[This transcript was generated automatically from audio using AI and hasn't been reviewed by a person -- it can contain mistakes, including plausible-sounding sentences that were never actually said. Treat it as a starting point, not a verbatim record.]

[1:07] So
[1:17] welcome to SSAC before Labor Day weekend or glad to have you.
[1:27] So first off on our agenda is the approval of the June minutes. Do we have a motion?
[1:37] We have a second.
[1:38] Thanks.
[1:41] And we're going to go ahead and get started with Jordan. Why am I here to talk about town branch comments?
[1:47] So we're really excited to be here about the case study that was performed on the landscape architecture and on the bioswilth there.
[2:20] Good morning everyone.
[2:23] Thank you so much Bailey for inviting me to be here today.
[2:28] We talked about trying it last year and the case study was still in process going through the peer review.
[2:34] 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.
[2:38] it's available online to you all now, and excited to share some of the results that we found.
[2:45] And I wanted to begin by thinking Bailey, but also thinking all of you, you all are volunteer
[2:50] in your time and investing in one of your most precious resources to help our community do
[2:57] better things as a school model, so thank you for your service.
[3:01] So a quick introduction, my name is Jordan Femister, and I am a senior lecturer in the Landscape
[3:07] Architecture Department of the Martin Gatton College of Agriculture, Food and Environment at UK.
[3:12] And I was the Research Fellow on the Project.
[3:14] I worked in really close partnership with Mitchell Cooperah.
[3:18] There in the middle, he was my research assistant. He's currently a senior in our program.
[3:22] And he's going to be graduating this spring, which is exciting.
[3:25] And we worked in very close partnership also with Erin Masterson.
[3:28] She's the senior landscape architect and I believe she might even now be a partner in Greshen Smith.
[3:33] We'll type disciplinary architecture engineering, transportation planning firm with offices here in Lexington, and the mobile within Kentucky, but also their headquartered in Nashville and have a lot of offices spread throughout the southeast.
[3:45] And they were our shoes are firmly as on for the project.
[3:50] 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 of fashion.
[4:04] 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.
[4:17] So just a quick overview of 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.
[4:35] And that's what we in their landscape architecture profession referred to as landscape performance.
[4:41] So we were one of six teams selected in the 2025 cohort and the projects range from large urban parks to community garden as well as a campus landscape.
[4:52] The program is very fast-paced, we started in February, we wrapped up research in July, so about six months.
[4:59] And...
[5:00] 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.
[5:07] 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.
[5:27] The research deliverables include a high-level case study brief, which is shown on the left.
[5:32] That's kind of the web interface that you would find on the website.
[5:36] And then a much more detailed methodology document, which is pictured on the right.
[5:41] Sorry, yeah. Website on the left document on the right.
[5:43] And both of those are freely accessible and online now.
[5:46] You can find town branch commons and more than 200 other similar exemplary projects
[5:52] from across the country around the world, which have been documented in this way, on the
[5:57] landscape performance series website, the program's been in operations since 2010.
[6:02] And the website is also a really great resource of landscape performance information and inspiration
[6:07] beyond these case studies, including, including translated research, they have a fast-facts library,
[6:13] which kind of puts research into more approachable terms, they have warehouse of tools and metrics
[6:19] that you might use to measure everything from carbon sequestration to carbon footprint of materials
[6:25] those sorts of things.
[6:29] And although your focus is on storm water here, you can note the watershed diagram in
[6:33] the lower right, showing town branch within the larger Kentucky River watershed, I wanted
[6:38] to take a moment to emphasize and point out how multifaceted and transformative town branch
[6:44] It is a really, really remarkable project nationally
[6:48] and for us to all take a great amount of pride
[6:51] in the fact that our community chose to invest
[6:53] and kind of worked so hard for so many years to do this.
[6:57] It's a multi-modal linear park
[6:59] and a transportation system running through
[7:00] the heart of our downtown as you can see here.
[7:04] It weaves together, green infrastructure, water,
[7:08] and walls that separate bike and pedestrian trails
[7:10] within a high traffic corridor
[7:12] And it connects our urban core to diverse neighborhoods as well as the surrounding bluegrass landscape.
[7:17] It traces the historic path of town branch, the original water source for Lexington, which is now buried very deep below.
[7:26] The trail and the streets, and this complex urban infrastructure project reflects the cultural and natural histories of our region as well.
[7:33] Through educational signage, and it connects people to civic assets, such as parks, public spaces, and transit,
[7:38] And it provides a missing link within a regional trail network.
[7:42] It does a lot.
[7:44] So before I dive into the research, I wanted to share a couple of photos to help us
[7:48] kind of highlight some of the key features before and after.
[7:51] If you all can remember, many years ago, before it came into being.
[7:54] I'm sure that many of you can.
[7:56] But I wanted to just kind of start to think with you all a little bit more involved
[8:00] how this is maybe, how you might imagine its impacted stormwater.
[8:04] So here's the view along Vine Street, we're very close to, I think it's just taken from
[8:09] down there facing in this direction.
[8:12] What do you see and how, what do you think is the source of stormwater in this condition,
[8:16] where do you think the stormwater is going?
[8:23] Lots of parking lots, lots of impervious surface, whether it's concrete sidewalks, asphalt roadways,
[8:30] roofs, right?
[8:31] So do you see much green in this picture?
[8:35] I can count.
[8:36] probably less than a dozen trees in the view.
[8:39] And Kudos to the biker, you can see them in the middle
[8:43] towards the bottom, very brave soul, traveling down
[8:46] by and street on bike next to the car.
[8:48] That we're at times going above 60 miles an hour.
[8:52] So, yeah, not a lot of place for stormwater to go,
[8:54] but a lot of places for a two canylaid.
[8:56] All right, so different location and different view,
[8:58] but what are you seeing is some of the key differences here.
[9:05] Many more trees, so much more vegetation,
[9:10] More permeable surface, so to support the trees and vegetation, a lot more planted areas,
[9:14] a lot more volume of soil there.
[9:19] Yes, so you can see, especially right along vine street, there are depressions there, so those
[9:24] are the rain gardens or by retention areas, they come under a lot of different names.
[9:29] And there are curb cuts along vine street to allow water from the road to go directly into those.
[9:34] And then there are special soils, engineered soils, plant material that's selected to
[9:39] treat stormwater pull out some of the pollutants allow it to infiltrate in and try to improve water quality along the way.
[9:47] Okay, so jumping into a little bit of the research.
[9:50] I wanted to start by saying that a lot of are we were looking at sustainability.
[9:55] So who knows the three pillars of sustainability?
[9:57] I'm teaching class at 10 o'clock, so I'm in.
[10:00] I'm in my teacher mode. Three pillars. Ross, I can count on you.
[10:08] Yes, those three pillars, which hold up sustainability. So, for a lot of our social benefits, we relied on a survey. We had 166 responses. We advertised it through a variety of means, listservs, posters, QR codes. We had over 100 people response, and there was significant support for many of the projects sustainability goals, which you can see here.
[10:28] And getting into some of those social benefits, you can see here that the project
[10:34] improved both actual and perceived safety along the corridor,
[10:39] significant reductions in both collisions and speeds along the corridor.
[10:45] This side demonstrates a clear preference.
[10:48] Human people preference for those wider, more generous spaces provided for people along the corridor,
[10:54] especially when you compare them to those really narrow,
[10:57] scary sidewalks that you can see that are just on the opposite side of Nizland Avenue in the upper left corner.
[11:04] A whole host of benefits that overlap with one another here.
[11:10] The findings highlighted impacts on social connection.
[11:14] Health and well-being, and in short, I would say,
[11:16] Town Branch Commons helps people to be more active to feel happy and energized when they're on the trail.
[11:22] And it's doing it all while connecting them more with one another as well as nature, their sense of nature.
[11:29] There's also an aesthetic and cultural and components to the comments, so visitors find the corridor attractive.
[11:35] I know some of these things feel very intuitive and logical, not a big surprise.
[11:40] But it's important for people to appreciate spaces aesthetically in order for them to care for them, to want to further invest in them.
[11:48] So these are important findings for us.
[11:50] And so people really like the diverse mix of plants
[11:53] and a majority of participants indicated
[11:55] that the project had improved their perception of our city.
[11:58] So not only people who live here feeling proud of it,
[12:00] it draws in visitors, right?
[12:01] And people are now staying in hotels downtown
[12:03] and can walk to places they could never easily access
[12:06] before in a way that's really pleasing and beautiful.
[12:11] It also does a really good job of reflecting
[12:13] the natural environment and kind of taking some of those
[12:16] beautiful spaces that we might be aware of as local locals who live here, but it brings them
[12:21] downtown. So people who might not have access to a car and can't get out to see those
[12:25] drystone fences in the bluegrass, they can see them right here downtown. They took those
[12:29] ideas, those materials, and kind of gave them a new expression in place that's accessible
[12:33] to many, many more people.
[12:37] So a couple of economic benefits as well, but I wanted to touch on.
[12:42] The design of and the investment in town branch commons created a very inviting and
[12:47] connected what we call a spine in the design disciplines and it spurred other considerable
[12:54] investments along vine street along midlands and main streets and a number of projects
[12:59] improving Lexington's public realm have been completed or nearing completion and their
[13:05] additional investments right now and mixed use and commercial developments that are scheduled
[13:09] to break ground in the coming years.
[13:10] So it's definitely been a driver and has helped
[13:13] catalyze those things.
[13:16] And then also, the project blended multiple funding sources,
[13:21] the most significant of which was the transportation
[13:23] investment generating economic recovery
[13:26] or tiger grant for just over 14 million.
[13:30] And the layered funding approach really allowed the city
[13:32] to leverage those federal state as well as municipal dollars.
[13:39] So shifting to the final pillar of sustainability environmental, which is what we're here for,
[13:44] I'm going to start with something and then we'll move into the stormwater stuff.
[13:48] But one thing I wanted to highlight, a couple of things related to plants.
[13:52] The diversity is much improved.
[13:54] I think you all can remember that picture I showed you.
[13:56] We maybe counted a dozen trees, most of which were ginkos, a non-native that really provides no wildlife benefit, very little.
[14:03] So now, the downtown corridor, which was formerly dominated by hard scape and almost devoid of green,
[14:10] it now has these narrow ribbons of really dense and lush plantings which create significant impact in an urban setting.
[14:16] So it has a mix of trees and shrubs, which are complemented by densely planted perennial and grass plugs.
[14:23] And the Shannon diversity index referenced on this slide is really a measure of the potential diversity of a space,
[14:28] and a hundred percent would be year at the maximum diversity.
[14:31] So if you look at the circles on the right, you can see generally, we're scoring really, really well.
[14:37] It just so happens that because there are so many of those plugs of the switchgrass,
[14:41] which is kind of the iconic grass that love it or hate it.
[14:44] It's the thing that's kind of a defining feature.
[14:46] Those really draw the overall average down a little bit, but overall scoring really highly.
[14:51] And the project has a lot of new habitat that it created.
[14:58] And
[15:00] 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 zirxes, according to the zirxes society.
[15:18] Carbansy question, lots of trees over 250 planted, and they are improving people's experience
[15:24] along the corridor, especially as they mature and provide additional shade, but they're
[15:28] also providing a lot of environmental benefits, as I'm sure a lot of you are aware.
[15:32] And we happen to take these measurements on the hottest days in July of 2025, so we appreciated
[15:37] every inch of shade that they could give us, but the trees are doing lots of really important
[15:41] stormwater absorption, shade, reducing urban heat, all sorts of great things.
[15:47] And those figures were calculated using eye-tree.
[15:51] So, finally getting to what you are here for, sustainable stormwater.
[15:55] So, this complete street project includes planting areas and a green infrastructure system consisting of curb cuts,
[16:02] inlets and plumes that collect and direct stormwater run off into a series of 22 rain gardens,
[16:07] with specialized soil mixes and plantings that are designed to support infiltration and in
[16:13] addition, they're sparse of permeable pavement as well, in strategic locations to help
[16:18] reduce and absorb runoff from the trails.
[16:23] So, stormwater quantity, the capture, town branch commons, the catchment area, captures and treats
[16:29] approximately 25,000 cubic feet of stormwater, which is 231% of the requirement from the city.
[16:36] The city designates a 1.2-inch rain event for treating the first flush, and that tall is up to
[16:43] about 10,000 cubic feet, and town branch is punching well above its weight in helping out with
[16:48] managing the quantity of stormwater.
[16:51] Some of the limitations, I'll get into them for these because I know this is what you're interested
[16:54] in.
[16:55] These calculated results are estimates, so they are not based on observation of actual rain events.
[17:01] And, however, it only accounts for the delineated urban rain gardens.
[17:06] So there's a lot more planted area than we use to calculate this value.
[17:12] And a lot more just sort of general planted areas that have vegetation,
[17:16] they have soils, which are part of that larger network of areas,
[17:19] and other features that are helping to collect and treat stormwater.
[17:23] So if anything, I think it's probably undercounting a little bit
[17:26] what the potential is for the storage and treatment here.
[17:29] It does not account her plant interception or a Vapotranspiration, so again that would only be an increase to what it's doing and
[17:36] 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
[17:46] This is the data backing that up. So
[17:49] meticulous spreadsheets and calculations
[17:52] We analyze the project documents and the stormwater submittals to calculate the storage volume required by the city
[17:58] as well as the below ground and above ground storage volumes provided by each of the
[18:02] rain of the 22 rain gardens and so this table highlights the data gathered and
[18:06] analyzed for those rain gardens. And there's some more information if you want.
[18:11] If you have questions at the end, I'm happy to come back and provide some more detail on that.
[18:15] Another stormwater quality quantity benefit was the corridor traces, the historic path,
[18:24] of town branch, which is a highly urbanized watershed,
[18:27] draining much of downtown.
[18:29] And the project encompasses a really, really small portion of that watershed.
[18:33] I'll get to that a little bit later in my presentation.
[18:36] But in spite of these constraints,
[18:38] town branch commons has significantly reduced annual runoff by realigning
[18:42] and reducing the lane widths of vehicular travel lanes.
[18:45] So that's known as a road diet in our profession.
[18:48] And the green infrastructure system, which has the rain gardens,
[18:51] the dense vegetation, the pervious pavement, all of that combines to decrease the impervious
[18:57] services for their contributing to the reduction and runoff from the site.
[19:01] So those two pie charts on the left, the baseline, that was the pre-existing conditions.
[19:07] And on the right is what we project to be the post-construction current scenario in the EPA's
[19:14] Stormwater Calculator Lingo. So you can see the big change there is the runoff is being influenced
[19:19] by the increase in vegetation and infiltration opportunities.
[19:24] Again, some limitations.
[19:26] These are modeled results.
[19:27] They're estimates not based on observation,
[19:30] and it is generated by the EPA's warm water calculator,
[19:33] which does not account for tree canopy and rainfall
[19:35] interception.
[19:36] So that might mean this is a little bit of an undercount,
[19:38] and then there are always potential discrepancies
[19:40] between the documentation we had to look at
[19:42] what was actually built in the field.
[19:46] Again, some more data.
[19:47] 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.
[19:57] So EPA National Storm Water Calculator is what we use.
[20:00] I would like to 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.
[20:14] So,
[20:17] town branch, when it comes to the thing that Kail or 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,
[20:35] and Bayley connected me to Chase, and that allowed my research assistant mid tonight to get
[20:39] out in the field and actually do some measurements and not just be documenting things
[20:42] in our office on the computer. So it was a really exciting, very warm couple of days that we
[20:48] got out in June and July of 2025. And I just wanted to kind of preface this section by starting
[20:54] to talk a little bit about the town branch Commons project within the overall watershed. So
[20:59] we know now that it's the actual town branch is very well beneath the streets.
[21:05] 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.
[21:15] So the watershed is heavily impacted by urbanization, as we all know, and town branch commons can only do so much.
[21:22] And know 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.
[21:34] what was then under construction,
[21:36] Gatton Park, it's now open and been open for just over a year.
[21:40] But we felt like it was a great moment
[21:41] to raise public awareness at that much anticipated park.
[21:45] So we gathered water samples in June and July of
[21:47] not this past summer, but the summer before
[21:49] and were really grateful to the support
[21:51] and assistance we received from the city,
[21:53] most notably Bailey and Chase,
[21:56] both pictured here in David Price
[21:57] at the Laboratories supervisor,
[22:00] as well as his team at the
[22:04] equipment, chemical analysis, all of those things. So this is the work that we did to begin
[22:14] to compare all of the data that we collected, which was only over four days, but we had
[22:21] a really great resource from the city with the volunteer work that had been done monitoring
[22:25] water sheds over the years. And so we compared our data, which is on the bottom and some of
[22:29] the cells are highlighted in yellow, to the volunteer monitoring data from 2021, which is really
[22:34] the top chunk of the spreadsheet.
[22:37] Some of those cells are highlighted in a really pale green, I see.
[22:41] And so we were also using EPA's water quality standards
[22:44] and some documentation on town branch watershed
[22:47] focus monitoring that I think was provided
[22:49] or created by Thurdrop,
[22:51] who might be presenting later today.
[22:53] The key comparisons we decided to make under the
[22:56] advisement of Bailey and Chase and others
[22:59] was to look at the dry samples.
[23:01] 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.
[23:15] 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.
[23:28] So, we had a variety of measurements that we took in situ.
[23:33] We collected the samples from the middle of the water body at town branch 12, monitoring
[23:39] site, and we used a hand-a-water quality multimeter probe that was known to us by the lab.
[23:45] And we collected water grab samples, put them in some ice, and took them to the lab on the
[23:49] days that we collected for them to conduct the chemical analysis in the lab.
[23:53] So the following are the results from the insidium measurements.
[23:57] And again, we're comparing 2025 to the 2021 summer dry sample.
[24:01] So dissolved oxygen increased, and it meets the benchmark.
[24:06] pH, but we'll talk a little bit more about that in a second.
[24:09] pH also increased, it's within the optimum of most aquatic organisms.
[24:14] Temperature increased a decent amount, which made the 7.6%,
[24:20] which made the increased dissolved oxygen a little bit suspicious.
[24:22] So, these are part of the reasons that we decided to designate these findings as inconclusive
[24:30] because you would expect there to be lower oxygen in warmer waters.
[24:35] And the average dry measurement does meet the benchmark, however.
[24:38] Conductivity increased a little bit of a problem area,
[24:43] because the average dry measurement was well above the healthy range to support fish and macros.
[24:48] And then looking at the chemical analysis, again, comparing 25 to 21, some are dry, and the suspended solids, massive increase.
[25:00] 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.
[25:12] And so I would imagine that this contributed to it. And now, if editation getting a little bit better established, I hope that these values might be lower than they were when we measured them last year.
[25:21] E. coli decreased, and although this is a move in the right direction, it's still well above
[25:27] the primary contact recreation benchmark, so lots of work to be done in that area.
[25:32] Total phosphorus increased, but it still meets the benchmark, nitrogen increased, but also meets the benchmark, and nitrate decreased, exceeds the benchmark there.
[25:48] All that being said, I think it's worth noting that people are still very supportive of
[25:57] these types of investments and they care about the work that you all are spending your
[26:02] time on and others really care about here.
[26:05] So I just wanted to kind of after the inconclusive quality data I wanted to share that it's
[26:12] still really important and we still need to keep working on it and just kind of reiterate that
[26:16] Brown Branch Commons is a tiny, tiny parcel within a really large watershed, and that incrementally
[26:21] I think there's a lot of work to be done, but a lot of potential improvements within
[26:26] the urbanized watershed of downtown Lexington.
[26:29] So I wanted to share just a couple of final thoughts before I leave you for the future.
[26:34] So so often when we are designing for stormwater, the spaces do one thing.
[26:40] They hold the maximum or designated amount of water for a prescribed amount of time.
[26:45] 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.
[26:51] If you're really lucky, maybe you get a fence around it because it's considered dangerous and a potential place for a kid bite drown.
[27:00] 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.
[27:09] 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.
[27:19] 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.
[27:34] It also provides educational opportunities and spaces to engage with and interact with the plants and
[27:40] materials that are there and all of these qualities together are what make it so successful.
[27:47] I also wanted to point you to that landscape performance series website, another case study.
[27:52] This was in Hoboken New Jersey.
[27:54] I wanted to highlight this one that is focused on storm water and it may be a source of inspiration for future
[28:01] redevelopment downtown. So in response to flooding during during hurricane
[28:05] standby back in 2012, which hit Hoboken particularly hard, this project transformed
[28:11] a surface parking lot. We have a lot of those into a resiliency park by weaving
[28:16] together social spaces at the ground level. On top of layers of stormwater and flood control
[28:21] infrastructure. So rain gardens, you can see the kind of green diagram shows you how people
[28:27] use an interact with the space and the blue diagram shows you all of the engineering and materials
[28:31] that are happening underneath the ground.
[28:34] And so it's weaving these things together and it allows the rain gardens, bioswales, and permeable
[28:40] pavement, channel, stormwater into underground systems and it absorbs nearly 200,000 gallons
[28:44] of stormwater and it helps to reduce confines to or overflows in Hoboken.
[28:50] There's more detail available online so they have a similar brief and methods document that
[28:56] and book into if you're interested in.
[29:00] A little bit closer to home.
[29:02] I wanted to highlight one of my students' projects
[29:04] from the spring of 2025.
[29:07] We were using what was, then, the EPA Rainworks Challenge
[29:12] Design Competition as our prompt for a semester-long project.
[29:17] And so my students started out looking at schools
[29:19] all across Fayette County.
[29:21] And this one in particular is Wellington Elementary,
[29:23] which is located pretty close to Fayette County,
[29:26] or Fayette Mall.
[29:28] And so this, you can see in the upper left,
[29:32] I think it's emblematic of schools across our district,
[29:35] which are very heavy on Monterf,
[29:37] very sparse trees, rest can confirm this for me,
[29:40] though he's done a really good job to get more trees
[29:42] on during school sites.
[29:45] But the moan line, in the aerial image,
[29:47] you can see a large linear detention basin
[29:49] on the right side of the image there,
[29:52] and that is moan to within an inch of its life,
[29:55] year round, and it's supposed to be collecting
[29:57] stormwater helping absorb. So, this project will...
[30:00] We thought to transform this underutilized infrastructure as well as many other spaces around the school and to opportunities for enrichment and learning.
[30:07] 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.
[30:19] 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?
[30:27] And so they were improving a reducing stormwater runoff.
[30:31] They were increasing tree canopy.
[30:32] They were adjusting impervious surface.
[30:35] And they were shifting mongrass to no-mo areas,
[30:38] which means more water can infiltrate, more biodiversity,
[30:41] more learning opportunities for students.
[30:43] And then this was a section drawing,
[30:45] looking at that same detention basin,
[30:47] which is currently being mode really heavily,
[30:49] thinking about that as being a more naturalized condition.
[30:52] And all of the different activities and spaces
[30:54] you could link along that space.
[30:58] And then a prospective view showing some of the other ideas,
[31:02] including rain gardens, greater diversity
[31:04] of trees, materials, and that's where things.
[31:11] So that's hypothetical student projects.
[31:15] But I wanted to emphasize that these are not only visions
[31:17] they can be our reality, too.
[31:19] So these are a few final images I'll share of school
[31:21] projects that I was fortunate to work on
[31:23] when I was in Virginia before we moved to Kentucky.
[31:26] This is a view of menaces elementary school in Northern Virginia and on the left you can see
[31:31] really innovative stormwater infrastructure.
[31:35] It is the detention basin there, but it also acts as an amphitheater and it's collecting all the water from the parking lot,
[31:41] it's collecting water from the roofs, and it's doubling as this rate wonderful gathering space.
[31:46] And on the right, in our school district we can't plant trees, close to windows or buildings for security concerns,
[31:52] which is important, but you can see on the right this is a courtyard space that was really
[31:59] lushly planted with canopy trees and understory species that provide really rich learning
[32:04] environments for kids and outdoor learning opportunities for teachers.
[32:08] And then one final image is the basketball arena at the University of Virginia's campus,
[32:14] and this was on the left a bioswale with a series of wears or check dams right after it was planted.
[32:21] 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 will your interior metal planting, which does a much better job of infiltrating stormwater and slowing water down along the slope.
[32:44] So wanted to open it up to questions and say thank you because I don't want to over over step my time.
[32:50] So,
[32:55] Wayne Burke, what would you consider some shortfalls or challenges and lessons learned from the top-red comments?
[33:03] From the project itself, or from my research.
[33:07] Oh, both.
[33:10] A really obvious one for research was mapping out our schedule to think about doing things like,
[33:16] We'd be being more knowledgeable about dry measurements for water quality or water quality, sorry.
[33:23] We could have mapped out our schedule a bit better, especially for measuring all of the trees during really hot days.
[33:28] That was a little rough, so that's a simple thing.
[33:30] In terms of the commons itself, all the pictures I have are from when it was very close to completion.
[33:36] And we can look outside now and know and rest of the nose it pretty intimately like he's starting to maintain the space.
[33:40] So understanding the maintenance considerations is a really important part of making these projects
[33:46] successful, too.
[33:47] So it's great when they look wonderful for the initial pictures, but then they evolve and
[33:52] change.
[33:53] And so there is, as part of this project, they have an adaptive management plan.
[33:58] So they are anticipating those long-term maintenance questions that are going to come up, because
[34:01] you put down all these plants, but they're not going to stay in exactly where you put them,
[34:06] and some plants are going to self-seed and do other things.
[34:09] And so there is this idea of trying to anticipate some of the longer term maintenance concerns that
[34:14] I think because it's a very complex project with lots of different partners from within the city that have
[34:21] 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
[34:30] So the coordination aspect makes it I think a little bit more challenging and I would say if I had my dream
[34:36] 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.
[34:48] 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.
[35:09] Given that there's a lot of eyes on this project and a lot of different people involved in so many different ways.
[35:17] And given that you had the award, this was a national competition to do this and you get some resources to do this.
[35:25] But on a small scale, like what could be some of the most simplified, easiest to do kind of case studies on stormwater infrastructure in town locally?
[35:36] Great question yeah given all the different stuff you looked at maybe what would you kind of see is like a fundamental or baseline
[35:42] 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
[35:49] But what of your goals which is great that you have someone like Bailey and the city who's so curious and interested and invested in improvements to stormwater infrastructure is
[35:59] is how might there be ways to measure the impacts on a unit by unit basis?
[36:07] Like there are 22 rain gardens along the corridor.
[36:10] Is there a way and there are methods out there?
[36:15] There are equipment out there that you could invest in to really start to build infrastructure
[36:19] in a way that has the monitoring in place.
[36:22] Right now retroactively after the fact it's really hard to go back in and put in some of the sensors
[36:27] monitors that would help us understand, okay, here's the water quality going into this cell and
[36:31] here's what it looks like in the outflow pipe, but that's possible if you want to put
[36:35] the resources and you can find the resources to put towards it. So I think that that's kind
[36:39] of maybe some of the leading edge that might lead to more buy-in to the value of this in terms of
[36:46] like those like small-scale research opportunities is like where are some spaces that are smaller
[36:51] more contained where you could really better understand like the outfall at the park compared
[36:57] to what happens along the corridor and the larger waters said we knew it wasn't going
[37:01] to really move the needle much but in a small more contained unit where you can really understand
[37:06] the volume and quantity and quality coming in and what's leaving that system that would be great
[37:11] to start to figure out how can you monitor those things. Yeah. Yeah in the back.
[38:11] Great questions.
[38:11] My recollection is that we tried to do our sampling in mourning as well.
[38:17] I don't think any of them were in the afternoon.
[38:20] I don't remember exact times, but I probably have that written down somewhere in my research notes, I would hope.
[38:28] So I remember very hot.
[38:30] Many of the times that we were out there monitoring and very exposed because it was a wide open construction site.
[38:36] I mean, they left one tree in that corridor in the park.
[38:40] that was at pre-existing, so no shade whatsoever.
[38:43] So it might be a little bit, I remember, before the park.
[38:47] Construction, that was a highly-vegetated corridor.
[38:49] So that may have had some impacts in terms
[38:51] of the pre- and post-mesherments,
[38:53] because they had to set down the banks quite a bit
[38:56] and removed a lot of the existing vegetation in favor
[38:58] of introducing more native and diverse vegetation
[39:01] and was there previously.
[39:04] And then your second question about soil specifications.
[39:07] So I was not the landscape architect,
[39:09] but I have access to the landscape architecture, construction, documents, and I believe it was actually
[39:17] it was a very diverse project team as well. So, Gresham Smith was the lead and they did a lot of
[39:23] the transportation engineering as well as a lot of the kind of design you see on the ground, walkways,
[39:29] walls, et cetera, but they also worked in partnership with Strand Engineering. But I believe it
[39:33] may have been element design that may have done some of the help them on some of the soil specifications
[39:38] specifically and some of the planting and so I might be able to access that and potentially
[39:44] share it with Bailey if that would be helpful. Yeah,
[39:49] yeah.
[39:52] Was there any data available
[39:53] of bears on the question about increasing those water quality parameters being able to
[40:00] Or reflection of the changes in the basin as a whole, versus in that reach that you are working on.
[40:06] I cannot say, I just did not have the research time or capacity, or like knowledge-based,
[40:13] so it would be able to answer that question unfortunately. I know where my expertise ends,
[40:18] and really as I was saying to somebody earlier, we're able to dip our toe into the water monitoring,
[40:23] Thanks to folks like Bailey and Chase helping us because that was not my research background coming to it.
[40:30] So I'm sure many of you are much more knowledgeable on those issues than I am.
[40:35] All right.
[40:35] Thanks.
[40:41] Thank you very much, Jordan.
[40:42] Walking here every day, crossing camera and comments is a delight.
[40:45] So I'm glad to know that it's actually also a real delight to the rest of the people.
[40:50] And I thank you to Bailey who started this off because I got caught in the
[40:54] to the construction of the parking garage.
[40:56] Anyway, it was an adventure this morning, coming parking.
[41:00] But we now have Tisha Cookley with the Kentucky water
[41:03] said watch, and she's going to talk about the water quality
[41:05] monitoring and community engagement.
[41:19] OK, thank you all so much for inviting me.
[41:22] And thanks, Bailey, for letting me know that some members
[41:26] of this group might be interested in knowing
[41:28] about what watershed watch is, what we do.
[41:32] And so this is not a technical presentation.
[41:34] I'll kick it off by saying this
[41:35] this presentation just about the nonprofit organization who we are, what we do, how we work
[41:43] with communities throughout this day. And so I'll start by just introducing myself because
[41:47] I've worked with some of you before in different capacities in Lexington. I used to be working
[41:54] as a capacity at the University of Kentucky as a water quality microbiology researcher and I don't
[42:00] do that anymore. And so I fall in on touch with some of you. And so that's just to say that
[42:05] I moved on to different types of administrative work.
[42:08] I do strategic planning and data analytics type of work now for the University of Kentucky.
[42:13] And so in my spare time as a volunteer, I'm still involved in water quality work through citizen science,
[42:21] volunteer engagement.
[42:23] And so I'm the statewide president and board chair for Kentucky Watershed Watch.
[42:28] And I know many of you have worked with Watershed Watch
[42:31] And right here in Lexington through Kentucky River Watershed Watched Base and Organization.
[42:37] And so you might know or you might not know that we're statewide, we work with seven river basins throughout the state.
[42:47] And so we are a board of directors statewide and five working committees of the board.
[42:53] And the board and the working committees have representation from all seven river basins.
[42:58] And the working committees are sampler support, outreach and communication, science advisory, fundraising, and organizational operations.
[43:07] And that's a pitch to say to you all, we are always looking for additional input on these working committees.
[43:14] 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.
[43:27] 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.
[43:40] And so keywords in there are volunteers and communities.
[43:48] So one thing I want to ask first is I know there are some samplers in the room that are watershed watch volunteers.
[43:54] I might not know some of you if you're sampling and I haven't met you yet.
[43:58] Can I get it right?
[43:59] Show hands of who all samples for Watership Launch?
[44:02] Great.
[44:03] Cool.
[44:04] Thank you all so much.
[44:05] Your data matters.
[44:07] Okay.
[44:07] So how do we achieve our mission?
[44:09] We work towards our mission by developing scientifically based sampling protocols and training methods.
[44:16] And I'll talk more about those specific methods protocols in this talk.
[44:20] We also recruit train and equip volunteer stream monitors throughout the state.
[44:27] We encourage that those volunteers to collaborate with each other and communicate within
[44:33] their communities to take their data to community action.
[44:39] And we establish local support hubs throughout the communities.
[44:42] I'll talk more about this as well, but these are partner organizations that support the volunteers
[44:47] directly within their community.
[44:51] And then we provide access to our sampling results
[44:55] for the volunteers to enter their results.
[45:00] Economously 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 sample 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.
[45:19] Okay, so where is this currently happening? Right now, these orange dots are all of the current sample sites throughout the state. There are 298 of them as of right now.
[45:30] And I just onboarded 13 new volunteers for Fayette County yesterday, and so it's growing constantly.
[45:42] And one aspect of our programming is growing in particular right now, and that's a teaser about something I'm going to tell you about a little bit.
[45:52] And then, so we have a leaderboard on a public facing part of our data portal to celebrate
[45:59] the counties and the hubs and the samplers and samples that are being sampled the most.
[46:07] And so right now Fayette County is the top of the leaderboard when sorted by County,
[46:12] yay Fayette County, and also in the, for the hubs, Lexington Fader Mechanic Government's
[46:19] branch waste water treatment plant lab is the fourth top support hub in the state right
[46:27] now for number of samples. This is just for 2026 so far. And the Kentucky River Basin is by
[46:34] far the most samples of all of the river bases on our leaderboard. And so we need some more work
[46:42] in the upper cumberland and the green river basins. We're doing a lot of work right now to try
[46:47] build up engagement in those areas.
[46:50] But the Kentucky River Basin and Fayette County are definitely leading the pack.
[46:54] But September isn't over yet, and we're in the middle of our September sampling surge
[46:58] right now, so these numbers could change.
[47:03] Okay, so what is the support hub?
[47:04] I mentioned the town branch wastewater treatment plant, is the support hub.
[47:10] So, some of the support hubs are like that.
[47:12] There are municipal government locations and communities throughout the state.
[47:16] Also, a lot of support hubs are extension offices or libraries or conservation district offices.
[47:25] Any type of community partner that has not lined mission with either environmental protection, water quality watershed protection and or community outreach and engaging the public.
[47:40] So what a support hubs do is they host our monitoring kits, our stream chemistry monitoring
[47:46] kits, and also for biological sampling, they host deep-frame nets for macro and vertebrate
[47:53] collection and things like that.
[47:55] And then they meet with the volunteers to check out that equipment to them like a library
[47:59] loan system.
[48:01] We manage that process, the sampler, when they check out their kits, they snappy QR code,
[48:06] and it registers on our statewide database where the kids are, so that the people
[48:11] managing the support hub don't have to take responsibility for the equipment at that
[48:15] level of tracking.
[48:18] But some of the hubs also offer additional services to samplers, and some of these really
[48:23] get more into how the hub benefits from the connection with our samplers.
[48:30] So we host an incubator at the hubs, they can incubate the E. coli cards, and then help
[48:35] sampleers interpret their data, they can host sampler meetings, training events, annual meetings
[48:43] to share results and interpret results together. They can help samplers choose sampling sites
[48:49] or locations. And so this is really important in municipalities that are hoping to get volunteers
[48:55] out to look at specific locations like outfalls or the stormwater outfalls or something like
[49:00] that the support hub can say, if you don't know where you want a sample yet, maybe you consider
[49:06] this spot and the samples are very receptive to that.
[49:11] They also help the samplers understand their results.
[49:15] Sometimes the results can become plexe, like Jordan was just talking about why did the temperature
[49:19] go up and the DO went down and so sometimes depending on who the support hub manager
[49:25] is, they may need to be in a position to help the samplers understand what they're seeing
[49:29] results too. They also can work with samplers to develop community projects. This is especially
[49:36] helpful when a sampler or a group of samplers in a community have a sample site or watershed
[49:43] location that they have specific concerns with. The support hub can kind of be the connection
[49:50] between getting those samplers connected with other groups to address that concern through community
[49:57] project, string, cleanups, best management practices.
[50:00] It's grant funding and things like that. And then, finally, they, some support have also host outreach and recruitment, equipment, so tabling, equipment for community affairs and things like
[50:17] that.
[50:17] Okay, so right now we have 42 support hubs throughout the states. And you can see that this map is remarkably similar to looking at the map of where all the sample sites are.
[50:28] If I overlay them with each other, it is literally around every support hub is a group of sample sites.
[50:35] And so that's one of the benefits of being a support hub.
[50:38] If there's an organization or a partner that is interested in getting a lot more monitoring data right there in their community,
[50:46] by becoming a support hub instantly the number of volunteers then follows.
[50:52] So another program that we work with is we have a partnership with Kentucky 4H and we've developed a 4H stream team program.
[51:05] Where watershed watch volunteers can become a 4H volunteer and take out a group of 4H youth to their sampling site.
[51:14] sample the water with them, do a habitat assessment, a macro vertebra assessment if they want to
[51:21] and develop a community project. And so this is a great way to start trying to get kids more involved.
[51:27] Children can't be official watershed watch volunteers. You have to be 18 to officially be
[51:32] a volunteer. But so this is our way of starting to work with you throughout the state.
[51:38] And so this is a newer program. We're kind of starting to build that up right now.
[51:43] And so, we have Fayette County, is going to be one of the first 4-H stream teams, and
[51:51] we're working right now, it's a partnership between Fayette County Public Schools, and
[51:56] Ico Grove, and Lexington, Fayette Urban County Government through Fiscal Year 26 Class
[52:03] of Education, Stormwater Grant.
[52:06] And so, we are right now in the process of training and coordinating teachers, and who
[52:12] then start working with the students, and we're very excited to see what kinds of community projects,
[52:18] those students propose after they go through the process of figuring out what's going on with
[52:25] their stream of choice.
[52:31] And so some of the examples of community projects that can come out
[52:34] of that are stream-bang tree plantings, stream cleanups. We've also talked with different for each
[52:42] agents who have said, you know, sometimes we have little kids who aren't going to necessarily
[52:47] want to get out there and do something like even a stream cleanup. But what type of
[52:52] community project could people do that would be more, you know, classroom-based, maybe.
[52:59] And so we've talked some about kids can do things like photos, studies, interviewing members
[53:04] of their community about the stream site and things like that.
[53:11] Okay, so how do volunteers
[53:13] getting involved. Like I said, there are multiple monitoring programs that we're doing statewide,
[53:20] so the physical chemical and E. coli testing, what we consider to be our base program,
[53:27] most all samplers are trained in those protocols. We also have habitat assessment, training,
[53:35] and monitoring protocols, as well as macro and vertebrate assessments.
[53:41] So in order to become
[53:42] volunteer. The first step is person goes through online training modules. And so if you were going
[53:49] to become a volunteer just for the base program, stream chemistry and E. coli, you take five
[53:56] online modules. They're about 10 minutes each. So it takes just about an hour to do the entire online
[54:03] training to become a sampler. If someone is interested in becoming a habitat assessment sampler,
[54:10] That's an additional online module, it's again about 10 minutes, and then there's a little bit longer when I think it's about 15 minutes for the biological assessment training.
[54:19] So these are simple.
[54:21] The purpose of them really is just to get people having a basic understanding of what they're going to learn when they meet with us for an in-person training that's approximately two hours.
[54:32] This is a hands-on practicum type exercise where they are able to get refreshed on what they learn from online training and then practice and demonstrate what they've learned in the field.
[54:48] So we conduct these workshops throughout the state.
[54:51] We have trainers throughout the state who provide these.
[54:54] Some trainers are in this room.
[54:56] We are eternally grateful to our trainers for being willing to do this.
[55:00] 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 Hallbender Festival next week.
[55:19] REST Turbin is going to lead a habitat assessment training at, I'm sorry, REST, where is that one going?
[55:26] Lower Howard's Greek, thank you. On Thursday at 5 p.m.
[55:31] So if anybody's interested in attending that one, you can sign up through that after our website to attend that.
[55:38] 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.
[55:47] and it's very popular people like it, it's anyone can do it, and so we're starting to roll
[55:53] out a lot more of those, so watch for those in the future if you're interested.
[56:00] We also work at those training events to form sampling teams.
[56:04] We're working hard to try to form more community connections between samplers.
[56:09] So a lot of times we find out in conversation standing beside a creek that these two people
[56:14] who've never met each other before,
[56:16] are very, very interested in the exact same stream site.
[56:20] And they've come friends and then want to start doing things
[56:23] and their communities together to protect that stream.
[56:26] And so we use these training events
[56:28] to help try to make those connections as well.
[56:32] OK, so then after a person completes their in-person training,
[56:36] they receive an invitation from us
[56:40] to enter the online data portal and create a profile.
[56:43] 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.
[56:54] And some of those tools include how they enter their sample results autonomously.
[56:59] So a sampler can collect samples whenever they want, wherever they want and enter their data.
[57:04] 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.
[57:15] 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.
[57:29] Okay, so then after you've created your profile in a 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.
[57:42] 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.
[57:50] So a lot of times a new volunteer will want to pick up an old sample site to continue it.
[57:55] So that's one way to choose a sample site.
[57:59] Also, if you have a sample site in mind,
[58:02] that you want to sample is never been sampled before.
[58:04] Maybe this is just the stream that runs by my house.
[58:07] You also, in the data portal, you can just zoom in on the map,
[58:11] drop a pen, and then that automatically creates a new sample site,
[58:15] assigns a site ID to it, and assigns it to you.
[58:22] So then after you decide where you want to sample,
[58:24] and you've selected where you want to pick up your equipment
[58:27] at hub, you go to that, you contact the hub, let them know you're coming, and then you go
[58:32] to the hub and pick up your sampling kit. So the sampling kits contain dissolved oxygen,
[58:38] pH, conductivity, meters, a thermometer for strength temperature, waste containers, and also
[58:46] a little instructional flip card deck that are waterproof, laminated cards that are just brief
[58:52] refreshers to the volunteers so that they can end the stream refresh their memory on how many
[58:58] drops of sodium phalsa they do I use.
[59:05] So then they take the kit, they go to the stream
[59:07] and conduct their sampling. This is an image of the field data sheet that our volunteers use
[59:13] to collect their data while they're at the stream. So they take this as a printed copy and
[59:20] you can see it includes a lot of information about the sampler, where they're sampling,
[59:24] We're tracking their volunteer hours and drive time and things like that that helps a lot with grant reporting
[59:31] And then also they're giving us information about
[59:34] 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?
[59:43] What is the flow conditions those types of things?
[59:47] any
[59:47] litter around that we should know about
[59:50] And then also turbidity is just a visual measurement.
[59:54] It's a subjective, either it's cloudy, muddy, clear, mostly clear.
[1:00:01] And then they can also take pictures of from their sample site, looking upstream, looking downstream, and upload those pictures into the data portal with their results, so that if something seems odd in their data, we want to try to take a look. We can pull up those pictures and see what's going on at that stream.
[1:00:20] Then they use the chemistry kit in order to assess the water temperature pH, dissolved oxygen
[1:00:26] conductivity, record all of that.
[1:00:30] They're trained how to calibrate their conductivity meter so that it's calibrated
[1:00:34] on the day that they go out sampling.
[1:00:37] And then they're using Roth biosciences, our cards, to collect equalized samples.
[1:00:43] on to a little, it's a card, like a cardboard card with a vellum film that folds down on it
[1:00:50] that's impregnated with the growth medium. So it duplicates, or it's an analog of a Petri-Dish
[1:00:56] culture method. But it's inexpensive, it's great for volunteers, it's field deployable. So they have
[1:01:04] a little pipette and they have their cards, they run each sample and triplicate, and they put
[1:01:08] one milliliter of sample on each card, let them sit until they
[1:01:13] gel out, there's some augur built into the growth medium, and then
[1:01:17] they take those back to the hub to incubate them, and when they come
[1:01:20] out the next day they count them, or some of the hubs can count
[1:01:24] the cards for the sampler, or take pictures of the cards and send
[1:01:27] the pictures to the sampler so they can count them. But they're
[1:01:30] counting blue colonies, and it's the only thing that grows on the
[1:01:35] is E coli, so if you see a dot, you count it. It's pretty simple for volunteers to deploy.
[1:01:43] So then when they get back home, they take their sample data sheet from the field, and it's
[1:01:49] an exact replicate of what everything looks like in the data portal, so that there's no confusion.
[1:01:54] When they open up the data portal, and they start putting in sample results, it looks exactly like this sheet,
[1:01:59] and they basically just transfer all of the information over into the portal.
[1:02:04] Okay, and then finally data interpretation and using their data.
[1:02:08] This is one of the harder nuts to crack as a non-profit organization.
[1:02:11] I think many of you are familiar with this is getting the community to then do something with that data can be expensive.
[1:02:20] It can be challenging.
[1:02:21] It's time consuming.
[1:02:23] And so we have some ways that we work towards this.
[1:02:28] So first of all, in Formos, we're increasing personal and community awareness of the string conditions.
[1:02:32] 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.
[1:02:42] They can use their data as a basis for further action, but not as regulatory data, just as pattern recognition.
[1:02:50] 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.
[1:03:02] So we're trying to track things spatially and temporarily.
[1:03:06] And then also, we, as an organization, create a report annually to send to the
[1:03:12] Division of Water and we have an annual meeting with the Division of Water to talk about
[1:03:16] this report and it's where we present to them our sites of concern annually.
[1:03:22] And so we're invited to tell them about 10 sample locations statewide each year that we consider
[1:03:28] to be the most concerning that we want to bring to the division of water
[1:03:32] retention. They can choose to do something with those sites or not, but we work with
[1:03:39] them to try to figure out including giving context based on the Sampler's own
[1:03:44] interpretation of why they chose set that site, why they care about that site, what
[1:03:49] they're seeing around there as far as land use patterns and things like that, so
[1:03:53] we can make sure that the division of water has the context they need to act.
[1:03:59] We're also currently working on a site grading tool in our data portal so that we can
[1:04:06] have a clear indication of how sites compare to each other statewide, not just on any one
[1:04:14] parameter, but based on the aggregate of all the parameters that we're looking at combined.
[1:04:20] So just kind of heat mapping, good, fair, bad.
[1:04:28] Okay, have a time assessment.
[1:04:30] Like I said, is one of our newer things that we're getting involved in.
[1:04:32] And it's really exciting right now.
[1:04:34] People are really enjoying this training.
[1:04:36] So we're starting to roll out more and more of this.
[1:04:39] And so what we do and have a time assessment,
[1:04:41] we're looking at stream characteristics,
[1:04:43] a observable stream characteristics standing on the banks.
[1:04:46] And we're looking at things like stream bank erosion,
[1:04:49] repairing buffer width. There's many more characteristics. And we are teaching volunteers
[1:04:56] how to score those on a rubric. So...
[1:05:00] So that these habitat assessments, 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.
[1:05:15] So one of the things that's interesting to me about this is like Jordan was saying, we hear all the time that is very challenging to say what was improved after implementation of a BMP or different types of things.
[1:05:29] 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.
[1:05:37] And so, habitat assessment might be a way of granted across long time periods,
[1:05:42] but we have samplers in this room that has been sampling these streams throughout Kentucky since 1997.
[1:05:51] And so we are dedicated volunteers who tend to stick with the programming.
[1:05:55] And so if we have the ability to assess these sites across long periods of time and say pre and post implementation changes,
[1:06:07] this could be an empowering tool for communities to use to showcase what these BMPs have done for us.
[1:06:16] So we do work with municipalities, we work with LFECG, we also work with some other municipalities throughout the state and in this force.
[1:06:24] And so I wanted to briefly say why Ms. Ali Orman and Ms. Four would work with Watershed
[1:06:30] Watch.
[1:06:31] So we believe as a partnership, we help turn technical plans into more visible and community-based
[1:06:37] implementation.
[1:06:39] And so that increases local capacity by providing volunteer monitoring and support of infrastructure
[1:06:47] and communities to expand the community outreach and engagement.
[1:06:51] It creates better program feedback so that there's a structured feedback loop for a municipality to get input from their citizenry.
[1:07:03] And also creates routine signals across time to help municipalities prioritize where to focus further work.
[1:07:12] And then, also, because we are documenting our volunteer training hours, drive time, sampling, and training events,
[1:07:21] a number of samples and things like that, we're able to provide that type of data back to municipalities to say,
[1:07:28] here's the engagement level that we were achieving in this community during this period of time.
[1:07:34] That helps with grant recording and things like
[1:07:38] that.
[1:07:38] 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.
[1:08:07] And then we're definitely offering community engagement, stewardship, we're providing screening
[1:08:14] level observations to help with pattern recognition and prioritization.
[1:08:19] We're our volunteers are finding trends and hotspot flagging for municipalities and communities.
[1:08:26] And then also, of course, education and hands-on experiences.
[1:08:31] What we need from professional monitoring though is the regulatory and compliance enforcement
[1:08:36] support much higher precision and consistency accuracy, data that can be used for more regulatory
[1:08:44] purposes. And then advanced laboratory analysis that we can't deploy in the field with
[1:08:50] volunteers, complex source tracking when we're, when and where that's appropriate, and then
[1:08:57] validation and follow up investigations based on where our volunteers find.
[1:09:03] So the bottom line
[1:09:04] volunteers broaden the signal, but professionals validate, diagnose, and act on that signal.
[1:09:12] OK, so finally, I wanted to wrap up with some follow-on actions.
[1:09:15] If you're interested in learning more, you can visit our news page on our website.
[1:09:20] We have a listing of success stories of some outcomes in various communities where we've
[1:09:25] been working.
[1:09:26] So you can read some of those and tell us more that we don't know.
[1:09:31] There's, we believe that there are success stories all over the state, that we as a board of directors just aren't
[1:09:38] dialed into fully yet.
[1:09:40] And so if you know of anything that you want to add to success stories from monitoring, let us know.
[1:09:46] And then also, we produced our 2025 annual report of all of our sampling results statewide.
[1:09:55] And so if you're interested in seeing more details about what our volunteers found.
[1:09:59] and
[1:10:00] In the water sites, they were sampling statewide. You can check out that in all reports of that.
[1:10:07] 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 as a support hub.
[1:10:31] 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.
[1:10:49] We're always looking for donations.
[1:10:51] So that's all I've got, if anybody has any questions, do I have time for questions?
[1:11:18] I need to call if I was saying I have not been in a leadership position for the statewide
[1:11:22] board for very long and so I've only had that experience a little bit.
[1:11:28] So I'm not the person to answer that question across at times, but my understanding is there
[1:11:34] has been variability in that and I do think it's getting better and I think that the more
[1:11:41] we do as an organization to be a partner with governments, the better we do at having their
[1:11:48] ear when we come to tell them about something. I don't think that the division of water,
[1:11:53] my impression is that the division of water does not have the capacity internally to act on
[1:11:58] every site that we tell them about, so they have to prioritize on their end. The more that we can do
[1:12:06] get them in touch with the community and what's going on in the community, the easier that conversation is.
[1:12:12] And so the basin coordinators are kind of the middle person where that happens and I think that
[1:12:17] basin coordinator model is currently getting better and it seems like we're getting some new basin coordinators
[1:12:23] throughout the state who are coming in with a lot of fresh energy and reaching out to us.
[1:12:27] We're getting a lot more community connections going right now through basin coordinators and I anticipate
[1:12:32] Okay, that's going to improve that conversation with the visual water on
[1:12:52] going.
[1:13:05] Thanks for that question, Ken.
[1:13:08] They are not cheap, and they've been increasing recently as with inflation.
[1:13:13] So my numbers are probably a little bit out of date, but I'm going to go on a limb and
[1:13:18] a full field kit with everything new purchased is at this point close to $500 but
[1:13:29] we do
[1:13:29] refresh field kits. This is part of the reason why watershed watch for years used to every
[1:13:35] new sampler got their own field kit and took it home with them and it was there kit to keep
[1:13:39] until they didn't want to be a sampler anymore. It was very tough to get those kits back if somebody
[1:13:45] had stopped sampling for a while and so we had a lot of kits out there that weren't being used and
[1:13:51] So the support hub model is helping with that.
[1:13:54] So we need fewer kits now to do the same amount
[1:13:57] of data collection.
[1:14:05] Any other questions?
[1:14:07] Thank you.
[1:14:14] So I scanned it a QR code and the website
[1:14:16] to answer the other part of your question
[1:14:18] can has plenty of opportunities to make donations.
[1:14:21] So you can be that there.
[1:14:23] I was a sampler of fun, of last for quite some time,
[1:14:27] but good lord is it fancy right now.
[1:14:28] It was all paper and there was no portals
[1:14:32] and that's really fancy, so good job.
[1:14:35] To continue our water sampling theme,
[1:14:37] we are going to have our friends from Third Rock
[1:14:39] talk about their monitoring program.
[1:14:52] You guys hear me all right?
[1:14:54] I'm Matt Call, I'm an engineer at Third Rock Consultant,
[1:14:57] and as asked to come here and give just a quick present.
[1:15:00] The presentation about some updates that Lexington has done to their MS4 program. We went through a couple
[1:15:07] of changes recently. We ended a permit cycle where we shifted from a watershed focused monitoring
[1:15:14] program to a bank county wide complete MS4 monitoring program. So just real quickly, I want to give
[1:15:22] a little bit of a background about it. I'll see a lot of familiar faces here, so I have a feeling
[1:15:27] guys are aware of the program and considering it's Labor Day weekend and you guys showed
[1:15:32] up I think you guys care about this a little bit. And then after that I'm going to talk
[1:15:36] about just some of the quick elements of the program and then some of the updates we've done
[1:15:42] to you call the assurance and quality control. And then right now where we are with each of those
[1:15:48] elements and the sampling and the monitoring and how that's going. So real quick, Lexton is under
[1:15:56] a KPDES permit, and as part of that, there's supposed to monitor the streams from the MS4
[1:16:03] that received water from the MS4. And like I said, the watershed focus monitoring program,
[1:16:08] that went from 2015 to 2023 when we wrapped up with Wolfron. And that was a yearly sampling where
[1:16:17] one major watershed would get sampled pretty intensively for one year. There are about 14 events
[1:16:23] for each of those watersheds.
[1:16:25] And it was really good for establishing a base line.
[1:16:28] It's a really good intense data,
[1:16:30] but the problem we ran into is that's just one year.
[1:16:34] So it's really difficult to establish trends
[1:16:37] and see if there's actual improvement in the watershed
[1:16:39] if you just have a snapshot in time.
[1:16:43] So currently, I'm working pretty extensively
[1:16:46] with Petrotech and Bailey MS4, LBCG.
[1:16:51] We were able to trim all the sides, which are about 115 sides that were sampled throughout
[1:16:58] all the watershed, down to 63 monitoring sides that we sample every quarter.
[1:17:05] And that's a pretty significant event, it's a sample, and it takes a lot of coordination.
[1:17:12] We ended up breaking all those sides up in the 13 different sampling routes, two different
[1:17:17] days or volunteers, sacrifice their time to come in and help us out along with LFECD staff
[1:17:23] and a third rock getting involved on that.
[1:17:27] But for each of these sprouts, they're about four of the six sides per route, each of them
[1:17:32] have like a little guide sheet and map to get to that spot, and then hopefully around lunchtime
[1:17:37] they bring it back to the town branch who then starts processing.
[1:17:41] So there's a lot that goes into it, but those sides were based off of the previous water
[1:17:46] quality data, approximate location to each other, and then also the drainage size for each
[1:17:51] of those sides.
[1:17:54] And like I said, it's throughout the entire MS4 area, which you can see here, each of the
[1:17:59] water sheds and major water sheds.
[1:18:02] And then additionally, we wanted to focus on the MS4 areas that are outside of, kind of like
[1:18:07] that central urban service area.
[1:18:10] Because there are some urban areas like the airport and then some of the extension areas outside
[1:18:15] you could see that pink shading that we're also we've added some sites that weren't sampled
[1:18:20] in the watershed folks monitoring program because especially with expansion and urbanization
[1:18:25] and continuing we want to set some good ground data now and then compare it to you know in five
[1:18:31] ten years when those areas kind of start to blow up a little bit we have a baseline and then we can
[1:18:36] compare it to effects of urbanization.
[1:18:41] But talking about the elements of the watershed
[1:18:44] MS4 monitoring program, water quality monitoring, quarterly scheduled sampling events by train volunteers,
[1:18:52] LVCG staff and third-doc staff, and you can see there that's a picture from the second quarter.
[1:18:58] No, I'm sorry, this is most recent event, and everybody is having a pow out there in the time branch lab,
[1:19:03] because as a saying, quality assurance quality control is constantly changing with this,
[1:19:08] because we want to make sure we have the best data that we can provide to the end user.
[1:19:12] And so there's usually some updates about sampling techniques and just friendly reminders to staff and volunteers about how to properly collect those.
[1:19:23] And so that was the most recent event.
[1:19:25] And then there's quarterly wet weather sampling done by Third Rock at each of the seven major watershed sites.
[1:19:32] And that's done by Third Rock because they're a very specific wet weather events and a
[1:19:38] sedence that we have to hit for to qualify as a wet weather event and it can be kind of
[1:19:45] dangerous sometimes.
[1:19:46] So we'd rather get out there and risk our own skin and have a bunch of volunteers out there.
[1:19:51] The most recent wet weather event was done during the June 4 event and that was a pretty heavy
[1:19:58] rain event and everything.
[1:20:06] And then on top of that, there's wet weather sampling done at the remaining sites, come down to about 57 sites, better done by us once a year.
[1:20:18] On top of that, let's just the chemistry side. There's macro and vertebrate and habitat sampling done once a year at each of the seven sites.
[1:20:27] And then every other year at the remaining 50-some sites.
[1:20:31] Fish sampling is only done at the major sites.
[1:20:34] Once a quarter or every other year,
[1:20:37] and then GM Warfare Assessment is something
[1:20:39] that we've implemented recently.
[1:20:41] They stopped feedback from likes and turn and touch or tag
[1:20:46] and have some of the other stormwater programs
[1:20:49] that are being implemented.
[1:20:50] And so that's done once a year at the major sites
[1:20:53] and every other year at the remaining sites.
[1:20:55] and geomorphic assessments were geomorphology, that's just the study of landscape, rivers,
[1:21:03] streams, and how they change over time. So that's really important in urbanization,
[1:21:08] or in urban areas, because the streams, they really get hit hard when you start increasing
[1:21:14] the impervious area and you can see effects from erosion. So we want to know if we're contributing
[1:21:21] sediment to the stream and I don't know landowners are really appreciative of not losing their
[1:21:25] stream bank and losing property.
[1:21:30] So some updates to the QAQC that I was mentioning. Some of
[1:21:34] this is already in place that we did for Worship of SmartTreeing Program. That's some we've added
[1:21:38] on. So everything in black that has been, you know, it's been an effect since 2015. There's
[1:21:47] minimum education and training and experience required for each element of the program volunteers
[1:21:52] have to attend a annual training where it stands on. We go through a presentation to
[1:21:58] them how to do it or for many of them remind them how to do it. Just a little
[1:22:03] refresher and then they go back to the lab and run some mock samples in the lab
[1:22:08] there. And then also to check for precision, collection, accuracy and analytical
[1:22:14] accuracy. We do duplicate samples and assessments for all elements. But we've
[1:22:20] also re-added field blank samples in Rinset Blanc samples.
[1:22:26] So, the duplicate that tests both laboratories, precision, and a sample is precision,
[1:22:32] but having the field blanks that allows us to see if there's any cross-cutation in a contamination
[1:22:37] when you are dropping it off at the lab, if the lab has anything wrong with the equipment,
[1:22:42] which typically onto that thing, but it's still nice to know it's just extra validation
[1:22:48] for the results and then rinse blank samples, that's just down to make sure there's nothing
[1:22:52] dirty with the field equipment that you use from side to side. You don't have to do that
[1:22:57] with a bottle because you fill it up, drop it off the lab once, but something like a chlorine kit
[1:23:02] or something like a filter kit where we filter a dissolved phosphorus. We want to make sure that
[1:23:09] the decontamination is at end of the day that we do when we get back to the office is not affecting
[1:23:13] the side samples. And then also one thing we've added on we kind of beefed up our equipment
[1:23:20] calibration where it's like chronicness that there's something wrong with the meter when
[1:23:25] you're putting the results in or the solution is outdated or expired it will let you know immediately
[1:23:30] as opposed to if you get back and you're looking through the sheet at any of the day you
[1:23:35] realize there's something wrong with your meter and all those results just have to get thrown out of
[1:23:39] point. So just extra validation, extra QAQC, and then field audits we've added to where once a year
[1:23:47] we have to go out and kind of just supervise the sampling, the processes, seeing how that's been
[1:23:53] done and make sure that it's all good and then offer correction when necessary. Because at the end of the
[1:23:59] day we just want this data to be used, not sit on a shelf, but to be implemented in either its
[1:24:06] KDAOs call for data or for watershed programs or whatever may be. We want this data to be used and it needs to be good data.
[1:24:17] And so right now monitoring status, the first three quarters have been done by volunteers and the results for the first and second process, the third is currently being processed.
[1:24:27] The first and second quarter major wet weather sampling has been completed and then 33 of the annual wet weather
[1:24:35] sides have been sampled and that will spend that June 4 event where we dropped off 33 wet weather
[1:24:40] samples at the lab and I believe it was 4.5 inches of rain in six hours so it was a pretty wet wet weather
[1:24:52] macronverate sampling, habitat assessments, all high water sides have been sampled and assessed and all
[1:25:00] And by the end of the day, we have our crews out there wrapping up the last wave of sites right now. Same with fish sampling, all had water sites been sampling and they're by the end of September, the wave of sites will be complete.
[1:25:13] And the GM traffic assessment, all field work has been accomplished. You can kind of see there in the pictures some of the stream sites would go to, to assess if there's any bank erosion.
[1:25:23] 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.
[1:25:34] We wanted to have a wide range of data that we can compare.
[1:25:38] You know if these green infrastructure practices are working, if it is maintenance, but also sediment contribution.
[1:25:45] It's very important to know what your contributing to the watershed.
[1:25:49] And so with the Geomorphic Assessment, all the monitoring monuments have been established
[1:25:55] where we can come back and check the dimensions of the stream from near to year, and then
[1:26:01] bank erosion hazard index, that's what we were doing in these photos here.
[1:26:06] And then soon the sediment modeling will begin shortly, and I will be in charge of taking care
[1:26:12] of that.
[1:26:14] So, with that really brief, really fast, but if there are any questions, I'll open up the
[1:26:20] portal.
[1:26:26] Yes, Ken?
[1:27:01] Yes, so that's very right.
[1:27:02] And then to your first point, this program is pretty incredible.
[1:27:07] Just talking to people at conferences, I actually just got back from a national stream restoration
[1:27:11] conference, and they were pretty impressed at the level of volunteer inclusion with
[1:27:17] this program.
[1:27:17] 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.
[1:27:28] As for the reporting, typically at this time each year, we would be giving the results from the previous watershed folks monitoring program.
[1:27:36] But where we just transitioned into this MS4 wide program that we're only halfway through the year on the sampling, we don't have those results yet, but it will be an annual report at the end of the year, and I will be presenting on it at an SSAC meeting.
[1:27:51] So, yes.
[1:28:15] We did that in March.
[1:28:17] Like we talked about what we were doing, and so we just finished our first year of the IDSF program this summer.
[1:28:24] So we'll wait until that data is finished being compiled, and then we'll have results on it.
[1:28:38] Thanks, Bailey.
[1:28:41] There's so much cross-pollination between volunteer groups, between watershed, watershed, and this water quality monitoring program, and not just people, but also simple sites.
[1:28:51] Right.
[1:28:52] Yeah, you have.
[1:28:54] Yeah, so Lexington is extremely fortunate to have much better capacity than most communities
[1:29:01] that we work with throughout the state.
[1:29:03] So, in Lexington, Watershed Watch is just recruiting volunteers and communicating with volunteers
[1:29:09] to coordinate their efforts.
[1:29:12] And then once we have the group together for who's willing to sample on which dates, we pass
[1:29:18] that list off to Bailey and then she coordinates to put them together in teams and get
[1:29:23] and with third rock, for example, yeah.
[1:29:26] And third rock is providing much higher-level training
[1:29:28] to those volunteers.
[1:29:30] So there's a lot of, yes, there's definite cross-pollination,
[1:29:33] but the volunteers are retrained
[1:29:35] with additional more technical methods
[1:29:38] using different equipment than what we're
[1:29:41] able to provide to volunteer statewide.
[1:29:47] Any other questions?
[1:29:52] The habitat in biological assessments
[1:29:55] you are done theoretically by watershed watch.
[1:30:00] What has been a challenge to get people confident enough to go out and do those assessments on their own?
[1:30:06] Would Third Rock think about doing some sort of mentoring where volunteers could go out for the Third Rock and work with them to gain more experience in doing those assessments?
[1:30:20] Yeah, that's something we'd totally be able to do. I will mention for this program when we go out and do the habitat assessment and the macro and the fish.
[1:30:29] with watershed watch, which bluegrass community
[1:30:32] will apologize to you to have a program
[1:30:35] where they would take their students out.
[1:30:36] I think that is still an act of class
[1:30:38] to where they do some stringboard work characterization
[1:30:41] and some habitat.
[1:30:43] So there are avenues for that, but for this program,
[1:30:47] we actually have a taxonomous two IDs.
[1:30:51] So it's not just like a field check.
[1:30:54] They'll take it back to our lab and look
[1:30:56] it under a microscope and ID it down the gene. So it is it's a little bit more
[1:31:01] involved. But yeah, that's something we totally be open to do.
[1:31:11] Anything else?
[1:31:13] All right. Thank you for your time.
[1:31:22] All right. So next on our agenda are approval of the meeting dates for 2027. So you
[1:31:28] should have them on the agenda. March 5th June 4th September 3rd and December 10th.
[1:31:33] Does anybody have any of the way I'd like to make a motion to approve those?
[1:31:37] Second,
[1:31:41] who was that? Great. And then any discussion? I mean, changes, updates. Okay. All in favor? Any opposed?
[1:31:50] Okay. All right. Now we have one potential topic third and new meeting as in the next year. What about other topics?
[1:32:01] Here's about, if the city doesn't need post-mortem after flooding events that don't typically flood.
[1:32:09] Um, I'm thinking, um, Richmond Road flooded after a big rain event, and that's like at the top of the town branch watershed, I had no idea could even flood.
[1:32:18] Um, I'm at things in, um, mittens had water intrusion from a rain event, and so I'm just curious.
[1:32:24] I mean, I'm sure the city has known flooding problem areas, but one of the area flood that doesn't usually like, what does that look like for the city?
[1:32:33] Bailey is taking notes, so I think that's a great idea. It's in, timely.
[1:33:01] That was a no for the record.
[1:33:15] With the mention of the schools that Jordan did earlier, I thought it might be interesting
[1:33:19] to have to see or somebody from the schools, I know Russ is what maybe it's Russ, I don't
[1:33:23] know, but somebody talked about all of the tree paintings and stuff that they're doing there
[1:33:26] for some water
[1:33:31] in the hills.
[1:33:34] All right, next are announcements.
[1:33:36] Do you have a slide?
[1:33:41] Oh, God. I'm sorry.
[1:33:44] I'm so sorry. Okay. It's almost, I'm out after this.
[1:33:51] I don't know
[1:33:52] that I want to read these. You all can read them. I am going to point out that on September
[1:33:57] 19 along with the mulch giveaway is recesses. I'll have them back.
[1:34:01] We have recesses green fest event where we have this as a sustainable living festival.
[1:34:06] we have sustainable vendors, we have beekeeping, sourdough workshops, composting,
[1:34:12] how to compost and green cleaning, how to make green cleaners. We also have guided hikes on
[1:34:17] on birds and foraging. We have music, beer, gasoline key. Anyway, super fun, the event.
[1:34:25] Anyway, does anybody want to talk about any of the other events that are listed on here or
[1:34:35] the
[1:34:36] showed up in my email that hell been to festival.
[1:34:39] It's September 5th to 12th.
[1:34:42] Maybe someone knows more about it to tell us.
[1:34:48] As I understand it, direction to this.
[1:34:51] It is already on.
[1:34:52] September 5th, there is an event at Burnsboro,
[1:34:56] there are events during the week,
[1:34:58] and Parks and Recreation is sponsoring the festival.
[1:35:00] The Special Counselor, Calis Landing, on the 12th with some paddling races in the morning and the table from 12 to 3 and
[1:35:09] kayakrim on stuff, and it is on the parks and yet.
[1:35:13] And what are the ways legs for be there?
[1:35:16] And I can add a KY Riverkeeper.org, it's where you can get more information.
[1:35:26] That's KY Riverkeeper.org.
[1:35:31] Great.
[1:35:34] Jennifer?
[1:35:54] Now, hello.
[1:35:55] You can probably hear me without this anyway.
[1:35:58] I just wanted to do an extra push for going to visit the Art by Neatur Gallery.
[1:36:05] you when it's out or when it's open, our inspirations, this year are mostly environmental or water
[1:36:13] quality incentive grant projects and just kind of encouraging people to do art those sites to
[1:36:20] show that water quality infrastructure can be useful and also beautiful. So I really encourage everybody
[1:36:27] to visit the gallery when it's open. It'll be open October through mid December. So at
[1:36:35] So it's a cool water quality, really, there aren't things here.
[1:36:39] That's a...
[1:36:40] Is the call for submissions to open for those artworks?
[1:36:45] Yes.
[1:36:47] The submissions are open and fill.
[1:36:50] I want to say a week from Sunday.
[1:36:53] You have about a week and a half.
[1:37:00] Anybody else?
[1:37:01] How anything?
[1:37:02] See.
[1:37:03] Yes, I'd like to announce that we're still taking late registrations
[1:37:08] for annual water research symposium.
[1:37:11] It'll be at the Central Bank Center on September the 18th.
[1:37:19] So if you can join us for that, it's a great all day event on water research.
[1:37:25] And also I'd like to announce that we now have a new basin coordinator for the Kentucky River
[1:37:30] Basin.
[1:37:31] So we have Nathan Weber this year,
[1:37:35] so to be around for a little bit afterwards if you want
[1:37:39] We need to discuss project ideas that we may be able to Swiss, though.
[1:37:43] Thank you.
[1:37:44] Perhaps that's a future topic, also.
[1:37:47] Maybe not December.
[1:37:48] We'll let you get a little bit more on your feet.
[1:37:53] Get used to that.
[1:37:54] Thanks, Steve.
[1:37:55] My name is Nathan.
[1:37:56] Glad to be here.
[1:37:58] It's going to be good to work with everyone here.
[1:38:01] And throughout the Kentucky River Basin.
[1:38:04] Just announced that the Kentucky River Authority grant applications open right now.
[1:38:09] So, we're going to send out a newsletter and mass emails based and wide.
[1:38:16] Applications are due December 4th, I believe.
[1:38:20] Our application process is right now on the KWRI website.
[1:38:24] More information will come with the newsletter hopefully next week.
[1:38:29] And those projects include any non-profits or liberal governments
[1:38:35] with water quality improvement projects, outreach and education,
[1:38:38] programmatic agendas, things like that.
[1:38:42] In the ceiling for each grant award is $5,000, I believe.
[1:38:50] So meet with me today.
[1:38:53] I'll stick around a little bit longer.
[1:38:55] Or email me.
[1:38:57] It's just Nathan.webber at UKY.edu.
[1:39:01] But just one B, thanks for asking, that's a very common, so yeah, and then I'm in the KWRI office,
[1:39:11] there at the campus and I'm building, and looking forward next week to be held in
[1:39:17] a festival, working with Russ, and then the preserve manager. So yeah, thanks guys, and I look forward
[1:39:26] to being old.
[1:39:29] Congratulations, thank you.
[1:39:33] Anything else?
[1:39:35] Alright, we've got 20 minutes to go, so we're going to sit here the whole time.
[1:39:39] Thank you all, and we'll see you in December 12, take 11.