Okay, let me do this again. Welcome everybody to the December meeting of the Stormwater Stakeholder Advisory Committee. We seem like we have a smaller group, it's probably because it's cold and December. But we have a very big agenda and I'm really excited to hear about all of this, so I hope you guys all got donuts and are caffeinated enough to have engaging conversations here. As always, we start the meeting with the approval of the minutes that you all should have received. And just as a reminder to say your name and speak into the microphone, push the little button and speak into the microphone so we can record your talking, basically. So does anybody have any, would anybody like to make a motion to approve the minutes from last time? So moved if they include the exhibits. Okay. A second? Eileen Burke, second. Thank you, Eileen. All right, any other additions other than the exhibits? Any other comments or changes to this, any discussion? All right, all in favor? Any opposed? Fantastic. All right, first I would like to introduce, coming up to Dr. Tiffany Messer from the University of Kentucky. She's going to talk to us about wetland solutions. So, Tiffany? Hello. How are you all doing today? Can you guys hear me okay? I'm very short, so we're going to like lower this down. Perfect. All right. I'm Tiffany Messer, and I'm at the University of Kentucky in the Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering Department. And I'll be talking a little bit about wetland solutions today. I was here a couple of weeks ago. So, we're going to kind of gloss over that a little bit before we jump into the details of this. So, as an overview, we're going to be answering a few questions today. The first is going to be, what are we observing in rivers throughout the Commonwealth and specifically also of Lexington? What are potential wetland solutions for water quality impairments, and can we actually utilize those? Do wetland solutions work, and if so, how do they work? And then, are they actually being used at the full scale? So, it's great if we do these inside of a lab, but are they actually going to work? So, the first question, what are we observing in Lexington and the Commonwealth and our waters that might be a potential use for wetlands? And our objective for that was we were evaluating multiple locations around the state to see what was in the water, looking at a suite of different contaminants of interest. And this right here is a lot on one page, but I'm going to break this down. So, we have a couple of different studies that we've done over the past few years. This first one was completed by Dr. Emily Byers. And so, it's part of her PhD program, but she was looking at four different watersheds around the state. They had different land uses that were predominantly in the areas, and so these are kind of broken down up here. And so, the one that we're going to really focus in on for this, though, is the urban watershed, which was actually here in Lexington, at one of the parks in Lexington. So, that was one of the locations we were really focused on. As you can see where it's majority red, that's where it's more urban development, compared to if you look at this other location, which is more in eastern Kentucky, it was a more oil and gas watershed, followed by a predominantly mining watershed out in also eastern Kentucky. And then we also looked at a predominantly agricultural watershed that was down in western Kentucky. We also did another study, this is one that I was here talking about a few years ago, looking at two wastewater treatment plants, and looking at upstream of the wastewater ... whoops, let's see. Is it going to let me do it anymore? There we go, okay. Upstream of the wastewater treatment plant, what was going into the wastewater treatment plant, leaving from your toilets and sinks, what was in the biosolids produced from the wastewater treatment plant, what was in the effluent, and then what was being released into the stream. And we looked at two different distinct wastewater treatment plants over two periods during that year. So, what were we monitoring and how did we monitor it? These are a few examples. We looked at a wide range of different things, including trace materials, nutrients, total organic carbon, pharmaceuticals, personal care products, PFAS has been a really big topic as of late, so we have focused a lot on PFAS. We also were looking at some pesticides, along with particularly neonicotinoid pesticides, but I'll talk about why in here in a second. And then we were also taking some physicochemical measurements, like temperature and pH. So why do we even care about these particular contaminants and why were we even interested in them? I have these outlined up here, but we were looking at antibiotics, for instance, due to the antibiotic-resistant concerns that we're having in streams. We also were looking at personal care products. This actually will allow us to know if there's straight piping, questions like that. PFAS, mainly because of the new EPA rule that we're waiting for more details about right now, but we wanted to know, is there PFAS in our waters? We were also looking at neonicotinoid pesticides. This is primarily due to the loss of honeybee diversity. That's been a concern over recent years. We also looked at metals and then nutrients, mainly because of harmful algal blooms, which is probably one of the big questions we have here in Lexington when we're talking to HOAs, to golf courses, places like that. One thing I want to emphasize, these are rivers. These are not drinking water. These are waters that may be pulled from as a de facto water reuse, meaning that upstream neighbors are using it, going through wastewater treatment, putting it into the river, and then a downstream user might be pulling that out and having to clean it. What you see in a few minutes is not what we use in our drinking water, it's what we're seeing in some of our rivers around the state that might be used as a source water for drinking water. I just want to emphasize that. What do we deserve? The main things we looked at, or saw, was that in urban areas, we had a high nutrient load. This isn't super surprising, because we have a lot of fertilizer users in urban areas. One thing that surprises some of the agricultural areas is that a lot of times we'll see that to be higher in urban areas. That's primarily due to pretty limited education and regulation for how homeowners are going to be using fertilizers and when they're applied and how they're applied. That's something that we've been trying to encourage, is how we can provide more education to homeowners on how to utilize their fertilizers. We also saw in the more oil and gas area, there was more caffeine. That primarily was likely due to old wastewater infrastructure and also a lot of straight piping. We literally had our monitoring station, we found out later, next to a straight pipe. When we drink caffeine, like we're all drinking this morning, it doesn't stay in our body, which is why we need it the next morning, so it comes back out. That was what we were seeing there. The ag area, we saw primarily herbicides like atrazine, which has some concerns for human health. Then on our mining site, it was mainly sulfate and glyphosate, mainly from the mining areas. For this, as we're going to zoom in here, this is for the purple, really, here at the bottom. This one right here is going to be where the urban areas are located. You'll see that we have a lot of personal care products primarily in the use of caffeine. This is not going to harm us, this background, but it can impact microinvertebrates if you're trying to have a healthy ecosystem in your stream. I don't know why this is going back and forth. The other thing we were looking at is nutrients, like I was mentioning earlier. We did, again, see that where this purple is, we have pretty high concentrations of nitrate fertilizer. In Kentucky, we oftentimes think of phosphate as what's leading to our toxic algal blooms. That's usually the big conversation, but what we're finding more and more through research is there's actually this happy balance between our nitrogen and our phosphorus, and if we don't get those right, we're going to end up with an algal bloom regardless. We look at both the phosphorus and the nitrogen as we go through these systems. You also see that the chloride that is there on the right is pretty high. That's mainly, usually, from salt applications, or pretty much how we're managing our roads. These right here are showing some of the byproducts for a particular type of imidacloprid. Here's a pet. Anybody have a pet? Do you have pet play treatment on your pet? Nobody? Okay, a few people. Okay, awesome. Your play treatment, that's what that imidacloprid is. You'll see that the purple, again, is going to be really high, and this line that's up here on the black, that's actually what is known to start impacting microinvertebrates, including honeybees, for collapses. We have found consistently in urban areas, it's super high. Typically, it's because of what our pets are doing outside, which then ends up in our streams. We also are seeing it a lot of times in wastewater treatment plants as well. These were the streams we were monitoring. What about the wastewater treatment plants? Are we seeing anything coming out of those that might be of interest for us to be able to utilize wetland solutions? This is a review of what we talked about a few years ago. This green line here is that imidacloprid again, where the ecotoxicity limits are hitting. You'll see consistently our imidacloprid, which is the orange, and then particularly the yellow, which is not a regulated chemical, it's a byproduct of that pesticide, actually is more toxic to most honeybees. We're actually seeing that to be much higher. That is something we're finding going primarily into our wastewater treatment plants, and then sometimes even coming out of our wastewater treatment plants. A lot of it has to do with the degradation processes, such as if we're using UV or chlorination and how that breaks down. We also were looking at the PFAS, because that's been a huge concern. This right here is showing our hazard indexes based on the EPA recommendations that were put out last year, but have been discussed recently. Right here is the thing I want to point out. This right here, the wastewater treatment plant one here, these both are in Lexington. Those are in different seasons of the year. You will see that there's these Xs here. That's when we're actually exceeding those drinking water requirements. Now, again, this is not water we're drinking. This isn't a wastewater treatment plant. Downstream, they might be using this for water, so our downstream neighbors might be impacted if we're releasing it. Those are some of the things we want to at least be considering if we have downstream users using de facto water reuse. The other thing we saw is that at the upstream location, this is before we even got to the wastewater treatment plant, we had exceedingly high concentrations of some forms of PFAS. That actually was likely due to a firefighting station training location. A lot of firefighting foam has PFAS in it, and so that can be released. We actually had an incoming concentration. We found a lot of times our wastewater treatment plant, when we were releasing the effluent into the stream, it actually was diluting it and actually decreasing those concentrations. All right, so we talked a lot about what's in our water. How can we utilize wetlands to potentially improve the water quality impairments that we may be seeing? These are four different types of wetlands, and if you're not familiar, I have these up here just to go over what they are and how others are using this. Many other countries, primarily in Europe and Asia, use these actually for wastewater treatment. They use them for stormwater. They use them for a wide range of different types of treatment applications, even for mining in an industry. This one right here is our free water surface. This is what you would probably imagine. You've got water with plants that are growing. This one right here is a more innovative one that a lot of people have questions about. It's called a floating treatment wetland, and you'll see that the soil's here. Here's the water, and then right here is this floating man-made mat. This is where ultimately you're putting the plants on top of the pond. We've been doing these a lot with homeowners associations and golf courses, and we have even some distilleries that are interested in potentially utilizing these. I'll show you if they actually work in a minute, because we actually have done these in the full scale. These other two are sub-surface and vertical flow. These are more if you're wanting to do wastewater treatment. For today, we're really focusing on the open water, the free water surface, and the floating treatment wetlands, because these are more applicable for stormwater control. Our objectives were to look at various designs to see if they could improve water quality impairments, and then identify mechanisms of how they were doing that. We were interested particularly in the mechanisms, because if you're designing it, you would like to enhance it. The smaller you can make it, the more money you're going to save. We were looking at how they were actually getting rid of some of the contaminants. This was completed in a greenhouse setting to look at this primarily at the beginning. You'll see here we've got our floating treatment wetland here. You can see the man-made mat. They come in blue. They come in black. These are the different companies that provide these resources. This one right here is just a regular planted one with soft stem bulrush. We use soft stem bulrush, because they're used primarily in wastewater treatment. They're exceptionally good at taking up different contaminants, so you can have a more efficient removal process using those type of plants. Talking to plant specialists, it's really important to be able to identify which ones are going to work best for your system. We also looked at a wide range of mixtures. This is where that overview of what we saw in these streams were really important. We had a rural mix of what we were seeing in those assessments in the rivers from earlier, and then we had an urban mix. You'll see in the urban mix, we were looking primarily at pesticides, personal care products like caffeine, PFAS, and then we actually did a mixture of them together. Along with each of these, we were putting in nitrate fertilizer. We wanted to see, can these systems actually remove the nitrate fertilizer? This shows, ultimately, the concentrations we put in, but I think the real interest is going to be what was removed. For the nitrogen fertilizer, we had 97 to 99% removal within 10 days of applying it. We put in sulfate. Sulfate doesn't do great in wetlands, mainly because of the biogeochemistry, so we didn't have an amazing removal of sulfate, but we did have a 91% removal of atrazine, which is a known human health concern. We had glyphosate and pretty much the replacement for atrazine, and had over 89% removal within 10 days, and then even caffeine, we had between 63% and 70%. Also of interest, depending on the design, our PFAS was actually removed between 28% to 89% in these systems. They do have the potential to remove not only the nutrients, but also the emerging contaminants in these systems. We also looked at what was going into the plant. The removing, that's great, but where are they going? For the plant, we saw that the atrazine wasn't in the plant. We also saw that the nitrate was anywhere from 16% to 40%. Why do we care where the nitrogen's going? What happens to your plant's end of the ear? It dies, right? And if it dies, that nitrogen goes right back into the water. So our idea is to hopefully have bacteria do a majority of our work to remove it completely from our system. And it also provides us with some guidance if we can do maintenance, such as going out and more management of mowing and removing that above ground to see if maybe that would help remove some of the nitrogen as well. We saw that the imidacloprid, which is that pesticide again, was between 19% to 27% in the plants. And then for the soil absorption, we saw that there was pretty minimal soil absorption, which is actually kind of good because that means we're not going to have to redo our soil every so often or remove the soil. Overall impacts for this, just as a summary, 97% to 99% of the nitrate was removed within 10 days. The vegetation had a positive effect on the nitrogen removal, meaning the more vegetation you had, the better removal you're going to have. The floating treatment wetlands resulted in a higher rate of nitrate removal in the presence of the mixtures, meaning that if you had a mix of these emerging contaminants, the floating treatment wetland actually performed better, which is sometimes surprising. A lot of times people will think, well, it'll actually kill the wetland, but some of these are actually enhanced, probably due to some bacteria changes in the systems. And then the mixtures in the free water surface, the ones that are in the soil, were inhibited by the mixtures, meaning again, that this might impact some of the bacteria in the soil. So this is looking at the different applications of where these might be best. We also saw that the free water surface outperformed in the spring versus the floating treatment wetlands performed better later in the year. This is important because this might provide us guidance of which one might be better based on when your issues are occurring. If you've got more of a late bloom happening, the floating treatment wetlands might be a better option versus you have an earlier bloom, these free water surface wetlands might also be a better option. We also looked at the caffeine and PFAS, and like I mentioned, the PFAS was reduced up to 89% depending on the design, and we also saw the caffeine was up to 70%. So we could also use these for some emerging contaminants as well. These are being used around the country, particularly in California and in North Carolina, to actually be a polishing system, where at the end of their wastewater treatment plants, they'll actually put them into a wetland that'll process out and kind of polish with these additional emerging contaminants. The Prado wetlands that are out in California is a really great example of how they're utilizing these systems, and they're seeing the same thing in these massive wetlands for removal rates. The imidacloprid was between 25 and 34% in the plants, and you can see here where they were in the floating treatment wetlands had a higher concentration of the pesticides versus the free water surface. What I want to emphasize is this particular type of pesticide primarily is degraded through UV. So the more UV penetration you have for a good portion of pesticides, the more reduction you'll likely have, and it just puts it back to base elements, so you don't have to worry so much about where it's going or how it's degrading. If the key is it's having it in there long enough. We also saw that over 90% of glyphosate and atrazine were removed from the water, which was really encouraging given the challenges a lot of times with these pesticides. And so the next question we have is, this is great that they work in a greenhouse, right? But can they actually work in a full-scale environment, right? That's always the big question. So we're going to go to a different location of the world. We're going to the very center of the country, Nebraska. This is where I actually was before coming to the University of Kentucky, and I was an assistant professor there. And we actually were able to install two full-scale wetlands, floating treatment wetlands, in two different ponds that were next to a YMCA, and one was at a golf course. And here we did two different types of designs, and so you'll see here the floating treatment wetland that's down here, and this is what it looked like. It was doing the biological removal. And so the key for these is you want to cover your pond, about 10% typically is where we start to see really positive benefits for these systems. However, this system already had a lot of problems, and when you already have a lot of problems, particularly with phosphate, you're going to have to do more than just put a wetland on top of it. The wetland's a good preventative measure once you fix the problem, and more of a maintenance measure, but you're going to have to actually deal with the phosphate either by dredging, or what we were doing here is we were using this lanthanum composite, and it was bubbling into the system. This is what it looked like on top of the pond, and it would release, it's similar to a releasing line, like you're pretty much absorbing the phosphate in the system. And this is what it looks like when you pull out the system. I mean, this was kind of us rigged up, we were engineering it, but it did the job. And what you can see here is you'll see the phosphate right here in 2020. This is before we put the lanthanum in, and you'll see the phosphate as you go through after the lanthanum goes in. So we had a very effective removal of that phosphate from our system. We also were looking at the nitrate, so we have higher concentrations, and then once we put the wetland in, we start to see a pretty dramatic drop in this as well. And the DO you'll see is staying the same, because one of the big questions people have is, okay, what if there's fish in there, are we going to kill everything? So our DO stays really strong, and I'll show you in a minute actually how it diversifies your microinvertebrates, and actually the fish really love these systems. So this is a picture of the biological approach, and what I'll say is this was installed in the middle of COVID back when we all had to wear masks even while we were outside. So these students were doing an amazing job of trying to install this while we were all social distancing and trying to push this mat onto the stream, so it was a very entertaining experience. One of the things that the student was looking at was how much nitrogen was taken up into the plant, so we had a better idea for management. I will say the big challenge with these systems is typically birds. The geese love to eat them. So you'll see that there is this kind of fence around it. That is to keep the geese out, because the first year we had about 60% loss of plants because the geese were eating our floating tree moellens, which is not ideal, but they like it too. When they have a fence, they don't have a way to escape, so they will not land on your floating tree moellens, and we found that to be extremely effective. The other question was is, well, in Nebraska, it snows like five feet a year, and particularly the first year we installed it, we literally had, we called it snowmageddon, because it literally never stopped snowing. These systems survived. They did very good. We actually banked them over the winter, just next to the pond, and then we put them back out in the spring, and they did just fine. These plants were meant to survive in these type of environments, so as long as you work with your plant specialist and put natives in, you should be good to go on these systems. You can see here the phosphorus uptake and the nitrogen uptake, and you'll see nitrogen, a primarily, a strong amount of it is going into the below ground biomass, and the same for the phosphorus, and you'll see that these are particularly for the soft stem bulrush. You have more minimal that's going into the above ground biomass. Now, this might change depending on what time of year you're looking at these. This was at the end of the growing season, when they start to finesse and start to hold all the nutrients in their roots, so one thing we've also been investigating is if you were to remove the above ground biomass earlier in the season, and then it started to regrow, and we have found that it actually can be effective at removing some of this nitrogen from the system if you're just doing maintenance on the above ground throughout the year. In Nebraska, the big concern was what are we going to do to the overall ecosystem, and we actually had a study that looked at microinvertebrate diversity, and what they ultimately found is this right here is in the pond, versus this right here is under the floating treatment wetland, and you will see we have a significant increase in diversity based on where you're at in the pond, the wetland versus non-wetland, and what we saw consistently is that the fish loved the wetland. They would go, they would get food, and they would go back out into the pond. The DO does go lower beneath the wetland, but again, it's only 10%, and only goes for about 3 feet into the water, so you're having this little bit lower anoxic area, but the overall pond itself is actually doing quite well. The other thing that we had questions about, well, if you put the lanthanum in, for instance, is it going to kill the fish? We actually had a fisheries expert in Nebraska that did a study to look how much was accumulated into the fish and how it would impact them, and there was very minimal lanthanum found in the fish tissue over a two-year period, so it shouldn't impact your fish as well. So what's it really look like when it's out there? So let's start with this. Here was what the pond looked like before we showed up. We could literally almost walk across this pond. This right here is about 10 days after we started applying the lanthanum and put the wetland in. Pretty significant improvement. This right here, let's see, right here, this is the dune location. You can see where the, this is where it was before versus where it was from the air, and you can see this is the same time of year, one year apart. We also saw, here is in June 2022, we hadn't started lanthanum because we thought, well, maybe we're good. Maybe we don't have to do the lanthanum anymore. Maybe one year is enough. Well, that requires a huge change in homeowner management of their fertilizer, so we left it and then this is what happened, and so we ended up having to apply the lanthanum and then it went back to looking pretty good, and this was in July 2023 when we just went ahead and just did the lanthanum year-round and started applying it. So, I just want to acknowledge the many different funding sources that we had for some of the things presented today, and this team, that was the only way this was made possible, and did the majority of this work that you saw, and is there any questions? Yes. My only question is, does the floating thing float around? Does it swim around 10%? That is a great question. We've actually looked at that. We recommend anchoring it because storms can actually pick it up, and we have actually saw them lifted and moved when I lived in North Carolina, we literally saw one with a hurricane get moved away. The other thing is, we actually place them a lot of times where the inlet is of where storm water is coming in, because that's where your highest concentrations are going to be before it starts to dilute in the pond, so your highest chance of absorption and uptake and removal if you have it in those kind of hot spots, and we have been able to show that to you. Other questions? Yeah. You mentioned something about dredging as a business, so patterns of dredging, has that been a big component? So a lot of people will dredge, I'm not a lover of dredging, but sometimes you just have to restart and reset the system, so you're removing pretty much all the phosphate, well not all, but a good portion of your phosphate from the system, resetting it, it's exceedingly expensive, but you're resetting your system so you're not having that release of phosphate every year, because every year you're going to have an algal bloom if you've got this really strong amount of phosphate that's there and you're not managing what's coming in, and there comes a point where your CEC can only take so much, you've only got so many absorption points, and if your oxygen gets down really low and the majority of your absorption locations are iron, that will release that phosphate into the pond, and so if you have pretty high iron and pretty high phosphate, we typically will recommend maybe resetting your system, and then using these other managements as ways to keep it clean so you don't have to dredge as often, but these are not going to fix something that's already exceedingly deteriorated, they're really great for install as you start, as a way of management, and I will emphasize, everything requires maintenance, so even though they're nature-based solutions, they still require maintenance because they're being used for non-nature-based locations. How many different papers did you just present here? Great question. I think there were six presented. We actually have about five more, though, that I cut those out, but other papers are primarily looking at how to utilize different types of other bio-applications like bio-solids and things to enhance these systems to work more efficiently, which we find are pretty good. Now, do you have these published that would be publicly accessible? Are you an extension? They are, and I'm able to share them with you as well. I'm not, unfortunately, an extension associate, so mine are, Dr. McMahon is next to you, though, and he is amazing, so I'm working on all kinds of great things for you all right now, but we do have a couple of extension documents on wetlands in Kentucky that were just released, and also if you've got some school-age kids, we also have an entire high school and middle school and elementary school program of how to teach kids about wetlands and their importance. And then what research are you currently doing in the Lexington area? Great question as well. Right now, we actually were recently funded with a 104G PFAS through the USGS, and we're looking primarily at how to utilize these to remove PFAS, and how we can look at different designs for them, so would a floating treatment wetland versus free water versus subsurface be most efficient at removing PFAS, and what different mechanisms would be enhanced in doing that? So, that's one of our big ones right now. We also have several others that are looking around the state at other different types of contaminants, and how to utilize biochar to effectively absorb some of these contaminants that we're seeing as well. Any other questions? Yes? Sorry about that. Yeah, so that would have been a great thing to include today, right? It depends on where you're at. What I would say is the floating treatment wetlands, it depends on how much dirt you're going to have to move. I think that's the real major consideration, right? So, if you're going to have to be moving a lot of dirt or putting in a liner, those free surface wetlands are going to be exceedingly expensive, and the floating treatment wetlands might be more effective. The key with the floating treatment wetlands, though, is when you put a free water surface in, you put it in, and you leave it. When you do the floating treatment wetlands, they have a lifetime. You can't just leave them there forever. Those plants, sooner or later, are going to have to be replaced, and the mat is going to have to be replaced. And one of the big things with the mat that we've been having more expenses with is that Right now, they're all plastic-based, so microplastics are a big concern right now, as well. So, we're now looking at, okay, so what are some nature-based materials to use that can float, but again, they're not going to float forever, so yeah. But I don't want to give you a number and then be wrong, but I can email that out afterwards. I do have some numbers, they're just not in the back of my head at the moment. Great, and also, I want to remind people, if you don't mind saying your name before you speak, that way you can hear the mic, that way you can hear the phone, sorry. You're good. Any other questions? Yes. Oh, hi, Russ Turpin. My question is about comparing the floating wetland islands with just kind of planting on the bank, and the situations I can envision are a lot of different HOA-owned ponds, that there would probably be approachable to a floating wetland island, but they would still want to mow right up to the edge. Yes. So, is there, like, do you have any sense about what would be kind of better bang for buck in terms of having a floating island versus planting up a buffer? So, buffers are the cheapest option no matter what. I mean, all you have to do is let things grow, right? But HOAs really, really, really like to see their ponds, and so that's, and I won't say it's just HOAs, it's also distilleries and many other locations like to see the edges of their ponds. But if you have, particularly for phosphorus, if you have a buffer, it's going to help pull out the sediment, and it's also going to make it so you're not going to have to dredge as often. So, ideally, we would have that. But, I mean, I think the bigger question is, how are we educating our homeowners associations on when and how to apply these fertilizers? We don't have to apply an entire bucket of fertilizer that's meant for, like, your whole street on your one yard right before it rains. And I don't think, based on my neighborhood in Lexington, I don't think that that's something that's really instilled, or maybe even something that everyone really understands or knows about. Or it might even be a time constraint of, this is when I have time to put the fertilizer down, so we're just going to put it down, but we don't understand the full repercussions. So a lot of times we work with HOAs where they're calling us and they're really upset that they're going to have to use all this money to fix their reservoir, but if we can somehow incorporate that into, like, you're going to save this much money if we manage our fertilizer, I think will be a really good first step where we don't have to even worry about it as much because we don't have as much leaving our lawns. Or our golf courses. Golf courses are another huge challenge. And dog parks. I'll throw that out there, too. Yes? Is there a benefit to having more than 10 percent, or is there a benefit to having more than 10 percent? Have diminishing returns. It's probably a cost-benefit analysis based on your particular wetland, and I think, Dr. Halfway, do you have a paper on that, or is it Dr. Winston? There's a couple people in the area that actually have done some cost-benefit analysis on particularly flooding treatment wetlands. I think those are based on North Carolina, though, so these are, like I said, they're pretty new to the U.S., but other countries have been using them for a very, very long time. So, but you will be looking at, like, the cost-benefit and replacement, yeah. Any other questions? All right, thank you all so much. I'd like to see her do that for the elementary, middle, and high school students, too, so. That's awesome. That's great. Thank you very much, Dr. Messer. All right, next, we have Hal Bailey from our Division of Planning, who's going to talk about our Urban Growth Master Plan and give us an overview, so, Hal? Good morning. Hal Bailey, I'm the long-range manager for the Division of Planning, so I know a lot of people might have heard about some of these things, I know a lot of people were in some of these meetings. I'm going to do a brief overview, but then open it up to some questions and see what more people want to talk about with this, so in our urban service area, just a quick overview. We were the first one to establish an urban service area within the United States in 1958. This was specifically done to control, sprawl urban growth, make sure that we were growing in a fiscally responsible manner and that we weren't just sprawling out the way a lot of communities were doing in the 1950s. We have expanded our urban service area several times over, sometimes very large ones, like in the 1960s, sometimes just fairly small add-ons, like in the 1970s and then into 1980s. We were at 85 square miles, we're now up to about 89, so we have been doing growth in our community in a fairly efficient manner. We're making sure that we are not expanding beyond our financial needs, putting in infrastructure that we need to then go ahead and continue to pay for and upgrade, even though we don't have the population to support some of those things. But also, we've been doing it, and this was a little bit of a shift in the 1970s to preserve some of our cultural identity as the horse capital of the world. We added in a few other aspects to make sure that we were highlighting the fact that this is a unique opportunity. Now, the one thing I will say is, while we were the first to do this, we have not been the best at it. Our expansions, our growth have happened relatively sporadically, and that was really the case with our expansion most recently. Our urban county council was feeling the pressure of needing a great amount of housing within our community. There have been a lot of reports that have said that we are behind, and that's the case for a lot of the United States. We're also really dealing with a housing affordability issue, so a lot of perspective of that is, if we increase our supply, we'll be able to at least level off the cost of housing. So 2023, when we adopted the goals and objectives of our most recent comprehensive plan, the urban county council said, you shall expand our urban service area. We want to make sure that we have a master plan that looks at how we're going to do these things with a focus on housing, and that will kind of get into some of the land use recommendations that we went through when we were doing this analysis. During that review, the planning commission found five areas of expansion that we were going to look at. So the first one down here, off of Parker's Mill and Man of War, one off of Winchester in between the interstates. And then three, the big grouping down here, off of Athens Boonesboro Road, Todd's Road, and then kind of adjacent to the interstate. Each of these locations were based off of kind of where our urban services are currently, adjacent to our current urban service area, making sure that we are trying to get the best connections to our current facilities, specifically sanitary sewer. When we were looking at the expansion of our urban service areas, roads and sanitary sewer are typically our biggest cost impacts, and that was one of the largest kind of perspectives of why we should go in certain directions. Now I will say some of the needs specifically for the Parker's Mill location, we have some issues with sanitary sewer in that location currently with capacity. We did not expand into those areas that would make that a little bit easier, so that one is probably the last one to develop. We are still working on figuring out how are we going to increase the capacity based off of the Mint Lane pump station and some of the facilities that we need in that region. But these are all along those gateways into our city, all along major roadways, so it also behooves us to kind of talk about what are we doing for our roadways going forward. So really the focus of this plan was trying to get the greatest amount of density, mixture of land uses, and try to create the best possible development within our community. We really focused in on a mixture of housing types. This gets into a perspective of the 1996 expansion, our last expansion, was very innovative in 1996, but when we look back on it now, it does not provide the density that we need for our community, nor does it provide the walkability aspects, making sure that people can age in place, grow as a community, and enter into different levels of housing. So here we are looking at different levels of housing, a mix between single family, detached, attached, and multifamily. Another thing is the diversity of land uses. You'll see in some of the land use typology that I'll present here in a second, we're looking for places that people don't have to technically get in their car and drive all the way across town to go to a specific restaurant, grocery store, shopping center. This is meant to have the density that can support a mixture of land uses in one space, so that we're, again, not overtaxing our roadway system, pushing people around the community. So that people can go ahead and walk to different amenities or needed aspects. Gentle density. So a lot of the conversations within Lexington recently has been that we are density uber all us. We're focused in on just trying to get the density where it is. That is not our focus. We are trying to get greater amounts of density, but trying to make that in scale and in mass with what is adjacent to it. So setting up a possible solution for people to live in different housing types, housing developments, but not have it overshadowed by having a 10 story building next to a very small structure or something like that. Making sure that we're getting those transitions from higher corridor roadways, things like that, into local roadways. Being a little bit more intentional about some of our development. And then another aspect is connectivity. In 1996, we did not do a good job within our community to prepare ourselves to expand in the future. This is off of the Hayes Boulevard area. We basically put a green ring, which is a good thing, around the community. Other than the fact that there is no way for individuals to get into this now expanded area off of Athens Boonesboro Road, and no way for people to get into that neighborhood from that neighborhood, or from the future development. This causes major problems because that pushes everyone out to Athens Boonesboro Road, creates major issues long term, but then also it can create issues with connecting to different infrastructure that's already there and established. So we are now kind of creating two separate developments. We have a really separated construction. It makes it a lot harder for us to make sure that we're providing some equity there. And then finally, looking at other modes of transportation. Making sure that we are looking at our transportation network in a more holistic way, rather than just focusing on moving people in cars. We want to make sure that we're also building out the possibility for mass transit to get out into these areas. That comes with the development of job producing, destination type developments, as well as higher density residential that will pull our transit system out into those areas so it can be efficient with what we're trying to do. The land uses for this. We have kind of shifted our perspective on some of our land uses so that we're trying to, again, get the greatest amount of housing so that it can support the growth in these areas, as well as try to get the most out of the land that we are bringing into our community. Low density, we specifically called out the amount of dwelling units per acre on this. So going from a 7 to 13 dwelling unit per acre, this is a little bit higher than what we were experiencing in 1996, which our low density in 96 was a 0 to 3. So looking at a lot less dense, a little less affordable, as well. So getting into trying to provide a little bit more flexibility in our low density. Medium density, again, shifting it up. We're also looking at different housing types that we're seeing develop in other communities. And then into our higher density. Our perspective of higher density on these types of developments are really going to be focused in along our corridors, along those major roadway networks, so that, again, we're trying to pull transit out there and do the gentle step downs away from some of our higher density. We have proposed two other land use types, a village center and a town center. This gets into the mixture of land uses that are necessary to keep people from having to get in their car to drive across town to get the things that they need. So blending residential retail across space, our village centers are a little bit smaller, whereas our town centers, we're starting to get into that vertical mixed use in which we are having multifamily above retail, making sure that we have also those employment generators, office space, things like that. And then finally, we did provide some space for what we consider flex space, or these are more of the jobs producers. So again, going back to what the council told us to do, which was focus on residential. That is what we were really tasked to provide. This ended up being a fairly small aspect of the expansion, to the chagrin of some and to the happiness of others. But we have found that most of our industrial land, when we say it needs to be industrial or it needs to be developed this way, it's usually the last thing to get developed, largely because the cost benefit aspect to that is more beneficial if the government or a non-profit organization or Commerce Lexington are working together to generate some of those land uses in industrial, bringing job users into those spaces, and then filling in from there. So we're hoping that we're going to get a little bit in this kind of land use, but we didn't expect this to be the primary component of this expansion. So I'll jump through some of the initial frameworks and the different areas that we have for this development. So this is area one of the expansion, specifically around Parker's Mill. This area was heavily impacted by karst topography, or karst geography, geology, there we go, in which this central area here was identified as having a lot of sinkholes. So per our manuals, we're not building on sinkholes, just bad idea in general, and we're really focusing in on if there is any environmentally sensitive area, if we have streambeds, trying to use that as a feature of the site, making sure that we're tying into that as having the opportunity for people to use that space for recreation, trail systems, things like that, building out the residential surrounding that, but making sure that we are having that kind of pulled apart from the rest. We are recommending, again, the highest intensity of land use and highest density of land use up along Man of War Boulevard with a proper roadway system connecting back, stepping down from the highest density to medium density and then into low density. One of the major aspects of each of these plans was that connectivity, making sure we're utilizing our roadway system appropriately. This was one of the few areas that we had a proposed road connection still available here. Now there was a lot of conversation during the development of this master plan as some of the residents over in this area were not particularly thrilled with the idea of connecting in. That is a goal of our comprehensive plan and it is a requirement of our subdivision regulations and zoning ordinance to continue on those roadways. That is really important, again, not to force all of this population back out onto Man of War or back over into Beaumont Circle, but to make sure that they have another way to get out onto the improved, or soon to be improved, Parkers Mill Road. That's going to be really important also for our emergency services, providing all those connections, making sure they have alternative modes to get in and out of sites. Area 2, this is one of our largest areas, has a significant amount of floodplain across it. We have two areas of floodplain, kind of come back, and then down here we do have some unmapped areas that we are calling out here and here. These floodplains and blue line streams here are also the location in which we are looking at for the reestablishment of sanitary sewer systems. Trying to get to the lowest point so that we have a different pump station rather than having one right down here and one right down here. That's just not efficient for our government to continue to maintain that. It's not efficient for our sanitary sewer system, so we're just trying to make sure that when we are expanding downstream, we're making sure that we're getting the best possible solution to get everything back to our wastewater treatment facilities. Here again, we have a town center, a real dense development here that we're hoping will complement the development that's going over here. We have the University of Kentucky Medical Campus here, and then Baptist just below that. We'll see some development that's going to occur over time along the frontages of those properties. We are also working with Parks, and Parks is looking at other opportunities to fill in some of these spaces down in this area. I know that a lot of people that live out in this section of the 1996 expansion have lamented that there aren't a lot of park facilities. That is largely because when we did that expansion, we had the idea that you'll pay into a fee. That fee will eventually allow us to purchase property or have it donated. That fee is still there. We're still working through that. I think they are trying to figure out what's the best possible solution for us to get a park out in that area soon and at a good level so that people can have everything that they need. We have identified within this plan. We worked with FCPS a couple of locations for schools. They were particularly interested in the amount of density that we were putting onto this plan and how that might impact their future growth and change. Area three. Here we're in that area that is landlocked off from the prior development, and then we've got I-75. Something that is probably going to take a little bit of federal monies and a lot of planning out into the future is cross-connection across the interstate. We have two planned connections at this point in time. I think those are distant. They're well out into the future, but we want to make sure that we plan for that option again to alleviate some of the impacts that we might have for roadway construction here. We do have a couple of green spaces, green ways that we have planned through the site, making sure that we are providing some of those connections across different areas, making sure that there are some green places for individuals, and then also, again, looking at the schools. We do have the schools with Brenda Cowan down here. Making sure that if someone over here wants to send their kid, they can possibly walk or ride a bike, do something different than getting driven down over to Athens-Boonesboro and then back up. Really working through that strategy of trying to promote density along the front, but also alternative connections into different areas. Our regulating plan for Area 4, we still have those connections, Todd's Road right up here. We have a connection that goes along what is currently Cane Break. If anybody has been out there, I doubt you have. There is a set of houses right here that would block that connection. This is a distant, distant plan. We're looking out 20, 30 years for some of these connections to be made, but they are really important to ensure that we are getting that north-south roadway connection. We do have some mapped floodplain out in these areas, and those will be particularly important to protect as we are going through this and really amenitize. Then, finally, we have Area 5. Area 5 is off of Athens-Boonesboro. A lot of this is starting to develop currently. If anybody has been to the Lexington Sporting Club events out at the soccer stadium, they're starting to build that out. The area that we were particularly interested in planning out for was this over here. That is part of what is the Blue Sky Rural Activity Center. They are looking for redevelopment options. The area to the south of Athens-Boonesboro Road here, that is undeveloped for the most part. There's a hotel, a few other small things. Looking for a little bit of residential, a little bit of mixed commercial and entertainment options out there to complement what's going across the road. I will say that this blue sky portion right here, it's already built out. That is an industrial area. That is going through a different small area plan right now. It's called Blue Sky Works. If you'd like to learn anything about that, I can send you some more information. We have a website. If you want to just Google that, L-F-U-C-G, Blue Sky Works, it will pop up for you. This is ongoing. We're at the end of the outreach part of it. We're still developing the market trends, trying to get that information out there. There will be some aspects of this area that have to be discussed, specifically the stream going around the back. It is not great. It is pretty gross back in there. It has basically turned into a dumping area. You put an industrial area there from the 1950s, 60s. You don't regulate it as a city. It's out there, forgotten. It's really great for the small business members. They're doing really wonderful things out there. There are a lot of great businesses, good people out there. What happens when it's unregulated, there are no lights, the roadways are pretty tiny. People dump. That was one of the greatest complaints that we've heard from some of the people back there that they've gone back and pulled out a whole bunch of tires, mattresses, things like that. I don't think it's the users of that site. I think it's people that are taking advantage of the fact that no one knows it's back there. We are working with all of our different divisions to talk about this area and come up with some strategies to either clean it up, bring it to light, or amenitize it at the same time. The other aspect of this that I wanted to highlight with the growth or the expansions that we've done is every expansion we've done has been slightly different. Sometimes we grow too big. In 1996, we grew by 5,600 acres. This time around, we did 2,840 acres. Those are big. It's somewhat unruly for us to plan because it's really hard to do a 20-year plan for something that might take 30 years to actually build out. This process, or Lexington's Preservation and Growth Management Program, which the council is currently reviewing, sets a set process for us to review the need for residential within our community. It is a really important thing to look at. If you haven't heard about it or read about it, I really push you to go to Engage Lexington. This is a council-pushed effort to try to get this to be a little bit more routine. The biggest part of something like this is it allows us to have other conversations of what probably needs to happen before or directly after an expansion, which gets into engineering, it gets into planning for things other than land use, it gets into more studies that can help us understand and help the development community build a little bit faster. When we're looking at our most recent expansion of the 2,840, that happened and we were told you have a year to do it. The 1996 expansion took approximately five years to do, was led by the mayor at the time, was really pushed to have engineering drawings, regional detention, conversations, a specific program for how we are going to exact payments or development fees, things like that. It was a very robust process. This didn't have that, and I believe that the planning side of this is sound. I think that we are now dealing with the impact of, okay, well, how are we going to do some of those other things? I'll also state there were no stormwater manuals when we did the 1996 expansion in the same kind of way that we currently have. There are rules and regulations that guide development as it occurs for a process like this. I don't want to say that we're not ready for it. We are. We are as a community. But I do think that supporting what everyone is doing right now to update those manuals, to make sure that they're done in the best possible way, is really important to engage with and be part of. On that, I'll be happy to take any questions. I will say, strangely, applause. You don't usually get that in planning. Yes, ma'am. I'm just going to override Parker's meal. I mean, it is a skinny road, and we're putting a space in with Waterways Lex. You're putting a lot of traffic on it already with that kind of big housing development that's going to be right across from Lane Allen. Yes, so there are some opportunities for us to look at that through not just the Division of Planning, but through our Metropolitan Planning Organization, which is kind of associated with us, in that they are looking at opportunities to get that upgraded sooner rather than later. That area has been an area of concern for some time, not only with this expansion, but with the current traffic that is being on it right now, as well as a person that rides his bike everywhere. I have had several conversations with individuals saying, I've been run off the road there because it's too small. This is an issue of trying to make sure that we are planning for not only our urban sections, but also our rural cross sections. We need to have a greater conversation of what is a complete street, when is a urban kind of land use affecting some of those areas. I think that our MPO also takes that into account for broader Fayette County, not just central Lexington kind of thing. So we are working through that. Before development builds up at this site, that needs to be taken care of. Yeah, Ross. Ross Boggess. So these concept plans, from concept to the point where somebody files the final development plan, are people guided towards that? Is that something that's been adopted by developers and landowners? How is that? So the Urban Growth Master Plan, I probably should have hit this earlier, it is adopted by the Planning Commission. It is used whenever we are doing a rezoning application. So all that area, for the most part, is zoned AR, or Agricultural Rural. So whenever someone comes in to do a new development, they will need to bring in a zone change application that has a public hearing. But when we say, oh, you're doing a zone change, you have three options to choose. You're in agreement with the comprehensive plan, which means you're in agreement with the master plan. There's been a change in socioeconomic kind of physical nature out in those areas, or you can't meet the comprehensive plan and there's something more appropriate. But when it's greenfield development, you're always going to the comprehensive plan. Those other two options aren't really options. And that's by state statute. They push you to those things. So we will see zone changes. We already have seen two out in those areas, one both on Cane Break. I think I anticipate us seeing more over the next couple of years, which is why it's so important that we get certain things worked through, like the infrastructure funding plan, that we work with developers to make sure that we're meeting all the goals of this as they come in with pre-application meetings and feasibility meetings. Yeah. Hi, Jason Unrye in Kentucky Water Research Institute. So I was just kind of curious if you're thinking ahead over the next 50 to 100 years that we're going to have more precipitation. Are you planning for what the flood plain might look like in 50 or 100 years and the amount of stormwater runoff and so forth? Absolutely. I think that really a comprehensive plan amendment doesn't do that enough. I think what we would need is greater change in our zoning ordinance and our manuals. Our zoning ordinance currently lays out certain things that need to be done, like setbacks off of blue line streams, flood plains. So I think we are in the process of reviewing our flood plain regulations right now and trying to figure out, well, how is that going to work with new development as it occurs. They were a little bit more generous on this plan to give wider setbacks to actually make those flood plains a little bit more like linear parks in a sense. And I think that is one way to do it. Other communities have done that better than we have in the past, largely because we relate to the game in establishing some of our metrics and our manuals. So we will be looking at that over the next year with our flood plain regulations, and we'd love to have your input as we go along in that process. It takes a lot of our conversations. We focus in on stakeholder groups but also getting out to the public. A lot of times the public needs a little bit more education leading into those conversations too. Yes. Basically, I want you to compare and contrast the 1996 expansion stormwater management planning versus the current. You mentioned it in your comments as being more robust in 1996 than now. What are you guys doing in terms of cost analysis, connectivity for stormwater systems, and those kinds of plans? And here's the final sort of caveat on this question, is there was a great deal of pre-monitoring and study done before 1996. I have not seen that evaluated, nor have I seen that compared to current data. Do you have any plans for that? So that was kind of three questions there, sir. I would say that the difference between 1996 and what we have now is 1996 was targeted at a specific area, whereas right now we are utilizing stormwater manuals, which is not a focused study on one specific area. It is general rules and regulations that guide development. So that's the difference there. When I'm saying that it was more robust in 1996, they took a more slowed pace to go through that process and really say these are unique features of each one of these areas of development. Right now we're utilizing the stormwater manuals, which is a good regulatory fashion, and I know you're going through the updates right now, and that will impact how that will occur. But, no, we also did not do pre- and post-flow or analyses on some of these things, largely because we were told you have an expansion, do the expansion, you have one year to do it. Now we're kind of catching up. Now this follow-up question, or it's really a comment, basically is not necessarily directed at you. It's directed to the community here in the room at the stormwater stakeholders group. In terms of the stormwater manuals, the stormwater manuals are okay for what I would call individual developments in terms of how their hydrology affects things, but the connectivity between these developments is not being looked at and not being studied, and I'm not seeing that comprehensive look in terms of all the different disciplines connecting these particular developments in these particular areas. Is there any plan to do that? I think you'd have to – not a question for me. I am a long-range planner, but I think it would be appropriate for you all to have this conversation as you move along with the review of these manuals. But that long-range planning, yes, I am a long-range planner. We hope to do more studies. We hope to support the studies that are going on, but we're really focused on land-use development and how that works development-by-development and gets into really private property rights within the state of Kentucky and how things are regulated here. So that is how we control the development process is by a property-by-property value. You're welcome. Thank you very much, Hal. It sounds like there's a lot of discussion and lots of things, so maybe this is something that we can consider the planning part as part of something we talk about in the next few months as well. I also want to point out that later on the agenda is – Abby is going to talk about the stormwater manual, so maybe there's an opportunity to bring some of this up, some of the things that Hal talked about there. All right, next we have Dr. Ian Simpson and Dr. John Hathaway from the University of Tennessee. They're going to talk about data-driven insights from Lexington's MS4 monitoring program. Ian? All right. Hi, everyone. I am Ian Simpson. Alongside me is Dr. John Hathaway from the University of Tennessee. We are here because we got the opportunity to play around with and really dive into some data analysis from the MS4 monitoring program, the watershed-focused monitoring program. We really got excited about this. Primarily, I get excited about this because I'm from Cleveland, Ohio, a much better place than Tennessee in some aspects and a much worse place than Tennessee in some aspects. But why I get excited about things revolving around MS4s is because I grew up five minutes from where the Clean Water Act got its birthplace. I grew up about five minutes off the Cuyahoga River, and so it's really instilled in me this passion for clean urban waters and clean urban environments. And so I – what was that? Gotcha. Sorry, I was probably just a little bit too far behind. But, yeah, so I get really excited about these sorts of topics. I'm really passionate. The other thing, before I get started, I'd like to apologize for bringing up my laptop here. I have a couple of slides where I want to drive around and show you some interactive features. And so if during that time I kind of focus in on my computer as I'm showing you around, please yell at me. I won't get intimidated or mad if you tell me that I'm getting away from the microphone. So the sorts of data that we used for this analysis are probably some of the data that you've either seen before or helped collect. So we used data, again, from the Watershed Focused Monitoring Program in which it was collected by either Third Rock, volunteers, or Lexington-Fayette County – Urban County Government themselves. And what these data included are these few different groups that I like to list. Wet stream chemistry, dry stream chemistry, wet outfall chemistry, dry outfall chemistry, physical habitat, macroinvertebrate scores, and fish scores. And so I used all of these sorts of different data to answer a number of different questions or kind of give some insight about what we think might help out in Lexington or identify some problematic or some really good areas. And so when I say wet stream chemistry, I mean the samples were taken from a stream during a rainfall event. Or dry stream, samples taken from the stream when it was just normal conditions. And those go the same for targeted outfalls. But the chemical analytics that we looked at specifically were total suspended solids, different nutrients, so different species of nitrogen and different species of phosphorus, and E. coli. And the objectives when looking at these data sets, we established three different questions or areas that we wanted to look into. The first were, were there different correlations between these pollutants? And if so, could these also be inferred to things like the macroinvertebrate scores that we saw or the fish scores that we saw or channel stability scores that we saw? And so this also went across the different aspects of how the data were collected. Was wet stream chemistry related to dry stream outfall samples? And those sorts of things as well. So we were really looking at multivariate analyses or multivariate correlations between all of these different data points that we were given. The second question that we wanted to explore was, we wanted to quantify what the concentrations of pollutants were in these streams and if they were meaningful or if they changed in different periods of time. Primarily, we looked at wet stream versus dry stream chemistry. Were there differences when it was raining? And lastly, we wanted to identify some of the urban watersheds within Lexington or Fayette County that had excessive pollution, and if so, we wanted to locate maybe where those hotspots were. So back into a little bit of the data that we were given or provided, we limited the data set from 2015 to 2024. 2015 was when the Watershed Focus Monitoring Program originated, but the data sets that we were provided extended much further back. We really just wanted to home in on what was more recent water quality data. And then I also wanted to provide this table to show you some of the numbers that we were playing with, how many samples there were throughout this data set. And so I wanted to show here, over here on the left side of this table, are the number of different stream samples that we analyzed or that we looked at, and over here are the outfall samples that we looked at. And so you can see that there's quite a good number for different or in wet season versus dry samples. And then I also wanted to point out these below detection limits and above detection limits. Whenever you send samples to a laboratory, they have method detection limits, and so if you're on the lower end, they might not give you an actual numeric number. They'll just say the concentration of the sample is below a certain number. And why I really wanted to point that out was because in certain nitrogen species, for example, TKN or ammonia, you see a lot of these numbers were below detection limit. And what that is hinting at is we don't actually know what the concentration was, and so I guessed. The concentration was low enough that the lab was not able to analyze it, and I just wanted to point that out because that's about two-thirds of the samples in some of the cases. And so what I did to handle those was I took the concentration and I assumed it to be half the concentration of the detection limit, and that might come into play when we look at some of the results. So now I don't really want to talk about the specific methods that I used. It kind of gets lost in the very technical jargon, but I wanted to explain what we're going to be looking at when I actually portray the results. So for the correlation analysis, the first objective, I used something called multiple factor analysis, which is very similar to a more commonly known statistical test called principal component analysis. It's just a little bit more sophisticated and can handle data sets that have different ranking schemes, different methods of quantification, and different periods of missing data versus when there is data. But what I wanted to show is the results will look something like this. It'll give you a circular biplot, and there'll be vectors of all the different parameters that we looked at, the water quality, the fish scores, the macroinvertebrates. And what we're really looking at is a cluster of vectors. When you see a cluster of vectors together, that's telling you that there is a correlation between them, and the longer the vector is, the stronger the correlation is. So these plots are really good to look at when you have a lot of data and a lot of different types of data and how they may relate to one another. For the second objective, what I did was I employed a statistical test to look at the distribution of data for chemistry in dry season or in dry events, I'm sorry, dry periods of time versus wet periods of time. So everything shown on the left in this light gray box plot will be a dry weather stream sample. On the right in the darker gray box plot will be a stream sample collected in wet weather. And then what we did is we related the distribution of samples to different references, to different targets. And so you see here we have KAR, surface water quality standards. We have Lexington non-regulatory standards. And then I also have something over here called the Tennessee Urban Waters Report Card Standards. And that's primarily what I related these to. So the Tennessee Urban Waters Report Card is something that I helped develop down in Tennessee. And what we did is we created thresholds for different chemical parameters that we often see in Tennessee streams. But how we created those thresholds were not based off of solely Tennessee data. It was based off of Southeast United States data. So there is some applicability to relate Lexington data to these. And so what I did is I collected a bunch of reference stream data throughout Tennessee. I gathered data from online sources and from published materials. And I aggregated all the data and kind of just made professional judgment breaks on where those would be. And so in that grading scheme or ranking scheme that I helped develop, we made grades for what we would consider A quality, B quality, C quality, D and F. And so I just showed the A and C quality, basically what we would consider really, really good and what we would consider pretty average, not bad, not great. And lastly, for the third objective, I employed a multiple comparison test to understand what the difference was between one watershed versus another watershed versus another watershed, both in wet and dry conditions. And what I really wanted to show here is when you see those figures, you'll see a lettering scheme on the top or the bottom. If you see two watersheds that have a similar letter, it means that there was not a statistical difference. If they do not share a common letter, there was. So that just tells us what watersheds might have been problematic, but it doesn't tell us where the problem was within that watershed. So next, what we did was we employed some mapping techniques, both in a statistical coding platform and ArcGIS to create maps that kind of look like this. This is a statistical technique called Krieging. Basically, it just spatially interpolates what a concentration might be in between two points that you actually have the data for, and they use some pretty sophisticated statistics to get that. But basically, what I ended up doing was I plotted wet stream concentrations, dry stream concentrations, outfall concentrations, and I made these maps to kind of overlap where the hotspots might be. So let's get into the actual results here. So this is the first objective, the correlation analysis, and this is the biplot that resulted from it. What I failed to mention is when you get these biplots, you get two different dimensions, dimension one along the x-axis and dimension two along the y-axis, and they portray how much variance in the data is actually explained. And if you add the two dimensions, it can tell you what percentage is explained, and here it sums to a little bit over 60%, so we can feel about 60% confidence that these relationships hold quite true. And what I first noticed when looking at this plot are these lines for RBP, or macroinvertebrates, I'm sorry, MBI, which is macroinvertebrates, RBP, which is channel stability, and IBI, which is fish. They are really, really long vectors, meaning that they have strong correlations with everything else that you see. So what I first looked at was this MBI and RBP are in the same direction as a lot of these purple and green arrows. And what that is telling me is that they have a strong correlation with dry stream chemistry and dry outfall chemistry. Basically, what it's saying, those two go hand in hand. But as concentrations get higher, it's bad. As the RBP and MBI scores get better, it's good. It's meaning there's better richness of macroinvertebrates, better channel stability. So while these arrows are pointed in the same direction, it's actually indicating a negative correlation. When the chemistry of streams was worse, macroinvertebrate scores and channel stability was, I'm sorry, when chemistry was worse, macroinvertebrate and channel scores were worse. Does that make sense? So it's talking about the background or the constant levels of chemistry of nitrogen, total suspended solids, or E. coli in the stream are having an adverse impact on macroinvertebrates and the channel scores. And that's kind of interesting because you see all of the wet stream chemistry pointing in the opposite direction. So that's saying when you would expect a lot higher levels of pollution in a stream, that's not what really is affecting those macroinvertebrates. It's the constant conditions that they have to live in. Next, what I notice is these purple, green, red, and blue arrows, all the different types of chemistry, you don't really see them in a nice pattern. You don't see them all correlated together. The dry stuff you kind of do, but the wet stream is on the opposite side, and that's saying dry stream chemistry and wet stream chemistry data points that we looked at weren't all that related. It's hinting at that there are different transport mechanisms and different sources for dry stream pollution and wet stream pollution, also suggesting that maybe the management strategies for them vary. Next, I wanted to dive into Objective 2. So this first plot that I show is for TSS. And what I notice is a significant increase, as denoted by this red star here, between dry stream chemistry and wet stream chemistry. However, while there was a significant increase, I looked at those lines across the plots, those different reference lines, and you see that almost all of the data points lie below those reference lines, indicating that while there was an increase in wet weather, probably driven by the forces required for sediment to be mobilized, the sediment concentrations weren't all that bad. I have shown here that there was a 0.6% exceedance of the sea water quality in dry conditions and a 1.5% exceedance of sediment in the wet conditions. So what that's really telling me is that the sediment wasn't really, or isn't really a driver of maybe bad scores or something, or impairments that we might be seeing in some of the Lexington streams. Next, looking at phosphorus. So total phosphorus, denoted on this bottom box plot, had a significant increase from dry to wet, and dissolved phosphorus had no difference. And what we see when we look at the different horizontal lines on this plot were that the issues really only occurred in dry weather. In wet weather, the exceedances were rather uncommon, around 25%, but in dry weather, we had about 86% exceedance of thresholds that maybe macroinvertebrates or fish would like to live in. What I also noticed was a very high portion of total phosphorus was in the dissolved phase, a much higher portion than what I've typically seen in the literature. It says here about 88% of dry weather total phosphorus was in the dissolved phase, while about 60% was in the wet phase. So I've just said a lot of phosphorus was dissolved, and I also hinted that maybe phosphorus is not that big of an issue in wet weather. So our management strategies should probably be focused on controlling dry weather sources of dissolved phosphorus. Looking at nitrogen, it kind of told the same story as phosphorus. A large exceedance percentage in dry weather, about 91%, and not that high of an exceedance in wet weather. And that's for total nitrogen down here in this bottom right plot. What I also saw, though, was that nitrate and nitrite, a dissolved form of nitrogen, significantly decreased, while ammonia and TKN significantly increased. If you start playing around with what might be particulate bound and what might be dissolved, I came to the conclusion that you can't really, there's not really clear trend if the majority of nitrogen is dissolved or if it's particulate. It might be split somewhere down the middle. And also what I was looking at, because total nitrogen is a sum of TKN and ammonia, and, oh I'm sorry, I lost my train of thought there. But because TKN is a sum of ammonia and organic nitrogen, and nitrate and nitrite were assumed to not be substantial drivers of harmful pollution, as well as ammonia was not, we came to the conclusion that the vast majority of the problematic areas of nitrogen in dry weather was because of organic nitrogen, not because of nitrate-nitrate, not because of ammonia, and not because of TKN. It was the form of TKN that was organic nitrogen. And lastly, for E. coli, we saw a significant increase of E. coli from dry weather to wet weather, and we saw common exceedances of the KAR standard in both wet and dry weather. So it's telling us that it's problematic in both wet and dry, but more of an issue in wet. And a lot of the sources of E. coli can come from various different areas. It can come from feces of dog parks or animals, livestock. It can also be from human sources if you have cross-connection between drainage infrastructure. It can come from wildlife such as geese. But across the majority of the literature, most literature confirms that wet weather E. coli is generally derived from human sources. That's nothing to indicate what I saw in this data, but that's just what the literature is saying, and it's something that I like to keep in the back of my mind while I was looking at the E. coli data. So now I get into the Objective 3, the spatial analysis. What watersheds were more problematic than others, and where within the watersheds were some of these hotspots? So what I saw with TSS was that the Town Branch watershed and the South Elkhorn watershed had the highest concentrations. But again, we looked back at Objective 2, and the concentrations weren't really all that high. Objective 2, and the concentrations weren't really all that problematic, right? What more I have seen an issue be of sediment pollution is not so much the distinction between dry weather and wet weather, it's how hard is it actually raining. And so that might be something that we want to look into in the future, if the sediment concentrations in streams are much worse during high rainfall intensity versus low rainfall intensity. And going beyond this, this is where I derive some spatial maps, and this is kind of why I wanted to have my laptop up here to show you. So I made these maps alongside with John Hathaway to kind of try and home in on where these issues might be. I'm going to switch over here really quick. I made these maps interactive. Oh, it's not showing. Okay. Well, I guess I'm working off of this. But anyways, I made these maps interactive so that you can click on all of these data points, and it brings up how many data points there are, what's the median concentration, how many exceed certain thresholds. You can turn off layers. You can kind of zoom in and see what areas might be worse than others. As I mentioned, TSS really wasn't that big of a driver, so there's not really a whole lot to look into here. What I lastly wanted to say was these big colored points are the stream concentrations, while these black points are the outfall concentrations. And the stream concentrations on the left-hand side is everything in the dry, in dry weather, and on the right side, everything is in wet weather. And so when you look at the interactive maps, you can turn off certain layers with the click of a button or turn them on. But with the stream concentrations, the color of these points represents what the median concentration is. The size of it represents what percentage is exceeding a certain threshold. And then the outer ring color denotes what season were the highest concentrations typically observed in. Again, since TSS wasn't really that substantial of concentrations, we didn't really notice a lot of trends here. But when we started looking at nutrients, the first thing that we saw was Town Branch had the worst concentrations of nutrients. It was significantly greater than all other watersheds, right? And so we kind of wanted to investigate why that might be. We also noted in Objective 2, wet weather versus dry weather, that wet weather was only problematic or only exceeded certain thresholds a certain percentage of the time. Well, if you looked at where those exceedances or where those exceedances occurred, what watershed they were derived from, it was almost always from Town Branch. So while most of the other watersheds were only problematic in dry weather, Town Branch was problematic in both wet and dry weather of exceeding those thresholds that we looked at. And so when I looked at the maps, I really honed in, again, on Town Branch, which is located in this watershed or located over here. I was able to zoom in on this area right around here. So Wolf Run is right here. This yellow point is from Wolf Run. This yellow point is from Town Branch. And this red point is also from Town Branch, just downstream of both of those locations. And so that was indicating to me that this stretch of stream might have a substantial source of phosphorus and potentially nitrogen as well. So these maps here are developed. This map was developed just for total phosphorus, not for nitrogen. But it indicated that there might be some hotspots there. And I was able to name or suggest a few that might be there. But with the data, we can't confidently say which might be the most substantial source of that. But we were able to hypothesize a couple, one of which was McConnell Springs, which McConnell Springs was, based off of watershed mapping, supposed to be in the Town Branch watershed. This gave a little bit of, I don't know what the right word is, but it made me question if this mapping was actually right. And so I looked at McConnell Springs, a constant source of water for where it's being discharged to. Supposedly Town Branch. But I looked at McConnell Springs, and I looked at data that Lexington had for McConnell Springs for each of the different chemicals here. Now the distributions of data here match almost perfectly with the distributions of dry weather data from every watershed except Town Branch. So even though looking at watershed mapping, it's showing or suggesting that McConnell Springs might be in Town Branch and might be a substantial source of nutrients for Town Branch, I was looking at that it's probably not. It's probably actually feeding Wolf Run and shows good or better water quality data. And that was also confirmed with some dye tracing that the city has done. And yeah, so I just wanted to say that McConnell Springs, while it was initially hypothesized as it might be one of the potential contributors to nutrients in that section of Town Branch, all the data that I have shows that it's probably not. And lastly, I did the spatial analysis on E. coli. Again, E. coli was exceeding those thresholds in dry weather and wet weather, more so in wet weather than dry. So what stood out to me here is that Cane Run and East Hickman, or Cane Run was the watershed with the highest wet weather and dry weather concentrations. And it was often greater than most other watersheds and almost always greater than the regulations. And so there was many very, or there was a lot of interesting places to look on these maps for E. coli, but due to the sake of time, I wanted to just focus in on Cane Run, which is over here. And we see two data points that are dark red, showing that it has quite a bit of E. coli in the water there, especially in wet weather. And what I noted is that they're very high up in the watershed. And when I looked around to see what potential sources there might be there, there are no farms, there are no golf courses, there are not really many ponds upstream of these areas, suggesting that while there can be natural sources of E. coli, which was likely observed in many of these other watersheds, what I hypothesized to be the substantial driver of dry weather and wet weather E. coli in these very high up spots along Cane Run was probably related to degraded or aged sewer infrastructure data. So just to go over some of the key takeaways from the work that we did, some of the analyses that we performed was, from objective one, that background concentrations or background pollution in streams is what more so drived poor macroinvertebrate scores rather than wet weather. Macroinvertebrates have this weird and unique resilience to water. They can have acute or chronic preferences, and it seemed like the preferences of avoiding was more so due to chronic water quality issues rather than acute. We also noted that dry weather and wet weather pollution were not all that related, something that we can confirm with our second objective, where we noted that nutrient pollutions in dry weather were much more common to exceed those thresholds than wet weather. Also with objective two, we saw that TSS, ammonia, TKN, and E. coli significantly increased in wet weather, while all others either significantly decreased or had no major influence by wet weather versus dry weather. And we identified the major sources of TN to be organic nitrogen and the major sources of TP to be in the dissolved form. Lastly, with objective three, again, the main issue was in between town branch sampling location one and two for phosphorus or for nutrient-related issues. And again, McConnell Springs appeared not to be a driver of that. E. coli in Cane Run was mostly related to sewer infrastructure, but we saw a lot of issues all throughout a lot of the watersheds for E. coli. And yeah, with that, I wanted to end with there are always limitations when it comes to field work and field sampling and analyzing data. For the sake of time, I don't want to get into many of these, but I have some pictures and some comments listed. If you are concerned or interested to know about any of them, please reach out to either me or John Hathaway, and we'd be happy to explain some more. But with that, I would like to open it up for any questions that you all might have, and thank you all for your attention. Yes. A little bit, but I am a nerd, and I like to. This is the stuff I love. Yes. So I really want to direct this question to Bailey in terms of where did they find you? Basically, I see that you've got an Ohio sweatshirt on. Yeah. But we have the orange of UT. Yes. And where are you publishing it? I mean, has a report been given to LFUCG, or is this it? So the report has been given to LFUCG. With the expectation that we might tweak a few things here or there, I'm not sure what their plan is to distribute it or not. That's probably a question for Bailey. But anyways, I was found because Bailey was a grad student of John Hathaway's. So they have that connection there. So when do we get to see this paper, or when do we get to see this stuff? It's still in draft form, so let us finalize it, and you can always reach out for it. Okay. And then I noticed that part of our data collection effort included the United States Geological Survey's real-time monitoring data. In other words, we have extensive, probably 30,000 data points a year collected per parameter at these monitoring stations. And we have, right now we're doing another cycle of it where, for example, in Wolf Round Watershed, we had 2013-2014 USGS data for DOPH conductivity, that kind of stuff. And then in 2023, we had another round of this data point. What does it take to analyze that level of data, and can you do that? Or why wasn't that done? Yes, I can do that. The computations aren't going to be much more difficult than what I've done here. This was just the data sourced from Third Rock Volunteers, LFUCG as well. And these were just the initial three questions that we thought were good to dive into. You know, we are capable of doing more if that's desired. Yeah. A lot of the automatic sampling is... I'm easily entertained, apparently. Yeah, so a lot of the USGS, if they're using, in particular, you know, the centers that are collecting real-time data, a lot of times that doesn't cover the types of pollutants that we're able to do with this analysis. So that's part of it. A lot of that stuff is more like temperature, conductivity, DO, stuff like that, that can give you some understanding of the physical condition of the stream, but it doesn't get into some of the data that you're able to do with the sampling. With the sample you send off to the lab. Yeah. Also, I wanted to make a note that the interactive maps that weren't able to be working right here, I have provided them to LFUCG as well, and those are really cool if you want to click around, turn some layers on, turn some layers off. And that's kind of where I tried to find hot spots. Like, this stream location didn't have very poor concentrations, but, you know, just a mile down the river there was some poor concentrations. So what's located in that area? That's kind of the things that I tinkered with a little bit, too. Yes. I'm not any kind of a scientist or a data analyst. So I have a very basic question. Are there areas that you had difficulty getting samples, meaningful samples? I'm kind of thinking of Town Branch, which is paved over quite a lot, the watershed. And did it vary from dry to wet? So I want to state that I did not do the sampling. The volunteers did. Third Rock did. Lexington did as well. So I can't really speak to that. But the dry weather to wet weather in Town Branch alone, the variations between total nitrogen and total phosphorus were not substantial. Am I able to get my presentation back up real quick? Okay. So in this graphic, this is showing Town Branch total nitrogen and Town Branch total phosphorus. The black box plot is wet weather, and the red dashed one is dry weather. And in both cases, you see that they overlap pretty well, suggesting that all the sources of nitrogen in Town Branch are being generated both or are being generated continuously, but the transport mechanisms aren't dependent upon rainfall. So if that kind of answers your question, is that pollution's always there in Town Branch. Yes. So the question was about if the data that I obtained from Third Rock and the volunteers in Lexington included population density. My assumption is yes, it probably did, but I didn't look at it. Just a comment here. I would like to confirm that McConnell Springs is a tributary of Wolf Run. I mean, that's known locally. Okay. And we've argued with U.S. Geological Survey about their surface GIS coverage. Now, with that box plot that you had where you were presenting the Town Branch data, did that include the McConnell Springs data in the town, or did you separate that out? Yeah, I separated it out. Actually, when I first had this data, I did not have access to the McConnell Springs data. I saw this box plot. I zoomed in on the interactive maps that I made here, and I saw McConnell Springs right around here on the watershed side of Town Branch, not McConnell Springs, and so I was like, oh, wow, this is probably a constant source of nutrients to Town Branch, but it wasn't, or most likely not, and you confirmed it. Yes? So we were looking at a cool line stream run. It has always been sort of an issue there, and there is definitely some sewage or septic issues there through lines, but it also has the Kentucky Forest Park in its headwaters, which has a lot of water coming in, and it also has the U.K. storm, which also has a bunch of water coming in. How far upstream? How far upstream? Do you know exactly where? Oh, it's outside the urban service area. Okay, so these points were all within the urban service area. No, no, they'd be downstream. Downstream. Okay. I was going to say, there is a chance that I missed. There is a chance that I could have missed something around here, but, yeah, I was pretty confident, but I wasn't sure. Okay, so, yeah, the sampling points were here, and then I'm assuming the Kentucky horse farms are around this area. No problem. Anything else? All right, well, thank you all for your attention. Thank you. Okay, Russ has graciously offered to go in March, so we're going to move forward with the stormwater manual update with Abby. Okay, good morning, everyone. I'm Abby Terry with Tetra Tech. We are the city's stormwater program management consultant, so I'm just here to provide a quick update on our updates to the stormwater procedures and maintenance manuals. Okay, so I just wanted to walk everyone through how we got to where we are today. This process really began this time last year. We started looking at all of the chapters. We're not bound to any permit requirement or any timeframe on when updates happen. We just kind of accumulate these things that we would like to improve, and then when we have enough, we do an update. So we started dusting the chapters off back in November 2024. Director Burton presented our key changes at the March SSAC meeting, and if you all are aware, House Bill 443 went into effect July 1st, and we didn't feel like we had had sufficient stakeholder input to get the changes through at that time, so Amendment No. 2 to the 2020 stormwater manual was issued, and we kept working on the full updates. So a workgroup was held in August. Many of you were there. We got some really great feedback. We went back to the drawing board to develop some revised language, so we're here today to present some of that and then what will happen. Bailey will send out the red lines and revisions after this, so that way you all have time to take a look at those. We're not on any set schedule to get these through council, so after we hear back from you all, your thoughts on what you see today, Director Burton will get back on the schedule to go to council and present these looking at a timeframe of summer 2026 to get the new manuals. One other note, after that workgroup, there were many lingering questions about green infrastructure, wetlands, so to support that data gap, Bailey Young, the MS4 program manager, circulated a questionnaire to many of the green infrastructure professionals that you all recommended. We received a lot of great feedback. So what you are seeing today is a result of feedback gathered through the workgroup and consensus on those questionnaires. Okay, so what you all are seeing are only the changes since the workgroup. I'm not going to go through the whole list. If you are interested in those, the original red lines and summaries were sent out after that workgroup. So this is what has changed since that time. So we don't have a comprehensive red line? You will get the comprehensive red lines afterwards, but this morning I'm only presenting what has changed since the workgroup. So in Chapter 1, there was a proposed addition to require updated hydrologic and hydraulic studies for amendments to existing development plans, and the stakeholders wanted to clarify that those would only be required if the changes to the plan affected hydrologic or hydraulic conditions. So that clarification was added. You can see the change to the original proposed revision in red. Most of the proposed changes this morning are regarding Chapter 10, post-construction stormwater controls. These are kind of presented in the order that they occur in Chapter 10, but I want to discuss the second bullet there first. We spent about half of the workgroup discussing manufactured treatment devices. Without getting into the details, the current stormwater manual references the 2013 NJDEP protocol for certification for those treatment devices. The original proposed revisions were to allow devices certified to the 2013 protocol or newer. We received a lot of input from you all in the workgroup. LFUCG also met with their colleagues at SD1 and MSD. Many of the other communities were either allowing a grace period for the 2013 protocol and then phasing that out or going straight to the 2021 protocol. After those discussions, LFUCG felt that it was best to adopt the 2021 protocol period. So it won't be 2013 or newer. It'll be certified to the 2021 laboratory protocol. Okay. The rest of the workgroup primarily focused on green infrastructure requirements. There was a lot of discussion about this requirement you see in bullet one. There was a requirement proposed to have a landscape architect certify that plants installed in green infrastructure were installed in accordance with the planting plan that was provided to the Division of Engineering. We heard from you all that there are other certifications and qualifications that should be accepted for that, and ultimately Water Quality felt that adding professional wetland scientist designation or firms pre-qualified for botany was also acceptable. You also see that language added there at the end, that in addition to certifying the plantings, they can either match the planting plan that was provided to engineering or they can provide certification that equivalent native vegetation has established. So those were the two big ones. And then the last one there was a result mostly of the questionnaires that were circulated. Several stakeholders asked that the Eastern Mountains and Piedmont region specifically be stated in regards to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers National Wetland Plant List just so there wasn't any confusion. So that was easy enough. All right. So like I said, there's no set timeline to get these approved right now. We want to get your all's reactions to that. The full red lines will go out after this so you have time to take a look at those. If you have any further comments or input, please submit those to Director Burton or Bailey Young with MS4 section, and we will get back to Council in spring 2026 with a hopeful summer 2026 new manual. So we've got time for probably a question or two, but we're close to time here. Go back to that slide where you talk about the plant species lists. Okay. Okay. The Eastern Mountains and Piedmont region. So these are not Kentucky natives or? They are. So if you look at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers plant list, it's divided by region, and Kentucky falls within that Eastern Mountains and Piedmont region. Okay. It is a specific certification. They have a license or some kind of certification given from a program. They have to have so many hours of wetland courses, experience working with wetlands to get that qualification. And they have a website where you can go and find the folks that have that certification. We have a landscape architect at that level. That is in addition to a landscape architect. So a landscape architect, a professional wetland scientist, or somebody from a firm prequalified for botany is able to do that certification. Not yet. My point is you have the landscape architect at the same level. You should have someone who describes as a professional wetland scientist. Professional or, I'm sorry, landscape architects do also go through planting courses, many of them design, bioretention, raking gardens. So they are also familiar and qualified for planting. My question is, they're at that same level, and you're saying, yes, they are. For this task. And we should clarify that there is a requirement already in the stormwater manual to develop the planting plan, which is only allowed to be developed by a PE or landscape architect. This is separate. This is a certification after planting regarding the plantings and green infrastructure. Most PEs do not know plants. Anybody else? Hi, Jason Unrein, UK. Just going back to that native plant list. So that eastern mountains in Piedmont region on the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is divided into sub-regions. And one is called Central and Eastern Mountains, and Kentucky is only in that sub-region. So I'm wondering if that would be more appropriate. Okay. We can take another look at that and see if we can zero in a little bit more. Yep. Thanks. All right. All right. Ms. Young, I think we're ready for announcements. Okay. So announcements are light this month. We have the Wolf Run Watershed Council meeting coming up. We have the MS Forum, December 19th, so please come to that. That's in the morning. That's pretty well attended. We have two Water Quality Fees Board meetings listed, and then our next SSAC is March 6th, and our annual water week is the 21st through the 27th of March. And then we wanted to celebrate that on Black Friday we collected 400 gallons of cooking oil at the Gobble Grease Toss. But that's all. Thank you all. Topics next time? Yeah, what are proposed topics for next time? I wonder if we could hear about the downtown area master plan. Any others? I've got a project that kind of dovetails into infill redevelopment that I can present on. Okay. And Russ is going to present on I-Tree assessments. Anything else? All right. Thanks for staying for that long meeting.