I'm going to ask you all for your attention so we can start off our March 1st Stormwater Stakeholder Advisory Committee meeting. We're really excited to have you here on this cold, brisk day, but I hear it's going to be 72 on Sunday, so there is hope in the future. So the first thing that we have to do is, first of all, we don't have Lindsay right now anymore, as we know, so you get me the whole time, which is exciting, but the first thing we have to do is the approval of the December 1st, 2023 minutes. Does anybody have any questions about the minutes that were circulated? Would anybody like to approve the minutes or make a motion to approve them? Jennifer? A second? Russ. Thank you, Russ. Any questions? Any comments? All right. All in favor? Any opposed? Fantastic. Now, I say this each time, but I'm going to try and remind you again to please, if you have questions, use the microphone. I think there's a button, is that right, on there to make it record so that we can record your things. But before you have any comments, we are going to first invite Lee Moser up. We've had him here before. He's going to talk about UK Research Foundation Class B Incentive Grant Stream Weed Eat Project. So Lee, I will turn it to you. Good morning. Good morning. Thank you. So stream weed to eat may be a typo. This is actually a steam weeding device, if you all have ever heard of those. So let me, one of the challenges about this project is I put a lot of speaker notes on my presentation. And to be able to see those, I'm going to have to run two devices here. So bear with me just one second. All right. So as Amy mentioned, my name is Lee Moser. It's nice to see you all. I know many of you in the room. So good to see you this morning. So I'm sharing today on the project that we're affectionately calling it UK Non-Chemical Weed Control, steam weeding. So we obtained, we, I'll show you the team here shortly, obtained a stormwater incentive grant through LFUCG to test out a device that generates saturated steam to be used for weed control. So I'll tell you a little bit about it here in just a sec, but that's kind of the initial rundown. So today I'll be giving you a rundown of what our team looked like and some of the history of the project. It was a bit of a revolving door on the project as some folks changed positions. So you'll hear a little bit about that and the project background, talk a little bit about steam weeding in general, and then we'll talk about the project in specific. And then some of the results and deliverables, we'll look at that. And then we'll have time for Q&A at the end. So to start, as I mentioned, there were some changes in personnel with the team over time. Folks that were originally on the project, I'm going to try to highlight this here, maybe. Maybe not. So Carmen Aguirre-Des, Greg Munshaw, and Dwayne Edwards were the original PIs on the project. Dr. Aguirre-Des moved on to an administrative role as the Associate Dean for Instruction at the college. Dr. Munshaw moved on to private industry and Dr. Edwards moved on to Virginia Tech as, I believe, the Department Chair of the Department of Biosystems and Ag Engineering. So that left a vacancy that Dr. Ellen Crocker with the Department of Forestry and Natural Resources filled as the new PI. And at the time, I was helping Dr. Aguirre-Des transition all of her extension programming, so I came on to help with this project. Other collaborators were folks with the Arboretum, folks you may know, Emily Ellingson, who's no longer with the Arboretum, she's moved on, and Jesse Dahl. And then the great folks with Physical Plants Division, UK Grounds, Stacey Borden, who has since moved on, and Jerry Hart and Richie Katko were also critical in this project. So in general, the project purpose was to evaluate this device and also assess Grounds people's knowledge of water quality impacts of things that they do on campus or in general Grounds management, wherever that may be. So this actual device and the thought of steam weeding came about because folks are generally concerned with the impacts of herbicides on human health, environmental health, and steam weeding is potentially an option to kind of reduce some of those risks. And what we were really trying to do with this is to test the effectiveness of this device for controlling several species that we find challenging on the landscape that I'll get into in just a minute. So without further ado, we can kind of show you the device. So this is the Weedtronics Satcha Steam SW800 machine. It is the device that was identified to use for this research project. And maybe we should start back at the beginning of the use of steam for weed control. So steam for weed control has been experimented with and used in agriculture back to the 1890s. It became kind of commercially available around 40 years ago for use as a pull behind on tractors. It's often used in organic agricultural operations to avoid the use of pesticides. So this was kind of an intuitive opportunity to test something that's been scaled down and made commercially available for landscaping applications. One of the challenges that we'll talk about throughout this presentation is kind of the cumbersome nature of the trailer for pull behind use in certain areas, specifically around campus. But just some general idea for you all about how this machine operates. So it has a diesel burner that heats water from the tank, and it's got a gasoline-powered pump that pushes water to the applicator wand, which is much like a high-pressure pressure washing nozzle. So it has various attachments that you can use in different settings and contexts depending on what you're trying to do. So we'll talk about the different types of attachments that we use for the project a bit throughout it. And you'll actually get to see it in action here on the next slide. So the actual machine itself internally heats water to about 230 to 250 degrees, and at the point of application it's running about 205 to 218 degrees Fahrenheit. And it's indicated to have shallow penetration into the ground so that it has minimal disruption on soil biota. And one of the interesting things is that, and it can be a challenge as well, it can stimulate seed bank germination, which can be positive or negative depending on what comes up. So something to be aware of if you're thinking about using this in the future. The other thing that we're really interested in, not just the effectiveness for controlling different plants, but the potential impact for collateral damage on non-target plants. So that was one of the trials that we'll describe here shortly. So I'm going to see if this will play the video, but this is a video of Richie Catco out at the Arboretum in one of our trials. And if you're thinking it kind of looks like wilted spinach or something like that, that's kind of what happens. So winter creeper's got a kind of waxy cuticle on it, and it really did a great job with this applicator head of kind of steaming it, breaking it down. And we'll get to see some of the efficacy results here in a little bit. Alright. Third time's a charm. Maybe I'm not pointing it the right way. Telepathy, maybe? I don't know. Any ideas? Might be because it's a video on here. Always one of the joys of live presentation. You arrive an hour early, and then in the middle of the presentation, that never fails. You want me to do a little dance? I have no shame, so I will. I've also been known to sing for my supper, so that's something that is interesting to the crowd. It's a little early. I've not had breakfast yet, so I'll settle for that. Is it moving? Sorry, y'all. This is just one of those unexpected things. So, what we can highlight here, maybe while we're in pause, this applicator head is really interesting. So, it's about a foot and a half wide and about ten inches deep. And essentially, it's almost like vacuuming. So, kind of have a motion, and they tend to pace at about two seconds per linear foot and back and forth a little bit. Some of the different precautionary things that you see here are some of the heat wrap on the hose to make sure that Richie isn't burning himself there. That's definitely one of the challenges and risks with working with saturated steam, is that you do have the risk to burn yourself. So, personal protective equipment was really important as we were working on this project. I can sit here and ad-lib some more, but, yeah. What times of year did you do it? Do what? What times of year? We did it in the fall, and it worked well then. As for other times of the year, we did not test other times of the year for applications. But we are open to testing it further for different times of the year. I can't believe I locked up the entire computer. Go ahead, Jack. Far from it. It can be as long of a hose as you can fit on the reel. It will push it 100 feet early. As far as the maximum distance that it will push it, that would be dependent on the pump, but if we never maxed out, how far we can push it. Hold on. Have you tried turning it off and turning it back on again? Sometimes. That's what you gotta do. If you've not had coffee or donuts yet, now would be a great time to do that. Any other questions while we're in between? Russ? How are we doing with the optimal checks? I don't believe it's a temperature drop. We did not test temperature in the hose, but at the point of application, it was running consistently within that 205 to 218 range, which is what we recommend. I'm sure this is in your presentation later. How effective? If it doesn't come back the next season, the season after that? We will definitely address that. We have results at 28 weeks after application and 60 weeks after application. At both of those intervals, it was comparable to 0 degrees. Statistically similar. One of the big challenges is that it can be quite time consuming. If you're thinking about two seconds per linear foot, a winter reaper with a foot and a half wide head, if you do the math, it can be quite time consuming. That was one of the challenges that's been identified with this technique in the past. Whether it's appropriate for every setting and every use, that's probably going to depend on your budget and your objectives. It can definitely use up some time. I've got one. Did you say earlier that it is commercially available? If so, what does a unit cost? The unit that I showed you is commercially available. I believe the base cost of it without any additional accessories was around $12,000. They also have a scaled down version that puts up to a hose bib. I think it's actually about the same price. This is just the brand that we chose to use. There are probably others out there at this point. One of the things that we really hoped to do with the project was to test out units that were commercially available for homeowners. We didn't identify any that seemed like they would be effective for that, for the costs that they were. We're back live here, it looks like. Hopefully my next video doesn't cause a lockup again. There's really a lot going on with this project. We had two different demonstration portions and tests where we tested the use of the device for control of winter creeper. That was done in the arboretum woods adjacent to campus. We also had demonstration plots at the arboretum near the ornamental beds testing different horticultural species for collateral damage at different distances of application. We'll cover both of those in depth. The other two items that might really be interesting were the knowledge and attitudes assessment and the user satisfaction survey, which were both IRB approved surveys that took way longer than I'd hoped. Then training materials and piloting workshops for the material. I believe we actually had some LFUCG folks come out and attend the training that we had on campus at the Good Barn. As far as Project Legacy, many of the different products that we've developed are available on the website through the Department of Forestry and Natural Resources. Public involvement will detail that towards the end as well. Alright, it's buzzing at me. I don't know what that means. I'm going to be gentle. So, winter creeper management. What did we find? The design of the project, we tested seven different treatments if you include the control. We tested the saturated steam treatment at two seconds per linear foot. We tested it at double that. Then we had a glyphosate treatment, a triclopyr treatment, and then a two second per linear foot treatment with the steam device plus triclopyr. So, what did we find? So, what we see is that all of the treatments were similar in terms of their response with the two keys per creamer. All of these circles overlapping indicate similarity between the triclopyr treatment, the steam plus triclopyr, the roundup, mechanical control, the double steam application, and the single steam application with our control being way up here. So, all of these were effective and similar in terms of controlling winter creeper. The challenge that was brought up was the amount of time that these devices take to try to get that level of control. Yes, Jerry. The y-axis is the percent cover of winter creeper loss. So, we did one by three meter plots treatment with nested subplots and believe N is nine on each of these different treatments just for statisticians and folks that are interested in that sort of thing. That was at 28 weeks, and this is at 60 weeks. So, at 60 weeks, we're starting to see the mechanical control bouncing back, but still technically similar to several of the treatments. The steam, the single and double treatment, still highly effective and comparable to the roundup treatment, steam and herbicide, and the triclopyr treatment. So, we were really pleased with the amount of control that we had compared to the other methods. However, again, one of the things that we'll highlight specifically when we are talking about the feedback from the grounds crew is the amount of time and the logistical challenges with this device. Not trying to sell it short, but there's always some pros and cons with these things. So, one thing you may see me doing up here is I'm just trying to make sure I'm advancing my slide notes because I'm running double computers here. So, the second part of the project was testing for collateral damage. You see a ewe there that we tested with and also lilies. So, this was done at the arboretum near the horticultural gardens and essentially we're testing whether applying steamweed to control in ornamental beds at distances of 0, 1 inch, 2 inch, and 6 inches from the plant has the potential to impact the foliage. Time of application was that two seconds that was identified as effective for controlling. So, what did we see? So, within all of our treatments, everything was very similar to the control. Dr. Crocker typed up a nice statement. We observed no serious damage of nearby steamweeding to non-treated foliage, even to plants immediately adjacent to steamweeding hood. As mentioned, we tested two species, lily and taxus, and found that the percent healthy foliage didn't vary much between treatments, different distances from the streamweeder and the hood. While this was not a statistical study, observational data suggests that there's little danger of serious non-target damage by steamweeding. So, the first survey that was a part of this was the knowledge and attitudes assessment of grounds crews and it was also distributed to LFUCG grounds folk. We don't really know the breakdown of how many replied from UK versus LFUCG, but in general, just trying to assess background knowledge related to weed management and water quality. So, some of the interesting findings, and I think these are really great, is that 94.11% of the respondents were concerned or very concerned about the quality of waterways in the area. 93.34% felt that what people do on the land affects the quality of water. And this is probably a good one for stormwater folks. When asked where stormwater runoff goes once it enters a storm drain, roughly two-thirds correctly answered that it goes directly to the nearest waterway. So, there's still a little bit of a gap. One-third of the respondents didn't necessarily know where the water is going, which has implications for the different decisions we make on the land and perhaps the precautions that we take when we're out there treating with things like herbicides. So, in general, they were asked about their concern for their health, the health of other people, and the health of the environment when applying herbicides. And 91.66% were concerned or very concerned about their health. 95.84% were concerned about the health of others, and 100% were concerned about the health of the environment. So, it means from this result, we think that folks are getting the message with their training that what we do with herbicide management and with landscape management does have potential impacts to the environment and water quality within the respondent group of landscape professionals that we surveyed. So, the second survey was a very low number of respondents inherently because it's only of the people that were using the device. So, we had five respondents, and we were basically trying to get their perceptions of where they're using the device on a daily basis within their work routine, how effective they felt it was, and the challenges that they observed using the actual device. So, the majority of areas where respondents identified that they were using the device was on lawns, near flowers. The highest proportion was near trees and shrubs, and we'll highlight why that might be here in a little bit as one of our additional outcomes, and on hard surfaces. So, some of the considerations that they're thinking about when they're using this device are some of the logistical challenges of getting the trailer into where they're trying to apply it. It does take a bit of time to fire it up, get it up to temperature, and actually utilize it. So, that was a concern for many of our users on campus. Maintenance and making sure that the device was properly functioning, as with any device, is a challenge. And I think just the limitation of not having access to multiple devices was challenging. If they really liked using it, sometimes they had to wait. So, that will be another additional outcome that we'll show here shortly of how they addressed that. So, in parallel to the user knowledge and attitudes assessment that was asking how concerned they were about using a herbicide, we asked them, how concerned are you about using heat control in relation to the health of other people and health needs? Again, low sample numbers, and it looks like not all five of the respondents answered all of these questions. We didn't have any that were very concerned. And it looks like some typos down there. I apologize on that. But it was actually two concerned and two not concerned on how concerned are you about the health of others. So, the health of the environment majority were not concerned. One was concerned, and zero were very concerned. And how likely are you to want to continue to use the steam weeding unit? And see the breakdown there? One was somewhat unlikely, possibly because of some of the logistical challenges. Neither likely or unlikely, one. Somewhat likely, one. And extremely likely, two. And again, the challenges and benefits and just general feedback that we received is that it seems safe and effective. So, here's one of the pitfalls. Takes a long time to get going and a long process to control weeds. The lugging of the entire unit could always be easier. And unit with trailer and water tank is difficult. So, again, getting at that cumbersome nature of the device, how it's designed, and just some of the challenges of operating it on a day-to-day basis. So, one of the outcomes and one of the project deliverables was a training workshop. So, you see us having a panel discussion with Richie Katko, who was one of the primary ground supervisors that utilized the device, Jerry Hart, and then Stacy Borden over on the left. Had folks come in and basically learn about the device, some of the challenges, some of the results, and actually receive some pesticide applicator continuing education credits for attendance and participation. And this is kind of one of the neat little side outcomes of the project. Grounds really did like the device, and they're interested in exploring it further. But the challenges of maneuvering it around, the startup time, and the management of a large trailer being identified as challenging, they were able to obtain some funding to get a smaller, more portable unit called the Green Ninja. Kind of cool. And that actually hooks up to a hose bib, so you don't have to worry as much about hauling a water tank around and trying to drive a trailer around campus. Or maybe if you're using it in a city landscaping setting, it could possibly be a little bit more manageable. So, this is the website and the instructional video of basically how the device works and some of the rationale and background behind the project. It's kind of one of our legacy products that lives on the Forestry Department's website. Other things that are interesting, public involvement. So, this project was highlighted on From the Woods Today. We had signage out to guide the public to the web resources so that they were able to understand what's going on because it kind of looked unusual in terms of what we were doing out there. Very unique device. Covered in the Arboretum newsletter in 2021. And just some additional outcomes on campus, places where it's been used, places where they found it effective. So, if any of you all have ever walked through the Cooper Tunnel on campus, below the Kentucky Tobacco Research and Development Center and heading towards the hospital. So, that's traditionally been managed as turf. Kind of steep. Not a great place to mow. So, we go to revert it to pollinator and wildlife habitat. So, they applied several different treatments, steam weeding being one of them. They also used some drip torch burning and herbicide application in different portions of the hillside to basically prep the site for a 17 species native wildflower mix. So, now it looks a little bit more like that. This was not a part of the study. So, statistical analysis and results aren't really available. But if you ever walk by that site during the spring, it looks completely different. It's really kind of a nice feature now on campus. And we feel that it's doing what we hoped it would do. The one challenge that we definitely notice is things like Johnson grass. Really, it does not do well with Johnson grass and things that are rhizomatous due to that nature of shallow penetration of the steam. The other big thing, and this may crash us, I'm sorry, it's another video and it's really... So, one of the initiatives on campus over the past several years has been to expand tree rings to the drip edge of the trees and try to use arborist chips on campus to reduce the cost of purchase mulch. So, the device has been identified by the landscaping crew as useful for expanding those tree rings as opposed to using herbicides. Hey, it worked. This one's got a video too. Cattail management. This is one of the attachments that's available. It's a spike to kind of inject into the ground and hit down into the rhizomes of plants. And anecdotally, without a study that was done on this, the grounds crew found it effective at managing cattails along two of the stream restoration sites. Specifically, they used it out on the one by the softball stadium on Alumni Drive considerably. So, the additional outcome that I mentioned, the U.K. grounds crew liked it enough to try a smaller version. I haven't had a lot of feedback on this, but as far as I know, they like it. So, that's what I've got for you all. Any more questions? I know we had some time for questions already with the tech issues. Jerry? Can you describe the noise level of the equipment? It is noisy. So, decibel-wise, I'd have to look at the spec sheets for the device, but ear protection, hearing protection was required during use. So, that was one of the items that was identified by the grounds crew as being a potential downfall. There are certainly certain areas where a noisy pump and generator might not be appropriate. Russ? You mentioned the application on organic farms. Had there been any utilization of this on the South Forum? Not that I'm aware of. I have not heard or seen or found any evidence of use. Or any indications that they're interested in using it? Not that I've been made aware of. Ken? Cost of the trailer, the equipment, and the water tank? Around $12,000, and I believe around $3,500 worth of additional parts were purchased to maintain it and utilize different attachments that they were interested in. And then you used two different fuel types, gasoline for the compressor and then diesel for the water? Correct. Which have their own potential environmental impacts. Depends on if you're concerned about herbicide, water quality impacts, so, yeah. Any other thoughts, questions? Heather? Yeah, I just was wondering why you think that the normal control, the one-time control, had better results than the two. I don't necessarily know. We had some discussions about it. It could have been an artifact of the site. Small sample size. It was nine measurements, so it could be that. Those would be the two things that we identified that might be most probable causes. Frank? So the head on that, the head on the steam, the flat one, does it have any kind of probes in it, or was it just, like, literally rubbing across it? So it's got the material that a cutting board, like the white plastic cutting board is made out of, that's kind of heat resistant. There are two of those and sliders on either side of that head, so it's just ever so slightly elevated above the ground. And then you basically just vacuum motion with it back and forth, if that answers your question. Do you think if you were to have, like, some kind of probe bristles type and kind of lunge it into the ground, do you think that would kind of help it be more effective or kind of get underneath the, if it would actually, I'm just wondering. It depends probably on the species of plant that you're trying to treat. It may not be necessary for all species of plants, and it could potentially disrupt soil microorganisms if you're getting too far down into the soil. So that's one of the benefits of just using the hood, is that it's identified as to have very shallow penetration. And our temperature readings that we took generally showed that, that it didn't have very deep penetration. So things like that spike head might be more appropriate if you're trying to get down on something. Like those cattails when you do. Thank you. Yes, Eileen. Yeah, this looks like a really great option for water utilities because we cannot use herbicides at our facilities. We have to use manual control or a salt solution, which have their own challenges. Are you aware of any contractors that have these units available? I'm not. If you ever hear you do. I'm not saying I don't exist, but as far as we're aware, this commercially available version of this is fairly new. So it could certainly be an area of opportunity for a contractor. I got another one. Frank. Do you think it could be effective on pavers? I think vegetation is coming up between pavers. I think it certainly could be. If you're wanting to control the vegetation in pavers, like pervious pavers, it could definitely kill some vegetation. I think it would be worth trying. I think it would definitely wilt the vegetation and likely control it. As opposed to torching like I've seen some people do. That is an alternative method for sure. Anyone else? Yes, Russ. I've got another follow-up question. My question about the time of year for when the treatment was done, but also what would have been the time of year of treatment, the 28-day and the 60-day, like on the winter creeper. The treatment was done late fall, early beginning of winter. I don't know the exact date off the top of my head. I can find that out for you. So if you back that up 28 weeks, push that up 28 weeks to 60 weeks, that would give you the answer. But I don't have the date off the top of my head. Let me get you that information. Okay, so you're saying it would have been towards the end of the growing season when the treatment was done and then the assessments were done in the wintertime? In the spring, when spring came back around. Let me get the dates for you. Okay, thank you. Thank you very much, Dr. Moser. Mr. Moser. Mr. Moser, sorry. Thank you. I live by the Kentucky River and have tons of winter creepers, so any time you need extra trial areas, you let me know. Next we're going to hear about another water quality incentive grant. Bluegrass Green Source, which might be dear to my heart, has been receiving water quality incentive grants for a while, and so I'm really excited to have a chance for Rachel, one of our fantastic environmental educators, to show how we've been using the funding in Lexington. So, Rachel? Rachel Patton. All right, awesome. And just a heads up, I am going to model one of our environmental education activities, kind of in the middle area. So I'll go through a couple of slides and then invite you to come up and participate and observe if you are interested. So like Amy said, my name is Rachel Patton. I have been an environmental educator at Bluegrass Green Source for about five and a half years, following a couple of years working in public schools after I got my bachelor's in elementary education. So I have found this field to be just the perfect fit for me with my passions, my teaching background, and getting to work with a lot of really awesome people. It's a really, really great opportunity for me. So we wanted to, just kidding. I wanted to give a little background on environmental education for anybody who's not familiar with the field. This is a subset of science education, but it's very interdisciplinary. So when we are facilitating environmental education activities, we're often incorporating art and math, language arts, social studies, like all of these different fields are woven together really beautifully in environmental education and gives us a lot of connections with many different kinds of teachers beyond just science and STEM teachers. So our goal is not to advocate on any environmental issue. As environmental educators, we want to wear that hat, right? It's the environmental educator hat. We're not advocating, but we're seeking to build an environmentally literate society, people who can make informed decisions on their impacts on the environment. So this is proven to have many academic benefits, social, emotional, and physical benefits for children, as you can kind of guess. A lot of our kiddos are spending more than 40 hours a week in front of a screen inside and less than an hour outside with unstructured playtime. We do not really promote unstructured playtime during our visits to schools. We go in as guest educators and are presenting, but we know that it's so important to have that connection to nature and to try to provide some time for manipulatives and just observing with multiple senses different things related to the environment. So we've seen this decline of children spending time outdoors, and it's linked to rises in ADHD, depression in our children, childhood obesity, sleep disorders, many, many, many negative things. So we recognize those benefits of environmental education, seeing more cognitive development and ability to focus, decreases in ADHD, enhanced peace, enhanced self-control, lots and lots of other things, benefits to eyesight, physical development, all of those things are incorporated with connection to nature and environmental education. So our team travels to different schools around the bluegrass, a lot of them here in Lexington, and we provide on-site environmental education through a series of lessons. Today we're going to talk about our water education programming, but we also do programming on ecology, waste reduction, and energy as well, for preschool through high school students around the area. So with that being said, our preschool environmental education programming, we have our Junior Energy Explorers Program and our Junior Nature Explorers Program, which Water Quality Incentive Grant funds some of that. So I wanted to demo one of our lessons for our Junior Nature Explorers Program. And like I said, I'm going to do it in the middle here. This is telling a story today. And I'm going to kind of be a preschooler here. As we tell a story about the animals who find a habitat at the creek. So I'm going to lay this on the ground in the middle. If you would like to stay on the floor, you may do that too. I'm going to need some help. Thank you. Perfect. Thank you so much. So anybody want to come help me? Thank you. All right. So in a preschool classroom, I would spread this out, say, I'm here to share a story with you, but I didn't bring a book to tell our story. We're going to use our big story blanket here in the middle. And I want you all to make some observations. What do you see that is going to be in our story today? There's a tree. There's rocks. A river maybe. Or a pond. Sky. Grass. Some grasses, right? Yeah. So our story is going to happen at this special place that has a tree and the tall grasses and some water, agua, in the creek today. So a creek is a place with moving water. There are lots of great animals who live there. How do you think the water got to that place? Rain. Rain, you're right. So when the rain falls down, it's going to wash across our land, end up in our water bodies. So before we start to share our story words, we're going to dress our tree up a little bit, give it some leaves. I'm just going to, for the sake of time, give a couple people some leaves to add. You don't have to put them all in there if you don't want to. Whenever I visit a classroom, I want to make sure all students are engaged. I've tried to learn some of our Spanish words for this, some of our ASL for a lot of this. I want to make sure that every student gets a turn to participate if they want a turn. Awesome. All right. Now I'm going to put something in our sky, the moon, la luna. Usually, when we see the moon in the sky, what does that tell us? It's nighttime. Not always, right? But a lot of times it is nighttime, and our story starts at nighttime. So it says, all is dark and quiet down by the creek tonight. See a raccoon walk along in the pale moonlight. Where do you think the raccoon could walk? I'm sorry. Russ already had a turn. Oh, our raccoon, the mapache, is so happy. It loves to live by the creek. It likes to eat a lot of things, right? Kids absolutely know that raccoons eat trash. It's crazy. Three-year-old. But they love to eat critters who live in our creeks, crayfish. So it says the crayfish scuttles near, then sees big raccoon and hides, scared. He'll wait until she leaves. Next to a rock he slides. Do we have rocks in our story? At the bottom of our creek. So let's see, can you help the crayfish find a rock? Oh, awesome. Depending on my students, we might go into talking about how the crayfish is really camouflaged in the rocks. That's a defense mechanism. It really varies by, you know, if I have a lot of threes versus more fives in the class. All right, our next animal. An owl. Oh, what's my, I forgot my words. The owl breaks the silence. Hoo, hoo, hoo, hoo, she calls. She's high in treetops' branches, her sharp eyes watching all. I'll let you do that one since you're by the tree. The bat swoops and zooms. Wow, what a stunt. Flying bugs should be aware when the bat is on the hunt. Why do you think bat is hunting looking for bugs? He's hungry. He wants to eat those bugs, especially mosquitoes. All right, another bat. Good. I find a lot of misconceptions around bats. Again, depending on our students, we might take a minute to address some of those fears of bats and associations only with Halloween, like all those kinds of things. All right, the sky is getting lighter now. The owl stops her song. Our owl, bat, and raccoon are going home. Thank you. Daytime won't be long. What do you think is going to happen next? The morning sun is rising, and the red-winged blackbird starts to sing. Whee! And stretches out his wings. Do you want to do it, Jennifer? Do you want to do it? Do I want to do it? Yeah. You can pick a spot for him. You can put him in the tree. You can put him in the sky. Male. Is that a male? The females look very different. They're brown and streaky, again, for camouflage. All right. Our frog wakes up and looks around, watching with big eyes. He hides in the tall grass, catching all the flies. Do you want to do that one? Another camouflage animal. And our next one is kind of crazy. You all should recognize, hopefully, a dragonfly. It might be a new animal for a lot of our preschool students. Butterfly usually is a guess. Mosquito is a guess a lot. But the dragonfly, Labibelula, where do you think she's going to be on our story? Yeah, in the sky. She can move in the sky with her wings. But her baby looks very, very different, right? Do you think her baby can fly in the sky? No. He's going to live, actually, in the water by our crayfish. All right. So the baby dragonfly crawls below, snatching every minnow in sight. When she molts and grows her wings, she'll be ready to take flight. All right. Let's come up with this one. Awesome. Let's do our last animal, see if you can guess it. All right. Quack, quack, quack goes the duck. Down the creek he swims. He stays cool in the shade under the big tree limbs. Oh, thank you so much. I love to see you sharing. Thank you. All right. And then we usually have everybody help at the end model some signs. With young children, we've got to use facial expression and other modes of communication to engage all our students. So the creek is a home for animals big and small. It gives food to some and shelter for them all. So we would do those signs together, think about some of our larger animals, getting our nighttime ones back out to our larger animals, and some of those really small animals, the dragonfly, the crayfish. Sometimes I add a snail to the story, depending on number of students and engagement level and all of that. And then think about the animals in our story who found food, the animals who found shelter. And a lot of times we will try to make connections with any of these animals that could live around the student's school. Talk about, well, why could the minnow, or if we include our smallmouth bass in there, why would they be found or not be found on your playground? What do they need to survive? Thinking about that different type of habitat. Talk about if they have areas of water around their school, too, and where that comes from, that kind of thing. Anybody have questions about our creek story? Russ? Thank you. A lot of my life, our culture, or what I've grown up with, was sometimes nature is a different place. Like we might see a rainforest or something on even a different continent, and not a lot of information. Actually, not only we're in nature, but we are nature. How do you incorporate that aspect of where we've got kind of this, maybe a good representation, I like the animals and everything, but how do you connect that with where are these places, where do we live? You mentioned the playground and schools and stuff like that. Can you talk through how you get those kids to start associating that it's not necessarily a made-up place? A lot of times, I find this to be a really great intro lesson into our Junior Nature Explorers program, both as a good way for them to see these systems and how things are connected, but also for me to kind of get to know the students. working with? Do they know trees before I come to visit them? Do they know some of these animals? And then in other visits we would try to get outside and explore and kind of compare our place at school with the creek and compare those animals. It's a little trickier with the younger ones. We work with a lot of public school preschool classes that have really really high needs, significant disabilities and delays and they're amazing to work with but it's trickier to get all of them outside and traveling and just with timing and their attention spans and for other reasons like we can't go off-site like all of these different factors so we really try to focus on like getting outside at school with with preschoolers at least trying to make those connections and our visits are usually every month so we can you know between one visit to the next we can read you know help them remember what we did last time and just continue to like reinforce those concepts and build. So does that answer your question? Yeah, it sounds like just that repeated visit and taking them through. So it's obviously not just a one-time thing, it's a beginning and you're starting to understand where the kids are at so you can kind of work with them but it sounds like that continual repeat visits is an important part of tying it together. Yes yep and then a lot of our really really stellar teacher partners will try to get the students outside and making those connections more than I really can when I go so Ken. The felt pieces did you create those or is that a commercial product? I created them. And the narrative is that something you you created the narrative as well? I adapted it from the growing up wild who lives in a tree activity so if you're familiar with the environmental education curricula project learning tree project wet project wild they all have early childhood components as well growing up wild is project wilds early childhood component and it has a lesson called who lives in a tree and then so this is the third well our second iteration of copying that reproducing that in a different for a different habitat. How many students? How many of these sets of equipment do you have? We have who lives in a tree who lives at the creek and then who lives in a bluegrass savanna. So one set of each? Yes very good yes. If it comes up if a student asks I do with young children it's really really important to instill a love of the environment and curiosity for the environment before we tell them about those kinds of issues that can really lead very quickly lead to overwhelm and that kind of thing so yeah but we do try to talk about like the connections and you know how everything helps each other in this habitat it's all connected and so hopefully that instills that foundation on which they can they can grow and learn. Do you have programs that are more suited for non-school groups like neighborhood kids or something like that? We have some we do like partner with a lot of libraries in the region to do mostly like family engagement events where there are stations set up for the families to go and see a guiding question and information vocabulary words and do a little activity together sometimes we'll go in and like read a book or do an activity like this leading into those stations not as much currently with like community centers and that kind of thing but it's certainly something that we're open to. Yes. Hi this is John Pike. I know for some environmentally environmentally conscious high schoolers it can be a challenge to understand how to get involved or interact with these environmental areas is there any kind of follow-up steps that you talk about on maybe how to volunteer with Blue Grass Green Source or where to go in the city to experience the environment? Yeah not as much with preschoolers but and I tend to work with preschool and elementary but we do try to encourage projects on the school level assisting with clubs and that kind of thing that want to take initiative take action one of my co-workers worked with a team at a Lexington Middle School who wanted to help with a nearby park and they established like recurring litter cleanups and improved some of the signage and that kind of thing so we try to meet everybody where they are and if it comes up for us to support and encourage other things absolutely. Does that help? Okay all right well thank you so much for letting me treat you like preschoolers for a little bit. You all are the best. Thank you. Thank you so much. Okay so I wanted to talk just a little bit about a little bit more about what these programs look like so you saw a sampling of junior nature explorers our preschool outreach programming where we're going to talk a lot about water plants and trees animals habitats again those systems how things are connected we do a series of three to four lessons with each class that participates again our goal to try to get kiddos outside feeling trees looking at places where trees create shade that helps our school ground you know all of those foundational concepts through interactive interactive means in Fayette County last year we had 29 preschool classes that participated in our program again through those four repeat visits with us about monthly we facilitated 98 lessons in our junior nature explorers program last year for a total of 1,131 student engagement so times that students were received those lessons and were engaged thinking about water around them storm water around them we do teacher surveys with this program we had teachers report that 82% of the students showed both increased interest in nature and increased growth with regards to one of Kentucky's early childhood benchmarks for science so observing and comparing phenomena around them this was these two pictures are part of the same lesson where we want students to understand the roles of roots which is pretty new for a lot of preschoolers to think about something that they can't see roots are there but they may not be aware so we read a book about roots and then they examine get to touch them look at them and then we model how roots absorb water through a simple little experiment all right we also as I said work with elementary middle and high school students through our water education program we have specifically Creek days in Fayette County and some of our surrounding counties in Fayette County it's supported by the storm water quality incentive grant so our goal with this is again to connect students with place with their local environment and specifically their local waterways we want them to understand some of the human impacts on water quality so we visit a nearby waterway we try to sample for macroinvertebrates do chemical testing and do a habitat survey guided habitat survey so that they can make a claim with evidence about their water quality in their watershed in 2023 we had 62 classes at 10 schools who participated in a creek day in Fayette County again thanks to the water quality incentive grant we had 1,154 students participate in the creek days any questions about that so far we provide all the materials for that provide boots if they need them net sampling materials hand-washing station and all that kind of stuff for us my question about the creek days are there enough locations to do Creek days would you like to see any more of those yes more more accessible locations yeah that's what I hadn't I mean because it's it's a matter of not just a Creek but being able to get the students in a timely manner as well to those locations and in the Creek being suitable enough for for young folks right so one of the one of the current findings is that we're we're able to work with schools that are within walking distance from a Creek so that eliminates a lot of students who may already feel disconnected from local waterways so we're trying to apply for funding to transport those students to still a nearby Creek but one that's not maybe within walking distance so yes we'd love to see more accessible streams and that's not it's not unique to Fayette County I'm working with a class in Woodford County and they're in Versailles and there's not a there's not an accessible nearby Creek there that does not have really high levels of E.coli that I can take them to so we're bringing them to Midway where I live so there's just it's not unique to Fayette County but yes it would be great to see all right and then last year was our first year to really have dedicated programming around tree week which is in the fall and again this was for elementary middle and high mostly although some of the a lot of my junior nature classes in October focused on trees as well and we were able to get outside and think about the benefits of our campus trees we looked at different internal and external structures of trees and talked about their functions we were able to plant some trees with some of the students and then they calculated a lot of benefits ID trees on their campus all that kind of thing last year we had 28 classes participate in tree week programming with us directly and another 11 classes used materials provided by us whether we modeled the lesson for a teacher and then left materials with them to do with other classes or if they borrowed materials from our resource library so we were really excited to see that interest level for tree programming we had seven schools participate and 1294 student engagements during mostly October right around tree week it wasn't all during tree week because that was a high volume but it was all around tree week so again looking at structures like roots doing tree ID I was really excited to partner with Naki from geomancer permaculture to do a really awesome tree walk at Julius Marks Elementary where they have their designated as an arboretum here in Lexington so it was really really fun for the students to get to understand that that was a really special thing for their school and here's why it's so important to know about our campus trees so any questions about our our EE programming for preschool through high school what kind of feedback do you get from the students it's really interesting like I've mentioned sometimes I find that some of the preschoolers are like tree you know so it really varies but I think that they're always excited and we're piquing their curiosity and I'm trying to get them connected with the outside world we do try to do surveys like just a thumbs up thumbs down at the end of our Creek days to gauge their understanding at the end of of our day of making a claim about the water quality and so yeah it's we're very it's very hands-on and interactive so it's pretty hard to I think it's pretty hard to not get excited and that's usually what we see Andrea are these resources available for anybody in this room to check out or is it just specifically for K through 12 no we have a resource library that is open to the public that kit is not in there but if you were wanting to borrow it I let people that I know and trust for those things but we do have a public resource library with kits about trees and soils animal pelts and skulls things that you know a teacher or any member of the public should be able to open up and say oh I know what to do with this like here's how I can explore and learn more about animals or trees or any of those things so it's on our website if you go to our BG green source org what we do there's a resource library page you can preview the kits and check them out through an online checkout form well thank you all so much for having me today again thank you for bearing with my craziness on the carpet thank you Rachel she has been just a joy for five and a half years we're very lucky to have her at green source and that's the first time I've seen this group on the floor so kudos to you that all participated in that next we are probably not going to be doing interactive things I'm assuming although who knows Doug can let us know we'll see we're gonna have a stormwater manual and procedures man manual amendments from Doug I walk around too much to have it at the stand anyway so all right so so for some of you quite a few of you recognize that you probably were here the last time I presented to this some some of these slides are gonna look the same because they're exactly the same but some of them towards the end or more what what I presented at the the construction workshop that we do in December because by the time when I presented to you guys what not quite a year ago maybe eight months ago ten months ago we were in the early stages of of development well early stages development with the development community but we had already kind of internally discussed it a lot and now we're at the point where we've actually made the changes in their official so I'll cover some of that some of that timelines to because I think what some of the community even this community which is more educated than most community it doesn't understand is how we get from A to B how do we get from a problem to a solution which is what we hope we're doing with some of regulations so that's why I'm gonna focus more on today I'll probably go through the first couple slides pretty quickly because again you guys have already seen those so what is the composite drainage plan and why did we feel we had to update it so in general when when developers are working on on drainage for a site and obviously this is a large home building site their focus is getting the water to some sort of conveyance system but a lot of that search such as curb box inlets and pipes etc and back out into the creeks as one of our previous present presenters said but a lot of that work to get it there is just overland throw flow through people's backyard so that's what these arrows that you see here are is it's just getting water from A to B again eventually getting it into a curb box inlet into a pipe out of the neighborhood into a stream this drawing here shows you some of the some of the components of that again the street itself sanitary sewer which is another potential issue that you run into the stormwater itself drainage swells between homes the home lots themselves but before our home lot our drainage composite drainage plans just really showed as long as you're making the water flow downhill we're not going to be much more specific than that so the problems that that can lead to that when we have those drainage problems is that we've as I said before let me back up here you don't have elevations here we're just saying can it go get water go downhill because water should always go downhill unless you have a pump so that's one of the problems is that this drainage plan didn't have elevations before another problem is that we why do we see problems in these lots is that you know you've got what 20 different home lots here in this this area I may be 20 different home builders depending on where you're at more often than not it's you know one to five but it could we've had some areas where it may be 10 or 15 home builders and those guys or gals don't do a very good job of talking to each other and making sure they're not creating a problem for their neighbor so that's that's another part of this composite drainage plan as it was before is that just the arrows is great for if you're the first person in if you're the last person in you might be left with some things that make your life harder again timing of if you're your first in probably doesn't matter you can make your water go downhill no matter what but if you or the folks before you have built mounds and built things that impede that water flow what you end up with is if you're the last person in you're you're the you're in trouble and then the last thing is frankly what home builders do that are not home builders but homeowners do to create problems is where you see all these arrows in these in these backyards and these side yards homeowners like to put fences all the way to the ground even though they're not supposed to they like to put raised beds and other things that impede that water flow again utilities are often back there so our challenge is trying to work around all those to make sure that water goes where it's supposed to so what happens when it doesn't go where it's supposed to it goes into people's backyards and you have a nice walkout swimming pool or walk-in swimming pool in this case again this is a less extreme case but this is unfortunately common in some spots where you have relatively flat elevations again all it takes is one home builder or property owner to do something that that creates problems for everybody as you can see here this fence it's all the way to the ground so any sort of little things like that matter when you know a development might happen over five years ten years because they just compound themselves one after another again same situation maybe the same backyard but you see that this water that was supposed to flow between those houses and then down because you can see this is downhill clearly can't because the gratings wrong and how do we fix that so we and before I get into actually what we talked about the solution will be want to talk a little bit about how we got to there because when I presented last year we talked about what are the next steps and the next steps were quite a few so we'd already met some with the a lot of the developers and their builders and their engineers in the development community to kind of discuss you guys are the ones that are doing this in the field what do you think the solutions are because we'd probably had what Richard 10 meetings up to that point and and bounced around probably 10 different ideas as to how to solve this so we ask them you help us solve it we don't want to we don't want to create a regulation that is both hard for you to meet and hard for us to frankly regulate so we work with them in order to get what do we think is the least worst solution because again we could do things that are that are perfect from an engineering standpoint but are just aren't practical we see we we hear that a lot well why don't you just well why don't you just is never just it comes with all the ramifications of well why don't you just sewer the entire thing put a law underground well how do you get to that yeah then you have to make sure you have an easement through the entire backyard that no one ever puts anything in including trampolines and swim pools and everything else that's just just unrealistic so those are the kind of conversations we had with a lot of the developers and their engineers we had two or three meetings with them tied with the Home Builders Association he even he got us Richard and a lot of my staff and Greg met with a lot of the home builders at the Home Builders Association and well frankly they yelled at me for an hour but in yelling at me for an hour it helped us understood of those draft changes that we prepared up to that point what was and wasn't practical and we made some changes based on that so one thing that the public I think often thinks is that we just come up here and I think some of the development community thinks this too but we try to give them input so it isn't is that we just in a vacuum develop these regulations and then we just hand down the tablets and say thou shalt that's not how we do anything and I think this group probably understand that more than anything because you've been involved in some of those how we do changes but that's probably the biggest thing that I wanted to convey to today that this wasn't developed in a vacuum this was developed with with both sides at the table and again there were some disagreements and there was a hell knows and hell yeses and we have twos we won't and and we finally came to what a solution that that is that is that is effective now of January as of January 1st all of our anything that's a development plan after January 1st this will be our new edict so let me talk a little bit about that and what we ended up with so that drainage plan that I showed before as I said one of the problems it has is it didn't have any elevations so when you're showing this plan again if if you don't have a have elevations that fix these back corner points then as long as the first guys there first he makes his flows downhill again you end up chasing it what you end up doing is if it's especially bad if see if we have a good example on this one maybe not but it's especially bad if you're at the bottom of the hill and you create a high spot and that just echoes 20 houses up so with our solution of putting in critical flow elevations which again the corners of the lot on the back the front corners are fairly fixed by the street elevation so we didn't worry about that that's another talking point that we hammered out in some of those discussions with developers because initially we said well the surveyors have to come in and do all four corners or like they said well that's silly your front two corners are set by the height of the street anyway so that's there's no need to do that so again simplified our solution and then again if we have any swales or any surface inlets that are in those areas we want to make sure that those are recorded again the next step would be to revise and and and republish that composite drainage plan because sometimes again in discussions with developers they said we might get out there and hit rock that's way shallower than what we thought it was so we go in and we adjust our street elevations as needed in our stormwaters so it's fine just update your composite drainage plan so that again water flows downhill so that that was the responsibility back up here probably cover that enough that's what the developers engineer supposed to do so they're gonna set the grading and set what those elevations should be in the field so what does the builder do well the builder basically builds it to that that's there the onus on them is to build it as it was designed and that's why those elevations are critical so the builder builder has to when they submit a land service permit to us they would have to basically show that they've communicated with the developers engineer to submit that composite drainage plan to us so that they understand that's their responsibility and then again at the end they actually go back survey those critical points whether it be the back two corners of swale the surface inlets and show us that yes these as built show that I did build it as it was designed it will flow as intended again and that that's where it shouldn't matter whether that the first person if you're the first of the last it shouldn't matter because if it's based on those elevations the compounding shouldn't really happen as much one thing I will point out here is that the variance that we allowed in that our initial and this is where a lot of discussion and a lot of engineering judgment came into play is initially that was two inches 10th of a foot Richard something like that and and honestly that was a number I wouldn't say we picked it out of the air but six inches felt like too much one inch felt like too little so we played with that and originally something said 10th of foot or maybe two inches then we went to the development community and talked to them and that's when I got yelled at for an hour and they're like well that's not practical we can't do that etc etc so we said okay I bet we meet somewhere in the middle and say four inches so that's where we ended up and again that that's the good and bad thing about regulations is that they can change so if we get out there and see that four inches is again indeed not practical or is it working from one direction another either it's too high or it's too low then we've got the ability to go back in and make tweaks to that knock on wood four inches is the right amount and we can move forward but because this is a little anecdotal and that we can't you know we're not running studies on every one of these yards that some of it has to be a little bit of give-and-take so so as I said earlier the the requirements for this going to be effective at January 1st development plans again that may change and tweak in terms of what that value is we did have one of the developers volunteer a small residential area they had that was development plan was already through before January 1st to be our test case so they're going to do this even though they don't technically have to for a small what is it 20 I'm looking to the people that were in some of those meetings 20 lots I think or something like that as a test case to see do we need to adjust that four inches and are there other elevations that we need we are getting too many so hopefully with that that communication and cooperation between us in the development community we can come up a solution that doesn't end up with the unintentional endorsement pools so with that any questions yes that four inches that's plus or minus four yes like you've got to be within four inches so and on those elevations and it really isn't four four inches and this is where we man this I don't want to get too deep into this because this will literally take an hour of explaining how we got four inches but if you're on a steep slope four inches is like who cares you're on a flat slope four inches can make a big damn deal so that's why we we struggled with four to a lot of people even still sounded like too much so that's why that may I say plus or minus but it's really not because if you get to if you get too far to that range then then you can like I said if you're at the bottom if you're if you're the person at the top of the hill and you've already had 20 homes built below you and every one of those was off by four inches you're now 48 inches off so there's gonna be a little bit of engineering judgment from from our engineers and from from the surveyors on on what's practical to paint based on the home lot size based on the home lot slopes based on the adjacent slopes but trying to put that into regulations is just silly because you know just taste you're never going to account for everything so you put in a more generic regulation like we have now and then just use some judgment and common sense to get it to that four inch desired yes sir I'm usually working on the downstream end some of the developments and such and and knowing that you know as stormwater runoff increases we're seeing parallel damages to our waterways and so my thinking is that I think there's something to be gained by decreasing stormwater runoff to help our our waterways when when you showed the picture of the backyard that had the standing water or if you can go to the next one that showed yeah like that one when I look at that picture I think you know seeing the the kind of a flat horizon that I don't see a lot of topography or elevation the other thing I'm not seeing is trees I'm not seeing I'm assuming there's probably really compacted soil and so I'm looking at a few other things I hear you talk about elevations and topography but I don't hear talk about changing the ability of some of the properties to have greater capacity in reducing runoff so like there's more infiltration or increasing the capacity of the soils to mitigate you know we're talking about you know small flows I'm not talking about flooding but smaller stuff and then just using having an option for green infrastructure to play a role in some of this is that I think it's an option but as anything else that we see in the development community it's it's cost if there's they do a cost-benefit analysis on just like anyone else does and if it makes sense and that makes them more money money on that lot and they can sell that lot by doing that they will if they don't they won't so the is there interest in LFU CG and approaching more than just elevation of topography but looking at drainage in a more comprehensive way I up to a point but again at some point we are not we are the regulators not the market drivers so I it would be a small bites kind of thing like we do with our drink green infrastructure we give them the options to do things that are better than just grass and the basics and the market will tell us if that is viable in certain markets depending on home size etc it's going to be viable in some markets it's just not because it doesn't make sense that the there's not enough profit or not the driver there so we have to be careful as regulators to not be what was the word you use you don't want to be your educator not a advocator so we have we have we we have to tow that fine line as regulators that we aren't advocators because which are we we can be a little bit of an advocator but if at the end of the day or more regulators than we are advocators for instance we don't know that if you went with a probing rod right to the middle of that puddle yeah you might shatter your teeth on bedrock just by sticking a probing rod in we don't yeah and maybe why this is so flat is that you know they hit bedrock and they went with the absolute minimum slopes and when you go with the absolute minimum slopes that four inches is when it gets it's a little tricky back to Scott's question and that's that's why we chased our tail a little bit on trying to identify what that number is because what's that what's the minimum amount it depends but it's hard to regulate on the word it depends with the grants we're starting out of grants for proposals dealing with what should have been something that the developer had to deal with and so I'm trying to figure out what do you propose what do you attribute that to do you think it's a builder thing or is it an engineering you know thing with the developer we're seeing a lot like Ellerslie and places like that so I'm just I'm just wondering because the board is asking questions I think it's all of the above which is why you know regulations are not a fixed thing it's not a we do it and it never changes when when when that was built when the ones that you're talking about were built I wasn't here but but who knows what the regulations were at the time and whether they they didn't know what they didn't know so that's part of it so but the other part is that did the developer developer and builder do a crap job probably as well so sometimes it's who to blame it's literally everybody but one good thing about the regulations is they are fluid so that when we see problems we can make these changes again that doesn't fix this person's backyard but our goal is to fix the next hundred persons backyard so that that's that's the goal you it's looking back and trying to figure out why everything went wrong in the past I've given up on doing that we did a little bit of that even when we started this exercise and it's like we're not gonna fix 30 40 50 year old drainage problems but we can fix 30 50 40 year old drainage problems from now which is our goal can we not add into our regulations a certain percentage of infiltration required for sites like that because that would help that is between you and the Planning Commission and the developers it's we can it's hard you're gonna have get their buy-in and if they don't buy in we don't do it it's I'm not saying we can't I'm just saying that's a very uphill battle okay see this is related to the hydrology requirements and I understand that on the new development queue or discharge is not supposed to change off of these facilities is that correct or incorrect ideally if you if you do you account for it by having facilities downstream and and so the drainage components they still have to meet that discharge volume yeah this doesn't change any of your other require so that can you know if they use infiltration or they use some sort of storage system or you know you can recapture they can do that I'm sort of impressed in terms of the regulatory development process that you all used on this in terms of going out to all the different parties and and that kind of stuff so it's kind of interesting to watch you all update the stormwater manual in pieces we haven't done a comprehensive update in what four years five years now two thousand yeah two thousand or twenty twenty I'm sorry yeah but just in terms of did you have to change an ordinance to to implement this or were you able to do it under existing authority we just did it on existing authority yeah thank you yep so be clear I'm a developer development engineer we do water quality volume and runoff reduction volume as part of the current standards and procedures so part of that where you can get credit is infiltration practices so there is a requirement already in place and infiltration is part of that all right anybody else good deal well hopefully I won't have to give you another update on this ever again this will work perfect and we'll never have to talk about it again thank you very much Doug I appreciate that okay so as always we take the last few minutes and talk about potential topics for the next meeting so who has some ideas Ken I knew that would happen okay so we would like a meet-and-greet with the new stormwater coordinator yes all right that sounds great other ideas okay we should we do more on the floor stuff next time that would be get everybody excited to talking again okay announcements so we have announcements listed here I have and the chair and Lindsay usually does this part and so I don't know what I'm doing so we're just gonna read it although Jennifer might talk about water week I can okay I can run through the ones that are mine so water week is coming up we have in-person self-guided and virtual events technically the water week hosts sign up it's closed but it is on the website until Monday so if you did not submit an event because you forgot and you would like to submit an event you have until Monday because it's still up there so we also another little kind of housekeeping thing for reforest on April 13th if you are interested in having a table in the tent please go ahead and send us your fill out the form to be an exhibitor if you did not get an email to be an exhibitor but I think probably everybody in this room who would be an exhibitor got an email you can email the live green email address and we'll send you the form to fill out so water weeks coming up we're very excited about that one at the end of water week we have the reforest 5k on March 23rd so if you would like to support tree planting in our community and do a run or walk through Heisel Park it's really cool because it's like very early in the morning obviously and it's beautiful out there so if you've never been out there it's really neat it's a good event the signups are open so please come run or walk with us we have reforest coming up on April 13th reforest at home coming up on April 20th the art by nature sites are open so that's our program for basically art inspired by nature we'll have a gallery this fall at the Living Arts and Science Center and the theme this year is monarch way stations so those locations are already up on the website so if you would like to go paint a monarch or sculpt or any art is fine so all of my creative folks in here please participate in art by nature and I'm going to go back to March 23rd because I wrote it weird in my notes we are celebrating earth hour and earth hour used to be very energy efficient efficiency focused where you would turn off your lights for an hour on the lap like on the last Saturday of March to kind of just recognize not using as much energy but now it's more of like a celebrate the earth and spend an hour doing something for the environment so we have our earth hour website and we have several events the reforest 5k is part of earth hour and there are several parks events and community organizations who have events that day so spend an hour doing something to benefit the earth and I think I have covered oh no March 18th and 20th stormwater incentive grant Q&A's it feels like cheating to plug my own water week events and not everyone else's but if you know anyone who has not applied for an incentive grant before and they have questions and they fall either into the neighborhood or education grant category please encourage them to attend one of the Q&A's there it's the same information at both you don't have to come to both it's just one for the evening people and one for the daytime people and I think that's everything that's mine which is almost all of it Amy so oh and that's the end there was Frank do you want to talk about the deadline yeah we will talk about we had our water quality fees board back on January 11th and there was a couple of changes I'd like to know for the upcoming FY 25 grant application cycle the board approved to continue with the change order program which helps to provide additional funding for extra you know like economical challenges dealing with supplies and materials and what have you they also allowed to continue with the tree canopy expansion establishment program for class A and B infrastructure scoring matrices so we're accepting those types of proposals as well for FY 25 they also approved to increase the volunteer rate from $7.25 to $15 an hour to fall in line with Lexington's minimum wage rate and then also this was spurred by one of our topics at the last meeting approval to allow for preferential scoring for projects that align with proposed BMPs and or actions items of approved watershed management plans so if you have a proposal that is attached to watershed management plans that are approved then there's a preferential item in the scoring matrix for that so we'd like to announce those items and also I'd like to announce that the class A and B education grant applications are due on May 3rd of 24 and then the class B infrastructure grants will be due on May 2nd I mean on July 26 so if you have proposals those are the deadlines for that thank you that's great that $15 an hour is huge Frank and to the fees board thank them for it for us too yeah Ken that's great we'll put that on the agenda or on the list since I have the microphone I'm going to tell you some updates from bluegrass green source that aren't on the screen but we have on March 16th at 10 o'clock at our office on National Avenue we have a rain garden and riparian buffer workshop that is part of the water quality incentive grant if you attend that workshop you are eligible for up to $650 to plant either a repair a riparian buffer or rain garden in your yard but you have to attend the workshop so March 16th at our office on National Avenue at 10 o'clock we have our fourth annual sustainability summit Jennifer and Heather have been helping to plan that that is not directly water quality related but there sure will be a lot of water quality involved in it it's at UK again it is going to have featured the sustainability coordinators from Lexington our very own Jada as well as Cincinnati and Louisville and then we'll have some smaller grassroots community organizations as well doing it we do serve other counties other than Fayette so we need to include the smaller communities as well but most importantly I think and most exciting we're gonna have a speed networking sessions where you can sit at your table and 20 experts from around the region will be coming and you can talk to them for about 10 minutes and get to know what they're doing so you might learn about energy even though you care about water but you probably didn't know you cared about energy as much until you talked to our experts so the speed networking is gonna be really fun and then slightly unrelated to you all but I'm gonna mention it anyway as we have our very our inaugural green business innovation forum so this is where businesses from the region will be talking about their sustainability initiatives on water but also on energy and waste reduction and that's going to be at BCTC's Newtown campus on May 31st so those are my updates to now open it up if anybody else has updates they'd like to share yes Jennifer all right I think we still have some spots in the compost workshops that are coming up over the next month so you can go ahead maybe I haven't checked with Seth we filled up so courtesy of our sustainability office we can now offer the con compost workshops to anybody in who lives in Fayette County not just people with City Waste Service because they are funding the outside of City Waste Service spots I believe we have a handful of those left but we are filled up for the city service spots however if you are still if you are interested in the compost workshops there's one tomorrow kind of late for that there's one next Saturday and then two closer to the end of March maybe the Saturday after that I can't see a calendar in my head but our website slash compost but if you're interested in being added to the wait list if you are in Fayette County and have City Waste Service you can email live green which is up there and it's our catch-all email address and we'll put you on the wait list for the compost workshops in case we have spots open because we do have people who cancel and that kind of thing so okay and a few more the solarized Lexington program for 2024 kicks off on March 12th we submitted on behalf of the MSA the Lexington Fayette County MSA our priority climate action plan late yesterday afternoon it will be available on the city's website it's a pretty impressive document especially since a year ago at this time Jada and I had no idea what a priority climate action plan was so big thanks to Abby with Tetra Tech they were the lead preparers of that document and it's it's really good we are also working on a landscaping and tree protection Zoda phase one Zoda that we anticipate filing in April and it will be heard by the Planning Commission in May we're going to use the month of March for public input so be on the lookout if you have interest in our landscaping or zoning ordinance or tree protection ordinance just be on the lookout for that kind of stuff so that's all I have thanks any more things coming up all right well we get done early do not too much don't be too excited but we'll see you all in June first Friday in June thanks