# Stormwater Stakeholder Advisory Committee - June 7, 2024 > Auto-transcribed civic record · Committee · June 7, 2024 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/6546 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/6546?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2024-06-07 - **Body**: Committee - **Last revised**: February 15, 2026 - **Length**: 13,323 words > ⚠️ **Auto-generated content.** Audio from the official Granicus video was auto-transcribed by OpenAI Whisper-1. Structured facts were extracted with GPT-4o; the narrative summary was written by Anthropic Claude Sonnet. Speaker labels and verbatim wording may contain errors. See [methodology](https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/about/methodology) or [report a correction](mailto:editor@lexingtonky.news). --- ## Meeting Overview The Stormwater Stakeholder Advisory Committee convened on June 7, 2024, at 9:07 a.m. in the Phoenix Building – 3rd Floor Conference Room, with Amy Sohner presiding. The meeting covered six agenda items, ranging from the approval of prior meeting minutes to several informational presentations on stormwater-related programs and projects. One vote was taken during the meeting — the approval of the March 1, 2024 minutes — and no public comments were heard. Informational items included presentations on Wolf Run Watershed-Focused Monitoring Results, the Watershed-Focused Monitoring Program's Volunteer Appreciation, and the UK CUP Stormwater Harvesting Project, along with a discussion of potential topics for the next meeting and general announcements. ## Attendance The following members were recorded for the Committee meeting on 2024-06-07. **Present:** Doug Burton, Jennifer Carey, Jim Conner, Ken Cooke, Steve Garland, Jim Griggs, Don Hill, Amy Sohner, Russ Turpin, Tom Martin, Jerry Weisenfluh, Denice Bullock, Sarah Donaldson, Jason Drew, Brian Hayes, Gabe Hensley, Becky Irwin, Greg Lubeck, Frank Mabson, Craig Morgan, Jennifer Myatt, Angela Poe, Mark Sanders, Abby Terry, Richard Walker, Heather Wilson, Bailee Young, Eileen Burk, Jerry Davis, Andrea Drayer, Nathan Krebs, Lee Moser, John Pike, Steve Vogel, Jack Wilson, Rachel Patton, Wes Morris, and Scott Southall. **Absent:** - Ken Cooke **Late arrivals:** None recorded. ## Votes and Decisions The committee held one recorded vote during the June 7, 2024 meeting. - **Approval of the March 1, 2024 Minutes** [timestamp: 0:33]: A motion to approve the minutes from the March 1, 2024 meeting was made by Scott Southall and seconded by Jennifer Carey. The motion passed unanimously. No roll call vote was recorded, so individual member votes are not available. ## Approval of 03/01/2024 Minutes [timestamp: 00:33] The committee took up the approval of the minutes from its March 1, 2024 meeting as the first item of business. Amy Sohner was the key speaker during this portion of the meeting. No concerns or substantive debate were noted regarding the content of the minutes. The committee approved the March 1, 2024 minutes. ## Wolf Run Watershed-Focused Monitoring Results [timestamp: 01:04] Mac Hall and Bert Remley of Third Rock Consultants presented the results of the Wolf Run Watershed-Focused Monitoring effort to the Committee. The presentation covered findings related to pollutant loads, stream habitat conditions, and volunteer engagement activities conducted as part of the monitoring program. No additional detail on specific pollutant load measurements, habitat assessment outcomes, or volunteer participation figures is available from the provided data. The item was informational in nature, with no vote or formal action taken by the Committee as a result of the presentation. ## Watershed-Focused Monitoring Program – Volunteer Appreciation [timestamp: 38:24] Bailee Young delivered a PowerPoint presentation recognizing the volunteer contributions to the Watershed-Focused Monitoring Program. The presentation highlighted the efforts of volunteers who have supported the program over the past seven years. The item was informational in nature, with no votes or formal actions taken as a result of the presentation. ## UK CUP Stormwater Harvesting Project [timestamp: 52:34] Britney Ragland from the University of Kentucky delivered a presentation on the UK CUP Stormwater Harvesting Project. [timestamp: 52:34] The presentation covered the project's goals, timeline, and lessons learned. This agenda item was informational in nature, and no vote or formal action was taken by the committee. *Note: Additional details regarding the specific goals, timeline milestones, concerns raised, and lessons learned discussed during this presentation are not available in the provided source materials. Readers seeking a full account of the presentation's content are encouraged to consult the meeting video beginning at timestamp 52:34.* ## Potential Topics for Next Meeting [timestamp: 1:23:58] The committee discussed potential topics to be taken up at its next meeting. The conversation centered on two broad areas of focus: political actions and community engagement. No additional details about specific proposals, concerns, or debate were recorded for this agenda item, and no individual speakers were identified in connection with the discussion. The item was informational in nature, with no formal decisions or votes taken. ## Announcements [timestamp: 1:25:31] During this portion of the meeting, various announcements were made regarding upcoming events and deadlines. The item was informational in nature, and no decision or vote was required. No specific speakers, event details, or deadline information are available in the meeting record for this agenda item. --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Approval of the March 1, 2024 minutes --- ## Full transcript My name is Amy. I'm the chair currently. And first, what I would like to do quickly is to introduce Bailey. Bailey is our new stormwater manager, and I have met her now. We go back about three minutes. And so this is, I believe, your first Stormwater Stakeholder Advisory Committee meeting. So you all might have met Bailey in a variety of ways. But I'm really excited to welcome Bailey and get to know more about what her thoughts are on stormwater in Lexington. So welcome. Thank you. Okay. So first on the agenda is the approval of the March 1st, 2024 minutes. Anybody want to approve those? Scott, South Halls. Moved? Any? A second? And Jennifer. Any discussion? I was quite impressed by the description of Rachel doing preschool activities with you all. That was great. It was fun. Anyway, all in favor? Any opposed? All right. Thank you for that. All right. First, we are going to talk about Wolf Run. And unfortunately, I believe Ken is not here and couldn't be here, which is who I always think of as Wolf Run. But I'm sure Mack and Bert are going to do a really good job with that. So I welcome up Mack Hall and Bert Remley with Third Rock to talk about their focus monitoring results. There we go. Always takes me a second to figure out how to use this fancy pointer. Well, good morning, everybody. Today, we're going to be going over the Wolf Run Watershed Focus Monitoring results. And this is the last watershed in the Watershed Focus Monitoring program. So it's nice to really put a bow on the program and looking forward to what the future holds with it. I'm Mack Hall. This is my coworker, Bert Remley. And we got to be on the other hand of the data that the volunteers brought in. And we got to crunch the numbers and look at the bugs and see what it all means. So today, we're going to be talking about the Wolf Run Watershed Focus Monitoring program. We'll be covering why LFUCG monitors, where they monitor, when, what, and how they monitor for the program. There's some monitoring goals that we wanted to hit with the Watershed Focus Monitoring program. And that was to characterize the pollutant loads of streams, tributaries, and major outfalls, characterize and rank those streams on habitat and hydrogeomorphic function, enhance the illicit discharge identification and prioritize sub-watersheds. And this was a big one, engage the volunteers and scientific community and data collection efforts. And that was personally my favorite part about the whole project. And then finally, lay the foundation for watershed-based plans and TMDL implementation. So here are all the watersheds in Lexington. You can see all of them color-coded. And that red line there around the edge is the Urban Service Boundary. And within that is primarily where all the sampling took place during this program. And today, we are talking specifically about Wolf Run, which is highlighted there by that black circle. This was the monitoring schedule for the entire program. As you can see, all the watersheds there that are within the Urban Service Boundary of Lexington. When we started the screen, when you all started the monitor, and when we reported on it. As you can see, it is 2024, and so we are wrapping this up. But it is exciting to see all the data that was collected through all this and all the good water quality work that was done. So the Watershed Folks Monitoring Program consists of five major elements. Collecting water quality or analyzing water quality at in-stream sites and major outfalls, doing a stream corridor, habitat substrate, and looking at a general macroinvertebrate presence. After that, there was a more focused macroinvertebrate efforts at larger in-stream sites, and that was where we really did some scientific genus and identification on it. Afterwards, neighborhood sources and potential generators and priority upland areas. And then finally, conducting some microbial source tracking and deploying optical brighteners to trace potential illicit discharges. So starting off, we had the water quality monitoring. This consisted of two phases. The first one was during four dry weather events. And these dry weather events were defined as 72 hours with less than a tenth of an inch. So no significant rain at all. And the reason that was done is if these outfalls were flowing and it hadn't been raining in a while, then that water is coming from somewhere else. And it was part of our job to figure out where it was coming from, whether it was a stream that got into the stormwater system somehow, or perhaps something illicit. Two of the events were done by trained volunteers, and the other two were done by LFUCG staff. That was during the really, really cold winter. So we thought about giving the volunteers a break and keep their fingers warm instead of getting out in sub-zero conditions. There were 15 in-stream sites that were sampled and then 40 major outfalls. And those were all the major outfalls identified within the Wolf Run watershed. The stream sites were distributed across the watershed, and they were selected to target major tributaries. Again, we talked about to see if they were flowing during Phase I, and that was part of the big effort. And then if they were flowing more than 50 percent of the amounts of times that they were visited, they move forward into Phase II. And then if at any time, whether it be in the field or in the lab when the results were analyzed and those were above the action limits, which you can see there at the lower table of the screen, an illicit discharge investigation was initiated. It might be a little small for some of the people in the back there, but these are all the sites. And we went ahead and showed how we color-coded them with all the different routes that we would give to volunteers. So if one group of volunteers would get, say, the blue route or Route 2, and they would go out and get to all those in-stream sites or outfalls before lunchtime usually. And so it was a quick effort, and it still took about three hours, but the volunteers really put in some good work, especially covering the entirety of the Wolf Run Watershed. After Phase I comes Phase II. And during this, it was 10 events during any weather. It was regularly scheduled every other Tuesday until all 10 events were accomplished. May through September of 2023, and it was done mostly by volunteers and LFUCG staff. All 15 in-stream sites were carried forward into Phase II, but only 11 of those major outfalls out of the 40 original ones were carried on over. So those 11 were flowing more than 50% of the time when they are visited during Phase I. There were 273 water quality samples collected during Phase II, which is no small task. That's a lot of data and a lot of good data that the volunteers brought back to us. In-situ measurements, which means taken at site directly in the water, we collected flow, conductivity, dissolved oxygen, water temperature, pH, and chlorine, which was done by a quick little HANA checker kit. And then they did a grab sample, took it back to the lab, and analyzed it for ammonia, nitrate, total suspended solids, total phosphorous, detergent, and E. coli. And then these are all of the Phase II sites. You can see significantly less. The red are the major outfalls, and then the blue are the in-stream sites. And so they were spread all throughout the watershed, but there were less compared to Phase I. So after all the data was collected and brought back to us, we wanted to crunch the numbers and present it in a way that was easy to understand, but also to help us implement future BMPs or remediation in the watersheds. And so this is based off of KDAL methods for grading in-stream sites and outfalls based off of the water quality parameters. You can see the benchmarks are on the left there in the second column from the left, along with the parameter. And depending on how many times that site had a parameter above the benchmark, it was exceeding the benchmark, and we would give it a percentage. So the less it exceeded, the better the site was doing, and the higher the grade it got. So the A on the left all the way down to an F. And the grading is similar all across the board for the percentages, but in some areas or some parameters where we saw more exceedances, we did slide the percentages just to help us prioritize certain sites. And these are all the Phase II sites. In the past, we would have more than 26 total sites to present, and so we would only be able to give you all a snapshot, but these are all of the water quality results for every site within the watershed. And you can see when we apply those colors to the parameters and the sites, we can see pretty quickly what sites are doing well and what parameters and what sites are doing not so well. And this helps us prioritize areas for potential BMPs in the future or watershed-based plans. This will help the author of those plans lock down what needs to be done in certain areas. And with that, we can take these colors and apply it to the drainage areas for each of the major outfalls, which you can see here, and then also stream sites, which we will show here in a second. So here are the results for chlorine. And chlorine is associated usually with drinking water lines. If there's a drinking water line break and it's being picked up in the outfall or stream site, you can see in that area where that break may be coming from. And so this helps us focus on certain areas to look for potential breaks or if it's coming from another source, such as dewatering a pool or something where you would expect chlorine to be present. So these are the major outfall sites. You can see the sites in red and orange. We received an F and a D, respectively, and then C for the rest of the sites. And then applying it also to the in-stream sites. So this is a stream drainage at each of those points. And so, again, similarly, you can identify areas that could benefit from either repairing drinking water lines or some other form of chlorine remediation. Fluoride, which is also associated with drinking water, we can see here. Not as much of an offender as chlorine was within the watershed, but there are still some areas that comparatively received a C and a B. So if you wanted to focus in on those areas for fluoride, you could. And then fluoride was good across the board for in-stream sites. Detergents, which are associated with soaps. Occasionally you'll pick it up in gray water or sewage lines, or it could be car wash or something like that. There were no exceedances or not enough to knock it into the B grade. They were all A across the board for both in-stream sites and major outfalls. Ammonia, which can be coming from sewage or gray water. It could also be a by-product of nitrification from over-applying nitrogen on your lawn. But there were only a few exceedances. You can see in that small little drainage area there, a 50020, that received a C and the rest of them were As. And then the only area that had a B, the rest of it was A for ammonia, is the Big Elm Tributary, which is right there in the headwaters of Wolf Run. So somewhere in there it could benefit from some ammonia remediation. Nitrate, which is most commonly associated with lawns, high lawn maintenance, over-applying fertilizers. You can see here the results applied to the outfalls. Some areas need to be focused on, such as 50008 there, and then some of them should receive a lesser priority. And then applying it again to the stream sites, you can see areas that could benefit from nitrate remediations. And that goes hand-in-hand with phosphorus, which is up next. It wasn't as, it didn't exceed as much as nitrate, but again it goes into over-application of fertilizer and lawn. Nitrate and phosphorus are two of the elements that are applied to help keep your lawns green, keep your gardens growing well. But if you put too much on your grass or into your garden, as soon as there's rainfall, it's just washed right into the drainage system. So you can see where we can pick up on that. So, you know, be careful about how much fertilizer you put on your lawn. There are ways to do soil testing and stuff like that. So, total suspended solids, which are anything that is suspended in a water column or in the stream when it's collected. Overall, A+. There were no exceedances of total suspended solids throughout the major outfalls and also in the stream sites, which is where you would most likely see it. Anything suspended in the water column is most likely sediment, but it can be algae or plankton or other little suspended solids that kind of float like a colloid in the water. And then finally, we get to E. coli. The number one thing that E. coli is associated with is sewage. It could be coming from sewage, but it could also be coming from wildlife or other direct, however it gets into the water lines or not water lines, into the drainage system or into the streams. Here, this is the primary contact recreation standard. So, if you are planning on swimming in the water, the EPA says if it's above 240 NPM, most probable number per 100 milliliters, it's not advised. That's if you are swimming or playing in the creek. And you can see here that there were several exceedances. There are only one site they got a C and the rest got a D or an F. That's not uncommon in urban areas. We do see that. And again, it could be coming from sewage, but it could also be coming from wildlife. Waterfowl is one thing that it's regularly blamed on. But it could be coming from transients or you name it. If something uses the bathroom, that could be what it's coming from. And then applying it to the stream sites, you can see D's and F's across the board. But there's also the secondary contact recreation standard, which the EPA says. So, if you are boating or fishing, where you're touching the water, but you're not in it all the time, there's a higher standard set for that where they advise you to be cautious, which is 676 compared to 240 NPNs. This way, applying the SCR to the E. coli exceedances helps us prioritize. So, if there are still major outfall drainage areas or stream site drainage areas that are still exceeding the secondary contact recreation standard, those areas need to be focused on first for future watershed-based plans or BMPs. Now, you can see those areas in red, those should probably be looked at first, and then also applying it to stream sites. So, we had a unique situation here where there is already a watershed-based plan for Wolf Run. And there was sampling done 10, 11 years ago that we were able to compare the data from 2023, or 2022, to the published data in Wolf Run, which was published in 2013. And while it is two snapshots in time, meaning it was sampled within a year, 10 years ago, and sampled within a year last year, we can pull general conclusions, but we cannot do any significant statistical trend analyses. So, keep that in mind when we compare the percent change of average results from 10 years ago to last year. Overall, we saw a general increase in ammonia and total phosphorus, which ammonia could be coming from sewer lines, it could be coming from a byproduct of nitrification. We saw that in the majority of the sites, I think 7 or 8 out of 12, and then 10 out of 12. But then we also saw a general decrease in nitrate and E. coli. The one thing I thought was really interesting from looking at the results 10 years ago to last year is the total suspended solids. So, that's going to be coming mostly from sediment. And in urban areas, sediment is most likely coming from bank erosion. And so, from the efforts that the volunteers and Friends of Wolf Run have done within that watershed, it's likely that because of the reestablishing riparian zones, reforestation, the public knowledge within that group has significantly decreased total suspended solids, which is something to pat yourself on the back for because it's pretty significant. And then, that's the percent change of average. We also wanted to look at the change in percent exceedance because just because an average went up, it doesn't necessarily mean that it was going above a benchmark or going below the benchmark. So, we wanted to compare two different methods of looking at the data. And again, this is watershed-based plan results to the watershed-focused monitoring program results. And overall, even though some of the averages went up, there are a majority, they still were not going above the benchmark. DO, we did see an increase in the percent exceedance, but besides that, the rest of them, the majority were either no change or decreasing the amount of percent exceedance. That's two ways of looking at the data from 10, 11 years ago to the data that we're presenting today. Now, I'm going to hand it over to Bert, who's going to talk about the stream corridor characterization. Morning. Stream corridor characterization for Wolf Run, the stream watershed was divided into half-mile segments, of which there were 30. 28 of them were able to be evaluated. The vast majority of the characterizations were done by Dr. Westmore's students. They did a great job. They've been a great partner over the years. A few of the reaches were done by Third Rock personnel. So, at each segment, the students would evaluate three things, stream habitat, using a rapid biosystem protocol data sheet. They would visually estimate the percent of the substrates, what it was composed of, like bedrock, sand, soil, those kind of things. And then the macroinvertebrates, which can be an indicator of water quality, they would collect them and fill out a sheet and use to give a rating, like a fair, poor, good, and so on. So, this is the habitat results. As you can see, the vast majority were poor. But as you move downstream to the – there we go. You got further down, we had a few goods. I think that was an increase of in-stream habitat associated with larger stream segments. So, this is the substrate composition. You can see the main stem of Wolf Run was mostly comprised of larger, coarser substrates, mostly bedrock, whereas the upstream sites, or the smaller tribs, were dominated by finer substrates, such as silt, clay, and sand. So, for macroinvertebrates, kind of similar to the habitat results, you had poor macroinvertebrate communities in the smaller tribs, but as you move downstream, you start to get some fair ratings. So, for the stream biology, Third Rock personnel would collect macroinvertebrate samples from six sites using Kentucky Division of Water protocols. It differs from what the students did by that it was a riffle kick and a multi-habitat sample collected, and from that, we did genus species ID and used either six or seven metrics, depending on whether it was a headwater or wadeable stream. Headwater is less than five square miles, and wadeable is greater than five square miles. So, two of those were wadeable, and they both scored fair versus all the headwater scored poor. In general, the streams lacked mayfly, stoneflies, and castflies, which are a pollution intolerant group. Actually, most of these sites were dominated by one taxa, and that was isopods, which some people know them as pill bugs, that's the terrestrial version, but it's just kind of a general bug that's found everywhere, just about. But they dominated, and one site was 93% of the population. So, here's the visual of the headwater sites for the fair macro sites further downstream. So, you know, as Matt discussed, you know, comparing one snapshot from 10 years ago, all the risk that's involved with that, but it is interesting to see. There we go. This site here in 2013 was poor, but scored fair in 2023. This is also the location of one of our long-term monitoring sites, so we have data going back a long ways, and I looked all the way back to 2015, and while that site did fluctuate between fair and poor, the scores have generally been getting higher as we get to 2023. So, that may be a long-term trend that we're seeing that is improving and not just fluctuating from year to year. And then the habitat was similar between years. This one did decline from fair to poor, and I looked at the data. It was mostly due to sedimentation and embedding this lower scores for those in 2023 versus 2013. So, another program element is the upland visual assessment. So, based off of the water quality results, we wanted to focus in on neighborhoods and industrial areas just to do a visual inspection to see if we could identify any potential sources of these pollutants that we were picking up. So, six neighborhoods were selected and visually assessed. The assessment is based off of the Center for Watershed Protection methodology, and from this, based off of a big checklist, we could come up with a pollution severity rating, which is, again, it's a visual indication, but it could lead to inspections and repairs down the road. And then potential generator investigation, this focused in on industrial areas where we would go to businesses, commercial areas, and look to see what practices they're doing that might be contributing to pollution or not contributing to pollution. And with that, you can see here, these are the results from that effort. The green and orange callouts are the businesses and commercial areas that we went and visually inspected, and then the shaded areas are the neighborhoods. Looking at the neighborhoods first, all but one of them were moderate, which is to be expected, and then one did happen to be a high pollution severity rating, which is there in the Pine Meadow neighborhood. Looking back at the results from that and why it got a high compared to the rest of them that had moderate, it had to do with a high amount of lawn clippings that were not picked up and just kind of pushed over into the drainage areas, the sidewalks, the swales, that can increase nitrate and phosphorus going into the waterways. Also, pet waste was not being picked up. It was commonly within the common areas and in the space between the road and sidewalks. There were some long-term car parking going on that could lead to oil and grease going into the waterway. But it just happened to push it just above the moderate, so it was a low high if there was such a thing. Luckily, those are all things that are easily corrected. Just from some public service announcements or some campaigns in that neighborhood, we could bring that down. So it had a higher restoration opportunity is what we would call it. Then there were all the businesses we went and looked at. Most of them were potential hotspots, which means, yeah, they might, but we can't say for a fact. But two of them, both of them were shops or auto stores. They were confirmed hotspots, and we visualized that they had car parts that were used and stored uncovered near drainage areas. They had some liquids, whether it was used oil or gas, that were uncovered in leaky containers without secondary containment, things like that. So those two locations could be revisited just to make sure they're in compliance or help them fill out a permit to receive a KDPES discharge permit. So that was the upland visual assessment. Now we get to the discharge prevention investigation. This was two parts, one optical brightener survey, which is a very quick, easy, and inexpensive method to see just a thumbs up or thumbs down on if there's any gray water or sewage influence in the water. We literally took a unbleached cosmetic pad, tied it to a brick, and threw it in the water. And that's all it consisted of during dry events because laundry detergent, it's usually really pretty colors, blues, greens, you know. That's all dye, and those dyes can get caught on the pad. And then if you can look here at the picture in the lower left-hand screen, if you run a black light over those pads, if they've caught any of the dye, they glow. You can see the positive control and negative control we used here. And typically it's not that bright. It's kind of more of a dull green than a bright blue when it shows up. But that's just a quick way of picking up if there's any laundry effluent in the streams. This was done in 11 outfalls, and this was all during dry periods. So it had to not be raining for three days or less than a tenth of rain. Another more expensive and more technical way of looking to see where potential pollution is coming from is microbial source tracking. So within warm-blooded animals, there are certain bacteria that are present within their gut that varies. So while there's a coli present, which you can't really distinguish from where that comes from, there are bacteroides that are specific to human, cows, birds, dogs, that we're able to pick out in the water and say, okay, there's human influence, but there's also bird and dog influence. So this was done based off the water quality results that had high E. coli and ammonia. That's why we selected these sites. And those were at seven in-stream sites and seven outfalls. So first, the optical brighteners. It is quick and it is inexpensive, but rarely does it produce meaningful results. If it does pick up on a positive, there is a high influence of laundry and gray water within that waterway. So that's usually like a red flag, like, okay, we've got to really do something about this. And very rarely throughout the entire program did we have strong positives. As you can see here, those white dots indicating this as such. But then when we get into the microbial source tracking, there were eight sites that pinged with a quantifiable result of bacteroides within there. So whether it's coming from sewage, from human influence, or transient, there is a human influence in those outfalls and waterways. The bird marker, which I will say is not species specific. Whether we like to say if it's goose or duck in the water, this could be anything with feathered wings. We're picking that E. coli up here. So whether it's songbirds or gull or turkey, we're picking that up here. All but four of the sites, so again, eight sites, had quantifiable bird results, which, speaking with the people who do the microbial source tracking in the lab we sent it off to, if you pick up quantifiable results of bird, it's usually a significant influence. So whether it's coming from waterfowl or songbirds, we can see that there. The last marker we ran for this was dog marker, and they were all positive. We picked up on these locations if they were close to common areas like parks or where we saw higher amounts of dog owners in neighborhoods. This is where we selected them, and they all pinged positive for dog influence from E. coli in the waterways. So pick up after your pets, people. And finally, leave it at that. Are there any questions? Yes? The relationship between dissolved oxygen and the biology, is that the key factor that limits growth? For the macros? Probably not. It's probably more unstable habitat, the flushing that's involved with strong storms, other water chemistry aspects, but not necessarily the dissolved oxygen. That would affect the fish more than, well, the aquatic insects. So you can have fish kills if you have a bunch of algae in the stream as it fluctuates from night to day, but probably not responsible for the insects. So you were only able to take 11 out of the 40 streams because they were 50% flowing? It looked like they were relatively representative, but like the southwest area maybe was not represented as well? Yes, all the stream sites went forward. The stream sites looked good. Yes, the outfalls you could see in the headwaters, it looks like those were flowing more than 50% of the time. There were some closer downstream, but these outfalls aren't... the drainage area is not really related to where they're positioned within the watershed. You can see here in the headwater where we would expect to see less of a stream drainage, we have more of an outfall drainage that's one of the larger ones. So that's anything running to a storm pipe, so collecting at a detention basin and running through a pipe. So that's our infrastructure-managed drainage. So that's what you can see there. That would be more definitive than the streams, right, because you know exactly where it's coming from? That's right. As you can see, the streams, that drainage is from overland drainage. While it does take into account the outfalls, that's overland drainage from USGS, and then this is actually from the LFUCG shapefiles for our stormwater network. So you're right, that is more precise to look for certain pollutants. Just a reminder, which I'm not doing right now, but please use your microphone so that Ken Cook and others can watch and hear you. One more thing then, is this all available online that we could put this on there? Not yet, but once the annual report is submitted, it will be available. Okay, thanks. Actually, it is on the website. Oh, okay. Thank you, Abby. Yes, Russ? I had a question on behalf of Ken. Hello, Ken. I couldn't miss this, but how many sampling events had more than a half inch of rainfall within 24 hours of sample collection? I do not have rainfall data with me now, but there were a few towards, especially towards when we got into the spring time sampling, we did see more wet weather sampling than we did, you know, during Phase I and earlier Phase II. I don't have those numbers with me now, though. For the dog microbial source tracking, is that, could it pick up coyote, or is it specific to domesticated pets? I think it is canine species, so it can pick up coyote, if I remember correctly. I can get back with you on that, but I think it's all canine. If the bird was that way, then it's probably similar. And they do have specific, I don't know if they have specific dog bacteroides, but they have specific goose and duck bacteroides, but those have been hit or miss on how reliable those results are. But, yes, that's all canine. I think it may be fox, too. So we have seen more coyote within the urban areas. And then real quick, on the website, if you go to lexingtonky.gov slash stormwater, there will be a section with a bunch of links, and you're looking for the Watershed Focus Monitoring Program, and all of the tech memos from each of the watersheds are linked there, and Wolf Run will be the last link. Yes? I'm just curious, what is the process for, like, if there's grass clippings or, you know, near a mechanic, you know, things are leaking, who, I mean, is there a ticket given by the city, or do we volunteers say something or educate, you know, about the clippings? I mean, how is that handled? Well, I doubt the city will write you a ticket. I don't think there's any kind of enforcement for that. That's generally something that's, you know, not a lot of people know about. I can tell you that if you mow your lawn and you don't want to apply nitrogen and phosphorus, experts recommend that if you mow the lawn, don't pick up the grass clippings, because there are stored nutrients within the grass clippings. If you leave it where it lays, as long as it's not on concrete or in the road, you'd want to move that back onto your impervious areas. But that can help you save money in phosphorus and nitrogen and do the stormwater a favor. So that's an excellent question. Any other questions? Thank you all for your time. Thank you. Thank you. All right, well, that was an amazing amount of work done by volunteers, and now we want to recognize them. So we have a volunteer appreciation from all of the LFUCG staff to do. Yes, we just want to celebrate all the volunteers' hard work over the past seven years. So if you participated in our volunteer program, will you raise your hand? Okay, awesome. Round of applause. And so we just want to highlight a bit of the program. I feel like this is very tall, the program elements. And so some of this will cover what Mack just talked about, but we'll just do an overview of all the watersheds and the volunteer effort that went into them. So in 2015, our permit said that we would submit a monitoring plan and then start completing the watershed monitoring plan the following year, and we were to cover one watershed per year. So we just wrapped up Wolf Run. And so there's seven within the urban service boundary, and so lots of you all were a part of monitoring each of those watersheds. And so the goal was to generate data to identify the impairments to the streams within the urban service boundary. And so Mack covered these goals, so we'll go over them pretty quick, but they were to characterize the stream and corridor habitats and to determine the pollutant loadings of the streams, tributaries, and major outfalls, and to enhance IDDE identification. They were also to engage volunteers in the scientific community in data collection efforts, which was a really fun aspect to get city staff and volunteers working together and collaborating and just like having new ideas and an opportunity to have feedback. And they also laid the foundation for watershed-based plans, TMDL implementation, and just provide the opportunity to improve impaired streams. So every year we put the call-out for volunteers. So these show our Wolf Run call-out. So there was one in the fall, and there was one in the spring. And so for the fall one, we said we need volunteers for 10 sampling events. And it had some quotes of some of the volunteers like appreciating the collaborative effort as well as like the ability to see real-time data. And so the volunteers were able to see draft data, and so that also allowed them to provide some feedback on the data they were seeing. So it just allowed some education of the community, and it also allowed, like I said before, city staff to like work with volunteers and have more like face-to-face time. And so then news articles picked up the call for volunteers, which was fun, and I like at the end of this one it says, we have 40 volunteers, but we need more. And the goal here was to, it says in here, the goal is to reduce stormwater runoff, to improve water quality, and to educate people on water issues. And it says it's really important and encouraging to see residents getting excited about like stream health and water quality. So we really appreciate everyone's efforts to just like give us good data and to work together for like a common goal. And in here it talks about how we were also able to like identify illicit discharges, and so then Gabe's group was able to go out and investigate the causes. And so we were able to identify lots of IDDEs, so that was a really important aspect of the program. And so here we really appreciate Tetra Tech and Third Rock's involvement. And so the volunteers were trained each year via PowerPoint as well as hands-on training. And so you can see the volunteers getting trained. And then here's our schedule. So we did start screening Cane Run in 2016, and then volunteers started in 2017 for monitoring. And then we just wrapped up Wolf Run. And so we really appreciate the seven years of effort that the volunteers were involved with. And then this is like a fun slide just to show some of our totals. So we got over 2,400 samples with the volunteer program, and we identified 266 IDDEs. And there were 283 sites, 92 being stream and 191 being outfall. And there were 107 individual volunteers, and some double-dipped and participated in multiple watersheds. So we really appreciate just the great turnout. And so here's some pictures of our volunteers in action. And so we want to give a special thanks to KRWW, who organized our volunteers, and KWRI with Steve Evans, who developed the QWAP, and Friends of Wolf Run, who showed up, and Cane Run Watershed Council, Hickman Creek Conservancy, Neighbors United for South Elkhorn Creek, UK and BCTC, who provided a lot of students who volunteered with us, Tetra Tech and Third Rock for facilitating the program, and Town Branch, who did all the sampling results, and so that was great, and they also helped train the volunteers, Compliance and Monitoring staff, who did the IDDEs and also volunteered with us, and then DES staff and MS4 staff. So now I think Jennifer's going to come up, and she was involved with the program heavily, so. Thank you, Bailey. Just, you know, to kind of help Bailey out, because she didn't really live through any of the actual sampling, and then Lindsey was here for the last couple of watersheds, but it was a huge effort that went into making this program what it is and was, and just thinking back through, since 2016 and late 2015, and gearing up for it, it was really, I think, Steve Evans and Bert, who really came up with the plan, what it was going to look like, what the five components were, and then the piece to engage volunteers was well-supported by Friends of Wolf Run and Kentucky River Watershed Watch, and so it just, like, okay, we've got it, it's approved by the state, how do we get this implemented? And I think our goal as staff was to make it as seamless as possible for our volunteers, so that, you know, they would come in, have a good experience, be able to collect the data, not have questions or have instrumentation that didn't work, make sure that they knew where they were going, could find the sites, so that they would want to return and stick with us through all seven watersheds. So there was just a countless amount of effort from our laboratory staff, our compliance and monitoring staff, and the MS-4 staff to make sure that it all pretty much went off without a hitch. And I really wish Dr. Price was here, Dee Lynn and Ben, they were amazing, so accommodating, you know, they had to get all of the instrumentation calibrated every day before the volunteers went out, or they would do it early that morning, and then that was an addition to their workload, was running all of those samples in addition to what they have to do for both of the wastewater treatment plants. But they were always helpful and accommodating. And then certainly, you know, we did do cane run strictly with volunteers, but, you know, there was, I think Richard Lamey, who was the former compliance and monitoring manager, he came up with the idea of how can we collaborate, get the staff involved with the volunteers, so that there's more trust in how the samples are being collected, more understanding of how the results from the sampling are then used to do an illicit discharge investigation. So that's when we started teaming up volunteers with staff, and I think that was also really successful. And then there was a lot of thought into the schedule itself. We started with cane run because it was one of our smaller watersheds within the urban service boundary. So that seemed like, okay, if we can get this done with a smaller watershed, then we'll be ready to move on to some of the larger ones. And it was also well-timed because there was an interest at the state to add on to the watershed-based plan, because basically, when that was originally developed, it was for the North Farm and that part of UK's extended campus. So they wanted to extend it to the entire part of the cane run watershed, so we were going to pick up that in-town urban service area piece. So that all sort of coalesced. It also got the involvement of several UK professors from the College of Agriculture because they were keenly interested in seeing that data collected. And we met Jim Connor, and he has just been the most fabulous volunteer through the course of it all. I thought, you know, Jim was like perfect attendance during cane run, and I was like, we are so lucky to have him. But I thought, you know, we're out of cane run after that. We're not going to see Jim again, but Jim stuck with us. I mean, like, kudos to Jim. I just want to give him a hand. You know, it's just someone who appreciated the program and obviously cares about water quality, and thank you so much. So then, you know, putting the rest of the pieces together, we kind of knew that if we saved Wolf Run for last, then we could do a comparison of water quality data ten years out from their approved watershed-based plan. We also were thinking about doing a watershed-based plan for West Hickman Creek, but we knew we had to sort of grow interest in that area. And so we did a lot of work to develop a watershed council for West Hickman, which eventually became Hickman Creek Conservancy, and that was a fantastic group of new volunteers that we were able to engage with West Hickman. Thank God we did West Hickman in 2019, because if it had been one year later, I don't know how we would have gotten all that sampling done with just staff, because that was a – every time we went out, all ten events, that was a two-day effort each time. And it was intensive. There were a lot of additional things that we had to collect, especially because we were going to be using that data for a watershed-based plan. And staff, especially from compliance and monitoring, man, they knocked it out of the park. They were so committed and dedicated, and thank you, Gabe and Brooke. So then it sort of reverted to just staff during 2020 when we were in East Hickman, but over the past couple of years, we've been very thankful to get our volunteers re-engaged. So we just hope that all of you who are here today had a great experience. We're not sure what's going to happen next. You know, we've got to sort of figure out the next way that the monitoring program is going to go. We also ran the risk of, like, we're in the middle of this. Our permit ended in 2020. We still don't have a permit, so thankfully we were able to get through the entire program as it was originally planned out. But that will definitely have a bearing on where things go from here. So thank you all, and thanks for being here, and we really appreciate you being involved over the years. And we have watershed keychains and awards, so stop by the table afterwards. And we do want to get a picture with all our volunteers at the end or now? At the end? Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Jennifer and Bailey, and volunteers. That's wonderful. As a nonprofit director, I understand the value of volunteers, and then also 20-plus years ago, Dave Gabbard, who helped start Reforest the Bluegrass, said, I can plant all these trees with a tractor and a tree planter, but I want to get people involved so the impact is greater. And I think that the way that Jennifer and Bailey described this program, obviously the impact has been greater with using the volunteers. All right. I am going to introduce our next speaker. Is Brittany here? Oh, yeah, she's over there. I've known Brittany for a long time in different roles, and I'm excited to have her come up and talk about UK's stormwater harvesting project. I also want to apologize because I am going to have to scoot out. I have to be in Frankfurt by 11, and I'm going to try. So I'm going to scoot out and let Bailey take it on since it's her first time. She needs to do half of it anyway. So anyway, Brittany, thank you. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. Glad to be here. Audio check good? All right. So it is really my pleasure to be here today to share with you this project that we have been working on for the last several years. I brought an entourage, which I will introduce them just momentarily, but this is an ongoing project. I will say that up front. We are learning from this. We are growing from this and looking forward to what we can do in the future. But I really just want to show off some of the great work that's been done today. So for our project team, I know Frank and I had conversed about this. Both sides have had people in the project team over the years leave and different personnel turnovers and promotions and all those different various factors. But these are some of the key players that are at the table. All of them are here today. So when I point at you, wave or stand up. So Graham Gray is our executive director for utilities and energy management at the University of Kentucky. I get the pleasure of being the associate director working with him. Carter Witten is our engineering support. He knows the insides and outs of this operation very well and is key to making this thing sing like it does. Shane Tedder was not able to be here with us today, but many of you know him as our sustainability officer for the campus. Kevin Lewis is at the back and I hear that he's at these things all the time. So many of you probably know him. He helps us with our compliance over in the environmental management, environmental quality department. I think your name has changed since I updated this slide, so forgive me. And then Bell Engineering was our consultant. They were not able to be here today. But both Jim Buckles and Jonathan Rainer have been really involved in this project and it's their baby as well. So don't forget them whenever you're thinking about this project. I also have, I did not make the slide for them, but part of my entourage, we have two young ladies who are both engineering students, Jennifer Bukowski. She is a chemical engineering student and she will be around. You guys can go ahead and start passing these out if you want. She wrote the case study that you guys will have. And then, forgive me, and then Corinne Keener is also an engineering student. She's doing civil engineering and so she is focusing on some other aspects of stormwater with us. So I drug them along to pass things out and to learn things and to carry stuff from the car. But they're both very brilliant young ladies. So if anybody needs an employee, come see them afterwards, but not until they graduate. So here is what we're going to go through today as part of this presentation. I will give you a little bit of the background of how we got here. Also how the context plays. It's fun for me that we just saw a presentation about Wolf Run because that is the watershed that this project is associated with, so we'll see some of the upstream work that's going on with this. And of course, we'll get into how it works, some of the pictures, some of the outreach and the lessons learned and where we're going from now. If you take a look here, if you're familiar with campus, right in here is our very heavily populated hospital area. So the Pavilion A and Chandler Hospital is right up here. And if you go to the west of Limestone, this is the area where the project comes. Just for context, right across the railroad tracks is where the Dairy Queen is on Virginia. So we are between the hospital and the Dairy Queen for our project area. Everybody knows where Dairy Queen is, right? So when we came to the table, this was a project that was funded as part of the incentive grant program and we wanted to do some work, see if we could do some work on both quality and quantity flowing towards Wolf Run. But the concept being, we have very large industrial cooling tower systems on our campus. We actually have four plants that do cooling and one of them sits immediately adjacent to this project area. So there we go. These are the cooling towers for what we call the CUP, the Central Utility Plant, number four over near the railroad tracks. At the time the project was proposed, there was about 45 million gallons of water that went through those cooling towers for evaporative cooling every single year. Well if you look just to the left here, this is a very large 8x8 storm culvert that comes out and I think, Kevin correct me, this is a Simpson outfall point, is that what that's called? Gotcha. So we actually started with Bell Engineering in 2017 to see, hey, how much water comes through here? How much could we get out of this thing? Because the nature of the water in a cooling tower is not something that has to be super pristine. Obviously, there is some chemical treatment associated with that, but it's open to the atmosphere. You get leaves, you get bugs, you get birds, rain, all that type of stuff. And so if we could use some of that water that is flowing past our campus every single day to offset some of the water that we have to purchase from Kentucky American that has been treated and shipped to us, we thought this might be a win for both of us. So the concept became to pull water out of this culvert, build something here to harvest that water, and then pump it up to our cooling towers, which would then feed into our cooling plant that is just off of the screen to the right. Once the testing happened, we found that there was, let me see here, I believe it was 170 million gallons in about a year's time that flowed through that outfall point. And that's every day of the year. So obviously when it rains, there's a lot more, but there's also some groundwater that runs through there after the fact. And so there is water available pretty much every day of the year for that spot. And just with our quick calculations, we thought, what if we just got 25% of that water? Is that possible? We're not sure. But based on a 25% availability, if we could use that water based on the offset of the water that we have to purchase for that cooling tower, it would be about a $200,000 savings a year. So we are still working in that direction. We are seeing savings, but we are still working towards that number. But we think getting very close to that is attainable. So project timeline. Frank, we've been working on this one a long time, buddy. I think you and I are maybe one of the few people that started it and finished it. So here we go. So we actually applied for a grant in 2018. And I'm not sure, but we didn't get the grant. We said, huh. So we came back the next year and we all worked together to figure out what in the world is this concept. And they were so gracious to allow us to reapply and award that. And of course, with the timing of such things, by the time that the award got approved, COVID hits and ain't nobody doing nothing. Everybody is just on survival mode at that point. And of course, if you're anything involved with construction, you know that after COVID started to let up and you started building things, prices went through the roof. So our original grant was less than $400,000 project cost. So the grant was not maxed out. But by the time we got around to designing and building this thing, it was way more expensive. So we had to come back to the table and say, hey, guys, we still really want to do this, but can we get some more money? And so they were gracious enough to take it from an 80-20 split. So 20% cost us, 80% cost the grant. Added up to the max grant award at $360,000, and we went in 50-50 on this thing. And so then we were able to complete our bidding, go forth, get started building. Even at the time we started building, we had some significant supply chain challenges. And so that is why it took all the way until 2023 before we turned this thing on. And so it is running whenever we are able to run it. And it is working today. So here is a great graphic about how it works, just to give you some explanation. So if you remember that storm culvert, that is our storm culvert. So we were able to intercept that water underneath the bottom, pull it off. We have some sediment sump areas that allow some of that gunk that you might get out of the storm system to drain out. And then what we have over here, number three, is our wet well system, which have some submerged pumps at the bottom. So as the water fills this wet well or this tank, once called upon, the pumps will pump up through a filter set and a meter, and then all the way up to our cooling towers. And so when the cooling towers call for or need water, because they are constantly evaporating, so they are constantly needing more water into the system to be able to cool off our chillers, it will use some logic that has been built into the system to call for storm water. There is also still some use of domestic water as well. So it is not completely a storm water driven system, but it is definitely helping us offset that. So here is the aerial image after the fact. So you won't notice a whole lot of change, but you can see here, the round circle is our wet well, and the rectangle is where our metering and filtration system sits in a vault. And so if you were able to see underground, there are some underground pipes infrastructure that run from that culvert into our wet well, then from the wet well into the filtration box, and then there is an underground system of pipes that goes all the way up to here, not in the electric line of course, but buried, and then it comes in in this top right corner of our cooling tower and dumps into the sump of our cooling tower. So here are some project photos. We have the wet well and our filter vault, and then in the background you can see the gray is where the culvert is that they have intercepted. There is a valve adjacent to the culvert that allows us to isolate the system if we ever need to do work on it, so we are not getting water in there. And then there is also I believe a valve after the filter box as well if we need to isolate it on that side. So here we have Carter down in there working on our filtration system, those are bag filters which you can see this is what the bag filters look like, that the water passes through to get out some of that sediment. We're not too concerned about super clean water, but we do want to keep some of that gunk out of our cooling towers. Obviously sometimes we get gunk in there anyway. We have additional project photos, we have Lindsey came to visit the site last summer looking down into the wet well with one of our controls technicians that really made the logic of the system work out very well. You can see here his computer is, he's connected out in the field to see what all the different components are doing. We have the meter that measures how much water we pump through, we also have a conductivity sensor that is very important, we don't want to be pumping water into our cooling towers if there is an extremely high level of conductivity going on, but fortunately it studies pretty good most of the time. It is obviously higher than the domestic water that you're going to get, and I might let Carter explain this in a minute of how the conductivity in the cooling tower matters and works, but we do get, like I said, a higher conductivity in the storm water than the domestic water, but that still allows us to use that in a lower number of cycles in our cooling tower before we have to blow it down. And then this bottom right, we have a very robust building automation system across campus if you're familiar with that, but this is what our dashboard looks like for our stormwater harvesting system, so some of the added expense that we did when we went back to the drawing table was to include more instrumentation so we can see how fast are the pumps going, what's the conductivity look like, what's the total of the meter reading, and all those types of things as well, so we can control this system, turn it on and off remotely. And of course, one of the first days that we pumped water, this is where the water comes into our cooling tower to supply, to supplement our makeup water for the towers. So one of the big components that we are still doing and will continue to still do is outreach and education. I believe you guys passed out both of the flyers, did you guys pass out this one as well? They're in the box behind you, sorry I didn't say that. So Jennifer's case study that you already have was part of a sustainability internship program last year. She is still working on this, so maybe before the summer's over we will add a little bit more data and lessons learned and so forth to this document, but I think she did an amazing job on this. And then we also, as part of a greater effort, developed this energy and utilities bulletin about our entire operation, but I believe it is page 12, we did a feature on our stormwater harvesting, but there's also some more information in there about what our water footprint on campus looks like as well, plus cooling and heating and electricity and all that if you're interested in how our campus runs. And we have various tours on site, do various tabling events as well, and we would be very welcome to invite anybody else that wants to come to campus, I know Frank and I had talked about perhaps sometime after this scheduling an open event where people can come look at the site. I mean there's not a whole lot to see, but it's cool to be there and to see it in person. So for what's going well, in the fits and starts that we've had, for the three-month period that we have documented in this case study, we ran it for about 55 days in total, and we were able to harvest about 2 million gallons for use in our cooling towers, which is just the tip of the iceberg for what we think we're going to get. And we did, in partnership with Chemtreat, who is our chemical company that works with us on our water treatment, and Jennifer developed a calculator that helps us know what all of our costs and so forth are, and so we've saved about $30,000, which is just those 2 million gallons that we've already documented. Part of the concern was when that water goes through the cooling towers, is cooled off to go to our chillers, which cools the chiller off, what's it going to do to those tubes? It's a heat exchanger that it's flowing through, and we have not seen any negative impact to those tubes, which is great, which is part of why we have that filtration in our system to keep some of that gunk out. Obviously we have to treat our water anyway pretty aggressively to prohibit any biological growth or any of that type of stuff in our system in the first place. And then fantastic educational and outreach opportunities. I'm so proud of what we've been able to do so far. We're tossing around ideas of perhaps doing a senior design project where students come and look and see how we can improve the system, maybe take a look at the filtration, what other methods of filtration might help us out so that we're able to keep the system on seamlessly instead of having to take it down to change filters and so forth. But there's obviously just tons of stuff that we could do, sampling, water testing, what is that gunk, all those types of things. So what we're learning, finding the right filtration, as I've already mentioned, has been a challenge. I think we started with, what was it, 10 micron filters, 15, 50, those would clog up pretty quick. We don't need them to be that fine, but that's just what we happen to have, and so now we're at 100, so we may try to do a little bit larger of a particle size to see if that keeps the major gunk out and then lets some of the other stuff go on through. And we're also working on chemical treatment enhancements. Our chemical partner changed hands during the course of the project, so they have suggested that for the off-season, if there is a time where we're not running the plant at all so we couldn't harvest water, the water that is sitting in the system might start to grow some biology in it. So we are going to do some chemical treatment for that particular time. It's all the same stuff that we would put in the water anyway, none of that is going to be released into the groundwater at all, but that will be done. That's actually in progress right now, we haven't started it, but we're building that little add-on to the component. And then bulk water storage could be a benefit. We have another site that we are considering once we work this one out and get the kinks out. Another plant on the north end of campus near Taylor-Dickey area, if you're familiar with campus, has the potential to use an existing tank that's already in the ground that has been cleaned. We could use that tank to store more water so that we're able to peak shave a little bit more of what's going on. So Frankie, in a couple of years we might come to you with that one. Probably be $2 million before we get done with it, buddy, but you can help us. But that would be another great one, but we really want to focus on getting this one tuned up really well to know what we want when we go into the next one, if we go into the next one. And then the great thing about it is we can change some of the parameters. One of the things that we're considering, and Carter, you might speak to this as well, is putting a sensor on there to know what the differential pressure is across those filters so we can see as they start to clog up, let's get ahead of it instead of waiting for the pumps to slow down, let's get ahead of it and see what does that differential pressure look like as those filters start to load up. Anything else you think we should mention about our tuning? We've done quite a bit, but it's all finesse. So I wanted to leave plenty of time for questions and discussion because I'm sure you're going to have them, but we are so grateful for the opportunity to do this project and looking forward to seeing where we can go with it and what we can do with it in the future. Any questions? I will direct it to them. Yeah, what is your most optimistic look at the payback period? What's it look like through the five years? Originally, if we can get to the harvesting target that we had, we were hoping for maybe about a three-year payback. Even if it is five or seven years, we'll still be very thrilled with that. And where does the water go exactly from the water tank? Most of it is evaporated because of the cooling, so it goes into the atmosphere. There is some that you would call blowdown that has to be bled off with all that sediment and so forth as the water evaporates, it leaves a lot of that concentrated stuff behind. And so that is already part of a blowdown that we would blow down anyway that goes into the sanitary system, which is being metered as well. Yes, sir? Uh-oh, we've got a consultant. Just curious, what is your conductivity levels and how often do you have to change out those more coarse filters? I mean, the conductivity levels vary. They seem to run, I don't know, somewhere in the 500, 600, 800 microsiemens range, somewhere in there. Our cooling tower is set to blow down when it reaches 1,600, so it's well below that. I mean, we're definitely messing with the concentration levels in it. And then the filters, you know, getting water is not the problem. Our tuning has all been filtration-related, so we put the 15-micron filters in. The first time we ran it, we probably had some construction debris, stuff in the pipe, but I think it ran for, what, three or four hours before we had to change it. I mean, it was very quick. So we knew pretty quick that we needed to increase it, so we talked with our chemical vendor, Chemtree, to kind of ask them what they feel would be an acceptable level, and I think 100 was originally kind of thrown out there in the original design, but we were trying to ratchet it back, you know, aggressively filter, just to make sure we were protecting the equipment. So we're kind of at the point where it really depends heavily on the rain. If we get a really heavy rain after periods of not much rain, we get all the stuff that's built up on the roads, we get a big slug of it, and we'll go from monitoring our flow rates and stuff, everything is good, to where it's just pumping constantly, and then we get a low-flow alarm, which means filters are plugged. So it's, I don't know, probably weekly, every couple weeks when it's running. If we get a bunch of weird heavy rain, it's probably more frequent than that. Go here, and then we'll go there. Thank you. I was thinking about, in the context of kind of an upper part of the urban watershed, it's kind of a little tributary area coming in, so not a huge creek system, probably like any other urban hydrology, kind of flashy, meaning that when you get rain, there's a lot of water, and then it's kind of dry for periods. So that got me thinking about kind of two different aspects, one you're kind of addressing as far as being able to store water when you get a lot of it. The other aspect, which it sounds like you all kind of identified that would be a benefit to have, to be able to store stuff offline. The other thing is, is there anything to keep a minimum flow in the creek? So in terms of like when the water level is low, are you still drawing the same amount, or is there anything in place to keep a certain level of flow? No, not really. It's pretty much just free-flowing. I mean, I guess you could throttle a valve back. We'd probably be afraid that we'd get sediment buildup or something in it, but it's just pretty much whatever it – well, once it reaches, what is it, the eight-and-a-half-foot mark, the pump's shut off, that's kind of the level it likes to sit in the wet well, basically the same water level as what's in the storm culvert. But, yeah, it's pretty much free-flowing. If we're pumping, we're getting it pretty quick. Based on the original study that we had, we could go back and look at it. I don't think that there's any danger of us sucking it dry unless it's a very dry period. There is quite a significant amount of water that runs through there. And so it's a pump system, so it would be very intermittent when we're pulling off of it. But, yeah, that's an interesting thing to look at, what happens when it does get really dry. I had him first, Frank. Where did the original idea come for this to be done? And the second part is, could you use some kind of backflow to clean your filters? It's like some filtration system to do. So the original idea was, I believe, one of our engineers, Joe Graff, some of you may remember him, in combination with Eric. What was Eric's name? Eric Larson. So I know he left the university about the time that I started, and so this was some of their kind of batting around some ideas. And then one of our previous directors, Jeff Zumwalt, who also helped kind of engage that. And so none of those gentlemen are at the university at this time, but the idea has kind of snowballed. And then I think what you're talking about, different methods of filtration, are all great ideas to explore to help us to be able to continuously keep this thing on. Frank, were you next? Have you had to bypass the flow flow? Can you be more specific? We always – there is not enough stormwater capability based on our system, so there is always some domestic water being used, and actually the mixing of that is advantageous for us for our blowdown and our cycles of concentration, but there are days that we use a heck of a lot of water. Yes, ma'am. Answering this, and I didn't recognize it, but I'm wondering about – it is the Simpson area that the stormwater comes out, and there's quite a lot of stormwater there. I wonder whether you pull water when it's high water, when there's a storm event, whether it has any beneficial impact on how much continues to go downstream. The reason I think you may have answered that is it sounds as though it's more turbulent and may have more sediment, but I wonder about that. I think that would be another great area to look at to see what the downstream impacts are. Obviously, we're getting some of that gunk, filtering that out, that would have gone through the stream. There is still some bypassing, but those are great questions to look at. Had a couple more. You were putting pipes along from the stormwater channel culvert to your facility. Is that in the railroad right away, or are you on your own land there? Do we have to – Yeah, we're – Just wondering if there was an opportunity there. Wondered about that. We did not have to mess with the railroad, but Columbia Gas also has a pipeline through there that they did authorize us. We actually had to cross the pipeline that serves the plant very carefully, obviously. And then, of course, KU has some significant transmission overhead that feeds into our substation, which we run along. So it was – it's kind of out of the back, but it's a busy area, so we definitely had to navigate all of that. Thank you. Yes, thank you. You again. I always have questions. It's interesting. So if you've gotten – you know, reduced your consumption or purchase of 2 million gallons thus far, how is Kentucky American handling the news? Are they disappointed? Buddy, we're still buying plenty of water from them. I mean, it's probably in the round-off era for them, to be honest, about how much we purchase. But they haven't called to check our meter, I don't think. That would be really cool if they did. But I'm not even sure if they're aware. Is anybody in here from Kentucky American? Uh-oh. Surprise. Hey, guess what? I'm sure. Anything else? Anything you want to add? Boss? Is Charlie Martin here? Okay. Charlie was pleased when he talked to me over a year where they had 20, 25 million gallons. I believe that was last year. He's pleased they have 25 million gallons. He doesn't have to worry about some division and, you know, drains and some problems with people's families. So it will certainly benefit that side too. Well, thank you all. Oh, one more question. With the work that's being done, and, I mean, this is on UK's campus, but you've got Transylvania, and then you've got the other hospitals in the area that also have systems. Is that being shared where they can benefit from it too to help? You know, I'm not sure if either of those that you mentioned are aware of that. But this type of stuff, we would love to get it in their hands. I know Frank and I have batted around what other publicity. The point of this case study is to be to our peers, you know, whether they're in Kentucky or not, of, hey, think about this. I know that there are lots of uses. Oh, yeah. Well, even, you know, factories, anybody that uses any kind of industrial cooling system could potentially benefit. Yep. So we're open to ideas on how to share that. If you've got a friend that works somewhere, let us know. Have you all talked with Lexmark and coordinated with them on their rainwater harvest? We did go see that pretty early in the process. There are some similarities and some differences, but we have not contacted them since our original site tour now. All right. I'm going to cut myself off unless you're ready to. So thank you, guys. Frank will be coordinating, I suppose, a site visit, but we are open and welcome to having site visits of all sorts. Just please contact me. My card is over there, but I think there's probably some contact information in one of these documents as well if you need to find us. Thank you. Are there any suggestions for potential topics for the next meeting? I'd like to see political actions that the city might take that would, once we've been identifying the problems, what's the next step to start remediating those? Okay. Anyone else? Mm-hmm. I'd like to build on that question, and the initial presentation talked a lot about the volunteers and the engagement, and so I'd really like to have some conversations about how to continue to involve the community going forward in what's going to happen in the continuation of monitoring, because that was one of my big incentives was the idea we're setting this baseline, we're figuring out what's going on, and wanting to continue to improve our water quality. Thank you. Mm-hmm. Anyone else? I think one thing to note is we are developing our proposed monitoring plan, and so we will hopefully have that ready for you all to discuss with you all in September, so that should be in line with what you're talking about. Anyone else? Nope. All righty. Some announcements. Tomorrow is Truckapalooza. June 15th is River Sweep. July 10th through 12th is KSA. July 18th, but now switched to potentially the 25th, is Water Quality Fees Board. July 26th is Grant Applications Due, and Frank, do you want to give any announcements on grant applications? Thank you for that notice. Yeah, we want to apologize for our cancellation of that 18th meeting. We're going to move that to the 25th so our deputy director and director can be present there. Our Class A and B education grants were due on May 3rd. We're in the process of evaluating those, and those awards will be decided on the meeting on the 25th. So if you have an application out there, or anyone involved in those, that meeting has been moved. Please pass the word so no one shows up on the wrong date there. Meanwhile, we invite any and everyone to get involved, submit applications, contact your associations, and if you find any stormwater issues that we may be able to help with, we'll be glad to entertain that. Thank you. Water Professionals, September 8th through 11th, and September 13th, Art by Nature deadline to submit, and then the gallery opens on October 18th. So thank you all for being here, and if we can get our volunteers up front for a picture.