5 at two 203 um do the roll call thomas Bradford here brad here russ Redmond clay Damon
joenta here michelle Shouse here wade Chance okay um approval of agenda uh first off I have some deletions uh number three under presentations Marjorie Craig is
not going to be able to do it this month uh I think she's going to do it in in uh May and number five under new business uh we have to delete that and uh we can discuss it uh after the presentations or
during uh committee comments later on uh does anyone else have any additions deletions evolutions can I get a motion to approve the Yeah I'll make a motion to approve the agenda as modified
i second okay all those in favor i no nays um citizens you are citizens so but we'll go straight to our presentations um so first up we have uh Bud Howard
director of information services at the Lock Hatchee River Environmental Control District uh he is going to discuss Lockxahhatchee River Environmental Monitoring Program and some information on storm water runoff throw in some storm water talk to you good if we can
put that in presentation mode landscape to look at it no worries i think that on the lower left there that screwed in there perfect all right thanks for
inviting me to come speak with you here um long long what 15 years almost in Tquesta almost 40 plus in in the Jupiter and Tquesta area uh I've worked variety different roles private environmental
consulting worked for Palm Beach County environmental resources for a number of years uh Taylor Engineering who you'll actually get to hear some of the work that they've done highly respected engineering firm out of Jacksonville and then the past uh 15 or 16 years I guess
I've been over at the Lock Hatche River District so one of the division directors over there wear a few different hats managing the laboratory um the customer service department on the wastewater side and then the IT shop so appreciate you uh inviting me to
come so uh for those who aren't familiar District is the company you pay your sewer bill to but we also do a lot more than that we're a independent special district so we have a publicly elected governing board and uh our main order of business is providing the serving as the
regional wastewater utility um each day we're treat treating six to seven million gallons of waste water that comes out of our houses and businesses and that water gets treated to a high level and then goes back out to many of the area golf courses for landscape irrigation as well as communities like
Abakcoa and uh also involved in environmental education we have our education facility over at Bert Reynolds Park off of US1 and then we also operate the Wild Pine Lab which supports our wastewater treatment plant operations but then also
they switch hats and do extensive work on the river and that's what I'm largely talking about today so as far as uh getting familiar many people I don't think appreciate how extensive Hatche River is um I don't
think the pointer is going to work on this but you can see you got Jupiter inlet down there these are mile markers that you see in the ovals and the main northwest fork of the river runs all the way up to the north goes into Jonathan Dickinson State Park but then loops back
around to the south and actually meets up with Riverbend Park and so um to kind of take you on a virtual tour of that if you haven't done it already the upper stretch of the river is truly remarkable uh this time of year especially the
cypress trees have greened out and that section of the wild and scenic river is beautiful rent a kayak from Riverbend Park and paddle down to Masten Dam and back is my favorite trip to do especially this time of year moving down the estuary we start to get to the where
we've transitioned from the freshwater cypress swamp to more uh the areas that receive some marine waters so you transition into the salt salty mix salt and freshwater area vegetation switches to mangroves and we see uh oyster
habitat which uh has been prevalent in the river in different areas over the decades i'll touch on some of that moving further downstream obviously we're into the lower estuary where most of us like to go and many of us go out and have fun and experience it and this
area obviously from an ecological perspective is receiving marine water twice a day with each incoming tide and then during outgoing tide can get a meaningful amount of fresh water as it's running off the landscape
so I think many of us in the community have a tendency to kind of take this river for granted and it's interesting to me that leadership in the community has been so progressive in doing so many things to help protect it and get this
recognized as a real landmark it's you know it's not just it's kind of nice it's a federally designated wild and scenic river one of only two in Florida it's part of the state aquatic preserve system that whole area in the lower estuary is all part of that aquatic
preserve which affords special protections and then the inter coastal waterway to the to the north is part of the Indian River Lagoon system so it's a special special place that we all get to live in uh today I want to touch on some of the different monitoring programs
that we do out of the laboratory a whole variety of water quality work we do weekly bacteria testing we walked into Publix right now and surveyed people i think bacteria would be one of the areas that they're most interested in um we have a volunteer water quality program
where some folks go out and look at some of the basic parameters each week and then we have our comprehensive monitoring program that we call RiverKeeper and we're going out to sites monthly quarterly many parameters that we're looking at uh and many different
sites we've partnered with folks at Jupiter or at uh the uh the park and other areas that where they're helping us collect samples and bring those in we also have some instrumentation in the river that helps us really get a careful
eye on primarily salinity salinity is an important factor with the management of the river to to try to understand what's happening with flows and how marine waters are entering into the areas that were historically uh cypress swamps and more freshwater
dominated system so that's a big part of the restoration work for the river we have a couple different seaggrass projects and we've been involved in a variety of oyster work and obviously we're not doing this work by ourselves there's other people in the area doing this department of Health does uh
sampling for bacteria along the beaches and Dubo Park I guess was closed as of today surf Rider Foundation does some work on bacteria water management district and department of environmental protection just about everything that I'm presenting to you today is available
on our website you can go the the short version is lcd.org and that big prominent protecting the river button has a whole slew of different things really take pride in trying to make everything that we do available to the public in a easy to
consume you know form so jumping into the bacteria program so this one is really interesting in the sense that east of I95 um just about well over 99% of all the
properties east of 95 are on centralized sewer so there's no septic systems oftent times you associate bacteria testing with looking for pathogens that are flowing out of septic tanks in Florida the water table's really shallow or really high and you don't have the
dry area for septic systems to be effective at providing good treatment particularly during the dry season or wet season so when we're looking at bacteria in the waterways there's a bit of a dilemma and Jay and I were just chatting that in California we've interacted with some of
their scientists to try to better understand this and be like "Look we don't have septic systems but we're still seeing high bacteria how does this work?" And they're like "Well what are you worried about if you don't have septic systems and you don't have septic effluent you guys are good." But not
it's not necessarily the case because there's high bacteria that can come off of the the landscape from dog waste oddly enough uh grass clippings you put those in a bucket your bacteria counts for antic bacteria which is what we're looking at and these are whole groups of
bacteria go off the chart so most of us I think feel comfortable letting our kids play in the you know on a grassy field but um I think the for me as a scientist the concern starts to be
high bacteria in the water independent of what kind it is is something to be taken into account especially when you have really high counts and you're dealing with kids and people with compromised immune systems so the fact that we can't to a bottle of water and
say "Is that dangerous or not?" is kind of frustrating from a science perspective but I think we're using tools to help us kind of gauge like you know at arms length how is this water so building on EPA's Beachw Watch program which the Department of Health
runs for all along the coastal beach uh beaches of Florida there's testing that goes on including Dubo Park we sample the areas that are popular for recreation and those as we speak right now they're collecting this week's sample and it gives you a an idea of
what things look like last week we had a little bit of elevated uh concentration at the Tquesta bridge and you know I use this information for my own personal use to to gauge is this a good week for my son and I to go out and go water skiing
in the river when I start seeing that the the value that turns that red is 71 which is the EPA's value the beach action value it's the same one that Department of Health and EPA uses it's a very conservative number i can tell you
it's not until those numbers start getting into the several several hundreds do I go eh maybe it's not such a good day to go out and certainly if they go into the thousands it's like yeah definitely don't want to be in the water so again back to the idea that everything that's on our yards and streets is going into the river or
oftent times going to the river and causing these increased concentrations of bacteria here's a way to kind of know you know what's happening out there the riverkeeper program again much more comprehensive whole slew of different
sites on the right hand side you'll see a whole list of parameters that we've looked at we may not actively be looking at for example sucralose which is the artificial sweetener but we've done projects and we made that data available but we do sample a whole slew of those every uh month and every quarter
throughout the the uh watershed and we've been doing this since 1991 so it's not like oh we've got a handful of samples we got thousands upon thousands of samples one of the neat things that uh we do is serve this data up on data
visualizations on our web page and for example here we've got three different types of bacteria the entic in the lower left which is uh the state uh bacteria standard for uh for brackish waters then up in the upper right is the E.coli
which is the newer standard the state standard for uh fresh waters and then kind of for historical context we still do feal caulifform bacteria and you can see there's some color on there we're doing some work in Jones Creek trying to understand what's happening there
there's been a whole slew of interesting work to try to improve water quality in that area and it's good uh there's a lot more green thankfully than red and some of those reds are kind of concentrated in areas that we know are compromised but we're trying to better understand
them so you can select on the lefth hand side the month that you're interested i roll those into annual s summaries so you can look at those you can zoom in in and out of the map you can hover on an individual data point to see the value so on and so forth so in the bottom
center there I show you the page selectors we got 12 different pages of maps and things that we show this one happens to be for the nutrients summarized on an annualized basis and it creates a pie chart over the sample size to kind of show you the proportion of samples that meet the water quality
standard or fail to meet the state and federal water quality standard so here we've got nitrogen in the lower left phosphorus in the upper right and chlorophyll in the lower right uh the chlorophyll standards are super stringent we you know the folks at EPA
as they were establishing these water quality criteria said that we had so much data that we basically broke their model and so they they agreed that the super stringent values that they've set for us as far as the water quality
standard are probably pretty challenging to meet but the feeling is they can't recreate the model to work with our data so we don't put as much stock into things that we see there although there's times where you see chlorophyll values that are like whoa that's that's you know we've got some crazy algae
cooking in the river so again you can select the the uh the years so on and so forth and be able to see that data and then if you're really geeking out um you can go to different pages that show you the parameter select
the year select the station it'll draw a little chart for you and again if you want to see the data a different way give me a call and we can probably build it moving on to the instrumentation we have in the lower left there a map you can kind of see we've got three stations
that I selected on here one of them is North Bay which is the furthest down right below the work toqua just west of the railroad tracks further upstream kind of in the banyan tree area that you may be familiar with as the river starts to narrow a little bit there's um the
North Bay or the uh North Bay site no sorry other way around north Bay is just west of the railroad track oyster upstream is the banyan tree and then the kitchen creek is well into Jonathan Dickinson State Park so what we're showing here is the 15minute
observations of salinity so you can see as the tide fluctuates you can see the changes in salinity this is two-month period last spring i grabbed May through through June and you can see that at the Kitchen Creek Station which is the red we're
seeing marine waters come all the way up to that area that should be staying fresh so anything above two PSU which is on the you know the scales on the left hand side you can see that's not a good thing if you're a cypress tree seedling
you're struggling because the surrounding area is so has so much salt in it but then you can see the rainy season started with a vengeance and all of a sudden that red line just went pure fresh and so you see no fluctuation in
that in the middle we're seeing the oyster area up near the banyan tree and so you can see that bops around between 20 and 30 during the dry season then the wet season comes and now during the outgoing tide huge swings in salinity it's truly remarkable how so many
organisms that inhabit the oyster reefs can make a living in such a challenging condition where it's pure fresh almost and then pure salt all within a you know 12 hour six hour period and then downstream by the railroad tracks you can see we stay pretty marine during the
dry season you start to get a little dip um but nothing too crazy so if you're an organism in a seaggrass if you're going below 15 that starts to get stressful but you can see here the black line doesn't go that low so kind of a neat illustration of just crazy fluctuations
in in salinity jay do you have a question feel free to interrupt no yeah so two things I hope two uh take-home messages that I hope you'll take home from from my talk with you today is um you know we get so many You
know I think the so many people in the community just see the brown water and they're like "Oh this water's terrible it's polluted." And I can tell you that with data sets that go back what 40 years now we've got thousands of
observations that show that brown water is not polluted water and in fact we're so fortunate to live here because the the water the wersheds that feed the river are remarkably pristine palm Beach
County and other agencies have been masters at accumulating South Florida water management huge areas of land and that's where this water's coming from so this picture I took in the inset picture in at Riverbend Park i mean that's a
classic example what we see is the the leaves come out of the trees they start to decay the tannins come out it's just like tea and then that water is still very high quality but then ultimately washes into the river so that's message
number one ground water is not polluted water and we got a heck of a lot of data to support that the other one is the Lockxahche River is not connected to Lake Okachchobee and those two kind of go hand in hand people are like "Oh my gosh all this brown water i wish they'd
closed the locks on Lake Okachchobee." We're not connected to Lake Okachchobee the C44 canal is part of the St lucy watershed and we it's not like we've got water coming back and forth amongst those so when you see the S46 structure which is back there by Duffy's open
that's water that's coming from the west and from the south and you know Lockxahhatchee uh Slooh and all these other huge natural areas that are discharging really nice clean water to the
river um moving on to seaggrass we have a couple different projects the patch scale in the upper left the red dots kind of show some of the sites that were monitoring we try to have kind of an upstream downstream gradient these aren't the lush beautiful seagrasses that you may see in Florida Bay or
Biscane Bay or the Bahamas they're more sparse they're you know kind of dimminionative but the habitat value no doubt is still there right you can go through find baby seahorses you know you can sain met we've got decades worth of
work that we've done with the Jupiter uh environmental academy folks doing all kinds of work catching all kinds of amazing juvenile fish that spend part of their life cycle in the estuary in these habitats the seaggrass story has been disappointing right we going back to
2008 here it's just been a del you know downward trend we have some like glimmer of hope um that middle chart is kind of the overall trend of all the sites the bottom chart is the the the time series of the different sites the two that fell
totally out of the out of the chart there are the two most upstream sites so our feeling is that the amount of rainfall when you look at a historical record of the annualized rainfall we've been in a period of increased rainfall
definitely not a drought on an annualized basis so last year that started to shift around where we had less rainfall than we've had in many years prior so maybe is that part of the increase that we're seeing so we're somewhat encouraged by that and hope it
at least you know stops going down so fast uh the other project we do every few years is the landscape scale where we go out and basically shotgun blast the entire estuary in water depths that we think may support seaggrasses and you
get an idea the green or continuous or a big 9 by nine or 3x3 meter quadrant uh is cover has grasses in all the individual cells and then patchy kind of a mix and then sparse only maybe only
one or two or three uh of the cells in the nine square meter quadrant have have grass so you can see there's some outliers way up in the northwest Fork there's a few areas of some sprigs of seaggrass that we may encounter but most of it's down in the lower estie in the areas that you would expect with the the
nice clear uh water particular that we see particular in the summer so obviously a lot going on here and um with regard to the causes of this I you know I think most likely it's a combination of many factors and disease
and who knows what else is going on um but certainly the relationship to the rainfall and the amount of fresh water that's coming into the system is got to be an important one um the organics and muck that I'll touch on here in a few minutes is another one um areas that are
just you know you sink up to your knees and and just ooze and obviously seaggrasses can't make a living there sand accumulation in the lower estster area I think is another one uh we've seen you know we've documented increases in elevation of areas that now are
experienced to more uh exposed areas during during low tide and you know what 30 40 years ago a 25 foot um you know make was a big boat and nowadays that's a whole different game I mean the wake
that a 40 foot center console throws is very different from a you know from an energy standpoint than a small boat so um We see that as evidenced with scour and the erosion kind of in that photo so
interestingly we're seeing changes though in seaggrasses all throughout the state and elsewhere the International Union of Conservation and Nature did a study years ago where they documented worldwide kind of an average of 7% seaggrass uh loss globally when you
annual annualize that big long trend chart 7% it's crazy so hopefully we're turning things around and and it's getting better uh touching on oysters um you know they're amazing have an amazing
capacity to filter water but I think the bi more interesting aspect is the biological value with regard to habitat value my favorite expression is every nook and cranny of an oyster reef is a is a critter condominium and it's so true we can take our aluminum boat and
there's so much life with an activity with like pistol shrimp and all kinds of organisms making noise that you can actually hear it through the deck of the boat when you pull over it so again amazing number in the locks we've documented over 300 species we had a
partnership with scientists at FIU for a period of time um historically widespread throughout the the estuary there's pictures of mining Oyster Reef off the this the sandbar that's in the central embment they actually the Jupiter Inlet District did a a project
to improve water quality where they removed and dredged oysters near the railroad tracks i mean it's just like we look back and it's it's so interesting how things got so twisted around but nonetheless we still have some healthy beds particularly in further upstream
than they were historically and that's probably a function of how the inlet is managed because it's wider and deeper and more marine water's coming through so that area that we showed you on the data data with the big fluctuations in salinity is further upstream
now we did some restoration projects years ago where we did a pilot project looking we felt like that you know we're in an area we know can support oysters we put uh bagged oyster shell beneath residential docks that worked
with us and they those areas flourished we did that in coordination with the nature comp nature conservancy and then uh the high school's environmental academy a couple years later we were able to take it really big scale and did a large scale restoration project again
kind of in that banyan tree area because we knew there was a high probability of success because of that's where the best oysters in the river were and was able to build you know acres and acres of this pretty amazing uh experience to take a a fossilized shell or an oyster
shell from a restaurant we were able to get some shell that came up as part of the beach nourishment project on one of the the Juno beach nourishment project and use that as the the culch is the term that is used for that and literally in the span of a few months the
colonization is and the growth oysters is pretty remarkable so fun project ultimately we ended up with uh you know these areas we did a little experimental project in the redu uh promptly unfortunately sunk into that ooze and
muck that I was telling you about the sites 13 and 14 are flourishing especially 13 i think there's flow better flow through that area and it's it's gone gang busters and then the yellow dots show the docks that that we worked uh worked with the property
owners on that um one last thing I wanted to touch on was while we're really fortunate to enjoy some you know a good healthy river um the DP and the EPA have a program where they're going around and testing
waterheds all throughout the state of Florida as part of you know their efforts to make sure that we're complying with Clean Water Act and various other things and so to be able to uh as part of those assessments we have impairments in the in the
Lockxahhatche River for bacteria for dissolved oxygen for various things depending on which little area that we're looking at so several years ago um D approached us and uh fortunately there's a very organized
group of uh stakeholders for the Locket River and they're legislative assigned council uh that the village of Tquesta is a member but it's called the Loxetry River Management Coordinating Council so because DP had a an audience of all the
stakeholders in one room to start with they said "Hey can you help foster this process um that helps hopefully drive um get getting these different water bodies to restoration and you may have heard of
the TMDL program which is a a pretty heavy-handed approach to where the the state comes in and sets targets and then goes through the process the management coordinating council and D agreed to work on a kinder and gentler approach if
you will through what's called a reasonable assurance plan and so we went through uh documented all the projects that are have recently been completed what monitoring works going on and with this effort of this is the the pollution
reduction plan that we're all collectively working towards to make progress and hopefully get to that point where the the river system is no longer impaired so this you know each year I compile the list for the for the submitt to the
state and there's you know dozens and dozens of projects that are underway that hopefully will help uh provide those improvements interestingly what one of them is that it's been uh that the town of Jupiter is doing is like the
village of Tquesta they discharge currently discharge their reverse osmosis uh uh byproducts to the river in the southwest and so I didn't appreciate the amount of nitrogen in that in that discharge it's
a real number and so I think the town of Jupiter being proactive said you know regulatory wise this probably isn't going to fly in the future and they've built a deep well or they're in the process of of uh building a deep
injection well very expensive project very complicated but it's going to be their their discharge site and so that's going to result in a huge reduction in nitrogen loading which it'll be interesting to see if we get the predicted response and improvement to
water quality so the other areas with regard to storm water and so here I'm taking off my district hat and I want to come to you as a resident and I feel like there's some things that we can be doing collectively um you know even
partner-wise I mean I send out 34,000 bills every quarter on the sewer bill side maybe there's ways to to help educate the public but the storm water systems in so many communities in our area were designed with one thing in
mind get the water off the landscape as quickly as possible right there's no treatment that storm water drain in the upper right is in front of my yard and before when the lot was vacant for a period of time across the street you my son was little and he'd shout into the
man into that storm drain and you could hear it echo out the out across the river because the the drain literally goes straight out to the river there and so in this type of design system again these were all installed in probably what the
60s you know it's just it's getting the water off the landscape so all the grass clippings that we see residents and and landscape workers blowing straight into the um storm drain system which are we know are loaded with bacteria uh leaf
debris dirt has crazy amounts of nitrogen in it dog waste all the fluids dripping out of cars so on and so forth all that stuff is going straight to the river and so I really feel like there's some opportunities here to try to to
make some improvements and I think one of the things that I want to try to do is try to help people make the connection between what's going in your storm drain and what you will find in the river with regard to these organic sediments which are a biological dead
zone right there's I mean it's like hydrogen sulfide you know bacteria is about the only thing that you got going there and so the seaggrasses can't live in it very few organisms do and so I think helping people understand what's
going into that storm drain is contributing to this to this sources of these of these muck sediments and it's not the only reason right there's other biochemical things going on but there's There's this great analogy of the pollution pie right and
imagine your pie chart of different sources of pollution you know so many things that are going in the storm drain are things that we can do stuff about right whether it's figuring out ways to improve the swailes so water's not running straight to it various other
things so again you know this system was designed to move water quickly this you know the elevations within our neighborhood is such to get the water to the storm drain and then that storm drain goes out uh up on the the upper
one there you can see that little delta forming that shows that meaningful amounts of sediment are coming out through there further off this map is yet another one and you can see there's a good accumulation of sand there that's the coarse sediment think of you know
all the fine sediments that were with these that then just went out into the river settled out and now are helping contribute to those organic rich the monkey sediments so you don't have to look far to figure out where this stuff is coming
from right these are pro pictures that I've taken in my neighborhood driving home from work who knows what you know when they're coming in working on project on sites on you know within the neighborhood there's little to no turbidity controls you've got leaves
dirt debris there's evidence of people dropping paint pouring paint in there um trash you get the You get the idea it we really I think need to try to improve what's happening here and help people understand the significance of it this
one's so classic right the emblem that is on each of the storm drains is so b so covered in paint you can't even tell what it says anymore this one was a curious story you know I I sent it off to the to the village staff and you know
the homeowner the developer rather wrote the most scathing email back is that you know this is not a problem and the village staff should be working on other stuff that's more important with regard to trying to protect the river i'm telling you from a science protect
perspective you got paint and grout and dirt and who knows what the pump was discharging and all these things that literally are going straight to the river this is fundamentally wrong and I hope that we can all work together to try to improve it another example that I
see every day on the drive home from work you know big construction project at this house that's been going on for well over a year and you know during a rainstorm that area you know shows a six foot wide swath of water that's just running straight to the nearest storm
drain and then going out to the river and again you got the core sediments that are settling out fast but then you got a whole slew of fines that are going out and and contributing to that poor water quality so my challenge is is this i hope that
um the village of Tquesta can can work towards being a leader in the whole storm water you know arena i have an uncle who lives in Kentucky but he also has a place in Santael Island and I feel like I don't know where who's led the
charge over there but his depth of knowledge as it relates to storm water issues and water quality issues is mindboggling they got it right i mean they were leaders in the whole fertilizer ordinance where he's like militant with his landscape crews about what they're
going to do when they're going to do it how much they're going to use on his yard all these different things and to be able to build that culture of appreciation for for the the river and the environment in this in this area would be would be helpful I think you
know Lockachi River District we'd love to partner uh village of our or town of Jupiter is in the same situation with the older communities and all these opportunities for figuring out ways to educate the public but then try to improve it i think on the residents it's
so easy it's human nature to say "Oh that's you know that's not our problem we're not causing that problem." But it we are right whether it's our landscape crews or ourselves I'm shocked by every time I cut my grass how much dog waste is still in there some people pick it up
right but others don't and that literally is going straight to the river in the next rainstorm the construction site stuff that one I feel like there's a lot of opportunity there what if you know with people getting assigned a permit they
got handed a shiny sheet that said listen these things are unacceptable in the village of Tquesta you need turbidity controls you need to manage the site properly and then being able to have the monitoring and the enforcement when some when somebody's doing
something wrong that they're swift and severe consequences right now it doesn't seem to be the case and we could hop in the car right now and go for a ride and see numerous instances of that and then lastly I do want to shout out I'm disappointed Marjorie is not here because I wanted to
give a shout out to her crew and um you know the storm I don't know what happened in the past with regard to the funds that were collected as part of the storm water uh fees but they weren't going to rehabilitation but now they are
again tip of the hat to the to the senior management here at the village i had a pipe collapse you know the the storm water pipe that ran right through the side of my yard collapsed caused a big sinkhole they've lined all those pipes now so they're they're functioning
as they should something that I think has been interesting that the town of Jupiter did was the swale restoration i think in many of our neighborhoods the grass has grown up over the decades and so now when the rain comes it can't flow off the off the road into the swale like
you see in the lower right photo there because there's that ledge of grass so it kind of forms a river and then it goes straight to the storm drain there's tons of grant opportunities the state has an amazing water quality improvement grants we have impairments documented
impairments we have a reasonable assurance plan all those things help with scoring partnerships again gladly contribute to that from monitoring standpoint whatever I think there's opportunities and then it's required
right the village of Questa is part of the municipal storm water blah blah blah system which is the MS4 and the national pollution uh elimination system it's NPDES so the town in town of Jupiter
village of Questa all these different storm water utilities participate in this Palm Beach Countywide effort that's the website under the NPDES they're permitted to operate their storm water system but part of that permit has requirements for compliance
with the sto with the Clean Water Act and so rules that are on the village code are designed to help support that there's rules at the state and federal level there's teeth right there's this doesn't have to be like oh well we can't really enforce it heck yeah there's
plenty of opportunities for enforcement so I challenge everybody to do it i want to tip the hat to whoever was involved with this i got to tell you I was so excited when I opened the smoke signals last last month and saw these figures i mean this is a great start we're helping
people understand that it's not like other people other areas of the country where the storm drain and the sewer system are connected it's separate here right marxi River District's treating those the waste water coming out of your house storm drains unfortunately are
going straight to the river but let's help the public make the connection between that storm drain bacteria in the river i mean most of our kids and we were just joking the other night my kid used to hop off the bus in elementary school and run and jump straight in the
river and go and have fun right i mean we want that for our kids and grandkids and friends so let's make the connection between the storm drain the river bacteria the vegetation going in there causing these types of things dirt trash all that
stuff contributing to the muck right if we show people the muck or talk about bacteria those are two things I think that really speak to folks all right last but not least another program that's really been interesting that we're involved with is wastewater surveillance during COVID we
were able to get engaged very early on with a company that was leading the charge testing for fragments of COVID at the molecular level in our wastewater stream and so you know what's happening in your community with regard to
different illnesses so there's the Biobot team that we did that we we work with but then um Verily which is a a life sciences division of Alphabet which used to be Google uh partnered with scientists from Stanford and Emory and
they have expanded this to look at all kinds of different illnesses and so we're part of that program every week we're collecting three samples monday Wednesday Friday we collect samples uh for the waste for the wastewater scan program and then the biobot programs
once a week too so we have different sources it's fun to kind of see the different methodologies provide different results up in the upper left there you can change the time series right now we're looking at six months worth of data you can see watch COVID run in the community had a good run at influenza A this year last year we had a
good run at influenza B and to me it's fun to watch this information and to be able to kind of be tuned in to what's happening and when some of these things are running it's like well maybe we'll eat in tonight rather than going out to a busy restaurant and uh so it's kind of
cool information that we're doing that's on the Lockahhatche it's on the Lockache River District website and it's there's a red and white box right now and it's called wastewater surveillance you can get to it there so with that awesome
thank you i'll entertain any questions if you want question i'm interested in that last thing so when you take the the samples is that just a sort of one one unit one time sample or is it like an ongoing where
you can really kind of monitor it right so it's a 24hour uh we have a a sampling device that samples it's a flow proportion sample so everything that comes into our wastewater treatment plant for 24 hours is basically captured in that sample and then we send that off
and so then they're looking for the fragments of those different pathogens that identify that and so each you know we shed huge volumes of these pathogens and then those fragments then are are picked up in the wastewater stream it's pretty remarkable stuff
so the the photos that you showed of the two it was like two different homes in toquest that were under construction yeah um you know I've seen many projects in different places in Florida and
elsewhere where I'm sorry where the u uh the perimeter of the project area has like a little fence made of plastic or something to keep debris from flowing like into a water body or to the neighbor or onto the street right
um are you aware of any other local governments in this area doing that sort of thing particularly when the the property is on the water it seems like something barrier like that would be helpful absolutely and I haven't studied the village code but I would expect that
some level of turbidity control for the property is is probably already there and so it's not just there's many ways to to help manage this right there's companies that have developed devices that you put
in the storm drains to help prevent things from going into it we did a project with the town of Jupiter that has some of these installed i can tell you that you know they're they're helpful right but they require maintenance and are they overwhelmed
during the big storms i you know there's always a concern about the storm drain not functioning properly because of a device in it to help prevent the dirt and all the other stuff going into into this into the system so there's some that are designed just for construction
and that's all part of those best management practices that's that's a requirement and so whether it's you know different devices around the property with silk fence or or things to protect the storm drains or both that's all part
of that yeah i noticed the storm drains I mean in other places I worked we would require in that circumstance for the storm drain to be surrounded by a filtration bag right that you know helped right maybe not absolutely
perfect but it's better than nothing nothing that I saw in those photos i just want to share something with everybody and I'll shut up the 35 about exactly 35 years ago I was
walking went for a walk in Wineheim Germany okay and being the public works nerd that I am I looked at the storm drains as I was watch walking and I looked closer and closer and I
realized you could you could remove the bars that kept people's feet from going into the drain and you know you know on a swimming pool how they have that that that uh the skimmer and the thing they literally have in everyone
a brass skimmer ba b that they pull up and it was so small that you know it was smaller than the baskets you use on your swimming pool right so I asked my brother-in-law I said "What?" He said "Every time it rains the city comes and
cleans out those bucket things that's 35 years ago that's that's kind of what we need to be doing right now right and and again back to Marjorie I wish she was here to understand like what things are they struggling
with right is it people going to council saying "Do you guys really going to bust my chops about this?" I I don't know right you know hopefully council supports this kind of idea and says "Hey let's let's try to be like Santael where it's common knowledge and folks are you
know embrace the opportunity to protect the amazing river that we get to all enjoy so yeah we need stricter enforcement in in things even beyond the environment
I don't know what it is uh but you know I always believed in I think the saying is something like walk softly and carry a big stick i mean so you know you can be nice you can say this is how it should be done this is what the code
says and if you get any back talk then out comes the big stick right and that that's just I can't believe that that developer told our people to take a hike in a very colorful and that's just un
unacceptable right but thanks for letting me know about it yeah and and two I think it's one of these things where decades ago I would come home from college and man to Questa had the reputation is you don't speed two miles
an hour over the speed limit because you'll get a ticket i mean that was just the mindset in the community it's like man the second you round into Questa look out they're they're gonna why not have a similar type of thing for developers that come and do work here that how they need to manage their their
work site yes as well as residents that sit there and blow all the grass and and leaves and other debris straight into the storm drain right i mean I think in many cases it's just like they didn't have a clue of like oh you mean that connects and goes right there and then
back to the picture of the organic sediments and buck that it's like hey if we want to keep that out we need to keep this out of the storm drain so if I can jump in real quick um we do have a new building official since probably the last time or since that encounter
happened um and we do have a construction site maintenance manual that the building department manages i don't deal with it so I can't share enough but um I can have Wayne the building official come here and I texted Marjorie to come in so she's here i'm trying to get Wayne to come in too but I
don't think he's in the office how you doing how are you doing i do have a question um when you mentioned the um Jupiter's new well for the discharge what are your thoughts on Questa's discharge like how do you So I haven't
done the math on that to know the significance of it talking about town Jupiter's deep wall as it relates to the insurance plan so um it's one of those that you know again it's it's a mathematical calculation
you know there's there's a phrase dilution is the solution right the Tquesta's discharge site is on or at least was on the US1 bridge and you know we know there's a heck of a lot of water moving through there but at the end of
the day there's at based on the calculations for the town of Jupiters and they're granted a different scale than the village but the numbers were staggering on how much nitrogen's in that water and so back to the long-term planning how are we going to manage this
what's going to be allowed regulatory standpoint you know is it one of those that down the road 20 years from now it's used to be like you know wastewater treatment plants could discharge their treated water offshore well you can't do that anymore right so is the village
going to be in a situation where they can't discharge their RO water i mentioned it in the in the context of it was striking to me how much nitrogen was in there and if that nitrogen gets removed the reassurance plan models show
that the impairments in the river should go away and we should be in really even better shape than we already are so it's something we really should start talking about I think for Tquesta for the future it seems it seems like it would be prudent right thank you
so I'm not aware that we're putting any nitrogen part of the question so I came here wearing two hats right one of them is a concerned resident with the opportunities for improvements on storm water and I and my my plea to them and
is to hopefully engage council to support staff so that you guys can get the enforcement stick that you may need on some of these commercial properties or development properties that are under development and then there's other things that I feel like we can all be
doing to help educate the public and to me there's two I feel like we can get some traction one is with regard to educating about people about what goes in the storm drain results in muck and organic sediments are part of that results in muck and organic sediments in the river which then cascades to
seagrasses and all these other things and then the other one is bacteria right so many of our kids playing in the river if we survey people in Publix bacteria are a concern and so when the grass clippings go in that crazy cruel study where this guy literally took handful of
grass and put it in a bucket and the bacteria counts go off this off the chart that's part of maybe what's you know driving what we're seeing in the river so helping staff have the support that they need to be able to make
improvements on construction sites and on these other things I guess right i mean yeah that's I shared with them i didn't I expressed that I brought the one site to your attention and the scathing email that
you shared with me from the person who happens to live on the river um it just baffles me people's mentality and their lack of responsibility and willingness to try to do the right thing yeah we were the bad guys
but if you can hang out just for a little bit i have a couple more questions but I just like stepped out because I thought there was a question that you could maybe answer what was the question that you I think Bud said he wish was here can is there
things that they can do to help support you i guess to to have a bigger stick we'll talk about that the answer is maybe probably you know I feel like we've got support from this group in the past for
sure um I think the enforcement side's our building official because he's the one that manages the construction sites so um what I can do is do a followup at the next EAC meeting and I'll have him come you'll already be here for another presentation for another presentation so we could have some kind of followup with
them about the enforcement side if you if you guys want to have that so we do do the inspections for the storm water um and and if we if our like my team member went out and looked when we got the complaint from BUD and looked at and then let building official because
building official is really the only one that can site that has the authority to site him but we'll inspect you know we can inspect it and bring to the attention of the building official and an official capacity great for sure thank you thanks thank you
so Michelle just a quick question first of all thank you so much you're very articulate in conveying your expansive knowledge to us as layman's for this field but and appreciate the time and education is always something that I
always fall into right away as as the more times a person sees a piece of information or marketing whatever the the more we can ingrain it into a culture so from our perspective as a
committee to maybe recommend from council is to continue with what you just showed in uh smoke signals but also to maybe target and ex um extend that information to our COAs and HOAs in the
village so that they will reprint it again in their newsletters and communications and any other opportunities that would come across village may not know may have that we can keep conveying that because just that visual on that one graphic with the
storm water I don't think a lot of people like you said realize what where where's that drain go nowhere um quick question pool drainage when people have to drain their pools and I see that hose going right down into that chlorinated water that can't be a good right does it
dissipate fast enough in the river to not create an issue there's the legal side and then the my opinion side so the legal side and I I looked into this with D the the permit your NPDES permit says
that has to be noninated sorry non chlorinated so what you can do is neutralize the chlorine in your pool and then discharge it that's the perfect way to do it okay that's a good piece to also communicate if it's low
concentrated chlorine i mean again I can't imagine that's having a bad effect right even some low flowing pump i mean again it's not one that freaks me out compared to like a whole bucket full of grout and paint being poured into it
doesn't uh Okay doesn't your agency require a permit to discharge it into the sewer system oh to the sewer system yeah okay so that Yeah that that some of those bigger
pumps can quickly overwhelm our system and so that's where there needs to be coordination i think the easiest thing is to neutralize the the chlorine in it or let it go to a very low level um and then just you can discharge it to store i think that that's actually D's
recommendation and to send it to the wastewater treatment plan is you know more cumbersome right good okay um so the slide about dirty water isn't polluted
water so I I know a few people that live along the water and have lived there for 40 50 plus years yeah and the one thing they consistently tell me is man back whatever in the 60s and 70s the water was so clear right so if
it's not pollution and it's tannins or whatever is the tannin level increasing or is it is it runoff and the pollutants that come with that runoff so I can tell you from a water quality perspective
that the overwhelming majority of the time we could go test anything in the most you know any time of year and during outgoing tide and that water quality is pretty decent right so I think the whole idea of you know the
water used to be different I I'm not so sure I mean we go back our data set goes back to 1991 so I can tell you though that from the perspective of water clarity there's different t different things happening right there are times where you know you
may have an interface with the fresh water and the salt water and it causes a precipitation and makes the water appear more cloudy right and that's another source for muck i'll acknowledge that it's not all grass clippings and dirt coming off of construction sites there's other biological process biochemical
processes that cause that but again what we can't fix that we can't change that aspect of the pollution pie if you will so back to the whole idea you can have situations where ground water is coming in has sulfur in it that sulfur water
encounters the the salt water and then causes a almost a white precipitate and cloudiness to the water so again there's whole slew of different things going on i don't think historically there's been any profound changes in many of those things going on
and again I think when you look at an aerial view there's so many huge natural areas Corbett all those areas i mean thousands and thousands of acres that's where the majority of water that's coming into the to the river system is coming from during during the wet season
okay uh so the oyster restoration where you um I guess seated or or tried to restore by putting oysters under private property docks
how did you go about doing that and is it like knocking on doors or And was it effective like can we do it again yeah so it was effective it was in a crazy social experiment right we literally partnered with the Nature Conservancy
which is I mean a hugely worldwide recognized good environmental agency they were the ones who knocked on the door because we thought "Oh if we try that it probably may not go as well." So in in in many cases people were like "No
thanks i don't want I've got any no interest in that." Some people would have interest but they didn't want the biggest complaint we had lots of people express interest but the biggest concern is that they didn't want to encumber future homeowners and it's a legitimate concern and we actually work with the
permitting agencies to be like "Listen can we make a a clause in this permit that says they when they go to restore their their dock that they can impact this resource to res rebuild their dock and of course that was like moving
mountain." So again knocking on doors telling people hey here's an opportunity it was a cool project you know students were involved the whole thing um but it there were challenges to get the number of
properties we got because of the concern about it covering future owners and future you know dock repairs and stuff all right no more questions right thank you so much i appreciate it was
excellent bud yeah that was excellent okay uh next presentation sue Panella co-founder and president of the Jupos Conservatory i'm sorry alliance conservation uh just an update to shoreline
restoration efforts in the Jupiter Narrows thank you for coming thank you for having me i appreciate it i think last time I spoke with you all I was on Zoom so it's nice to see you all in person um I don't know were you all part of that last presentation
i was okay so I'll go quickly through the context and the background and what I really want to focus on is an update of where we are on permitting and fundraising as well as community building because this really is a community-led effort and it's one of the things we're most proud of um in terms
of building and expanding our community so just context we are north of Ko's Bridge on the east side of the inter coastal waterway from the bridge up to the southern part of Coral Cove Park we're directly across from the Bureau of
Land Management project the Jupiter Inlet Lighthouse Outstanding Natural Area and this is significant because we are using the same engineering firm Taylor Engineering who I've mentioned before um we have had conversations with Peter Dwit and He has indicated that if
we're in the water with our project at the same time as what they're doing in that area there might be some opportunities for some economies of you know sharing some mobilization so forth so it's a really great opportunity and the fact is it's all one ecosystem so
the perimeters who are looking at our permits right now at the D and the Army Corps are the same reviewers that permitted the project right across the way so they're very familiar with the waterway they're familiar with the the traffic the baometrics the hydrarology
and by the way I'm not a scientist so these are all kind of new terms for me um let me just as a little bit of background this is an area that's been important to me and my family for over 55 years my grandmother was on the Lockxahhatche River back in the early
60s so I've been coming down here and since I was five I think um and now have the good fortune to be right there on the um inner coastal it was about four years ago I put pulled out these pictures that are in the top row looking
right out um at the time of my dad's unit and now my brother's unit were upstairs um and this what I was looking at compared to that was so striking and I had just retired and I said "You know what i've got the time something's got
to be done i got to pick up the phone and call some people we also looked further back in history and from 77 to 2022 you can see I mean that whole area actually if you look back at the pictures from the 50s that whole area was mangroves um and even from 77 to
2022 you can see where we've almost lost all of what's there there's very little left there's we're focusing on three what we're calling three islands the the northernmost one that's already now split and even since 2022 that's even in
worse shape the middle one where the second yellow arrow is and then way down by the bridge what used to be a very very robust island is now just pile of sticks i'll show you a picture in a minute so I picked up the phone i said I'm just a passionate resident i really
don't know what I'm talking about i've got to call some conservation experts so I called anybody and everybody who had expertise here and um Fish and Wildlife Foundation I mean FWC and Palm Beach County came out snorkeled around the area and agreed that something had to be
done that this is a really valuable ecosystem i mean you all know how popular that area is it's popular for a very good reason there's just a tremendous amount of wildlife beautiful pristine waters um and just area that we
have to save um we had a meeting with residents um actually Tom you came to that meeting way back in I think it was three years ago at our building to educate the residents about how important it is to save the ecosystem of mangroves and
seagrasses when if you were to go out there now and look actually this was last year these pictures this is what the people from FWC and Palm Beach uh county saw but these islands like they've been hit by a hurricane i mean it is astounding how quickly they're
going and I look out there every day and it's like we cannot waste any time because they're going to be gone so I realized after talking to FWC in Palm Beach County they said "We're willing to guide you and help you but you you're better off doing this
independently because you'll go a lot faster and honestly time is of the essence." So I said one of the big learnings for me was okay now I really need help because I don't know what I'm doing so the community built grew i really focused on finding people who
could work with us who know what they're talking about in addition to those other agencies I just mentioned but I was very lucky to be introduced to JP Brooker who is the Florida director of the Ocean Conservancy they're based in um St well they're based in Washington DC they're
the largest nonprofit devoted to ocean conservation in the country or I'm sorry the oldest um and so JP took a look at this project and he said I I really think there's something here because if a community-led effort like this can succeed it can be replicated in other
areas of the Indian River Lagoon and beyond in Florida so JP and I co-founded the Jupiter Narrows Conservation Alliance we were we incorporated last January and immediately hired Taylor engineering to come in and start doing
the requisite scientific data collection to really understand what's here what can be done to save it and what are the best ways to save it so Taylor Engineering has been a tremendous partner um they are currently in the permitting process and I'll get
into that in just a bit but um I want to highlight two other partners uh one is the village of Dquesta we're incredibly grateful for the support that initially you all gave us um and then the council also gave us in terms of a unanimous
letter of support and now we've been working with Jay and his team on uh a public private partnership to apply for some grants we applied for or the village applied for the coastal partnership initiative grant through the D um we got an indication that we're on
a short list but unfortunately that's federal money right now that's being held up so we're just not sure where that's going but we're very hopeful and we're looking for other opportunities so we're really incredibly import um uh thankful for the support from the village of
Toquesta there's other areas where I think we can partner and I'll talk to them a little bit as we go on one is you know as Ed was talking about just educating the p population about being responsible stewards of this area um and
I'll get into that a bit but um another partnership I want to mention is the Andrew Red Harris Foundation i don't know if you're all familiar with them they're based out of Jupiter it's about a 10-year-old foundation and it was established um 10 years ago after their
son Andrew was tragically killed in a snorkeling accident in the Jupiter Inlet they established this foundation to honor Andrew's love of the of the water and he happened to live for the last couple years of his life in one of the condos that was looking directly at
these mangroves so their primary mission is um well their primary mission is to um I'm not going to remember all the words but basically preserving the marine ecosystem but their primary activity has
been establishing artificial offshore reefs so there's a couple miles of offshore reefs off of Jupiter and Juno thanks to the Andrew Red Harris Foundation but their their donors came to them and said "You know what we'd love to see something in because Not all of us scuba dive so we'd like to see
something that we can touch and feel and see and so about seven years ago Scott Harris the dad did a white paper on these very islands that we're trying to save and uh put together pictures and really started researching what it would take to save them long story short he
didn't have the bandwidth to do it so the fact that we were introduced to each other a little over a year ago was really fortuitous because they have since committed all of their fundraising dollars last year and this year to our project a minimum of of
$175,000 um what we're trying to do on our side is we would really like to name the islands the Andrew Red Harris Islands apparently Andrew was a really upstanding young man and I've talked to people who lived in the building with him and um I just think it would be such
a great community um tribute to um a young man who was very well known in the community the lands are stateowned lands so it's complicated naming the islands we have been in touch with um Senator Harold
Representative Snyder um and we are working the formal channels we also want to work the informal channels and we know there are a lot of areas around the country where informally people can start calling things by a certain name so that's one
of the areas as well where we think the village of Tquesta could help us um we did talk to Mayor Young about it she presented it briefly to council um we really didn't get into the whole background with them and I think their first thought was it's state and we really don't have any business trying to
name it what we'd love to come back with through your help and through council's help is even just an informal proclamation or a letter of support saying we we would support the state naming these islands the Andrew Red Harris Islands so um stay tuned on that
we're also working with Palm Beach County on the same effort um for the naming so let me go to the plan uh the plan that Taylor Engineering has uh put together is to install three natural limestone breakwaters between the
navigational channel and the remaining islands that are there it would include a three-year long uh monitoring plan with the potential to add on more monitoring over time to to prove the success and then the third component is awareness and education which we've
already started and again where I think there's an opportunity to partner more um more specifically with the village and I'll go into these in more detail the breakwaters um would be again between the navigational channel and the
islands and the they would be far enough away from they're designed such that you could still get manatees could still swim behind them kayakers paddle boarders could still get behind them at high tide obviously because at low tide not much of anything can get behind
there but um and in addition to the breakwaters they've designed a what's called a toe protection right at the base of the mangroves to provide some extra stability and then there's an opportunity where the elevations are
appropriate to plant additional mangroves i'll talk about what the um proposed outcomes are in a moment um but what these would look like would be very similar to what you've seen south of the lighthouse and also up in the Lockxahhatchee River at Bird Island what
it's called Bird Island um and I pres I show these pictures because the top one if you all remember what those mangroves looked like south of the lighthouse they were really starting to fail as well and now they've come back and they're quite robust just with a little bit of
protection from the wave action and then the in Bird Island Taylor Engineering has done uh seaggrass surveys there for the last five years and they've seen an 860% increase in seaggrass which is really remarkable and that's what we would expect to see
something like that in our project so again what we would be looking for is we'd be stabilizing um ba basically um stabilizing the root system and the um and the sediment underneath the mangroves by reducing the wave energy u
we've talked to Taylor and they're in turn talking to the perimeters about the impact of the lower speed limit let me be really clear it will certainly help it will not save the islands because as you talked before about these big boats you get a big boat on a slow speed and
they're plowing through the water they're not up on plane so there are some enormous wakes that even at slow speed won't um won't uh be blocked completely or they need to be blocked um we're looking at about almost two acres
of seaggrass increase and obviously it would certainly enhance the fishing and recreational values and marine productivity that area I look out there every day and I got to tell you even now as measily as those mangroves look I still see an incredible amount of wildlife down there it's
um rays sharks manatees it's really remarkable so we can't afford to lose it i'll just show you really quickly the data that Taylor shared with us this was on the left in 2019 right when the
breakwaters were built the colors you see is where the seagrass was a year later you can see there's quite a bit more seaggrass a year after that even more and then you go five years out and like I said they've seen an 860 800 yes 60
something% increase in seaggrass and not just on the back side of the the um break waters but also on the other side and I'm sure bud you could probably tell us why more than I can but um it is remarkable just when you kind of calm down the area um what can happen and
what I'm sorry to interrupt yep so in this picture all of the seaggrass seems to be growing over here why not here it's I believe it's pretty similar as far as the depth and could that be because people are
trampling around back there because I see it all the time you know what i really I honestly I wish I wish I could answer that's a good question i can ask Taylor Engineering i don't know be you might be able to chime in there is a little shallower is it i believe so it looks shallower all right i'm sorry no
no good question 28 in of water okay so in terms of the um awareness um all of the condos along there put their own nickel in too and bought signs and
banners to put up on their private property just to say caution there's fragile ecosystem around here and I'm happy to say I've heard from a lot of people through our website who saw these signs and reached out to find out what we're doing so some people are paying attention they're they're noticing
they're we're trying to build awareness the other thing we want to do and we're in the middle of um getting permits is to put someformational buoys if you notice so I don't have a pointer here but there's the two islands further north and then there's that whole area
that used to be mangroves it's no longer mangroves a lot of there's a lot of seaggrass in there it is very sparse but there is a lot of seaggrass in there and that's where right now there's a lot of boats that park and that's fine it's state land it's public land they're
entitled to park there we're just trying to raise awareness to say pay attention to the tides when the tides go out and you get stuck there don't just you know jam your propellers through it or be careful where you're anchoring or how you're anchoring um unfortunately when Taylor did the seaggrass survey they saw
a lot of prop scarring anchor scarring in this area so you know it's when we asked Taylor why can't we put a breakwater there they said look you got to work on triage save what's there it's very hard to get permitted and the conditions may not even be exactly right
to put uh a breakwater where out with there's where there's not something right behind it so they said let's focus on saving what's there and we'll talk about the next plan so for in the interim we're talking about puttingformational buoys this was done somewhere up in the Tampa area
um trying to remember the woman's name Samantha Barry um I don't know if you know her bud but she's a scientist up in that area and she did a a study with someformational buoys and some very positive results not everyone's going to
pay attention some people will kind of ignore it but even if a handful of people pay attention I think we can make a difference the overall plan uh when it was estimated nine months ago was about a
million dollars about 20% of that is the uh engineering costs all of that we've raised um the materials and installation are the bulk of the costs and again the amount there will really depend on whether we have the opportunity to share some costs with the um Bureau of Land
Management so that's a bit of the wild card but we're shooting for a million dollar plan i'm really happy to say that we've raised more than half of that already so the local residents in this area have
been amazing we've raised almost $200,000 and we just this weekend got commitments for $100,000 if we can get people to match that money so that's a really exciting development now because that'll be another $200,000 into the
project um we've raised 175 commitment from Andrew Red Harris we've gotten um commitments from the Mson Foundation Fish and Wildlife Florida Foundation Wellbeings which is um does a lot of work out of Palm Beach
we got a $75,000 grant from the IRL National Eststerary Program they're very interested in what we're doing because we are the very southern tip of the Indian River Lagoon they've actually provided funds to have us have some grant writers help us out and um they're
really interested in having us succeed here i show above the line we've got that where we're shortlisted with the village of Tquesta and the CPI grant uh if we can get the matching funds to match what the the we just got the commitments of this weekend that takes
us up to almost 750 we've got a few more grant applications outstanding and we're just starting to reach out now to local businesses and some of the bigger businesses so um we got our work cut out for us but I mean we're really pleased with the
progress we're making uh we're open to ideas if you know of businesses um that support this kind of thing or local foundations we're all ears we'll talk to anybody um what else can I say here about this um we have conversations
again with our elected officials about potential state appropriations uh we met with Brian Mass's office last week and they're very supportive of what we're doing willing to write a letter of support federal money is tough we're a very small
organization it requires a lot of administrative um work it's worth it if you can get a big chunk so we are talking to them about what potential opportunities there may be so in the meantime this circle of the
community is expanding and as I said before we're so encouraged by the amount of support and our approach in developing this project really has been to create it in a way that there's no downside for anybody really i mean we are benefiting anybody who uses that
water enjoys that water um we've talked to community groups we got a letter of support and unanimous um from the Juper Inlet colony we're uh from the condominiums along the water um we've talked to recreational groups we've got Blue Line working with us potentially
doing a front fundraiser get up and Coat Kayak has our brochures there for their people who use the Glass Bottom kayaks uh West Palm Beach Fishing Club wrote a letter of support they represent 1600 members we've had some strong media
we've got local and environmental foundations we're talking to obviously our relationship with you guys in Palm Beach County is very important and then uh the local businesses maybe you've seen around town but we have our brochures around it Pinders and Jupiter
Wports and Blue Line and trying to really get the word out to broaden this community of support uh we were just at the Wild and Scenic Film Festival on Saturday night for the second year in a row a lot of people came by the table um and everybody is just
so psyched that we're working to try to save this area a lot of paddle boarders fishing people um yeah so these are the organizations we've gotten sort of formal letters of support or uh endorsements or funds from so
we're excited about that and then just finally um any questions you have um So have you guys had any opportunity to be out there on our news that's one of the things that I've been talking to Jay about is sort
of the communication piece now how can we get on your website how can we not just to make people aware of what we're doing to to save it but also I think the education piece is really critical we all use this water right so how can we save it and I'm I'm talking like on TV
like get you out there to It really needs to be talked about i mean you have so many people passionate here and in our area that I think you need that outlet um we have had some really good press coverage on all four major TV
networks great we've been in Florida Weekly recently okay we've been um early on um Palm Beach Post as well as um what's it called um it's the online version of Saving the Seas
uh Treasure Coast uh no it's through all the Florida major papers all the Florida papers they share stories about helping um it right now but um anyway so we've been we feel very lucky about I mean
we'll take more trust me i'll start putting little feelers out there because I think that it's I think and social media you know the younger generation here is all into their phones with they need a short little oh this is what's
going on for their attention span um but to we do have LinkedIn Facebook and Instagram i will confess because we've been so busy doing other things I don't post very often okay um if you know of someone who does all that stuff who would like to help I'm
all ears okay um what was I i was also gonna mention something else oh we'd love to get in Jupiter magazine okay i really think the story about our partnership with the Andrew Red Harris Foundation is a really cool community story and they invited us to the Andrew
Red Harris day which has been designated by the town of Jupiter the first Saturday of every of December every year and we went to their event and presented the the project and their supporters were so excited about it and just I mean
when we said we wanted to name the islands the Android Harrison there was a audible gasp in the room and clapped or clapping and it was it was unbelievable it was so yeah help us get the word out
i'm all ears okay thank you any other questions um how's the permitting going last the last thing I remember FD staff had a list of questions and comments and how's that going yes I'm
sorry i said I was going to give you an update and I forgot um yes D sent us the request for additional information um Taylor was sending the response two weeks ago and then they got an additional question about please show us
why you still need to do this with the lower speed limit they're responding to that now and they're supposed to get it back today or this week and then the D has 30 days to respond to that what I did learn which was very interesting
is with this permitting they can't come back with any brand new questions that have not been raised before so the questions that Taylor got initially they can ask more detail on them but they can't ask about new things so Taylor knows what they're up against right now
they've had a very good dialogue with them um and so fingers crossed the Army Corps uh same thing they're having great conversations sharing a lot of information they don't have a timeline that they have to work by so we're
totally at the mercy of when they get back with their questions our hope is that we would have permits in place by the end of the summer early fall our hope and the reason we're pushing on the fundraising now is so that as soon as we get the permits we can go we can do the
pre-engineering drawings go out to bid hire a contractor and do the the work we'd love to be done by the end of the year um I probably shouldn't say that out loud because I don't want to jinx us but if everything goes well I don't see any reason why we couldn't have it done
by the end of the year first quarter of next year oh yeah i mean as is normal the D and Army Corps have come to the site they've walked come around with the engineers to look at it really understand it more
deeply and um you know and like I said they know it because they've been across the way and we have a lot of support from the uh IRL aquatic preserves group and they are part of D so um while they're not responsible for the
permitting they are asked for their opinion and they one of the first people who came out and looked at this and said "Yes this this needs to be done." So we're hopeful i hope next time we talk and give you good news about the permits
thank you i'm curious about what happened with that dude that was here a couple of months ago who was bummed about the project yeah whatever happened with that guy so he lives in my building um I have offered to sit down and talk
about the project from the beginning um I did see him a couple weeks ago and he said "Yeah let's sit down and talk." But I haven't heard any more in terms of his concerns so the question sometimes asked and
answered law He submitted his remarks army corps they're now asking tell us why has been approved why would you now need this done and that's essentially
what was getting to Well he had a lot of questions and I did share them with the engineer and I said "Hey are there any teeth here?" Because honestly I I want to do what's right you know for the community as well and the engineers were not concerned they said "These are all issues that the Army Corps and the
Det very carefully if there are navigation issues this is not going to happen." Right so we have to let the really pass judgment on on all those issues this might be unrelated and Sue you may
not know the answer but Bud might um is are is their data similar but not probably not as comprehensive as Buds uh Lockachi River District data but are showing you know like seaggrass surveys
water quality bacteria levels is any of that happening on the Indian River Lagoon and particularly in the Jupiter narrows part of it go ahead the short answer is yes it's limited so Indian the St john's River Water
Management District has a survey that they do through the whole Indian River system i know they have that report and some of the transexs are in that so you don't have map but I think Taylor did some pretty comprehensive analysis of
historical aerial imaging our water quality station is right there at Kos Bridge so we got decad to it it may not detail that everybody wish they had but there's good information okay well thank you i just
curious i have been told that the water quality is quite good in our area because we're so close to the inlet so there's a natural sort of flushing process but again I'm not the expert they're moving south this is a very
important project good anything else one comment so um since your area is inqua and you're going for a name change um Red Harris Islands at Tquesta sounds
pretty good okay you would get fullthroated support from us as well as council I believe but Um that would go a long way that would be very helpful question did you say I like it i I think honestly I mean our
goal would be if you guys council Palm Beach County could write a letter that says you would support the naming of the islands that's good information to send to the state than to say the community wants this to happen you know and honestly we can go on Google Maps and
name them that and start i told the people at the Andrew Red Harris day start calling them that what the heck you know why not so who do we send the letter to well you you get home and let me let you know let me let me let you know because
you know maybe you direct it to us and we pass it on to the state or um or we pass it directly to the state let us know address to whom it may concern i really appreciate your time and
attention and thank you very much that was kind of a joke by the way i didn't want to ruffle any feathers but Okay um consent agenda from
February uh anyone have any changes is it the minutes no I didn't all right could I get a motion to um pass this agenda from February
you mean minutes i'm sorry minutes yeah i'll make a motion to accept the minutes from February 12th second all right all those in favor i motion carries um new business so I've mentioned before uh we
kind of have to strike or delete number five um so I I think Jay you might want to say a few things here so I don't step on any legal toes if you know what I mean on number five i'm not going to say the
name of it what are we talking about four well there's still four do you want to do number four first the the Seabick Road tree trimming oh my numbers are off i'm talking about new business it's not It's five and six
i got number four is new business i edited I edited it yeah so I did not see it when did you anyway okay it didn't get resent i I'll wait until the end then to uh to discuss that
so the first version of this agenda had this it did and and then I I just updated and that out top secret stuff apparently I was I didn't get it i'm sure you sent it okay so the Sewick Road
tree trimming um this was I brought this to the attention of committee because someone uh to Questa resident in particular to Questa Gardens had brought it to my attention and I just wanted
to determine if this was the status quo of tree trimming that's a serious hack to clear um limbs away from electrical wires fpnl or their contractor uh performs this
work and it just it was quite um shocking yeah i've never seen them be that dramat dramatic i have you have unfortunately okay understand it but um Wow those lines so
Jay sent to me the tree trimming uh our suggestions on tree trimming uh or the I'm sorry the FPNL uh national and state vegetation management standards tree trimming and
apparently this is how you trim trees away from uh power lines however it was interesting when I read through this that uh they say that it uh let me see here find it
preserving overall tree health and uh where is it in retaining structure of the tree i don't know doesn't seem like
either of those are actually occurring well well I they do that is their I've seen it and I think that's what I put in it looks severe but in the memo um you know it's not something unusual but it was
exaggerated and it was brought to my attention so I I thought I would the history and maybe Jay knows it um you probably know it better than I do i know the present but you can tell about the history this has evolved over the last 20 to 30 years
originally FPL tried through you know information on their website and mailing things to pro uh customers telling them you know how they would like for them to plant trees and
bushes and other stuff to avoid problems with overhead lines and in some cases underground lines and the uh and then about I'm going to say 10 to 15 maybe 12 years ago they they realized
that the uh the carrot wasn't working and they got the Florida legislature to allow them whenever and wherever they want to do this to protect their infrastructure and most people don't realize you know they they think that
tree that's in their backyard or their front yard they're shocked when all of a sudden sudden without warning FPL does their thing and it's like that's a and that's how they do it and it's horrible
and now it will grow back and it'll fill in that V cut that they made but it's you know it's temporarily ugly and it's I just they have the right to do it they got the legislature to pass a bill that
so they can do it after it grows It's an unnatural look going straight up i mean unfortunately it's just it FPL does have this right tree right place policy and it's not even close to to meeting that and unfortunately because
it's directly under it they're the the style of pruning they do is this V pruning um I actually went out to country club today to look and what people don't realize is they also do the same thing there it just happens to be on the back side of the trees so the side pruning is done on Country Club but
it's away from the street side so it's not as not as noticeable um but I mean I I just I don't think there's really anything we can do about it um I talked to public works director talked to village manager about it after your
memo and I mean Doug Doug Chambers mentality who's the public work director is we need to be planting more I won't call them understory trees but you know a little bit lower trees um but unfortunately you don't get that beautiful canopy that you get from an oak tree when do we know schedulewise
when they're going to start dropping these lines so on this one I don't know um I I don't think there's any imminent plans to do anything on Seabbrook i know they're exploring some other areas closer to the country club um I don't
think there's any imminent plans here in Seabbrook should be like priority village i will I'll mention that to to FPL next time we talk to them about it and say especially this spot holding
Sebrook Drive where everybody country club drive because it's just that beautiful canopy that everybody wants and the whole village gets to appreciate it yes as residents we would like our own yard lines dropped but I think as a
whole for the village that should take priority yeah I agree and it's it's really just the stretch in front of the gardens too so the lines are on the on the other side of the road and then they they go across toquest gardens if it was a new development we could require them
to bury it as part of that project so if they ever redevelop we could do that um but until then I think we're at the mercy of of FPL um because you'd have to bury them under the street as well so there'd be a disruption to Seabbrook it'
be a it'd be a big project so one thing I did notice when I walked through this and took pictures is on that side of um the Questa Gardens there are shorter wooden posts that are holding up the electric wires and then on the east side
of Seabbrook the other side of the street you have much taller concrete posts that look like they you know were just recently installed that's right they did in fact they increased height yes uh all the trees on
that side of the road are you know they still trim a little bit but they haven't grown to that height yet um and I believe there's only like four of these wooden um poles on that Tquesta garden side
right they Yeah that's right they they hardened the the east side of it but they I don't know that they will ever harden that side because it's just one little stretch yeah yeah so it looks like that part got ignored trying to drop it down and show you guys the street view
well and one of the uh concerns is if you saw these pictures the one picture where the V is exaggerated um the side that's away from the road hangs over the parking lot at the Questa
Gardens so I mean they talk about you know stability or retaining structure um you get a nice uh storm or hurricane through there a tree like that is going to be far less structurally sound as
compared to a regular tree or a tree that's growing naturally um and hanging over the parking lot i mean it could do some damage to the rest of the gardens it's a valid concern but you got to have the power lines protected
the uh Well I know Doug Chambers is big on uh requiring landscapers to follow you know national arbor standards for proper tree trimming okay so one of the things
we did in Palm Beach was uh uh we required FPPL to get a tree trimming per a no fee tree trimming permit so that we would know when they're doing it and could
monitor what they were doing so in other words if if this fellow or group that did the photos that that uh Brad has shown us if he went overboard well And if somebody was monitoring it they would probably catch it and stop the
uh chopping away at the tree doug has done that in my neighborhood well the trees up there where I live are uh the oak trees are owned by my homeowners association and Doug has shut Comcast and
AT&T tree trimmers down many times telling them "You don't have a permit and you're not following national standards so this one might But see FPL is not required to let you know unless the local government creates a permitting process where they have to
come in but you can't charge them you're just doing it so you know where they are and when they're doing it it's basically it i'm going to follow up with that Tom um if he's following the National Arbor tree yeah there's a name
barber something I forgot there's a you know so many people are under this false um idea that hurricane trimming needs to be done to these palms and trees and when you take those nice sable heads off
and you're down to three little sticks of fronds up there it's so bad during hurricane because that could just take the entire palm or tree away you need all that green should be the seeds that get taken off and the dead fronds and
the rest should be left i mean that's the structure of those palms um and it protects them during hurricane season if a hurricane were to come through so just adding my little two so
it's like oh don't do that uh anyway so I agree that they should be following some kind of rule all right so I don't know what we can do with this other than I like the idea of a no charge permit um is that something that we could suggest
to council okay i guess I motion yeah you want um I make a motion that we ask the the uh village council at the appropriate time uh uh to give
consideration of a no fee permit for FPL andor their contractors and subcontractors that do landscape maintenance to pull that permit no fee permit in advance of starting to work i
second that motion all those in favor i against passes i'll work that into our our code update that I've got a bunch of different updates on which by the way I'll just give a quick update on that
update is uh the I took some code changes to council a couple weeks ago and they were in favor of the green building recommendations you made and the tree recommendations you made with Steve Parker with the prohibited species so it looks like those are going to move
forward so in the next few months we'll get those adopted and have an official green building policy awesome can I add on you were talking about the constructions just a real quick one um do you a difference when the contractors
are using those really big fencing and screens with the backs i mean I'm thinking that should be across the board instead of those little little sticks with the um black I don't even know what you call that yeah it's like almost like
garbage bag it's like gone in blows away so it just can't Anyway so that's just We'll talk about that at next month with the construction update okay all right so moving right along old business um I just wanted to kind of get
your your thoughts uh and recommendations about the Living Shoreline presentations last month um I appreciate everyone attending um like we had said prior to the event um we could have 20 people or two people well we had
three people so um but the questionnaire that I did hand out everyone was very positive they would like to see more of them um and a couple comments on here with
regard to um environment environmentally related topics that are interested for future evening events uh uh let's see this guy's handwriting protection of natural areas um how to prevent kids from
campfires in the dunes uh and then the last question any environmental concerns that you'd like for us in our normal committee meeting to address uh one was boat issue with
manatees and boats going too fast affecting living shorelines and wildlife so I think isn't that what we presented that's kind of what we were doing but I'm I'm happy to have these three people show actually there were a few more
people than that but only three people filled out the filled out the questionnaire so I would like to get anyone's comments about you know in general uh the the presentations the whole evening I mean I thought I loved
it to start off with I I think the presentations were wonderful Um I think they hit on all the major points very succinctly and I think we kept it under the time that we had allotted which I thought was also very important i agree i think the concept of
presenting these what whatever we're going to end up calling them a workshop or or event or whatever whatever um it falls in that line of education and perhaps as we as we come across topics like that that are instrumental for the
community to be involved in if the more they see these opportunities perhaps it will start to grow on itself or we find another way to present that in a different venue maybe it's not We did it at a maybe it's going to be at a
um the food trucks event or something i don't know but I'm just saying that perhaps we could just we do keep working with it and see how we can develop a balance to create education with it yeah i Jay after the meeting was over Jay and
I spoke briefly about this but uh we didn't get into the weeds but the uh I think we were both on the same page about trying to get the uh the students environmental committee at Jupiter High School to
either for us to take this traveling salvation show to them or they come here as a field trip one day and we show that whole thing to them and then maybe we can get some of them to be part of you know volunteers for the things we want
to do in the future and so on and so forth you preempted my my update at the end which is randomly an Eagle Scout who's in the Jupiter High program reached out to Peter Dit about improving commercial recycling in Toqua so Peter
put him in touch with me i met with him last week and he's interested in in getting a lot of Jupiter High students to go do this initiative to push and improve commercial recycling into Questa so he's going to come give you a presentation at the next EAC meeting
told me he had a 1560 on his SAT so he's a he's a junior so we've got him for another year um so he's a really sharp guy so I think you guys are going to like him next month that's great excellent that's a perfect example of another venue and also since you just said Eagle Scout
there's also the other organization for students it's called Congressional Award that's very intensive and if we can identify any or present to any of the students that any of the schools in our area that affect
our area that are in that program uh they have to also do a very comprehensive uh pro project and uh perhaps we can reach out to them as well give them an opportunity any other comments
about the presentation the evening event it was great good good presentations thank you M uh last item uh for old business um Arbor Day uh it's going to be April 25th
is the um the Arbor Day I guess celebration that is going to start at 9:00 a.m um unfortunately Remembrance Park will not be available uh which I thought would
have been perfect but uh nonetheless we're going to have it right here in front of village hall uh planting the lignobite tree you know I love that tree yeah it's a good tree um it would be great for committee to be
there unfortunately as I say that I'm not going to be in town Thursday or Friday that week so I will have to miss it um but when asking for recommendations and suggestions Michelle came up with a
beautifully written one pager to tell you all about in about one font that I can barely read but he's blind how come we can't read but I think a lot of these uh suggestions in here are uh
are spot on um can we implement them in the what two weeks or three weeks that we have or two weeks that we have yeah that's well maybe some version of them what does the village already have in place yeah let me just get I'll give a
quick rundown so it'll be at 9:00 a.m so uh what we did last year is have the mayor read the proclamation declaring an Arbor Day i was the MC and just like asked the kids questions about trees in Arbor Day and handed out candy to them got them I was kind of like the hype man
got them excited and then uh Jessica who was our chair at the time then gave a speech about just the import general importance of trees and arbor day and so ideally I believe the mayor's going to be here again i could be the hype man again and ideally we'll have somebody from the EAC kind of give a little bit
of an overview of of the lignum piatry or the importance of arborday or something like that and then um Marcia Nelson our historian had the suggestion to make them uh the tree a wishing tree and so the kids are all going to write
down a wish on biodegradable paper and we've already ordered the paper and they'll write down the wish and they'll put it in the tree and then they'll all plant dirt back under the tree very good but if you you had some great suggestions so if you want us to do any of those other ones so the students that are coming are they invited from the
local schools it's they'll they'll actually walk here from um Good Shepard and from the Harvey School you already have them coming so Heather and Michelle Pro I think it's the Pro Good Shepard and Providence school I believe okay
so you already have the student do we do I remember that if we had if the village had seeds packets from other events that they had ordered we can we can buy them like would they come in in time something that ties in with like I
love the wishing idea and but something that helps instill in a child what you know the concept of planting it's amazing how they don't even a lot of times know how tree or vegetable or anything even comes out of the ground but so it's an
educational process um if we had those I know it's not enough time to do a saplings because I would love to do like a mighty offer but that's probably not enough time to put that together but something that correlates to maybe it's a seeds for um I thought that they were
wildflower seeds that we had for some other project last year we can get some seeds and and maybe put them in like a little burlap bag and you know try a little bit of information about whatever whether it's Arbor Day in
general and that particular tree or not or something a takeaway of info do you know how many children will be there approximately we've got 26 I think RSVPd for now and they're I think you said fourth or fifth grade they're like They're like third somewhere between
second third and fourth grade maybe they're they're really fun and we had Joe Nameoth out there last year so I got them to all they're all like "You guys don't know who this guy is but ask your parents and grandparents they know who he is." Um
well Michelle you you did such great work on this one pager it seems like you know a lot about the lignite tree i have an excellent specimen in my front yard if you would like to drive by and see it it's an amazing tree it really is perhaps maybe then you can Oh
speak right into that oh I did didn't I it seems like you already have all the notes here so I Okay yeah i mean it's up to you i don't want to put you on this one that would be fine i I would love to share my love of the tree did you Did you plant one that was uh
pre like already big and kind of looking good i tried one it didn't work out it It was um already about three feet high but now it's probably eight and it puts on a Yeah i tried on and it just bombed it
did not work out but it was very small probably the wrong place so I have a question for Jay have we been approved as a Tree City USA we we are a Tree City USA and we have five signs ordered that say we're Tree City USA so public works
and I have already identified them and we're going to put them in um probably the next month or so we'll probably kind of coincide it with Arbor Day okay you know big picture I only have one concern and that is I see this all
across the country and it disturbs me but there's a tendency to always want to plant a tree for Arbor Day in a park okay but what happens over time is the park's open space gets smaller and
smaller and smaller and the kids can't throw frisbes anymore the dad can't pitch the baseball or softball to the sun they can't do open space stuff anymore so you know I'm not a fan of
every now and then you know the park is okay but if you can find a streetscape area that you want to do that you don't have any money for that's a great place to say this stretch will be this type of tree and it'll be however many but if
you can only do one a year just do it i mean I I hate to see open space get eaten up by you know unintended consequences of of of trees being overly planted in parks i totally agree with
you and Doug Chambers does too he was already planning to plant this tree in this spot so I think he was actually going to put a few of them in um before this and I I got him to agree to hold off on the last one so he's going to put a little It's going to be right out in the front of village village hall out
there but yeah so we're we're not just forcing one in yeah that's good thank you anything else okay um we would like to uh
do is Linda Smith is it yeah there she is um sorry I'm late would you No no worries no worries we're happy to have communication from citizens i'm sorry linda Smith I actually live in Jupiter it's not that far away but I'm
representing the Sierra Club Luxahhatche Group and we have members in Tquesta um I want to thank you guys for everything you guys are doing i love coming to this meeting i don't come enough because you guys are inspiring green building standards h my
previous life I'm an architect um so sorry I'm late but I was speaking at the Palm Beach County Solid Waste Management Board meeting today um speaking to the same folks that are actually your county commissioners and what we're trying to do the Sierra Club and I think a lot of
people once they're aware is try to get um communities to reduce their waste instead of building a $1.5 billion incinerator we do have a study that we um paid for to crunch the numbers on some of the
nasty things that are going to be created with burning our trash i'm sure you guys are all aware of PAS and all the stuff mercury goes up the smoke stack goes in the water goes in the soil so we are having a a program
tomorrow in the city of West Palm Beach which I know it's a little far away at the Mandel Library but it was free and we're a nonprofit so we take what we can get and I do have some flyers and the flyer has a link to the report it's not
green new trash incinerators in Palm Beach County are are expensive and major air polluters and thank you for your time thank you thanks Linda okay um did anyone look at the first version
of the agenda that was sent out i saw I did i did i thought I did i thought I did but do I remember it let me The first item first item on the new uh agenda for the new business i'm sorry i don't remember
what it was okay well maybe is it worth talking about yeah I think I think it's good to bring up especially with Bud here it might be related to storm water management okay so um I I originally had a uh agenda item um that included the
area on Old Dixie that uh Yes now I remember it kind of unsightly yes and I included pictures yep and I Yeah and I called it Yes i called it that um Well it turns out that that was private
property yeah so I I was unaware of that and likewise that's the reason it's off of the agenda you did not take pictures from private property i'm sorry it was from the the sidewalk from the men in
black i'm going to do the men in black button you did not hear that okay but you you have to realize that after 40 years and or longer though that that cement plant is gone and it was one of
the biggest eyes to Questa had you know it's industrial kind of a thing as people are coming into toqua and old Dixie they got cement plants is that do we know if that property is uh retained by the owner or is it for sale or what's
it it's he knows it's a Yeah so it's under contract by a developer who's exploring options but he he has not closed on it as far as I'm aware so it's still owned by CX but it's under contract with a
exploratory due diligence where they've done like phase one and I think phase two environmental assessments on it possibly found things i think they found something with the phase one which needed them required them to do a phase two so what municipality is that is it Palm Beach County is it village of quest
is it Jupiter it's h it's like twothirds into Questa and like a third in Jupiter interesting how do how just curious how would that uh site plan review and so forth be handled in that situation we haven't even crossed that bridge but we'd have
to do some sort of interlocal or joint meeting um that'll be a home dinger yeah so will that be open to the public like with a comment period that's if they even come forward i mean we don't the person has even closed on it i don't
think they even know what they want to do i wouldn't anticipate anything happening anytime soon on it okay so all right so anyway that's there was a little like Whoops i
stepped in it a little um but I did stay outside of the property when I took those pictures and when Wayne comes our building official next month to talk about you know construction site maintenance and runoff and that kind of stuff maybe that's a discussion to ask him about as
well because our code does have some language that typically requires people to um to sod over a property after it's been demolished so that there's not storm water runoff um so I'm not sure what the status is on that one with with with him and with the permitting but um
that's something we could talk about with Wayne next month yeah i mean you know there were there were some serious things that I saw from the road that uh you know safety hazards safety hazards um you
know I don't we'll talk about it next time how how do we how and when do we get in the weeds of the storm water uh what's the word discharge you know pre I don't
know pre-treatment of the water if you will you know like the swailes raising the lids where the water gets in to have more retention things like that i mean is that that's probably a Margie kind of a thing yeah I think it'd be
joint Marjorie and Wayne thing at the next meeting um baffle boxes is something I think Bud said Jupiter has done they do it's a new kind of how how new is that fairly around a while it's been It's been around a while but it's a process some
people are starting to use to filter water so we could have we could have that discussion next month okay yeah the swale system thing it's not just the country club there's a lot of the older neighborhoods the swelles need
to we call it scarfed be recontoured and scarfed and to make them functional again so at our next meeting are we going to be looking at what we currently have in our code that so that we can address it from
there to in reference to what we just received okay do you have a question i just wanted to comment that one of the benefits of new development is that storm water plans have to be things that were built
precape as quick as possible but now there's treatment in all new development so that's one encouraging thing the details of how you do that treat some kind of mechanism those are
all things that can be worked out but that is a benefit of development is that storm water is thought through okay I think uh unless you all have uh
further comments on anything from today or No thank you very much for both um Sue and Bud for coming today we appreciate that it always helps us to become educated ourselves so uh with
that being said I'll be happy to accept a motion to I'll make a motion to Second all those in favor i pass it's a good meeting thank you everybody i felt like I got in a little bit of
trouble but Oh no i was just trying to prevent you from incriminating yourself he's got his antenna up that's interesting that that's private property because I assumed that was not
yeah so did I well this thing's off yeah but because I So I was wondering who's going to be approving the next level of whatever comes there it was just crazy i mean they're giant pads of concrete
which if the next owner needs that savings for them but the safety hazards of that rebar rusted rebar sticking up but you know a kid's going to be in there there's a primary drainage line that runs from roughly Old Dixie and
Bridge