you you you we're gonna go ahead and get started so welcome to SSAC before Labor Day weekend we're glad to have you so first off on our agenda is the approval of the June minutes do we have a motion do we have a second thanks and we're gonna go ahead and get started with Jordan Flymeister here to talk about Town Branch Commons so really excited to hear about the case study that was performed on the landscape architecture and on the Bioswales there you hit ctrl-l it'll maximize nice great good morning everyone thank you so much Bailey for inviting me to be here today we talked about trying it last year and the case study was still in process going through the peer review and so I felt like it was maybe a little bit better to wait and so I'm really grateful to say that it's been published it's available online to you all now and excited to share some of the results that we found and I wanted to begin by thanking Bailey but also thanking all of you you all are volunteering your time and investing your sort of one of your most precious resources to kind of help our community do better things with stormwater so thank you for your your service so a quick introduction my name is Jordan Femister and I am a senior lecturer in the landscape architecture department of the Martin Gatton College of Agriculture Food and Environment at UK and I was the research fellow on the project I worked in really close partnership with Mitchell Kubera there in the middle he was my research assistant he's currently a senior in our program and he's going to be graduating this spring which is exciting and we worked in very close partnership also with Erin Masterson she's a senior landscape architect and I believe she might even now be a partner in Gresham Smith a multidisciplinary architecture engineering transportation planning firm with offices here in Lexington and Louisville within Kentucky but also they're headquartered in Nashville and have a lot of offices spread throughout the southeast and they were our she was our firm liaison for the project so Erin was really helpful in connecting us to resources and project documentation that we used in our analysis and research and she also connected us to many wonderful partners across Lexington who were involved in some form or fashion with the project and I'm especially grateful again to Bailey and others at the Division of Water Quality for their help and insights with our research and for the invitation to join you all today so just a quick overview the CSI the case study investigation program is funded by the landscape architecture foundation and it seeks to bridge the gap between academia and practice by investing in research that articulates and quantifies sustainability benefits of landscape architecture projects and that's what we in their landscape architecture profession refer to as landscape performance so we were one of six teams selected in the 2025 cohort and the projects ranged from large urban parks to a community garden as well as a campus landscape the program is very fast-paced we started in February we wrapped up research in July so about six months and it's also very supportive and collaborative with a lot of peer-to-peer learning opportunities within that cohort of other people working on research across the country and it's really approachable and rigorous so it's great for somebody like me I came from a background in practice I do not have a doctorate I don't have a PhD I came to teaching from a practice background and so it was great to make it accessible to someone like me with replicable metrics and methodologies and a peer review process to ensure valid and defensible findings the research deliverables include a high-level case study brief which is shown on the left that's kind of the web interface that you would find on the website and then a more much more detailed methodology document which is pictured on the right sorry yeah website on the left document on the right and both of those are freely accessible and online now you can find Town Branch Commons and more than 200 other similar exemplary projects from across the country around the world which have been documented in this way on the landscape performance series website the program's been in operation since 2010 and the website is also a really great resource of landscape performance information and inspiration beyond these case studies including including translated research they have a fast facts library which kind of puts research into more approachable terms they have a warehouse of tools and metrics that you might use to measure everything from carbon sequestration to carbon footprint of materials those sorts of things and although your focus is on stormwater here you can note the watershed diagram in the lower right showing Town Branch within the larger Kentucky River watershed I wanted to take a moment to emphasize and point out how multifaceted and transformative Town Branch Commons is it is a really really remarkable project nationally and for us to all like take a great amount of pride in the fact that our community chose to invest and kind of worked so hard for so many years to do this it's a multimodal linear park and a transportation system running through the heart of our downtown as you can see here it weaves together green infrastructure water and walls that separate bike and pedestrian trails within a high traffic corridor and it connects our urban core to diverse neighborhoods as well as the surrounding bluegrass landscape it traces the historic path of Town Branch the Lexington the original water source for Lexington which is now buried very deep below the trail and the streets and this complex urban infrastructure project reflects the cultural and natural histories of our region as well through educational signage and it connects people to civic assets such as parks public spaces and transit and it provides a missing link within a regional trail network it does a lot so before I dive into the research I wanted to share a couple of photos to help us kind of highlight some of the key features before and after if you all can remember many years ago before it came into being I'm sure that many of you can but I wanted to just kind of start to think with you all a little bit more involved how this is maybe how you might imagine it's impacted stormwater so here's the view along Vine Street we're very close to I think it's just taken from down there facing in this direction what do you see and how what do you think is the source of stormwater in this condition where do you think the stormwater is going lots of parking lots lots of impervious surface whether it's concrete sidewalks asphalt roadways roofs right so do you see much green in this picture I can count yeah probably less than a dozen trees in the view and kudos to the biker you can see them in the middle towards the bottom very brave soul traveling down Vine Street on bike next to the cars that were at times going above 60 miles an hour so yeah not a lot of place for stormwater to go but a lot of places for it to accumulate all right so different location different view but what are you seeing as some of the key differences here many more trees so much more vegetation more permeable surface so to support the trees and vegetation a lot more planted areas a lot more volume of soil there yeah so you can see especially right along Vine Street there are depressions there so those are the rain gardens or bioretention areas they come under a lot of different names and there are curb cuts along Vine Street to allow water from the road to go directly into those and then there are special soils engineered soils plant material that's selected to treat stormwater pull out some of the pollutants allow it to infiltrate in and try to improve water quality along the way okay so jumping into a little bit of the research I wanted to start by saying that a lot of our we were looking at sustainability so who knows the three pillars of sustainability I'm teaching class and at 10 o'clock so I'm in my I'm in my teacher mode three pillars for us I can count on you yes those three pillars which hold up sustainability so for a lot of our social benefits we relied on a survey we had a hundred and six responses we advertised it through a variety of means listservs posters QR codes we had over a hundred people respond and there was significant support for many of the project sustainability goals which you can see here and getting into some of those social benefits you can see here that the project improved both actual and perceived safety along the corridor significant reductions in both collisions and speeds along the corridor this slide demonstrates a clear preference human people preference for those wider more generous spaces provided for people along the corridor especially when you compare them to those really narrow scary sidewalks that you can see that are just on the opposite side of Midland Avenue in the upper left corner a whole host of benefits that overlap with one another here the findings highlighted impacts on social connection health and well-being and in short I would say Town Branch Commons helps people to be more active to feel happy and energized when they're on the trail and it's doing it all while connecting them more with one another as well as nature their sense of nature and there's also an aesthetic and cultural and component to the Commons so visitors find the corridor attractive I know some of these things feel very intuitive and logical not a big surprise but it's important for people to appreciate spaces aesthetically in order for their them to care for them to want to further invest in them so these are important findings for us and so people really like the diverse mix of plants and a majority of participants indicated that the project had improved their perception of our city so not only people who live here feeling proud of it it draws in visitors right and people are now staying in hotels downtown and can walk to places they could never easily access before in a way that's really pleasing and beautiful it also does a really good job of reflecting the natural environment and kind of taking some of those beautiful spaces that we might be aware of as local locals who live here but it brings them downtown so people who might not have access to a car and can't get out to see those dry stone fences and the bluegrass they can see them right here downtown they took those ideas those materials and kind of gave them a new expression in a place that's accessible to many many more people so a couple of economic benefits as well that I wanted to touch on the design of and the investment in Town Branch Commons created a very inviting and connective what we call a spine in the design disciplines and it spurred other considerable investments along Vine Street along Midlands and Main Street and a number of projects improving Lexington's public realm have been completed or nearing completion and there are additional investments right now in mixed use and commercial developments that are scheduled to break ground in the coming years so it's definitely been a driver and has helped catalyze those things and then also the project blended multiple funding sources the most significant of which was the transportation investment generating economic recovery or tiger grant for just over 14 million and the layered funding approach really allowed the city to leverage those federal state as well as municipal dollars so shifting to the final pillar of sustainability environmental which is what we're here for I'm going to start with something and then we'll move into the stormwater stuff but one thing I wanted to highlight a couple of things related to plants the diversity is much improved I think you all can remember that picture I showed you we maybe counted a dozen trees most of which were ginkgos a non-native that really provides no wildlife benefit very little so now the downtown corridor which was formerly dominated by hardscape and almost devoid of green it now has these narrow ribbons of really dense and lush plantings which create significant impact in an urban setting so it has a mix of trees and shrubs which are complemented by densely planted perennial and grass plugs and the Shannon diversity index referenced on this slide is really a measure of the potential diversity of a space and a hundred percent would be you're at the maximum diversity so if you look at the the circles on the right you can see generally we're scoring really really well it just so happens that because there are so many of those plugs of the switchgrass which is kind of the iconic grass that love it or hate it it's the thing that's kind of a defining feature those really draw the overall average down a little bit but overall scoring really highly and the project has a lot of new habitat that it created and so significant increase in that habitat with a really diverse range of species pictured on the right most of which are native and nearly 50% of all of the plants have a special value for pollinators and other beneficial insects as deemed by the Xerxes or according to the Xerxes Society carbon sequestration lots of trees over 250 planted and they are improving people's experience along the corridor especially as they mature and provide additional shade but they're also providing a lot of environmental benefits as I'm sure a lot of you are aware and we happen to take these measurements on the hottest days in July of 2025 so we appreciated every inch of shade that they could give us but the trees are doing lots of really important things stormwater absorption shade reducing urban heat all sorts of great things and those figures were calculated using i-tree so finally getting to what you are here for sustainable stormwater so this complete street project includes planting areas and a green infrastructure system consisting of curb cuts inlets and flumes that collect and direct stormwater runoff into a series of 22 rain gardens with specialized soil mixes and plantings that are designed to support infiltration and in addition their spots of permeable pavement as well in strategic locations to help reduce and absorb runoff from the trails so stormwater quantity the capture Town Branch Commons the catchment area captures and treats approximately 25,000 cubic feet of stormwater which is 231 percent of the requirement from the city the city designates a 1.2 inch rain event for treating the first flush and that count that tallies up to about 10,000 cubic feet and Town Branch is punching well above its weight in helping out with managing the quantity of stormwater some of the limitations I'll get into them for these because I know this is what you're interested in these calculated results are estimates so they are not based on observation of actual rain events and however it only accounts for the delineated delineated urban rain garden so there's a lot more planted area than we use to calculate this value and a lot more just sort of general planted areas that have vegetation they have soils which are part of that larger network of areas and other features that are helping to collect and treat stormwater so if anything I think it's probably under counting a little bit what the potential is for the storage and treatment here it does not account for plant interception or evapotranspiration so again that would only be an increase to what it's doing and there are there may be some discrepancies between the project documents which I was using and we were analyzing on the research team and what is actually constructed in the field this is the data backing that up so meticulous spreadsheets and calculations we analyze the project documents and the storm water submittals to calculate the storage volume required by the city as well as the below ground and above ground storage volumes provided by each of the rain of the 22 rain gardens and so this table highlights the data gathered and analyzed for those rain gardens and there's some more information if you want if you have questions at the end I'm happy to come back and provide some more detail on that another stormwater quality quantity benefits was the corridor traces the historic path of town branch which is a highly urbanized watershed draining much of downtown and the project encompasses a really really small portion of that watershed I'll get to that a little bit later in my presentation but in spite of these constraints town branch Commons has significantly reduced annual runoff by realigning and reducing the lane widths of vehicular travel lanes so that's known as a road diet in our profession and the green infrastructure system which has the rain gardens the dense vegetation the pervious pavement all of that combines to decrease the impervious surfaces further contributing to the reduction in runoff from the site so those two pie charts on the left the baseline that was the pre-existing conditions and on the right is what we project to be the post construction current scenario in the EPA stormwater calculator lingo so you can see the big change there is the runoff is being influenced by the increase in vegetation and infiltration opportunities again some limitations these are modeled results their estimates not based on observation and it is generated by the EPA stormwater calculator which does not account for tree canopy and rainfall interception so that might mean this is a little bit of an undercount and then there are always potential discrepancies between the documentation we had to look at what was actually built in the field again some more data we analyze project documents and the stormwater submittals to calculate storage volume required by the city as well as sorry that was the other one so EPA national stormwater calculator is what we use to calculate this benefit and I can get into more details if you'd like but I think I'll stay at a higher level in the interest of time but just shows you some of the volumes that we were talking about there so town branch when it comes to the thing that Kayla Bailey invited me to talk about it was stormwater quality and this was our one inconclusive benefit but to me it was honestly one of the most interesting things I got to work on because this was when I was connected to Bailey I think through somebody at strands and Bailey connected me to chase and that allowed my research assistant Mitch and I to get out in the field and actually do some measurements and not just be documenting things in our office on a computer so it was a really exciting very warm couple of days that we got out in June in July of 2025 and I just wanted to kind of preface this section by starting to talk a little bit about the town branch Commons project within the overall watershed so we know now that it's the actual town branch is buried well beneath the streets and the linear system of town branch Commons represents a really small fraction of it of the overall watershed point zero three percent to be exact so the watershed is heavily impacted by urbanization as we all know and town branch Commons can only do so much and though it's impossible to control for development and changes in land use prior to and since the construction of town branch Commons we felt like it was a symbolic moment and a prominent location where the outfall is in what was then under construction Gatton Park it's now open and been open for just over a year but we felt like it was a great moment to raise public awareness at that much anticipated park so we gathered water samples in June and July of not this past summer but the summer before and we're great really grateful to the support and assistance we received from the city most notably Bailey and Chase both pictured here and David Price at the laboratory he's a laboratory supervisor as well as his team at the town branch laboratory who helped us with equipment chemical analysis all of those things so this is the work that we did to begin to compare all of the data that we collected which was only over four days but we had a really great resource from the city with the volunteer work that had been done monitoring watersheds over the years and so we compared our data which is on the bottom and some of the cells are highlighted in yellow to the volunteer monitoring data from 2021 which is really the top chunk of the spreadsheet some of those cells are highlighted in a really pale green I see and so we were also using EPA's water quality standards and some documentation on town branch watershed focus monitoring that I think was provided or created by Third Rock who might be presenting later today the key comparisons we decided to make under the advisement of Bailey and Chase and others was to look at the dry samples so it had to be 72 hours post a storm event and those cells in our data collection are highlighted in yellow and we compared that to the summer collection samples from the 2021 volunteers so those are the ones highlighted in green those are the numbers that I'm going to be sharing with you today because we felt that they were most similar in terms of mimicking similar climatic temperature and precipitation conditions so we had a variety of measurements that we took in situ we collected the samples from the middle of the water body at town branch 12 monitoring site and we used a Hanna water quality multimeter probe that was loaned to us by the lab and we collected water grab samples put them in some ice and took them to the lab on the days that we collected for them to conduct the chemical analysis in the lab so the following are the results from the in situ measurements and again we're comparing 2025 to the 2021 summer dry samples so dissolved oxygen increased and it meets the benchmark pH but we'll talk a little bit more about that in a second pH also increased it's within the optima of most aquatic organisms temperature increased a decent amount which made the 7.6% which made the increased dissolved oxygen a little bit suspicious so these are part of the reasons that we decided to designate these findings as inconclusive because you would expect there to be lower oxygen in warmer waters and the average dry measurement does meet the benchmark however conductivity increased a little bit of a problem area because the average dry measurement was well above the healthy range to support fish and macros and then looking at the chemical analysis again comparing 25 to 21 summer dry and the suspended solids massive increase and likely a result it was an active construction site at the time they had silt fence up they were doing their best but they were you know they did a lot of re-engineering of the banks of town branch where it comes into Gatton Park and so I would imagine that this contributed to it and now with vegetation getting a little bit better established I hope that these values might be lower than they were when we measured them last year E. coli decreased and although this is a move in the right direction it's still well above the primary contact recreation benchmark so lots of work to be done in that area total phosphorus increased but it still meets the benchmark nitrogen increased but also meets the benchmark and nitrate decreased exceeds the benchmark there all that being said I think it's worth noting that people are still very supportive of these types of investments and they care about the work that you all are spending your time on and that others really care about here so I just wanted to kind of after the inconclusive quality data I wanted to share that it's still really important and we still need to keep working on it and just kind of reiterate that town branch Commons is a tiny tiny parcel within a really large watershed and that incrementally I think there's a lot of work to be done but a lot of potential improvements within the urbanized watershed of downtown Lexington so I wanted to share just a couple of final thoughts before I leave you for the future so so often when we are designing for stormwater the spaces do one thing they hold the maximum or designated amount of water for a prescribed amount of time and not all of them look like this but there's a fair number out there that look like this they're not very attractive if you're really lucky maybe you get a fence around it because it's considered dangerous and a potential place where a kid might drown but I really want to leave you all with a much higher expectation for what is not only possible but what is needed and incredibly worthwhile in terms of investing in when it comes to stormwater infrastructure it's precisely the multifunctional nature of town branch Commons that makes it so compelling and inviting it supports people from all walks of life it provides a green ribbon of bluegrass through downtown with lush plantings it collects and treats stormwater and connects us to our history and to the region through material choice and design expression it also provides educational opportunities and spaces to engage with and interact with the plants and materials that are there and all of these qualities together are what make it so so successful I also wanted to point you to that landscape performance series website another case study this was in Hoboken New Jersey I wanted to just highlight this one that is focused on stormwater and it may be a source of inspiration for future redevelopment downtown so in response to flooding during during Hurricane Sandy back in 2012 which hit Hoboken particularly hard this project transformed a surface parking lot we have a lot of those into a resiliency park by weaving together social spaces at the ground level on top of layers of stormwater and flood control infrastructure so rain gardens you can see the kind of green diagram shows you how people use and interact with the space and the blue diagram shows you all of the engineering and materials that are happening underneath the ground and so it's weaving these things together and it allows the rain gardens bioswales and permeable pavement channel stormwater into underground systems and it absorbs nearly 200,000 gallons of stormwater and it helps to reduce combined sewer overflows in Hoboken there's more detail available online so they have a similar brief and methods document that you can look into if you're interested in a little bit closer to home I wanted to highlight one of my students projects from the spring of 2025 we were using what was then the EPA RainWorks Challenge design competition as our prompt for a semester-long project and so my students started out looking at schools all across Fayette County and this one in particular is Wellington Elementary which is located pretty close to Fayette County or Fayette Mall and so this you can see in the upper left I think it's emblematic of schools across our district which are very heavy on mown turf very sparse trees Russ can confirm this for me though he's done a really good job to get more trees on DARA school sites but the mown lawn in the aerial image you can see a large linear detention basin on the right side of the image there and that is mown to within an inch of its life year-round and it's supposed to be collecting stormwater helping absorb so this project really sought to transform this underutilized infrastructure as well as many other spaces around the school into opportunities for enrichment and learning so some of the planting strategies they were thinking about in the lower left and just the ways that they were imagining transforming increasing tree canopy creating lots of learning spaces and mixes of materials and opportunities for learning this is a quick diagram showing those big moves that they were making because part of the design competition was you had to quantify like what are the benefits and so they were improving or reducing stormwater runoff they were increasing tree canopy they were adjusting impervious surface and they were shifting mown grass to no-mow areas which means more water can infiltrate more biodiverse more learning opportunities for students and then this was a section drawing looking at that same detention basin which is currently being mowed really heavily thinking about that as being a more naturalized condition and all of the different activities and spaces you could link along that space and then a perspective view showing some of the other ideas including rain gardens greater diversity of trees materials and that sort of thing so that's hypothetical student projects but I wanted to emphasize that these are not only visions they can be our reality too so these are a few final images I'll share of school projects that I was fortunate to work on when I was in Virginia before we moved to Kentucky this is a view of Manassas Elementary School in northern Virginia and on the left you can see really innovative stormwater infrastructure it is the detention basin there but it also acts as an amphitheater and it's collecting all the water from the parking lot it's collecting water from the roofs and it's doubling as this great wonderful gathering space and on the right in our school district we can't plant trees close to windows or buildings for security concerns which is important but you can see on the right this is a courtyard space that was really lushly planted with canopy trees and understory species that provide really rich learning environments for kids and outdoor learning opportunities for teachers and then one final image is the basketball arena at the University of Virginia's campus and this was on the left a bioswale with a series of weirs or check dams right after it was planted but you can note here like the very intentional edge that we were creating there and kind of frame for that facility and then there's a view a couple years on right up the middle of it so that clean edge helps to frame a much wilder and woolier interior meadow planting which does a much better job of infiltrating stormwater and slowing water down along the slope so wanted to open it up to questions and say thank you because I don't want to over overstep my time so questions yeah what would you consider some shortfalls or challenges and lessons learned from the Tom Brach Commons? From the project itself or from my research a really obvious one for research was mapping out our schedule to think about doing things like probably be being more knowledgeable about dry measurements for water quantity or water quality sorry we could have mapped out our schedule a bit better especially for measuring all of the trees during really hot days that was a little rough so that's a simple thing in terms of the Commons itself all the pictures I have are from when it was very close to completion and we can look outside now and know and Russ knows it pretty intimately like he's starting to maintain the space so understanding the maintenance considerations is a really important part of making these projects successful too so it's great when they look wonderful for the initial pictures but then they evolve and change and so there is as part of this project they have an adaptive management plan so they are anticipating those long-term maintenance questions that are going to come up because you put down all these plants but they're not going to stay in exactly where you put them and some plants are going to self seed and do other things and so there is this idea of trying to anticipate some of the longer-term maintenance concerns that I think because it's a very complex project with lots of different partners from within the city that have if you look at all the responsibilities in that management plan I don't know five or six different entities within the city that have a particular role to play so the coordination aspect makes it I think a little bit more challenging and I would say if I had my dream all of the money that Gatton Park is doing such a great job of raising philanthropically if they could kick off a little bit of that endowment to the Commons which is really the front door to that park and really connects it to the rest of the city I would love to see them be a little bit more generous with their fundraising and see how important that connection is and how those two really feed into one another questions yeah hi given that there was there's a lot of eyes on this project and a lot of different people involved in so many different ways with and given that you had the you know kind of the award of this was a national competition to do this and you got some resources together to do this but on a small scale like what could be some of the most simplified easiest to do kind of case studies on green stormwater infrastructure in town locally great question yeah given all the different stuff you looked at maybe what would you kind of see is like a fundamental or baseline yeah well I think one of the things Bailey and I talked about and we never quite like we just did not have the time in our schedule to do it but one of your goals which is great that you have someone like Bailey in the city who's so curious and interested and invested in improvements to stormwater infrastructure is how might there be ways to measure the impact on a like unit by unit basis like there are 22 rain rain gardens along the corridor is there a way and there are there are methods out there there are equipment out there that you could invest in to really start to build infrastructure in a way that has the monitoring in place like right now retroactively after the fact it's really hard to go back in and put in some of the sensors or monitors that would help us understand okay here's the water quality going into the cell and here's what it looks like in the outflow pipe but that's possible if you want to put the resources and you can find the resources to put towards it so I think that that's kind of maybe some of the leading edge that might lead to more buy-in to the value of this in terms of like those like small-scale research opportunities is like where are some spaces that are smaller more contained where you could really better understand like the outfall at the park compared to what happens along the corridor and the larger watershed we knew it wasn't gonna really move the needle much but in a small more contained unit where you can really understand the volume and quantity and quality coming in and what's leaving that system that would be great to start to figure out how can you monitor those things yeah yeah in the back do our sampling in the morning as well I don't think any of them were in the afternoon I don't remember exact times but I probably have that written down somewhere in my research notes I would hope so I it was I remember very hot many of the times that we were out there monitoring and very exposed because it was a wide open construction site I mean they left one tree in that corridor in the park that was a pre-existing so no shade whatsoever so might be a little bit I remember before the park construction that was a highly vegetated corridor so that may have had some impacts in terms of the pre and post measurements because they had to set down the banks quite a bit and removed a lot of the existing vegetation in favor of introducing more native and diverse vegetation than was there previously and then your second question about soil specification so I was not the landscape architect but I have access to the landscape architecture construction document set and I believe it was actually it was a very diverse project team as well so Gresham Smith was the lead and they did a lot of the transportation engineering as well as a lot of the kind of design you see on the ground walkways walls etc but they also worked in partnership with strand engineering but I believe it may have been element design that may have done some of the helped them on some of the soil specifications specifically and some of the planting and so I might be able to access that and potentially share it with Bailey if that would be helpful yeah yeah was there any data available that bears on the question about increasing those water quality parameters being a reflection of changes in the basin as a whole versus in that reach I cannot say I just did not have the research time or capacity or like knowledge base to be able to answer that question unfortunately I know where my my expertise and we really as I was saying to somebody earlier kind of were able to dip our toe into the water monitoring thanks to folks like Bailey and Chase helping us because that was not my research background coming to it so I'm sure many of you are much more knowledgeable on those issues than I am yeah thanks thank you very much Jordan walking here every day crossing town branch Commons is a delight so I'm glad to know that it's actually also a real delight to the rest of the people and I thank you to Bailey who started this off because I got caught in the chain the construction of the parking garage anyway it was it was an adventure this morning coming parking but we now have Tricia Coakley with the Kentucky Watershed Watch and she's going to talk about the water quality monitoring and community engagement you thank you all so much for inviting me and thanks Bailey for letting me know that some members of this group might be interested in knowing about what watershed watch is what we do and so this is not a technical presentation I'll kick it off by saying this is a presentation just about the nonprofit organization who we are what we do how we work with communities throughout the state and so I'll start by just introducing myself because I've worked with some of you before in different capacities in Lexington I used to be working as in the capacity at the University of Kentucky as a water quality microbiology researcher and I don't do that anymore and so I've fallen out of touch with some of you and so that's just to say that I moved on to different types of administrative work I do strategic planning and data analytics type of work now for the University of Kentucky and so in my spare time as a volunteer I'm still involved in water quality work through citizen science volunteer engagement and so I'm the statewide president and board chair for Kentucky Watershed Watch and I know many of you have worked with watershed watch and right here in Lexington through Kentucky River Watershed Watch basin organization and so you might know or you might not know that we're statewide we work with seven river basins throughout the state and so we are a board of directors statewide and five working committees of the board and the board and the working committees have representation from all seven river basins and the working committees are sampler support outreach and communication science advisory fundraising and organizational operations and that's a pitch to say to you all we are always looking for additional input on these working committees if you have interest in citizen science and engaging with us as a statewide organization after you hear this talk let me know because we're always looking for committee engagement okay so our mission statement is to support water quality monitoring that informs connects and empowers volunteers and their communities for the improvement and protection of Kentucky's water resources and so keywords in there are volunteers and communities so what one thing I want to ask first is I know there are some samplers in the room that are watershed watch volunteers I might not know some of you if you're sampling and I haven't met you yet can I get a show of hands of who all samples for watershed watch and they're great cool thank you all so much your data matters okay so how do we how do we achieve our mission we work towards our mission by developing scientifically based sampling protocols and training methods and I'll talk more about those specific methods protocols in this talk we also recruit train and equip volunteer stream monitors throughout the state we encourage that those volunteers to collaborate with each other and communicate within their communities to take their data to community action and we establish local support hubs throughout the communities I'll talk more about this as well but these are partner organizations that support the volunteers directly within their community and then we provide access to our sampling results for the volunteers to enter their results autonomously in a data portal and also as a public facing data portal for members of the community to go and see the data so you can go and look at the sampler results anywhere in the state at any time that you want to and we can sort and filter those different ways in the data portal okay so where is this currently happening right now that these orange dots are all of the current sample sites throughout the state there are 298 of them as of right now and I just onboarded 13 new volunteers for Fayette County yesterday and so it's growing constantly and one aspect of our programming is growing in particular right now and that's a teaser about something to tell you about a little bit and then so we have a leaderboard on a public facing part of our data portal to to celebrate the counties and the hubs and samplers and samples that are being sampled the most and so right now Fayette County is the top of the leaderboard when sorted by County yay Fayette County and also in the for the hubs Lexington-Fayette-Arby County government's town branch wastewater treatment plant lab is the fourth top support hub in the state right now for number of samples this is just for 2026 so far and the Kentucky River Basin is by far the most samples of all of the river basins on our leaderboard and so we need some more work in the upper Cumberland and the Green River basins we're doing a lot of work right now to try to build up engagement in those areas but the Kentucky River Basin and Fayette County are definitely leading the pack but September isn't over yet and we're in the middle of our September sampling surge right now so these numbers could change okay so what is a support hub I mentioned the town branch wastewater treatment plant is a support hub so so some of the support hubs are like that their municipal government locations and communities throughout the state also a lot of support hubs are extension offices or libraries or conservation district offices any type of community partner that has an aligned mission with either environmental protection water quality watershed protection and or community outreach and engaging the public so what support hubs do is they they host our monitoring kits our stream chemistry monitoring kits and also for biological sampling they host D frame nets for macroinvertebrate collection and things like that and then they meet with the volunteers to check out that equipment to them like a library loan system we manage that process the samplers when they check out their kit they snap a QR code and it registers on our statewide database where the kits are so that the people managing the support hub don't have to take responsibility for the equipment at that level of tracking but they do some of the hubs also offer additional services to samplers and some of these really get more into how the hub benefits from the connection with our samplers so we we host an incubator at the hubs they can incubate the E.coli cards and then help the samplers interpret their data they can host sampler meetings training events annual meetings to share results and interpret results together they can help samplers choose sampling sites or locations and so this is really important in municipalities that are hoping to get volunteers out to look at specific locations like outfalls or the stormwater outfalls or something like that the support hub can say if you don't know where you want to sample yet maybe you consider this spot and the samplers are very receptive to that they also help the samplers understand their results sometimes the results can be complex like Jordan was just talking about why did the temperature go up and the DO went down and so sometimes depending on who the support hub manager is they may be in a position to help the samplers understand what they're seeing in their results too they also can work with samplers to develop community projects this is especially helpful when a sampler or a group of samplers in a community have a sample site or watershed location that they have specific concerns with the support hub can kind of be the the connection between getting those samplers connected with other groups to address that concern through community projects stream cleanups best management practices grant funding and things like that and then finally they are some support hubs also host outreach and recruitment equipment so tabling equipment for community affairs and okay so right now we have 42 support hubs throughout the state and you can see that this is this this map is remarkably similar to looking at the map of where all the sample sites are if I overlay them with each other it is literally around every support hub is a group of sample sites and so that's one of the benefits of being a support hub if you if if there's an organization or partner that is interested in getting a lot more monitoring data right there in their community by becoming a support hub instantly the number of volunteers then follows so another program that we developed a 4-H stream team program where Watershed Watch volunteers can become a 4-H volunteer and take out a group of 4-H youth to their sampling site, sample the water with them, do a habitat assessment, a macroinvertebrate assessment if they want to, and develop a community project. And so this is a great way to start trying to get kids more involved. Children can't be official Watershed Watch volunteers, you have to be 18 to officially be a volunteer. But so this is our way of starting to work with youth throughout the state. And so one, this is a newer program, we're kind of starting to build that up right now. And so we have Fayette County is going to be one of the first 4-H stream teams and we're working right now, it's a partnership between Fayette County Public Schools and EcoGrow and Lexington-Fayette-Urban County Government through a fiscal year 26 class B education stormwater grant. And so we are right now in the process of training and coordinating teachers and who will then start working with the students and we're very excited to see what kinds of community projects those students propose after they go through the process of figuring out what's going on with their stream of choice. And so some of the examples of community projects that can come out of that are stream bank tree plantings, stream cleanups. We've also talked with different 4-H agents who have said, you know, sometimes we have little kids who aren't going to necessarily want to get out there and do something like even a stream cleanup, but what type of community project could people do that would be more, you know, classroom based maybe. And so we've talked some about kids can do things like photo studies, interviewing members of their community about the stream site and things like that. Okay, so how do volunteers get involved? Like I said, there are multiple monitoring programs that we're doing statewide. So the physical, chemical, and E. coli testing are what we consider to be our base program. Most all samplers are trained in those protocols. We also have habitat assessment training and monitoring protocols as well as microinvertebrate assessments. So in order to become a volunteer, the first step is a person goes through online training modules. And so if you were going to become a volunteer just for the base program, stream chemistry and E. coli, you take five online modules. They're about 10 minutes each. So it takes just about an hour to do the entire online training to become a sampler. If someone is interested in becoming a habitat assessment sampler, that's an additional online module. It's, again, about 10 minutes. And then there's a little bit longer one. I think it's about 15 minutes for the biological assessment training. So these are simple. The purpose of them really is just to get people having a basic understanding of what they're going to learn when then they meet with us for an in-person training that's approximately two hours. This is a hands-on practicum type exercise where they are able to get refreshed on what they learned from the online training and then practice and demonstrate what they've learned in the field. So we conduct these workshops throughout the state. We have trainers throughout the state who provide these. Some trainers are in this room. We are eternally grateful to our trainers for being willing to do this. And so the habitat assessment training in particular is starting to really pick up. In 2026, we've had several of those, and we have some more coming, including as a part of the Kentucky Hullbender Festival next week, Russ Turpin is going to lead a habitat assessment training at Lower Howard's Creek on Thursday at 5 p.m. So if anybody's interested in attending that one, you can sign up through our website to attend that. And we have more of those scheduled. We're not quite as dependent on flow conditions and things like that to conduct a habitat assessment training, and it's very popular. People like it. Everyone can do it. And so we're starting to roll out a lot more of those, so watch for those in the future if you're interested. We also work at those training events to form sampling teams. We're working hard to try to form more community connections between samplers. So a lot of times we find out in conversation standing beside a creek that these two people who've never met each other before are very, very interested in the exact same stream site, and they become friends and then want to start doing things in their community together to protect that stream. And so we use these training events to help try to make those connections as well. Okay, so then after a person completes their in-person training, they receive an invitation from us to enter the online data portal and create a profile. And once they create a profile and they're in the portal, now they have access to a lot more tools than are visible in the public-facing side of the data portal. And some of those tools include how they enter their sample results autonomously. So a sampler can collect samples whenever they want, wherever they want, and enter their data. We have a science advisory committee on the back end that is going through and looking at that data periodically to see if there are any quality control concerns. And we also have threshold values built into the data portal that will flag things and not let you enter a result if it seems way out of alignment. Okay, so then after you've created your profile in the data portal, you can open up a map in the data portal where you're able to select your support hub and also decide where you want to sample. And so you can see all the orange dots are sample locations that already exist. Maybe they've been sampled in the past, but they're not sampled anymore. So a lot of times a new volunteer will want to pick up an old sample site to continue it. So that's one way to choose a sample site. Also, if you have a sample site in mind that you want to sample and it's never been sampled before, maybe this is just the stream that runs by my house, also in the data portal, you can just zoom in on the map, drop a pin, and then that automatically creates a new sample site, assigns a site ID to it, and assigns it to you. So then after you've decided where you want to sample and you've selected where you want to pick up your equipment at a hub, you contact the hub, let them know you're coming, and then you go to the hub and pick up your sampling kit. So the sampling kits contain dissolved oxygen, pH, conductivity meters, a thermometer for stream temperature, waste containers, and also a little instructional flip card deck that are waterproof laminated cards that are just brief refreshers to the volunteers so that they can, in the stream, refresh their memory on how many drops of sodium thiosulfate do I use. So then they take the kit, they go to the stream, and conduct their sampling. This is an image of the field data sheet that our volunteers use to collect their data while they're at the stream. So they take this as a printed copy, and you can see it includes a lot of information about the sampler, where they're sampling, we're tracking their volunteer hours and drive time and things like that. That helps a lot with grant reporting. And then also they're giving us information about visual observable data. So are there any odd smells? Is there anything new about the stream that you've noticed that wasn't there the last time you visited? What is the flow conditions? Those types of things. Any litter around that we should know about? And then also turbidity is just a visual measurement. It's a subjective, either it's cloudy, muddy, clear, mostly clear. And then they can also take pictures from their sample site, looking upstream, looking downstream, and upload those pictures into the data portal with their results. So if something seems odd in their data and we want to try to take a look, we can pull up those pictures and see what's going on at that stream. Then they use the chemistry kit in order to assess the water temperature, pH, dissolved oxygen conductivity, record all of that. They're trained how to calibrate their conductivity meter so that it's calibrated on the day that they go out sampling. And then they're using Roth Biosciences R-cards to collect E. coli samples onto a little, it's a card, like a cardboard card with a vellum film that folds down on it that's impregnated with the growth medium. So it duplicates, or it's an analog of a Petri dish culture method. But it's inexpensive, it's great for volunteers, it's field deployable. So they have a little pipette and they have their cards, they run each sample in triplicate, and they put one milliliter of sample on each card, let them sit until they gel up, there's some auger built into the growth medium. And then they take those back to the hub to incubate them, and when they come out the next day, they count them, or some of the hubs can count the cards for the sampler, or take pictures of the cards and send the pictures to the sampler so they can count them. But they're counting blue colonies, and the only thing that grows on the card is E. coli, so if you see a dot, you count it. It's pretty simple for volunteers to deploy. So then when they get back home, they take their sample data sheet from the field, and it's an exact replicate of what everything looks like in the data portal, so that there's no confusion. When they open up the data portal and they start putting in sample results, it looks exactly like this sheet, and they basically just transfer all of the information over into the portal. And then finally, data interpretation and using their data. This is one of the harder nuts to crack as a non-profit organization, I think many of you are familiar with this, is getting the community to then do something with that data can be expensive, it can be challenging, it's time consuming, and so we have some ways that we work towards this. So first and foremost, we're increasing personal and community awareness of the stream conditions, and again we're forming those teams between samplers to communicate with each other and communicate with their cities and communities about the problems that they're finding. They can use their data as a basis for further action, but not as regulatory data, just as pattern recognition, and hey, we're seeing this looks a lot different than the other stream sites around it, or this stream site looks very different than it did two years ago, based on our data. What should we look into for that? So we're trying to track things spatially and temporally. And then also, we as an organization create a report annually to send to the Division of Water, and we have an annual meeting with the Division of Water to talk about this report, and it's where we present to them our sites of concern annually. And so we're invited to tell them about 10 sample locations statewide each year that we consider to be the most concerning that we want to bring to the Division of Water's attention. They can choose to do something with those sites or not, but we work with them to try to figure out, including giving context based on the sampler's own interpretation of why they chose that site, why they care about that site, what they're seeing around there as far as land use patterns and things like that, so that we can make sure that the Division of Water has the context they need to act. We're also currently working on a site grading tool in our data portal so that we can have a clear indication of how sites compare to each other statewide, not just on any one parameter, but based on the aggregate of all the parameters that we're looking at combined. So just kind of heat mapping, good, fair, bad. Okay, habitat assessment, like I said, is one of our newer things that we're getting involved in, and it's really exciting right now. People are really enjoying this training, so we're starting to roll out more and more of this. And so what we do in habitat assessment, we're looking at stream characteristics, observable stream characteristics standing on the banks. And we're looking at things like stream bank erosion, riparian buffer widths, there's many more characteristics. And we're teaching volunteers how to score those on a rubric so that these habitat assessment scores are standardized statewide, and we can compare the habitat of the different stream sites to each other throughout the state as a snapshot in time or across time. So one of the things that's interesting to me about this is, like Jordan was saying, we hear all the time that it's very challenging to say what was improved after implementation of a BMP or different types of things. What was the improvement? If we try to measure that as E. coli, it's really hard sometimes to show that there's been an improvement. And so habitat assessment might be a way, granted across long time periods, but we have samplers in this room that has been sampling these streams throughout Kentucky since 1997. And so we are dedicated volunteers who tend to stick with the programming. And so if we have the ability to assess these sites across long periods of time and say pre and post implementation changes, this could be an empowering tool for communities to use to showcase what these BMPs have done for us. So we do work with municipalities. We work with LFUCG. We also work with some other municipalities throughout the state and MS4s. And so I wanted to briefly say why a municipality or an MS4 would work with Watershed Watch. So we believe as a partnership, we help turn technical plans into more visible and community-based implementation. And so that increases local capacity by providing volunteer monitoring and support hub infrastructure in communities to expand the community outreach and engagement. It creates better program feedback so that there's a structured feedback loop for a municipality to get input from their citizenry. And also creates routine signals across time to help municipalities prioritize where to focus further work. And then it also, because we are documenting our volunteer training hours, drive time, sampling and training events, number of samples and things like that, we're able to provide that type of data back to municipalities to say here's the engagement level that we were achieving in this community during this period of time. That helps with grant recording and things like that as well. So however, we know that volunteer data can't be used easily for regulatory purposes. And so we are advocates of a hybrid monitoring approach where we're using volunteer monitoring to look at broad and frequent coverage throughout the community, maybe more sites, maybe more frequency that could be offered by professionals. And likely with a lot less cost. And then we're definitely offering community engagement and stewardship. We're providing screening level observations to help with pattern recognition and prioritization. Our volunteers are finding trends and hotspot flagging for municipalities and communities. And then also, of course, education and hands-on experiences. What we need from professional monitoring, though, is the regulatory and compliance, enforcement support, much higher precision and consistency, accuracy, data that can be used for more regulatory purposes. And then advanced laboratory analyses that we can't deploy in the field with volunteers, complex source tracking when and where that's appropriate, and then validation and follow-up investigations based on what our volunteers find. So the bottom line, volunteers broaden the signal, but professionals validate, diagnose, and act on that signal. Okay. So finally, I wanted to wrap up with some follow-on actions. If you're interested in learning more, you can visit our news page on our website. We have a listing of success stories of some outcomes in various communities where we've been working. So you can read some of those and tell us more that we don't know. We believe that there are success stories all over the state that we as a board of directors just aren't dialed into fully yet. And so if you know of anything that you want to add to success stories from monitoring, let us know. And then also, we produced our 2025 annual report of all of our sampling results statewide. And so if you're interested in seeing more details about what our volunteers found in the water sites they were sampling statewide, you can check out that annual report for that. And if you're interested in getting involved with us further, there are many ways to be involved with Watershed Watch other than as a sampler. And that would be as a trainer, offering a support hub. I should say there are three support hubs in Fayette County. Town Branch Wastewater Treatment Plant is one of those. Also, Kentucky Water Research Institute is one, and Raven Run is a support hub. We also are always looking for people to help table at events and recruit more volunteers. And then we're always seeking additional leadership in the organization for board service or service on one of our working committees. And of course, because we're a non-profit, money. We're always looking for donations. So that's all I've got. If anybody has any questions, I'm happy to. Do I have time for questions? Okay. Yeah. I need to qualify by saying I have not been in a leadership position for the statewide board for very long. And so I've only had that experience a little bit. So I'm not the person to answer that question across a time trend. But my understanding is there has been variability in that. And I do think it's getting better. And I think that the more we do as an organization to be a partner with governments, the better we do at having their ear when we come to tell them about something. I don't think that the Division of Water, my impression is that the Division of Water does not have the capacity internally to act on every site that we tell them about. So they have to prioritize on their end. The more that we can do to get them in touch with the community and what's going on in the community, the easier that conversation is. And so the basin coordinators are kind of the middle person where that happens. And I think that basin coordinator model is currently getting better. And it seems like we're getting some new basin coordinators throughout the state who are coming in with a lot of fresh energy and reaching out to us. We're getting a lot more community connections going right now through basin coordinators. And I anticipate that's going to improve that conversation with the Division of Water ongoing. Ken. I'm curious about your views on how some of those policies are being used. Do you want to sponsor other communities that are going to be helping with that? Oh, thanks for that question, Ken. They are not cheap. And they've been increasing recently as with inflation, right? So my numbers are probably a little bit out of date. But I'm going to go out on a limb and say a full field kit with everything new purchased is at this point close to $500. But we do refresh field kits. But this is part of the reason why Watershed Watch for years used to every new sampler got their own field kit and took it home with them. And it was their kit to keep until they didn't want to be a sampler anymore. It was very tough to get those kits back if somebody had stopped sampling for a while. And so we had a lot of kits out there that weren't being used. And so the Support Hub model is helping with that. So we need fewer kits now to do the same amount of data collection. Any other questions? All right. Thank you all. Thank you. So I scanned the QR code. And the website to answer the other part of your question, Ken, has plenty of opportunities to make donations. So you can do that there. I was a sampler and a felon. I've lapsed for quite some time. But good Lord, is it fancier now. It was all paper. And there was no portals. And that's really fancy. So good job. To continue our water sampling theme, we are going to have our friends from Third Rock talk about their monitoring program update. You guys hear me all right? I'm Matt Call. I'm an engineer at Third Rock Consultants. And I was asked to come here and give just a quick presentation about some updates that Lexton has done to their MS4 program. We went through a couple of changes recently. We ended a permit cycle where we shifted from a watershed-focused monitoring program to a Fayette County-wide complete MS4 monitoring program. So just real quickly, I want to give a little bit of a background about it. I see a lot of familiar faces here. So I have a feeling you guys are aware of the program. And considering it's Labor Day weekend and you guys showed up, I think you guys care about this a little bit. And then after that, I'm going to talk about just some of the quick elements of the program and then some of the updates we've done to quality assurance and quality control. And then right now, where we are with each of those elements and the sampling and the monitoring and how that's going. So real quick, Lexton is under a KPDES permit. And as part of that, they're supposed to monitor the streams from the MS4 that receive water from the MS4. And like I said, the watershed-focused monitoring program, that went from 2015 to 2023 when we wrapped up with Wolf Run. And that was a yearly sampling where one major watershed would get sampled pretty intensively for one year. There are about 14 events for each of those watersheds. And it was really good for establishing a baseline. Some really good, intense data. But the problem we ran into is that's just one year. So it's really difficult to establish trends and see if there's actual improvement in the watershed if you just have a snapshot in time. So currently, I'm working pretty extensively with Tetra Tech and Bailey at LVCG. We were able to trim all the sites, which there are about 115 sites that were sampled throughout all the watershed, down to 63 monitoring sites that we sample every quarter. And that's a pretty significant event to sample. And it takes a lot of coordination. We ended up breaking all those sites up into 13 different sampling routes, two different days where volunteers sacrifice their time to come in and help us out, along with LVCG staff and Third Rock getting involved on that. But for each of these routes, there are about four to six sites per route. And each of them have, like, a little guide sheet and map to get to that spot. And then, hopefully, around lunchtime, they bring it back to Town Branch who then starts processing it. So there's a lot that goes into it. Those sites were based off of the previous water quality data, approximate location to each other, and then also the drainage size for each of those sites. And like I said, it's throughout the entire MS-4 area, which you can see here, each of the watersheds, the major watersheds. And then additionally, we wanted to focus on the MS-4 areas that are outside of kind of like that central urban service area because there are some urban areas like the airport and then some of the extension areas outside that you can see that pink shading. And we're also – we've added some sites that weren't sampled in the Watershed Focus Monitoring Program because, especially with expansion and urbanization continuing, we want to set some good ground data now and then compare it to, you know, in 5, 10 years when those areas kind of start to blow up a little bit, we have a baseline, and then we can compare it to effects of urbanization. But talking about the elements of the watershed, the MS-4 Monitoring Program, water quality monitoring, quarterly scheduled sampling events by trained volunteers, LFUCG staff, and Third Rock staff. And you can see there, that's a picture from the second quarter – no, I'm sorry, this most recent event. And everybody is having a powwow there in the town branch lab because it's – as I was saying, quality assurance, quality control is constantly changing with this because we want to make sure we have the best data that we can provide to the end user. And so there's usually some updates about sampling techniques and just friendly reminders to staff and volunteers about how to properly collect those. And so that was the most recent event. And then there's quarterly wet weather sampling done by Third Rock at each of the seven major watershed sites. And that's done by Third Rock because there are very specific wet weather events, antecedents that we have to hit for it to qualify as a wet weather event. And it can be kind of dangerous sometimes, so we'd rather get out there and risk our own skin than have a bunch of volunteers out there. The most recent wet weather event was done during the June 4th event. And that was a pretty heavy rain event, and everything was up high, and roads were overflowing. So thought we could get out there and get soaked so you guys didn't have to. And then on top of that, there's wet weather sampling done at the remaining sites. It comes out to about 57 sites that are done by us once a year. On top of that – and that's just the chemistry side – there's macroinvertebrate and habitat sampling done once a year at each of the seven sites. And then every other year at the remaining 57 sites. Fish sampling is only done at the major sites once a quarter or every other year. And then geomorphic assessment is something that we've implemented recently based off of feedback from Lexington and Tetra Tech and some of the other stormwater programs that are being implemented. And so that's done once a year at the major sites and every other year at the remaining sites. Geomorphic assessments, or geomorphology, that's just the study of landscape, rivers, streams, and how they change over time. So that's really important in urbanization – or, in urban areas, because the streams, they really get hit hard when you start increasing impervious area, and you can see effects from erosion. So we want to know if we're contributing sediment to the stream. And I know landowners are really appreciative of not losing their stream bank and losing property. So some updates to the QAQC that I was mentioning. Some of this is already in place that we did for Watershed Focus Monitoring Program, but some we've added on. So everything in black that has been – you know, it's been in effect since 2015. There's minimum education and training and experience required for each element of the program. Volunteers have to attend an annual training where it's hands-on. We go through a presentation, show them how to do it, or for many of them, remind them how to do it, just a little refresher, and then they go back to the lab and run some mock samples in the lab there. And then also to check for precision, collection, accuracy, and analytical accuracy, we do duplicate samples and assessments for all elements. But we've also re-added field blank samples and run state blank samples. So the duplicate that tests both the laboratory's precision and the sampler's precision, but having the field blanks, that allows us to see if there's any cross-contamination, any contamination when you are dropping it off at the lab, if the lab has anything wrong with their equipment, which they're typically onto that thing, but it's still nice to know it's just extra validation for the results. And then rinse state blank samples, that's just done to make sure there's nothing dirty with the field equipment that you use from site to site. You don't have to do that with a bottle because you fill it up, drop it off at the lab once, but something like a chlorine kit or something like a filter kit where we filter dissolved phosphorus, we want to make sure that the decontamination at the end of the day that we do when we get back to the office is not affecting the site's samples. And then also one thing we've added on, we've kind of beefed up our equipment calibration where it's electronic now so if there's something wrong with the meter when you're putting the results in or the solution is outdated or expired, it will let you know immediately, as opposed to if you get back and you're looking through the sheet at the end of the day, you realize there's something wrong with your meter and all those results just have to get thrown out at that point. So just extra validation, extra QA, QC, and then field audits we've added to where once a year we have to go out and kind of just supervise the sampling, the processes, seeing how that's being done and make sure that it's all good and then offer correction when necessary. Because at the end of the day we just want this data to be used, not sit on a shelf, but to be implemented in either it's KDAL's call for data or for watershed programs or whatever it may be. We want this data to be used and it needs to be good data. And so right now monitoring status, the first three quarters have been done by volunteers. The results for the first and second have been processed. The third is currently being processed. The first and second quarter major wet weather sampling has been completed and then 33 of the annual wet weather sites have been sampled. And that was from that June 4th event where we dropped off 33 wet weather samples at the lab and I believe it was four and a half inches of rain in six hours. So it was a pretty wet wet weather event. Macroinvertebrate sampling, habitat assessments, all headwater sites have been sampled and assessed and all wadeable sites will be done by the end of the day. So we have our crews out there wrapping up the last wadeable sites right now. Same with fish sampling, all headwater sites have been sampling and then by the end of September the wadeable sites will be complete. And the geomorphic assessment, all field work has been accomplished. You can kind of see there in the picture some of the stream sites we go to to assess if there's any bank erosion. Some sites are pretty easy to tell, but also we've picked sites that are in prior restoration or prior green infrastructure, so we're not just looking at the bad sites. We wanted to have a wide range of data that we can compare, you know, if these green infrastructure practices are working, if it needs maintenance, but also sediment contribution. It's very important to know what you're contributing to the watershed. And so with the geomorphic assessment, all the monitoring monuments have been established where we can come back and check the dimensions of the stream from year to year. And then bank erosion hazard index, that's what we were doing in these photos here. And then soon the sediment modeling will begin shortly, and I will be in charge of taking care of that. So with that, really brief, really fast. But if there are any questions, I'll open up the floor to them. Yes, Ken. I'm sorry, that's a good point. I think it's a good point. I think it's a good point. We've already had a few of these. And I think that's a good point. And I think that's a good point. With the saltwater grid lines, there's a shortage of public infrastructure to be able to do that. Yes, that's very right. And then to your first point, this program is pretty incredible, just talking to people at conferences. I actually just got back from a National Stream Restoration Conference, and they were pretty impressed at the level of volunteer inclusion with this program, and then also with just some of the elements that Lexington has to offer. And I think that's a good point. And then also with just some of the elements that Lexington has added to the program, it's something that they're pretty excited to hear about and will probably be following up on. As for the reporting, typically at this time each year, we would be giving the results from the previous Watershed Focus Monitoring Program. But where we just transitioned into this MS4-wide program, and we're only halfway through the year on the sampling, we don't have those results yet, but it will be in an annual report at the end of the year, and I will be presenting on it at an SSAC meeting. Yes? I have a question about the MS4 outcomes. Those were dropped from the March release, and I believe they were used in the IDSF program. Okay. We did that in March. Like, we talked about what we were doing, and so we just finished our first year of the IDSF program this summer. So we'll wait until, like, that data is finished being compiled, and then we'll have results on it. Sure. Thanks, Bailey. Is there much cross-pollination between the volunteer groups, between Watershed Watch and this Water Quality Monitoring Program, and not just people, but also sample sites? Right. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, so Lexington is extremely fortunate to have much better capacity than most communities that we work with throughout the state. So in Lexington, Watershed Watch is just recruiting volunteers and communicating with volunteers to coordinate their efforts, and then once we have the group together for who's willing to sample on which dates, we pass that list on to Bailey, and then she coordinates to put them together in teams and get them with Third Rock for sampling. And Third Rock is providing much higher-level training to those volunteers, so there's a lot of, yes, there's definite cross-pollination, but the volunteers are retrained with additional, more technical methods using different equipment than what we're able to provide to volunteers statewide. Any other questions? Yes. The habitat and biological assessments are done theoretically by Watershed Watch, but it's always been a challenge to get people confident enough to go out and do those assessments on their own. Would Third Rock think about doing some sort of mentoring where volunteers could go out with a Third Rock and work with them to gain more experience in doing those assessments? Yeah, that's something we'd totally be open to do. I will mention for this program, when we go out and do the habitat assessment and the macro and the fish, with Watershed Watch, which Bluegrass Community Technical College used to have a program where they would take their students out. I think that is still an active class to where they do some stream corridor characterization and some habitat. So there are avenues for that, but for this program, we actually have a taxonomist who IDs. So it's not just like a field check. They'll take it back to our lab and look at it under a microscope and ID it down the genus, so it's a little bit more involved. But, yeah, that's something we'd totally be open to do. Anything else? All right, thank you for your time. Applause All right, so next on our agenda, our approval of the meeting dates for 2027. So you should have them on the agenda March 5th, June 4th, September 3rd, and December 10th. Does anybody have any, or would anybody like to make a motion to approve those? Second? Who was that? Great. And then any discussion, any changes, updates? Okay, all in favor? Any opposed? All right, now we have one potential topic for a new meeting sometime next year. What about other topics? I'm curious about if the city doesn't need post-mortem after flooding events that don't typically flood. I'm thinking Richmond Road flooded after a big rain event, and that's, like, at the top of the town branch watershed. I had no idea it could even flood. And Eppings and Mittens had water intrusion from a rain event. So I'm just curious. I mean, I'm sure the city has known flooding problem areas, but what an area flood that doesn't usually, like, what does that look like for the city? Bailey is taking notes, so I think that's a great idea. It's timely. Okay. That was a no for the record. With the mention of the schools that Jordan did earlier, I thought it might be interesting to have Tahseen or somebody from the schools, I know Russ is, maybe it's Russ, I don't know, but somebody talk about all of the tree plantings and stuff that they're doing there for stormwater. Okay. Anything else? All right. Next are announcements. Do you have a slide? Oh, God, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Okay. It's almost, I'm off after this, so. I don't know that I want to read these. You all can read them. I am going to point out that on September 19th, along with the mulch giveaway is Bluegrass, since I have the microphone, Bluegrass Greens versus Green Fest event, where we have, it's a sustainable living festival. We have sustainable vendors. We have beekeeping, sourdough workshops, composting, how to compost, and green cleaning, how to make green cleaners. We also have guided hikes on birds and foraging. We have music, beer, castle and key. Anyway, super fun event. Anyway, does anybody want to talk about any of the other events that are listed on here or the bolded ones? Yeah? I'm looking at something that just showed up in my email, the Hellbender Festival, and it's September 5th to 12th. Maybe someone knows more about it to tell us. As I understand it, do I have to do this? It's already on. Okay. September 5th, there's an event at Burnsboro. There are events during the week, and Parks and Recreation is sponsoring the festival at Kelly's Landing on the 12th with some paddling races in the morning and then tabling from 12 to 3, and kayak run and stuff, and it is on the Parks and Rec site. And Waterways Lex will be there. And I can add a kyriverkeeper.org is where you can get more information. That's kyriverkeeper.org. Great. Jennifer? You can probably hear me without this anyway. I just wanted to do an extra push for going to visit the Art by Nature gallery when it's out or when it's open. Our inspirations this year are mostly environmental or water quality incentive grant projects and just kind of encouraging people to do art those sites to show that water quality infrastructure can be useful and also beautiful. So I really encourage everybody to visit the gallery when it's open. It will be open October through mid-December at the Living Arts and Science Center. So it's a cool water quality related art thing this year. That's all. Is the call for submissions still open for those artworks? Yes. Submissions are open until, I want to say, a week from Sunday. You have about a week and a half. Anybody else? Highlight anything? Steve? Yes, I'd like to announce that we still are taking late registrations for our annual water research symposium. It will be at the Central Bank Center on September the 18th. So if you can join us for that. It's a great all-day event on water research. And I'd also like to announce that we now have a new basin coordinator for the Kentucky River Basin. So we have Nathan Weber is here. So he'll be around for a little bit afterwards if you want to meet him and discuss project ideas that we may be able to assist with. Thank you. Perhaps that's a future topic also. Maybe not December. We'll let you get a little bit more under your feet. Yeah. Get used to that. Thanks, Steve. Yeah, my name's Nathan. Glad to be here. It's going to be good to work with everyone here and throughout the Kentucky River Basin. Just announced that the Kentucky River Authority grant application is open right now. So we're going to send out a newsletter and mass emails basin-wide. Applications are due December 4th, I believe. Our application process is right now on the KWRI website. More information will come with the newsletter hopefully next week. And those projects include any nonprofits or local governments with water quality improvement projects, outreach and education, programmatic agendas, things like that. And the ceiling for each grant award is $5,000, I believe. Thanks. So meet with me today. I'll stick around a little bit longer. Or email me. It's just Nathan.Weber at UKY.edu. But just 1B, thanks for asking. That's a very common thing. Yeah, and then I'm in the KWRI office there at UK campus in the mining minerals building. And looking forward next week to the Hellbender Festival, working with Russ and the preserve manager. So, yeah, thanks, guys. And I look forward to meeting all of you. Congratulations. Thank you. Anything else? All right, we've got 20 minutes to go. I'm going to sit here the whole time. Thank you all. And we'll see you on December 11th. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.