclusion a long time ago that bnes pawn widening had a real impact yeah okay so this is a very unique I will say this a very unique situation and and it took and a lot of the permitting stuff took a long time because it it required um in general DP does not like to permit something some sort of Coastal Engineering structure type thing to improve water quality they they it is very outside their all all fans of the D in this [Laughter] room so it took it took a lot of people I will say it took a village believe me or not you know I mean V Virginia and everybody else was was certainly involved with this heavily AR turkington you we all went up to these meetings and it was was a pretty uh Hefty fight to get where we got okay I'm going to let the audience if they have questions I ask you to stay on topic to you know why is the inlet being widen as much as it is and the and the benefit of it R steam selectman hi Doug Brown selectboard uh John did I hear you right that there's an opportunity still to elevate the bridge a little bit um I I you know you'd have I think from this standpoint I think there might be an opportunity to elevate the road a little bit but I think the bridge is probably set at this point it's it's up already up at mot for plans but but and that's process in itself so if you want to talk about that you you may want to just reach out to the DPW director and see I mean I think I think there's a lot of pressure to get this done do this the design is done I have been resigned to the fact that so so if if you if you want to go talk to the DPW about raising the thing up a bit we're probably going to delay the project further because we'll have to go back to redesign never mind and and right and the one thing I would like to point out I mean that's that's where we're at I mean the the plans are done yeah and the one thing I would like to point out you know the bridge is low that you know that whole area goes under during during a major storm anyways but the one thing I will point out is part of this project is to Wi the the beach on the east side uh and to give that a better buffer than it has now uh and then also to restore some of the dunes on the west side so that is going to have a resiliency component to it it's just not going to be resilient enough so that it is um you know going to uh you know deal with a major storm but I think where you go from surf drive all the way down here there's no the be the roads are just not high enough to to deal with those with that issue uh directly I think that's just something we're going to have to deal with getting comfortable it's going to flood on they're not high enough now they're not high enough now and and there's really not there's no way to elevate them enough to to get them out of the flood plane okay thank you yeah come to the microphone identify yourself yep my name's Ann Pride I live right here okay that's 94 bournes Pond Road in general I don't support widening I think Mr Leighton was headed a point I wanted to bring up which is that what is the total cost for IA systems for these homes I'm still unsure about total homes impacted North and South I know they're 47 I guess down in my area South what is the cost of an IA system multiplied by the number of homes what does this project cost um Mr rafy you kindly suggested I contact Jim mclin at the end of the last meeting asking for the current budget which I know is not going to be the what the budget is but the latest budget multiple calls emails I never received it what is the cost of this and if we are going to do this it should certainly be elevated come on it gets washed out sometimes you know what's happening you know what can happen we should not be building this a new structure like this without considering elevating it but again I'm opposed to widening I think we should stick just replace the bridge that we have now look at the cost at least examine the cost for a systems versus what this is going to cost nobody has any idea we were at 11 I bet we're up to 15 or more million doar for this thing two years of and believe me our neighbors are going to be happy not to have Central have the runway in uh operational for two years but two years I I'm you know we probably three years I mean let's be reasonable and Coastal erosion problems and commitment of the town to dredge when necessary these are all concerns that I have um thank you I will I will reach out and see if I can get you the current cost estimate thank you hi my name is Lee DDO um and I want to thank you all for your concern and all all the hard work that you do I am a member of the family that John was talking about um so we have two homes one is the property right here on the beach and the other is the one right there on the small Round Pond and our concern was what the erosion impact will be on our properties of course we care about water quality but we also care about erosion for our properties we were promised that there would be dredging um through the process that we went through several years ago that there would be dredging because if this shows up which we see it does constantly um this isn't going to be effective so it nothing has been dredged for several years now I don't know how they would dredge the interior of bournes pond I understand how they can dredge the exterior I think the I think the plan is to remove the bridge dredge the interior every 2 years is what we were told it would be dredged every 2 years so I don't think they're removing any Bridge every two years John's going to clarify that a little bit my understanding of the sequence on the project is the bridge is coming out then they're going to go into the pond and dredge the inside of the pond because they can't get the dredge inside there right now and then they're going to put the new bridge back in which has got the higher velocity to help keep it open that Sand's being relocated to the east uh to build up in front of the your area that's what I understand so I just want to I want to point this out and I I mean no disrespect to you and and what you do we have been very fortunate to be able to use um seaw walls to protect our property but I will say that you don't truly know the impact on land and on water when you change something you don't truly know it we've seen it in our property so I think to say oh it won't show in anymore I I think that's not necessarily what we're going to say so I understand your I understand your priorities and I respect that I respect his expertise um I think what Mr Leighton is suggesting is very valuable and worth considering um that we reverse this process and I would just like to say on behalf of my family and those two properties we are not for widening the inlet thank you for your time okay thank thank you I can at least uh try to answer at least a bit of the questions about dredging um so you're correct when we take the bridge out that that's when we would uh develop the the full wide Channel going back um there was a time uh and you may remember uh it's been several years because the inside very rarely needs any dredging um there was a uh U you basically they they dragged a bucket up a drag line up into the system and actually were able to dredge without going under the bridge so it can be done um we don't anticipate that that the channel inside is going to need any more maintenance that it typically does the um outside shows in pretty pretty much a lot right now and that that does impact the flushing of the inlet um but at the same time the town's going to need to stay on top of it this project actually gives the town the opportunity uh because in the in the um permits for the project and it's specifically for the the beach that's being done on the West Side um the required to maintain those structures to entament so there's an impetus that the town is going to have to dredge in order to basically uh put that material on those uh structures to make sure that they uh stay filled so that is part of this process it is anticipated based on what the town had historically done that every two years they would be dredging offshore um but it really is memorialized in this whole monitoring plan and stuff for the permit so I think the way this project is being done you're going to see um more proactive maintenance on that Inlet than you have historically um and that's and because it's going to be required by the permits additional comments all right thank you John um can you make sure that Kristen gets a copy of your slides I have it you got it and then through I guess your office aing we post it onto our web page for people to be able to access it um at the start of this meeting we actually have a sort of introductory slide that tells you when our next meetings are what we think the topics going to be and also identifies um the web page you can go to or how you can get this information uh okay with that we're going to have our Wastewater superintendent Amy L make a presentation on the outfall and where we where we've gotten to and where we're going to go to good evening uh yep so today uh I was asked to do an update on FMA outfall data collection and permitting uh We've made a lot of progress since the November Town 2023 town meeting when funds were appropriated for data collection and permitting um so first off we've established a regulatory review team uh the Department of Environmental protection has taken a lead role in coordination of the permitting and and environmental review so far um which has been very helpful they've brought in um folks who are relevant to each part of the permitting and and environmental review process we've been meeting twice monthly um most months with the DP and other regulatory agencies that will be issuing outfall permits we've been meeting on specific issues with relevant agencies including coastal zone management division marine fisheries Environmental Protection Agency US Army Corps of Engineers uh Department of Conservation Recreation the Water Management agency Etc uh we met with uh the Massachusetts Environmental Policy Act office to establish uh to introduce them to the project and talk about the review process for the upcoming environmental impact report so far so far we have very good regulatory engagement for this process um also we spent a lot of time in the first half of the Year confirming with the Regulatory Agencies the scope of the environmental data collection that will be needed for the 2-year Baseline survey uh that's required under the ocean sanctuaries act on the figure you see the yellow rectangle is the area that we surveyed in 2022 um to provide preliminary data for this project through the meetings uh at the beginning of this year we ended up with a much larger survey area um that's shown in the green uh outside box outside rectangle that larger eelgrass survey area is to allow um the Consultants to eval and The Regulators to evaluate the um existing and then in the future the condition of the habitat along a gradient east and west of the proposed outfall um so um we've also within that rectangle you see a lot of uh circles with cross crosses through them those are approximate locations of benthic sampling um as part of this Baseline survey there's a lot of data that will be collected from the benic environment at each of those locations um so this in combination is uh a larger Baseline survey effort there is a funding request as part of one of the capital articles at this Falls town meeting uh for an additional um sum of money to um uh accomplish this greater surveying um effort um we began after resolving the um the process and the area of the survey we began the 2-year Baseline monitoring program in Nantucket Sound uh the consultant performed two benic surveys in 2024 and completed an eelgrass survey of that uh entire larger survey area shown on the previous slide in the fall of this year uh after that survey was completed we met with the Department of of Environmental Protection and coastal zone management agency to review and compare that preliminary data uh preliminary survey data with the data that the DP has collected and really just to show them what what we had preliminary to pre preliminarily to date and there was very good agreement oh so the DP um on a regular basis does their own eelgrass survey uh along along the coast and they uh happen to update their their survey Mo uh most recently this summer so we were able to compare those two uh surveys and there was very good agreement between the DP survey and the town survey but it was also clear that the town survey provided a lot more data um the DP survey uh is based initially on an aerial aerial photography and then they send divers in along transex to confirm what they're uh looking at in the aerial photography and the town survey is uh um with a remotely operated vehicle which is taking video and photography and sidescan sonar and an enormous amount of data is collected so the DP was glad to have the data or very interested in the data and is in fact likely to use the town's data to do its final eelgrass um delineation along the South Coast uh we completed the first year of Baseline water quality monitoring uh we've been monitoring at three locations the one that's labeled f F1 um I believe that's fouth outfall something or other uh outfall one is the approximate uh proposed outfall location uh we also have a very close to Shore or more inshore uh location and the farther out out uh from Shore location the net sound sampling location is a long-term sampling location uh it's been U monitored for a long time but this summer an increased um there was more data collected at that location as part of this survey uh so dissolved oxygen temperature salinity pH and water Clarity were um data were collected at the service and and around one meter off the bottom at both of these Loca at these three locations twice monthly from mid-may through midt uh before 9:00 a.m. in the morning because dissolved oxygen in particular is um light it's um fluctuates based on on light um the nutrients orthop phosphate ammonium nitrate plus nitrate total dissolved nitrogen particulate organic nitrogen chlorophyll a and fyen also looked at at the surface and 1 meter off the bottom once monthly May to October in the last 3 hours of the E and the first 3 hours of flood uh I don't yet have that data um but it has all been collected and will be available for the Baseline survey Amy just just stay that that one last slide so are these the ones where the Buzzards Bay Coalition has been working with us on on yes they've collected the data because they're out they collect data in not only Buzzard's Bay but also in uh net sound anyway so they added these couple of stations some of the stuff like the Eel Grass survey that's all on Town put together to do some of these monitoring stations we're using um there's more than one entity involved in helping us to get get the information yes we have several Consultants that are working with us to collect this data um so the next thing uh I wanted to review was that we received very positive initial results from the US GS the United States Geological Survey evaluation of the potential effect of the outfall on the aquafer uh the USGS has done their um done done all of the modeling that was requested of of them under the under the scope with the town uh and they've so they've looked at the effect on the aquafer of discharging uh 2 million gallons a day to an outfall instead of to land um the USGS has a very detailed rigorous peer review process so we don't have their report in hand at this point and we're not going to have it until July of 2025 but they did review with us the preliminary results of that showing um changes in water level from moving that water from land to the ocean and we met with the we asked the Water Management act Personnel um to meet with us and the USGS to look at this data as well the Water Management act Personnel are the the ones who regulate the town's drinking water supply and um their feedback on the results was that it was not a signif was not a significant impact to the town's drinking water supply um obviously when we have the report in hand we will be able to provide a much more detailed um summary of that but it was very good news from from both the USGS and the Water Management act um Personnel on that uh we completed the permit application process for marine soil borings um the goal of marine soil borings is to characterize the subsurface soils uh off offshore in order well and actually one location onshore for design of the outfall um we're going to we're as you know we're planning to do directional drilling starting from kite Park Park um in in fites and drill approximately South uh about 2,300 ft offshore so we have one boring plan for uh kite Park on land in kite Park and six more uh offshore um the borings will be 6 in in diameter 100 ft deep um and we'll use a jackup barge that looks approximately like the one uh on this in this photo for to do that work offshore it's estimated it'll take a month to complete the six offshore borings there is some potential for noise during the drilling operation uh and the borings will be conducted this winter assuming uh which we do that uh we receive the final permit from the Army Corps of Engineers to do this work um this month um we're planning to start in uh as soon as possible and we expect the permit from the Army Corps of Engineers with uh this month so um we definitely want to get this information this winter so that we can use it for um the preliminary design and and have that available uh this is a little obscure but it's it's important as far as the pering process we confirm that the interbasin transfer act does not apply to the town's to fam's outfall plan uh the outfall in infrastructure is fully within the town's limits the seaword boundary of coastal towns uh in Massachusetts extends to the state's seaword limit I.E 3 nautical miles from Shore so discharging um within that boundary means that our discharge is within the the the town limits uh in addition uh fouth does not plan to accept any Wastewater from any other towns for discharge through the outfall um so those those are the criteria for the ocean sanctuaries act that you're not discharging outside Town limits and that you're not um out um accepting waste water from other towns this would not have been a uh a showstopper but it would have resulted in another uh layer of of uh permitting and uh and and state review uh we've spent quite a bit of time in the last six months or in the last four months outlining the anti-degradation evaluation that will be required for issuance of an npds permit npds stands for National pollutant discharge elimination system that's the surface water discharge permit that we would get for an outfall uh the most one of the most important permits on this process so um we're developing a draft scope of work to present to the D and the EPA based on Massachusetts surface water quality standards and anti-degradation examples that we've um been able to find from uh other Massachusetts and New England communities uh dp's implementation procedures for and this anti-degradation evaluation Uh define discharge to a highquality water like n Tucket sound uh as quote insignificant if it uses quote less than 10% of the unused loading capacity of a receiving water it's actually pretty difficult to um make that conclusion the uh loading capacity is not established for all of the constituents and um it's a complex conversation so um we've been um actually collecting um some data to start on Wastewater affluent and on Nantucket Sound to provide to actually try to over time make this conversation a little simpler um and for nitrogen where nitrogen uh is is um what's been the primary concern for the town as far as contaminants in the waste water uh there is not a nitrogen um uh limit in the sound that we could compare this to but it is we have outlined for The Regulators the the way that we can look at that which is we are going to be reducing nitrogen in Nantucket Sound by sewering right we're going to collect Wastewater from all those septic systems along the shore and we will then take that Wastewater up to our wastewater treatment plant and use that tertiary treatment plant to remove 94% of the nutrients from that Wastewater and then return it to an outfall um so we can calculate the nitrogen reduction to Nantucket Sound from sewering we can calculate the Nitro nitrogen contribution to the sound from the new outfall and demonstrate that we're not um increasing the nitrogen we're in fact reducing it there's also uh narrative criteria narrative description you get into about not impacting eelgrass and the habitat values along the coast for other constituents uh where there are actual numeric criteria we can do a little more straightforward analysis where um we're sampling Wastewater effluent we're sampling the sound we use the model to calculate dilution um and uh then we compare the resulting con concentration to the background con concentration and the numeric criteria uh where it's available and um and then and can make the make the conclusion about whether we're impacting whether we're getting close to the 10% of the Capac loading capacity uh for some of these there are ALS I that for some of these are additional narrative criteria that we'll need to address any case this is an ongoing process um and we've we've made a lot of progress um and um we really appreciate the this the regulatory agency's uh participation with us in in figuring out how we're going to do this Public Communication we um presented Steve rafy went with me and we we presented and spoke with the phth heits maravista neighborhood association at their annual meeting and the T ticket Association at their annual meeting this summer uh gave us presentation to the select board last month uh this meeting tonight and then I have um I've asked um to do a presentation at the November town meeting to provide the town meeting with an update on this project uh the schedule is not different from what we've been talking about in the past we are can you just back up one time yep um you and I've had a conversation that as we go forward at some point we want to get ourselves out to the vineyard and let them know what we're doing as well as in town you know reach out to some other groups whether that's the Chamber of CH or so that's that's not the definitive list that's what we've done so far we expect to be doing more over the next year yes and uh suggestions are welcome about who to talk with and how um the goal is to get the information out there and hear what people are interested in learning about it sorry for interrupting no issue uh so we're planning to conduct the Marine borings this winter uh complete the Baseline data collection next summer or next next year but primarily next summer submit an environmental notification form which starts the environmental impact review process the meepa process um in 20125 um we've we've left a long period here for applying for and receiving permits uh We've you know we've already done the permitting for the Marine borings there are permits that will be um uh requesting or applying for over the next several years a draft environmental impact report we uh plan to issue it uh by the end of 2025 or early 2026 a final environmental impact report and uh designing the outfall in 2028 and then constructing the outfall 2029 to 2032 uh obviously if we can do this faster we will um this has been uh a big focus of ours over the last year and we as I said we do have the regulatory agency's attention so we want to take advantage of that and keep up the momentum but there is a lot of work to do so it is it's going to take uh quite a while and this is our um we believe realistic schedule for doing that um just backing up the uh the the big picture on this is that the water the outfall is obviously a water quality improvement project and I talked about this a little bit earlier but this is something that um it seems obvious but I you know we keep stressing with The Regulators you know while there's concern you know there there are a lot of questions about obviously they want to make sure we're not degrading the um Nantucket Sound environment but you look at the big picture and and this this figure on the right shows um the green dots are septic systems um the pink area is existing seid area so the green dots are existing septic systems uh the ocean alha will allow us will provide additional capacity to allow us to do sewering in these highly impacted Coastal ponds which means removing uh the septic um uh leachate from all of these septic systems on the peninsulas where in within the sewer areas um so we would uh improve Coastal pond water quality by reducing septic discharge to the pond we'd avoid the impacts of treated water discharg to land which I haven't spoken with with you about tonight but we've discussed over the years this is how we ended up with this um with an outfall concept and ultimately we'd be decreasing the nitrogen discharge to uh Nantucket Sound from fouth properties and that's it thank you very much um questions from the board Jonathan so I'm interested in the USGS model and you mention that they say preliminary conclusions there's not a big impact on water quality but what water levels okay so it's the the groundwater level and saltwater intrusion that they're concerned with or subsidence from dropping water table levels I'm going to try this one sure if I can the Sagamore lens is a body of water that sits like this MH the concern has always been if you don't put that water that goes to a septic system back in the ground but you put it into outfall does that lens get smaller right okay and the analysis that they did said has almost insignificant because John John's going to help me here there's an a lot of water that comes down onto the aquifer and there's a net outflow already going out and so they looked at a lot of that and they did these maps that look like what you saw they show like you know over time the the shape of the the acfer will change by like a tenth of a foot but it's not it's not going to keep decrease in a tenth of a foot every year there's a there's a shift but not a so it's a mass balance thing it's a mass balance very much a mass balance process yep they they don't look at Salt Water intrusion or those other things that much it's because if you can you bring up that that little good so the thing to look at is that the lowest line on this map is 5 ft the lens is 5T thick at that point point right if you notice everything on the south Coast that we want to sewer is is sort of past the point the the it intersects the kuna River and whatnot so the fact that we're taken out from the peninsulas doesn't really affect what's going on up above is and John you know waterb articulated this several time but we've now got people that do this for a living with a model and everything else um uh I I'll say it I mean the one thing over the last year that has I've been I've said to a lot of people you know if if we're impacting the Sagamore lens the outfall is not going to happen um and uh we we met with everybody and they showed us their results but have not been peer-reviewed and they go through elaborate process but after we had that conversation with them I got up and did a little happy dance because uh it it it was a better answer than I expected to hear and we did it uh sensitivity wise up to the 4 million gallon per Day level the model we're we're we're sticking with the two why not run a four just because you mentioned that they they did a couple of outlier things but it's we also we we it it didn't have that much of an impact at the four but that's so far out there and rules will change all over the place we we also had them run a scenario where you so we had them run two which is our proposed 2 million gallons per day which is our proposed outfall and then we had this um what if we s the sewer the entire town what would that look like to sort of bracket the you know uh they probably modeled five and a half not four so they've done the sensitivity yes yeah yeah they did a couple different ways yep y i I think the thing to keep in mind John is that that aquafer uh discharges to the coast in Falmouth approximately 40 million gallons a day uh if you look at the kuna Kun messet River discharge in March it's discharging 9 million gallons a day so the impact of that outfall according to USGS will have a really negligible impact on the recharge characteristics of the aquafer itself and the aquafer itself varies like mad so if you look there the head up in Sandwich they normally says it it has a head of 65 ft but depending on the interannual variation uh that can change by 10 feet right on precipitation yeah right yeah drought drought and what not yeah changes several feet each year just seasonally goes up and down yeah yep yeah okay Tom you had had your hand up yeah um Amy can you go to number seven um the signifying that the using Nantucket Sound as the receiving water is the best possible case for fouth right because Nantucket Sound is absolutely enormous and if you remember I brought up the point before but actually the outfalls in Vineyard sound and I wonder if if somebody somewhere along the line is going to say well actually you're trying to cheat a little bit by by spinning up the best possible and and how difficult would it be to model it using the vineyard sound data in addition to Nantucket s so I think so we are using we're calling it you and I are talking about the same body of water and we're calling it by different names right we are disagreeing about the line between where Vineyard sound stops and where Nantucket Sound begins it's the same place right because the US Board of geographic names says says n CH starts at point is the name doesn't matter because the nitrogen now goes to the mysterious place with an unknown name and and the outfall it will go to the same mysterious place with a name that we can't agree on right but my my point is is I'm I'm worried somewhere along the line someone will come along and say you're trying to cheat because you're making it look you missed my point doesn't matter person not going of time okay the evaluation has nothing to do with the receiving water USGS is evaluating the impact on the aquifer I'm not talking about the aquifer I'm talking about theing water I'm I'm going to try to get this for you do you recall the beginning there was a slide about all of the coordination going on with the Regulatory Agencies if there was somebody that that this was going to be an issue for I I I would I would say that we've we've we we talked about 4050 people maybe more by now I'm not at all worried about those people I'm worried about Joe citizen like like the same people that get excited about other things comes along and says well you're cheating here and tries to come up to work that's all we're not cheating so um that's what I'm saying so we are colle so on this slide when I refer to n Tucket sound I'm referring to show the sample station right but I'm referring to this like we are sampling here and here and here and here is where we're planning to discharge right right so whether you call it Nantucket Sound or Vineyard sound we are looking at a background where we're planning to discharge and that's where all the right yeah I I I understand all of that but if you're modeling the receiving water it's obviously best case scenario for FMA to say oh we're we're discharging in N Tucket sound where it's going to have l so our model or model F1 we're discharging F1 and you're modeling based on the chemistry of f yeah yeah we're we're Gathering water quality data right and showing that what we're going to do doesn't degrade the water quality of that location right then the modeling was the modeling was done for this location yeah I don't going to have any effect I'm just worried about somebody somewhere somebody would want want us to take a data point down in Woods Hole and use that no well where where the where's the water quality data going to come from I'm not talking about water quality data I'm talking about the modeling if you got a choice of dumping your waist in a small leg or a big leg Lake you'd like to tell people you're dumping it in a big lake cuz it's going to have minimal impact right compared to the small Lake the point is that the model of the physics of the water indicates within one model cell 200 ft I know I'm very familiar find what you've put in whatever water body we want to call this yes I'm not concerned about that and I said I know it's not going to have an effect but I'm just concerned that someone coming along is going to be even nitpicky than I am impossible wow okay good Steve yeah um on the Baseline you don't need to change the slides unless you want to but the Baseline survey for the eel graphs yeah the reason for that I will change it is um in case for some other reason not anything we're doing the Eel Grass gets worse in that area we can show that it isn't because of what we're doing because it's getting worse everywhere it's some kind of correct red tide or something like that correct yep that's yes you want to know it's basically a control the outside edges of this survey area are a are basically a control what I want to make sure of is the the reason the Regulators want that is so that if God forbid there was something that we did wrong they they could shut us down which would not be a good day for Fel um we will be required to do monitoring and they will be watching and we will I'll be watching that so have you I want to make sure that someone that's good at statistics and biology has made sure that that Baseline area is adequate to prove that it's not us right so it's a combination of the the modeling um and the we so we have Jim Churchill with uh woodell oceanographic institution did the modeling and um and then we have we have um Scott Gallagher with uh who used to be with houie but now is has his own company Coastal ocean vision and uh the two of them are looking at that very question and came up with The Regulators with this with this um survey area for that purpose The Regulators agree it's sufficient for that yes they call it's called a before after gradient Sur survey and they have the statistics um summarized uh that they'll be using in that area thank you any questions only a comment very thorough remarkable progress thank you okay members of the audience uh anybody have questions on where we're at what we're doing why we're doing it cor to coren Peterson with the Buzzards Bay Coalition um I just wanted to Echo Ken's um sentiment congratulations to the committee great job Amy and the buzzers Bay Coalition supports the work that the town is doing and to the extent that we can help in any way getting permits done accelerating the time frame we're here to help so please call on us thank you than you thank you for your support Matt um Matt Hanley I'm resident of fouth but also on the board of Surf Rider Foundation uh cap and Islands um want to applaud this board and the fouth water quality I mean um wastewater treatment facility for their improvements in their discharge um and obviously this lall would would assist in the water quality improving on our South Coast yeah is it possible we can go back to slide four where that shows the lens y um now all of us here have been following this for a long time and we know how to look at the information that's being provided but the people at home don't know how to interpret you know what they're looking at here um just from clarification for the people following this at home the the lens it's this this this illustration is a little deceiving because it doesn't show the watersheds and if if you were to Overlay the watersheds over this map you would see the the flow um travels South and then as it gets closer to the coast it would it would take the path of least resistance and and flow westward in Buzz's Bay and then flow strictly Southward um in uh the South Coast estuaries and so and so on and those red lines are those um delineating the rivers yes like the keset river yes um so would Steve would would you agree that the direction of flow would be Southwest or Southeast depending on depending on you know where you know which part of fouth you're in oh yeah yeah okay um yeah and you know this this is measuring the thickness of the lens and that has nothing to it's not really measuring the thickness of the lens it's measuring the height of the water table above sea level right but that's the lens is lens can extend below sea level okay so this is this is showing how how high the water table water table is above sea level and that has nothing to do with the Topography of fouth roughly parallels this because because if you look at it there's a lot you know the the west side of fouth tends to have more Hills but you don't really see that too much yeah it's not a detailed and this is a pretty generalized set of contour lines so yeah I'm sure you know they have a regional they have more detailed models around each of these water bodies that show even more refined Contours but you but you see the rivers where the red lines intersect the the lens you see the lens drops where those rivers are because paining streams so the water flows groundwater is flowing into those streams and as you move down gradient you know towards the ocean the flow increases because it's picking up groundwater so those Rivers do have a facted it's it's the water is taking the path of least resistance and using those Rivers as an Avenue to the to the to the coast yeah I just I just wanted some clarification for the people at home you know that's important information so people understand the mechanisms and and how it all works because you can't see it right and it's it's good to have experts like yourselves here that understand it that can interpret it my actually only question on this diagram May me and maybe is that the is the the little blue area outlined is is that presumed to be area where there's fresh water underlying I don't even know this this is not a this is not a figure of our this is not our modeling results this is just a figure that shows the groundwater lens in fth uh the SAG the Sagamore lens in fouth um so when we have the the USGS report we'll have a much more detailed map not on of of the aquafer as it exists um now and then the aquafer um showing the impact this the relatively small impact on on the level in the aquifer based on the outfall discharge so the the small change in water level that is attributed to moving that water offshore the takeaway is that the outfall might make a difference of 1 in in something that's varying plus or minus 10 ft from natural Clause something like that I yeah I don't say those specific numbers but something like that and and back to Matt's question about the direction of water flow the general assumption is water flow is going to be at right angles to the Contours that's what I wher just if you draw little arrows across each of those Contours at right angles at that point that's basically the water flow Direction um will the general public be able to get a copy of this report the in July we won't we will not have it until July July of next year yeah it goes through a detailed review process inside the agency it goes reviewed by people has to go to Washington and then it's got to be published and then it gets released all right we so we will be have access to it when it is released yeah absolutely okay all right if you there's several reports that are already posted someplace you know they they did a study of the um marav Vista Peninsula at one point what was was I can't remember the name of that one but um yeah there there's different reports ring around out there all right thank you I won't take any more time okay anybody else wish to comment on this right Amy thank you so much good job thank you and you know how that works these these get passed passed over and get posted right yes this will be on the uh committee's website okay along with all the other presentations all right um we're going to move to the next item which is the suggested IA Geo boundary for oyster Pond um I want to do a very quick poll in here because um we do have to get out of here by 6:30 but our vaed uh support person needs to be out a little bit after 6 weend CU she's got a another obligation that I don't want her to miss so I don't want to short shorten up the oyster Pond presentation so I'm going to suggest a little Pawn in the Falmouth Harbor which we bumped already we'll get bumped again um so that we have time for reports of members and staff and maybe talk a little about where you guys are with subsidies and some of those other items okay okay um and I just did that so you don't have to speak faster than anybody in the entire universe to get it all done so we're doing oyster Pond tonight because we knew that there was going to be significant interest in it so that's why we're jumping ahead so we're going to get the spoiler alert of the final totals cuz we've been working east West so next week just act surprised when you see the numbers next meeting so we're doing oyster Pond the same way that we've done all of the other watersheds in Falmouth for consistency um we're looking at basically what it would take with tangible implementation where we can measure nitrogen reduction to meet our tmdls so the oyster Pond Watershed is a fairly small wed see outlined in Blue uh this Watershed has roughly 190 Parcels um 226 dwelling units of those 149 are single family residents since the Massachusetts estuaries project the me report uh the cessor database has 13 Parcels that are listed as year built later than the me freshwater resource in this Watershed is Mosquito Creek and the MEP has it assigned a 30% attenuation rate so for this Watershed there is a draft comprehensive Wastewater management plan um that was most most recently updated in 2019 uh through that cwmp process the town selected two preferred options within that neither has been decided on but in that draft plan the two preferred options to meet the tmdl are either through the use of sewers or IAS primarily so the data sources for this project are pretty much the same ones we've been looking at the MEP the tmdl U the right Pier St cwmp smass data and the Cape Cod Commission so oyster Pond has some unique challenges to it from the documents so as I've been saying all along the tmdl reports are primarily based on the MEP findings in the instance of oyster Pond they do not agree and what I was able to determine is that the tmdl is using a sumary table from the MEP reports and there is an error in that me report which is inflating the tmdl for oyster Pond so in the me if you use the number straight from there the the parts of the hole you come up with a nitrogen reduction requirement of 176 the tmdl is using sums of the parts and that's where the error is and they're saying there's about 1,300 kg that need to be removed so going through pretty fine detail I would say it's pretty justifiable that the me numbers are more correct in this case so that's what this is based off of and then for added fund because the Cap Cod Commission the MVP tool has tended to be higher for most watersheds when there is a difference for oyster Pond it's significantly lower the Cap Cod Commission is saying that there is only 731 kg that need to be removed from the Watershed so this is what the Cap Cod Commission has as far as where they think the loading is and reaching the threshold the threshold from Cape Cod Commission is the same as the MEP and the threshold is the same for the tmdl it's just a difference in agreement of what the loading is so looking at the me versus the MVP numbers same as we've been doing looking at the flow the MVP flow is less than the me so to add a level a conservative Factor we're using the lower water flow to determine the minimum amount of nitrogen that could be removed by implementing IAS performing at 10 milligrams per liter so looking at the average single family home in the wated an IIA at 10 Mig per liter would reduce about 3.5 kg a year on sewer it would be 5.1 for those homes that already have IAS presumably performing at 19 milligrams per liter the reduction is about 1.6 kg so looking at the MEP nitrogen reduction requirement along with the existing IAS if you're looking at just single family residents you're looking at about 307 that would need to be upgraded to meet the tmdl there are only 190 Parcels in the Watershed and 226 dwelling units so if you're following the tmdl numbers that's saying 366 single family residents would need to be upgraded MEP numbers because the nitrogen removal is lower or considerably less so here is the pond watch data for the Sentinel station and at the Sentinel station they sample a variety of depths but the actual depth for the Sentinel station is the 4 M so this is the data from there the red line being the Target threshold concentration so you can see 2021 has some pretty high values and some pretty big variability so if we just look a little bit you know finer scale this is kind of what the data looks like currently so this proposed Geo boundary again this does not mean that IAS have been chosen for this there is a draft cwmp the preferred options were either sewer or IAS this exercise is just following what we have done for the remaining the rest of the watersheds in town so to get attempt to get to the tmdl using IAS the entire Watershed would need to upgrade So within that district there are the 190 Parcels we we've also been doing the IIA lot screening size so identifying lots that may have may not quite have enough open space available to easily install a denitrification system so lots where it may be additional engineering challenges to install an IA so this is just the map of that so if we look at with water use looking at the average nitrogen reduction considering the attenuation potential in Mosquito Creek um if you upgrade all of the IAS within the Watershed coming out with a minimum of 608 kg of nitrogen to be reduced when you need 1,071 after the existing IAS this is just the MVP data which also shows that you don't quite get there so comparing it to what is present in the existing draft cwm p and again it's a draft cwmp it has not been submitted nor approved by any regulatory agency the way right Pierce looked at it was more from the actual loading as opposed to the reduction so once they removed they calculated the remaining load so they broke it out into the different areas they also for the IIA option recommended upgrade every developed parcel in the wed to an IIA performing at 10 mg per liter the difference is they take into account all of the other credits the theoretical credits the lawn fertilizer 25% reduction storm water they take a 25% reduction for natural surfaces which I never seen any other Town look at that as far as a reduction um but right Pierce also incorporates a 40% reduction in atmospheric deposition um again I've never seen other towns take that into consideration when calculating the actual load reduction but that is how the draft cwmp is getting there again IIA upgrades in every parcel in that Watershed so without looking at the potentially nonmeasurable nitrogen load reduction so your fertilizer and your storm water just by upgrading alone will not meet the tmdl when you look at fertilizers and storm Waters there's you know a small fraction to be added there's no shellfish proposed for oyster Pond um the proposed IA District represents 100% of the parcels in the Watershed so looking at the map again we haven't talked about these two but this is what the full map for all the Geo boundaries we've discussed for Town and the two we haven't discussed yet looks like and then the final tally table so we're looking at 7,638 within those IA districts across the town I just want to understand like one of your fundamental numbers if I can that you say there's 190 Parcels yep say there are 149 single family residences Treetops is one parcel yes so when you talk about 226 dwelling units you've added in dwelling units for Treet toop or not the tree toop dwelling units are included in there that's the number that right Pierce was using for their determination I thought that's what was going on I mean there's no other large parcel that's got multiple so in the right pierce cwmp the hooy dorms are included in there but in the cape C commission so all when I'm doing all of my numbers I'm relying on the designation from the Cap Cod Commission of where a parel is so and they say that parcel is not in oyster Pond and that's to prevent duplication maybe between watersheds where you're actually have two impaired areas on a borderline so whether it's in this Watershed or not it really depends realistically where the leech field is and its contributions but for this exercise it was not included in here just fine are are you going to say something about what it would be if sewers were used nope I haven't done with any other presentation so no yeah but that's obviously an option it would sewers remove more nitrogen in an advanced system yes I I just I need to know more about the process you may not want to do now but at some point we're going to have to make make a watershed plan for each one of these estuaries when that plan gets put together it will look at you know things like per reactive barriers possible sewering Etc they'll have other factors in there we've just been marching through each as saying if all we've got in front of us is Advanced treatment and the existing areas defined for sewers per approved um water shed plan what I always forget it the what's the Plan called for the south coast cwmp twmp c yeah yeah yeah and it gets complicated here because there's some talk of uh moving the force ve that's now under the bike trail yeah up to hoist Pond Road and Woods Hole Road right in which case it would be going right by yeah which would yeah every one of these every one of these asteroids has some you know bnes Pond Inlet widening is a factor in one asteroid you it's different for each one I'm going to start at the far end so Kristen in all of these you've been using um conservatively right the the regulatory a presumed regulatory limit on the IAS yes which is are youum 10 milligram 10 um and we know some of them have a medium performance better than that so I you know I'm just wondering if that's something that should be addressed at all because you know the last time I checked the uh Mass TC site for for example for the Nitro it median was 4.57 so throughout all of the discussions when you talk to people who have been in this for a long time like George Hoy Felder when discussing with the state what kind of credit you'd receive for IAS they're really only going to give you the credit to the approved performance level that has not changed yet whether they start accepting the actual monitoring data to give credit for that so we're looking at if a system is approved for 10 milligrams per liter that's the expectation that it's going to make that hopefully better right and the 10 milligrams per liter standard is not yet official is it correct so what's the process for getting that to be official so so right now the the the the Watershed permit and the title 5 stuff talks about um the target is to get to 10 okay I mean they're very clear in there about that right now we have one system that is on the verge of having 50 installations in three years of data and then it gets approved and then there's now an approved system at 10 by the d That's the process so once that system submits their data DP will say okay this we we can approve something we can set a standard at 10 because we have a system that performs that well that's that that I I I'm not going to speak for the de as to what they will or won't do but that is how I understand it for example right now there are systems that are approved for 19 yeah okay some of those perform at 25 or 30 some of them perform at at 11 but you know nobody's going in there and you know managing those numbers I would suggest though that since once we have a watershed plans in place and approved by the state which will include some extent of areas that need IAS with some anticipated value there's every five years you need to provide monitoring data explain where you're at and I would say you know once some of these things get in place if the performance is better and you can say we only need to put in X instead of Y because we've got now you know 1,500 of these installed and you look at the but if you go to the barnable County's data set right now for IAS you would say that getting a system that performs at 19 is is is is unusual okay so those are for General use systems the two systems that are being talked about are under provisional approval so you can install those and one is provisionally approved for 11 and the other is provisionally approved for 10 it just means that there's increased monitoring requirements for a much longer duration until its General use approval so it doesn't um limit you to not using those systems DP it's on their list they're just not General use approval right and the part that I'm still fuzzy on though is now if we're going to mandate we're doing that the town is doing that the Board of Health is doing that or DP is doing it D is not going to say they've left it up to the towns to do Watershed plans and submit them and that that plan has to show how you're going to get okay to to the water quality that you need to get to and then is that the Board of Health that's perview or is there some broader bylaw or something that gets written you so I'm going to ask you to hold those thoughts cuz what we've been doing is a March of like you know the scale of this then we've got a meeting or two we're going to talk about what I like to call the conditions and then there's we advise the board of Selectmen right so once we advise the board of Selectmen as to where we're at and things that need to be done which is why we're communicating some decision will we made not by this board about whether it's going to be Board of Health Fiat which they possibly could do or whether it's going to go to town meeting for you know I guess it's like one of those ballot questions where you like how do you feel about this I don't know um but yeah that's that's to be worked out Ken okay okay good I have a better understanding thank you for clarifying right you're up um Ken really hit the topic I wanted to mention is that there are systems now performing better than 10 now I think the question is going to become at what level will the Nitro which is showing better than five um going to be approved for General use and I don't know the answer to that but it might be worth asking Nitro and D if Nitro gives you data from the 50 for three years and it shows better than five will you approve them at a five level and that becomes the new goal and there are a number of groups working with Nitro and other companies that are performing at the levels they're calling them eias enhanced Innovative alternative systems so at what level will it be approved if it's at 5 we've got a shot at getting to the tmdl goal otherwise for oyster pun you can't get there right we do not have the ability to meet the tmdl and it's kind of like a uhoh what are we going to do for that Watershed and realistically that's probably the only way to get there unless you said sewers yeah and that's not even in the Horizon plan and you know we're talking 2030 plus year plans for some of this sewering and where the money's going to come from and how and when and the logistics and all of that isn't in the planning right now so that's the only way to get there but I don't think we know anyone unless somebody corrects me that what they're going to approve that General use level at so take a step back here okay keep in mind that when back several months ago people were saying oh mashby says if you're within a th000 ft of a water body you have to do something people were doing these distances from water bodies sort of criteria what we've been doing here is does that you know what's the real thing inside a given Watershed using 10 which is the target they've got could be better but using the 10 cu it least looks like there there's a shot at getting units that at least operate 10 maybe better at 10 what is how many properties would have to go to an IA system you know like and we're seeing for some of these for some of these estuaries even that doesn't get there that's right okay so this exercise is leading us to the scale of what's out there how big is it going to be you know we're not talking that we're putting in 50 or 100 we're talking putting in thousands of these but the the actual delineation of some of the stuff will come out of the Watershed plants this whole thing is is is to to identify the scale in front of it yeah what what you know you know we could say oh you know people are wealthy if they live on the water tell them to put in an IIA system but it might do nothing you know we want to we want to identify the scale of what we got to do and I think we're think we've done a good job of getting there um we haven't tried to take into account oysters or fertilizer we've kind of left all those soft things off the scale a little bit but when we come back to doing specific plans for specific h estuaries which is going to take a lot more work than Kristen's been doing here you know there'll be a specific thing you know in this Estuary we're looking for a fertilizer reduction of X or Y through whatever mechanism different things over here we're going to want to put in a perum reactive barrier at this location and that location because it it'll cut off and and and have some value so we're this is just a this is really the high elevation and show us that map that shows a lot of the town is now blue right I mean 4 months ago or 5 months ago when we started this I don't think anybody's sitting here on this board at least not me thought the map was going to look like that I I I thought there were going to be smaller maps running up the water bodies but they're not it's not that's what we're looking at remembering that we started the exercise on the IAS because the D said if you don't do water shed plans in X number of years you will put IAS in every home in the wed every so this is showing you how much fewer IAS you have to put in rather than every home in the water and that's why we're keeping a running total of you know we're looking at less than 50% but the D has said if you don't do it baby you're going to do them all and within five years I'm going to put pop down here because I want to get her out of here in the next five minutes we happy good yeah I don't understand some of those credits that were listed there you know for hard surfaces and nitrogen in the atmosphere but that seems kind of fuzzy at this point to me right it is I turn you lo I Turn You Loose to give Kristen a call one day and she'll walk you through it yep okay any questions from the audience I'm going to go to miss L there's two Miss LS that's right yes yeah hi Vicky L Vicky LOL I live in Treetops um and I'm wondering if the time comes which seems like at least a decade away would you say I I don't know but that we'd actually be doing any uh putting anything into the ground but we have now I don't know how many but there's you know 15 buildings and they and there's usually maybe two septic systems for each building so you know let's say I'll just guess we have 30 septic septic systems for the 62 units that we've got is they're thinking at some point that you would that we could get more nitrogen out if you made us do a maybe Treetops not a a package plant yes rather than having to do uh denitrifying you know AI IAS IAS maybe maybe it all run by AI but I of that's or is that too far down the road to know what you what direction you'd be leaning in that way I'm not going to I'm not going to try to project what you know again once we get plans in place and each watered gets told what they they're expected to do it would be up to Treetops they might come in and say you know we hired an engineer here's how we're going to get to that okay okay it might be like well cuz we're not Treet just um not unique to the town there other developments like that so it's a possibility and in fact Richard hail who you probably know of yeah spoke to John Smith of nitro weed eight or more years ago about possibility of a package yeah definitely not ruled out so just to give you just to give you a frame of reference there's a 32 unit subdivision off of brick Hill Road right now you drive by you see the houses stacked one on top of another they have two IIA systems in there yeah no no I just so there'll be it could come to the Treetops itself being deciding how to be if they were assigned a certain amount of loading that they can have they could decide whether to have two package treatment plants or one or none or what we we have learned is that if you tie a number of homes together yeah you get more reliable performance and number two you have to sample one system four times a year and not 32 systems I've thought about this for a long time so and I have a little input locally too thank you I I don't I I don't know you so you'll have to identify yourself no no not you you know me next person I I thought you still speaking to me thank you nice to see you hi this is Meredith golden I'm also from Treetops but my question is a broader question um I with the AI we're focusing on reduction of nitrogen I believe but with the sewer system we can also treat emerging uh chemicals of concern which of course are prevalent around the cape so what consideration will go into the degree to which we depend on AIS but not address these other chemicals of concern versus a sewer system that might be able to over time identify and then uh focus on those as well I'm I'm not going to speculate right now on that question um I'm sure that there's data out there about how septic systems or IA systems perform um I believe various people are looking at you know to what extent they break things down inside their their biology okay so I don't have that in front of me so I can't can't I well I guess my question is um I hope that the committee will contact the experts and some of them I've heard from to address that issue because over time it's going to cost the town a lot of money to go One Direction and then realize oops we really needed um a system that would address all these problems so thank you and I appreciate all the work you're doing right be brief Matt yeah sure it's okay I'm not I don't want to keep Kristen um I've been attending all these meetings Matt Hanley from from Thomas Lis Road uh surf riter Foundation um but I've been attending all these meetings and you know we're talking about total nitrogen being removed but it seems like we're focusing on the single family residences and not calculating like other factors like hotels businesses Schools administration buildings you brought this up at the last thing and that one of the reasons I at the start of this went back through the numbers with Chris and Lan is again this is the bigger picture right now mhm when we get into Watershed plans you know you're in your manit you got to look at the Royal mcit right then right exactly again this is this is the big picture but but the problem is by starting off focusing and judging every parcel the same instead of saying these are a major contributing factors we should address these try this one more time with you can I this is this is this is the broad picture we're going to we're going to retain Consultants to write Watershed plants we're going to drill down to the is this what what are the real uses inside this wed who in that water shed is contributing you know a bigger nitrogen load and then how big is the Geo boundary at the end of the day they will shrink as we look harder at things like hotels and and nursing homes and things oh so these are these are maximum numbers for each watershed this is this is this is showing the potential worst case scale scenario based upon the 10 milligrams per liter single family residence I'm just I'm just trying to speak for all the residents of fouth and we want to we want to address the the ma major contributing factors before we start going to the residents and putting the burden on our homeowners okay thank you thank you all right can I follow up so in these Geo boundaries any parcel that's highlighted for the single family residents I'm taking the average water use for all of the single family residents within that Watershed if it's anything other than that I'm using the actual water from that parcel calculated in there so that's covering your schools your nursing homes your multifam Parcels they just get treated a little bit differently as far as how I can back that back into the way the me did it so I am accounting for the nitrogen potential reduction Potential from those parcels and when I'm looking at this what I'm looking at is where I can areas where the travel time for the groundwater is less than 10 years so that if you're putting these systems in you have a chance to see that impact sooner rather than up here where it could be 50 years until you're seeing an impact that Watershed doesn't make the TM deal that's why the whole one is there so those are being taken into consideration so it's not just single family homes in this I appreciate that that's the that's the answer I was looking for thank you thank you you can you can check the the the tape for uh okay committee members updates um reports of members and staff uh that's fine that's fine Ken you you touched upon um The Little Pond uh stuff you were doing but I don't know that we ever got a presentation on that no I mean I have it if you if you have time that you want to put that on another agenda do you have Ken lined up it's on there it's on the left hand side it would be pertinent to everything else that was discussed if you want do you want it up sure if if Steve wants me to second from the bottom yeah let's do yeah well well while you're queuing that up um I'd like to jump to item seven can I have a motion to jump to item uh s minutes of Prior meeting so moved second all those favor all right we're going to go I'm seven we have the minutes of the prior meeting everybody them distribute them read them has anybody got any comments on the minutes I move they'd be accepted as written second okay moved and seconded all those in favor of accepting the minutes as written all all right Ken you're okay so as you guys know uh I've been working on uh the Little Pond system and kind with a general question of okay here's one that we actually have buil sewers around and how is it responding to that uh reduction in nutrient inputs and uh some of that information is relevant to this question that's popped up about the exchange with vineyard sound and you know to the whole Warnes Pond uh Inlet widening so here's here's our system we have our inputs from both direct precipitation Stream flow and groundwater and then as we have removed the nutrient sources uh we expect a decline in groundwater but we still expect some time for Recovery to occur because we're going to get benthic nitrogen regeneration we're uh and then we're also monitoring what's the response of the ecosystem how is productivity changing oxygen Dynamics and there is also of course nitrogen uptake associated with the growth of all these crits in there and finally the fundamental process that will clean up these sediments which is is denitrification removing uh the nitr removing the nitrogen converting it to nitrate uh and then to end to gas so all of those processes kind of get integrated into this uh nutrient exchange that and that's really where we're focused looking at what's going in and what's going out uh and that's where the relevance to the whole issue of exchange with BN with the vineyard sound comes in so just a couple of some of you have seen some of this before but the first thing we did starting back in 20156 was put in a set network of monitoring wells around the pond and each of these Wells has somewhere between three and five depths that we sample uh and what you can see in this first slide first uh panel here is that you know in 2016 at this lp1 site we have very high uh nutrient levels in the groundwater and they dropped consistently every year after the sewering was implemented uh so 2017 in the blue uh 18 and green and so forth and now we're down somewhere maybe a third of what the initial levels were and we can see similar patterns at other Wells locations even though every each one of these Wells has sort of a unique set of profiles so you know up here at lp1 they're all vertical profiles we don't see uh any subsurface plumes whereas at lp4 there's a a deep plume probably we're capturing uh some plume of nitr nitrate coming from a septic system further up gradient uh when we take all of that data and uh summarize it over the period of time since the Searing was implemented uh back in 2016 all the homes were pretty much hooked up and it took maybe another couple of years for uh for the effects to kind of manifest uh we see this General Decline and this is data up through spring of this of 2024 so General decline in the uh levels of nitrate in the groundwater the offset is actually there's a few of these Wells that have some ammonia inputs and and most of those are actually associated with saline groundwater so not not so much fresh water um but that's sort of you know the time course that we might expect to see uh replicated in other systems where we remediate I mean all of these ponds are very similar in their morphology uh and geology um so then the uh the question of the inlet uh so here's the you know Little Pond Channel and the other sites that have been already mentioned this uh during the meeting here you know this Center for Coastal study system further out in Vineyard sound sast site off of uh Green Pond I guess it is um we have been uh collecting uh as frequently as we can water from the inlet over multiple tidal Cycles using an automated sampler so we collect a sample um once an hour collect actually two samples once an hour over four title Cycles over 48 hours uh and that's the data I wanted to show you um to talk about this exchange issue so what you can see in this figure first of all we're monitoring flow we have an acoustic Doppler system to measure flow rates we also have Pond level monitoring uh the two agree pretty well the amount of water that we see you know drop expect to have moving through the channel based on the volume change in the pond matches what we see in the acoustic Doppler measur so we can we can uh look at how much water flows out and then what you can see here in the pink coated um areas that's all flood Tides or that's e sorry e tides and the blue is the flood tide period And so you know we have higher chlorophyll levels coming in in this particular set of data uh uh uh or leaving rather on every single uh e tide we have higher total nitrogen going out on every single eptide uh higher carbon uh milligrams per liter and and actually the pond Imports a little bit of phosphorus and uh so we can then estimate the net exchange by simply taking our flow rates multiplying it by our concentrations summing it up over the multiple tital cycles for each constituent to get a net flux and when we do that uh in this these examples uh we're seeing in this case we're trying to get as close to break even as we can in the water flow so we're ending the the summation at about 46 hours where the pond is just slightly increased in volume by about 925 cubic met uh even though there's a little bit more water in that pond we've exported uh 33 kilograms of chlorophyll 16.6 kilog of nitrogen 73 kg of particular carbon and we've imported a little over a kilogram uh of phosphorus if we look at the EB versus the flood uh for in this case 96 of these samples um you can see that our numbers actually are very similar to the ones that I think John Ramsey mentioned the e flow is putting out about point a mean of a or median I think this is of about3 milligrams per liter the flood is bringing in about 24 so um but I think that's about a 40% difference between the EB and the flood uh but it it definitely shows that that Vineyard sound water is a lot cleaner and this is after sewering so this is you know our e TI Waters uh would have been probably much more enriched prior to sewering um there's the data from this uh NT K10 site that you showed earlier Steve further out and we're getting 0.15 I think John said 0.16 uh as the as the uh mean value there so um again consistent with everything else that's been shown so um I guess the conclusions pertinent to the issue of exchange nitrate levels in the groundwater since uh the sewering have decreased by about 2/3 uh concentrations in the flooding Waters from Vineyard sound are about3 milligrams per liter compared to data from stations further offshore of about 0.1 5 uh our ETI Waters uh have a mean concentration of about 38% lower or higher rather than the flood tide Waters and that was in August of 2023 uh and I mentioned already the export numbers um and so I think all of this is consistent with all the stuff that was shown earlier uh a little more of a deep dive into one performance in one particular Pond thank you can I question you sure that was great Ken thank you got two questions one is is there any way to I mean I assume we're now waiting for the benthic stuff to happen right before the Sentinel station changes well you know house U mentioned that he thought unless we watch in the inlet they're never going to we're never going to see dramatic changes further up in the pond there's a pretty big difference between the North and South ends and and I think John mentioned the same thing there's sort of a natural because of the length of the residence time tendency for those to become more enriched we're we've been hovering around 04 something but a little over the 045 limit at that site so we've been doing surface surveys to similar to what uh you know that but you've shown that there's less coming in and that there's some going out yeah which may have always been going out right so things should be getting better well I don't know if I add up everything so we haven't gotten yet thank you for tending we haven't gotten yet to the point where we can add up all of the export and compare it to all of the stuff all of the material coming in over an annual cycle right we need to let alone the mass on the bottom that you have to get rid of right but in general I think these systems export less than they get because of denitrification and the last question is where does the phosphorus go I assume it's taken up by the plants and and then washed out as plants maybe well I mean if it's been coming in for the last 10 million years yeah yeah yeah there's a lot of phosphor yeah so there's accumulation uh but this is not an uncommon pattern to see some phosphorus import um you're adding all this nitrogen so to balance that you might need to you you know get some phosphorus from somewhere phosphorus has to leave too well right but it's being retained because it's needed in there to support the growth W okay to support the productivity of the organisms the plants producers does that make sense Tom John Tom I think this is great this is really nice stuff I I like the the mass balancing the black boxing and stuff and I'm encouraging Ken to keep at it Ken what you you might anticipate is that that little average of the EB where you had the pink if you do that from year to year right you would anticipate that it ought to gradually decreased I wish we could have studied it in this detail starting back in 2016 and had a totally parallel data set with the groundwater that would have been a phenomenal uh study we you know but it's expensive expensive to do the work but that of course is our objective exactly and and also when we look at so we you know we also have signs out there measuring total uh productivity we have some some of uh Matt Long's equipment from houie uh also measuring productivity and oxygen Dynamics and so you know we're expecting to see changes in the uh daily Excursion in oxygen less hypoxic an oxic events um you know I've I've gone out there there's 200% super saturation in the middle of summer uh there's so much productivity but uh then you get a couple cloudy days and and you have a hypoxic event um I would think over time we'd see that basically tail off into a narrower range John one question it looked like in the last three or four years for the nitrogen it was starting to level off and it was almost flat yeah do you think that's I think just a blip statistically and ultimately the long-term Trend should be to drive it down further so we I didn't show this slide but uh if I make certain assumptions I can take the decline in groundwater inputs and convert that into a actual loading estimate and as I understand it the plan was to remove about 5,000 kg um in loading and we're at about 4500 kilg reduction in loading so I think based on the amount of sewering that's been done we're pretty close to uh you know the end on what we might see for improvements it may drift a little bit you know down further over time but uh if all happened a lot quicker than I anticipated but uh Steve mentioned that USGS did a a survey that survey on the maravista peninsula predicted about a 2year uh lag mhm yeah and that's kind of what we saw y much so um there I'm I'm always amazed when things agree when the mo when the model turns out dead the model worked heav you forbid I I would say this and not to prolong it but you know the Dynamics of the Little Pond neighborhood are extremely unique it's just probably one of the most thorough studies that's been done on sewering effect of an extremely densely popularity uh populated area the house has changed dramatically since the seing more converted to mini Mansions year round occupancy and the sewer takes care of the human discharge but man there's some real big Lawns that are heavily heavily some pretty green Lawns out there there some pretty weren't there 10 years ago the other thing that i' I've noticed and a couple of the residents have commented on as well is when we get when they get a big rainfall event there 's a lot of runoff um and we've seen it in the pond level I mean the inlet is so constricted that if there's a large rainfall event we might see you know a half a meter increase in the pond level uh from fresh water uh accumulating in there and that also a lot of sediment and other stuff very large storm water retention Basin delivered in there right so that you know if that I I I thought that might be one area where if if something you know useful was going to come out of this that we might think more about some kind of storm water management for the pond system uh to accommodate that because there's you know a lot of little roads that end right at the edge of the pond but the volume is half a meter times the area of the pond that's one heck of a big tension yeah well remember it's not the area of the pond is area of the Watershed it's draining into the pond but Steve just said that or somebody just said that the level of the pond sometimes goes up half a meter I I've seen it increase by that amount and then you you know over a period of days it drains out but you're collecting from a much larger area right right I'm I'm not saying it doesn't happen I'm saying that since it does happen anyone who proposes a retention system to stop it from happening yeah has to find an alternate location that has one heck of a big volume yeah all right last item of business there's no debate there's no debate on this this motion I move we adjourn second yes okay thank you Ken that was good