Good morning, everybody. These mics are very loud and sensitive. I'll move that away a bit.
I'd like to call this meeting on South Florida Water Management District Board to order and
remind everybody if you could please take a moment to silence your cell phones and the
microphones. Norman, our board meetings, microphones can be turned on and off. These
are all on, and so they're very sensitive, and I think actually they pick up conversations
mentioned in the audience also so it's very interesting before the meeting, listen to everybody.
And I'd like to recognize Mr. Porchwondo for the Pledge of Allegiance.
It's a pleasure to be here in the village of Kivas, I think we should have all of our
meetings here from now on.
Second.
What a beautiful location.
Mr. Porchwondo, would you like to introduce the local officials today?
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for providing me the opportunity to welcome the governing
board to Miami-Dade County for this month's workshop and business meetings. Holding our
meetings at different locations gives local citizens an opportunity to participate in
district meetings and let us know what issues and concerns are important to them. I'm
particularly pleased that the meetings are being held in my hometown of Kibis,
Those of us that are fortunate enough to live here, consider it an island paradise and like the district, the village is very engaged and committed to protecting and enhancing the environment and our beautiful natural resources.
We thank the village for allowing us to use the chambers and we appreciate the hospitality and assistance their staff has provided.
At this time I would like to introduce Village Manager John Gilbert to say a few words.
We're also pleased to have Doug Yoder from Miami-Dade Water and Sewer who is going to address us on behalf of the county.
And from representative Rashim, Katie Loach, and Erin Muir are here from the office and
Senator Nelson's office is represented by Willstein Lawson and I believe she would like
to address the group as well.
Mr. Gilbert.
If I may, good morning.
My name is John Gilbert.
I'm the Village Manager for the Village of Kivas King.
On behalf of the Mayor, Mr. Franklin Kaplan and the Vice Mayor, Ms. Myra Lindsey-Penya
And all of the council members, I want to welcome you.
I know that you have a lot of important business to conduct today.
I share the sentiment I live and work here, so this is a great place.
We look forward to having you back in the future, but again, I want to welcome you on
behalf of the village, hopeful for a very outstanding meeting today and the outcomes
of what you're seeking.
And if we can do anything at all, please, not a seconds' hesitation and we'll correct
whatever it is, including rain, weather, whatever it may be.
It's, again, welcome and thank you very much.
Thank you, John.
Good morning.
I'm Doug Yoder with Miami-Dade Water and Sewer.
I want to welcome you on behalf of Mayor Carlos Salmenes, who is on a trade mission in Spain
at the moment, and Chairwoman Rebecca Sosa and the County Commission, my director, John
Renfrow.
If you look at today's Miami Herald, you'll see on the editorial page a letter from
John that describes in a little bit of detail some of the work that we're
undertaking to restore our water and sewer infrastructure. We've got as big a
job in dollar terms as restoring the Everglades just right here in Miami-Dade
County. Our commission did authorize over four billion dollars worth of bonds
the first sale of which is in the works.
And one of the projects on that bond list is
our South Miami Heights Water Treatment Plant, which is
the last remaining piece of infrastructure
that's in our current water use permit.
That's going to be three-quarters Florida aquifer,
brackage water, and one-quarter fresh Biscayne water
to serve our southern service areas, so we expect that to be completed in the next two
to three years, hopefully.
Another issue of note, Commissioner Sosa is sponsoring a resolution
to create a task force to evaluate the consequences of sea level rise with respect to all types
of infrastructure. We've begun to look at that with respect to our wastewater plants,
one of which is just right down the road. You went by it, though you may not have seen
it. And I think that's going to be a set of issues that we jointly are going to have
to deal with. I think that over the next 20 to 30 years is going to become the issue that
dominates water management as well as local development decisions. So there's plenty left
to do. In the meantime, enjoy your time here and we're glad that you came.
Thank you, Doug.
Ms.
Lawson from Senator Nelson's office.
Yes, good morning.
Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak today and to bring comments on behalf of Senator Bill Nelson.
The past few weeks have been good ones for the Glades.
First, water flow freely under the newly built Tamiami Trail Bridge.
in nearly seven years, and after nearly seven years, the Senate passed the Water Resources
Development Act of 2013, which paves the way for four additional Glades projects.
Despite this progress, we are in danger of losing an opportunity to move forward with
the single most important restoration initiative thus far. Decades of research and science
coupled with efforts of state and federal partners led to a new initiative called
the Central Everglades Planning Project, CEP. The CEP is the missing link in
restoration. It is a comprehensive solution for treaty and storing an on
average 200,000 acre feet of water each year before sending it south into
to Everglades National Park and Florida Bay.
This plan will also lessen discharges
to Kalusa Hatchey and St. Lucie etuaries by about 25%.
The Senate Paz Werder bill authorizes water resources
projects that have been completed.
They have a completed chiefs report
from the Army Corporate Engineers
by the date of the bill's enactment.
Therefore, it is imperative that the Chief's report for SEP be finished before the word
of bill makes it to the President's desk.
But to move forward with the Chief's report and subsequent authorization, the Governing
Board must send a letter of approval to the Army Corps of Engineers, which is what
the Senator is asking for.
I understand South Florida Water Management District is responsible for developing and
analyzing SEP water models.
These models are integral in the study and scoping process for SEP and must balance the
needs of ecosystems and municipalities in South Florida.
I urge you to work closely and efficiently with the county's and agricultural interests
to ensure that your modeling base signs are acceptable to them.
Again, thank you for the opportunity to speak and to represent the views of Senator Nelson
here today.
Thank you, Ms. Walsh.
Chairman, I think that's all the members.
Thank you.
Thank you, Juan.
Okay, we're going to call on Reagan Walker for any revisions to the agenda.
Yes, Mr. Chair, under the Consent Agenda, items 13, 14, and 24 are revised, and item
25 was deleted under the public hearings.
items 41 was revised. In addition, the settlement agreement for McDaniel Ranch under item 13
has been pulled.
Thank you, Reagan. Okay.
Next up on the agenda is the Executive Director
position. As you are aware, our Executive Director for the last two years, Mohsen
Meeker resigned with an effective date of June 13, 2013, and probably first and foremost,
I think it's worthy of noting Melissa's tremendous efforts over the last two years and the progress
and accomplishments that this district has been able to make under her leadership. She put
together.
Great senior leadership team. And we have really accomplished some historic achievements
of the last two years. And not only that, but also appoint the district in the right direction
and had a significant impact. And I think all of us share in our appreciation for Ms. Meeker's
efforts.
And I'm going to ask all the board members, give them an opportunity to comment
on Ms. Meeker, I think also that brings up the issue
that we do need to have an interim executive director
to hold us over and keep out the progress going
until the determination of Ms. Meeker's replacement
is determined.
So with that, I guess I'll pass the other board members
if they'd like to comment on Ms. Meeker
or the executive director position.
I'll just echo your sentiment, Mr. Chair.
You know, I mean, Ms. Beaker stepped in
at a very challenging time and in front of us
is an awesome senior leadership team
and they stand in front of an awful lot of accomplishments
under Ms. Beaker's leadership.
And that didn't, that was, she was a great team leader
and she took that agency,
we're in a better fiscal position as a result of that
And what do you mean, sir?
Yeah, for my part, I agree.
Melissa did a tremendous job, very difficult circumstances,
having to deal with a much reduced budget,
and handled that and brought in some additional folks,
including our new general counsel.
And she showed tremendous leadership in that regard.
And I think today's effective date.
I'm speaking out of both sides of my mouth.
No attorney jokes. I knew I shouldn't have
recognized our general counsel. But I think today is not only the effective date of her
resignation, but today is her birthday. And I do believe so we have to be very careful
here. I do believe she's monitoring this from Colorado where she has gone from the, you
pan through the fire because she is in the Colorado Springs area where she's raging there.
So that was her doing.
You spoke long enough.
But as part of this process now, Mr. Chairman, are we – are you looking now for nominations
for our interim executive director?
And is this the part of our meeting where we're going to have an open discussion
among the board members, about the process to accept applications and have discussions
concerning the next permanent executive director.
I think that now would be an appropriate time to have that discussion.
Before
we go there, I do want to also – I'm not
supposed to speak.
Maybe let's hold on just a second and see if we have this resolved because we might want
to shut down the meeting for a couple minutes if that's going to keep happening.
Yeah.
Let's give another try, Mitch.
Okay.
I do want to commend Melissa.
I think she's, as everybody indicated, done a wonderful job in a very difficult time.
And she's done it with Poison, with Grace, and I appreciate her effort.
And I think that the state ought to be grateful for her service.
As you indicated, I think her legacy is a district that is focused on a core mission and has an excellent leadership team.
That's one that I look forward to seeing continue.
And I won't try and take it as a personal offense that she waited until Rick Barber was appointed to resign.
But I'm sad to see her go.
I was looking forward to having the opportunity to work with her more.
Thank you.
Yes, Mr. Chairman, thank you.
I also second everybody's feelings about Melissa.
She came on very difficult times.
She came on board almost at the same time as I did, and she has done an extraordinary
job of right-sizing the agency and putting together a really top-notch executive team.
And on that note, Mr. Chairman, I feel strongly that as we go forward with both the interim
and the new executive director that I, for one, would like to make it very clear that
I feel that the organization needs some stability at the top and that we need to have this team in place going forward.
Thank you, Juan. And I would agree with the fact that we're dealing with so many complex issues and certainly we've put together a great leadership team.
we've had transition and belt tightening over the last two years, and I do think it is a
time when we need our senior folks to stay. We've got a good team. There's no sense in
disassembling that team and reassembling it, in my personal opinion. Anybody else with
comments? If there aren't, then may I throw out for discussion and consideration? I think
that Ernie Barnett would be an excellent candidate for the interim executive director, and his
respect and leadership is felt, I think, across the spectrum of our stakeholders. He has an
incredible wealth of knowledge regarding the Everglades, the core mission of the
district, the priorities and the massive challenges that we have right now. And really
in the next, you know, we can't afford to pause. We can't wait 60 or 90 days or even
30 days. We have very important works of the district that have to happen and this board
is responsible to make sure that they happen. So in my opinion, I think Ernie would make
an excellent interim executive director.
Well, I second that. But in addition, I don't know when we're going to take up
the discussion. I don't know if it is for today, probably shouldn't be for today to
have a permanent executive director, but the executive director in the next 30 days for
my part is extremely important because I think we're all aware that with regard to CEP we
need to have that teed up and we need to have a vote on that next month. And so whoever
this executive director is, if it's the interim executive director and I presume
that, you know, we'll all be in favor of Ernie taking us for the next 30 days
and then beyond. But that's some real important leadership and some guidance
that we're going to need in the next 30 days, because we'll have a separate discussion I'm
sure today and next month on SEPA. We need to have a vote on that. We need to have a
vote on that in 30 days. And I would vote yes. I second it, and I would vote yes in
favor of Ernie taking us in that direction in the next 30, 40 days, whatever it is.
Okay, but I didn't make a motion yet, so don't jump into that.
I took your nomination as a motion, so I'll make the motion then for Ernie Barnett
to serve as our Interim Executive Director.
Second.
Okay, we have a motion and a second.
Any further discussion regarding the Interim Executive Director?
Just to take off comment on what Glenn said,
and I have all the respect and confidence in the world in Ernie,
and I feel even better that this won't be a 30-day wait.
I mean, he will take charge and get this thing moving
and move the agency promptly in the direction it needs to go.
Ernie's done a great job. He knows the agency inside and out and knows the issues inside
and out and a place of great confidence in him.
And just to be clear, I fully support the motion. I think obviously Ernie's got a lot of expertise
and skill in this area. I want to make it clear, though, that I think it is appropriate for
us to have a full and robust discussion about the executive director position so that we have a full
understanding of what are the characteristics, what are the leadership skills, what's the vision
that we see going forward because we want to make sure that we have that opportunity.
So before we finalize an executive, permanent executive director decision, I want to make
sure we have that conversation.
I agree.
Any further discussion on the interim executive director proposition?
If not, we have a motion and a second.
All those in favor?
Aye.
All those opposed?
The motion carries unanimously.
obviously. And Mitch, I agree. I think we need to have a discussion about the permanent
executive director position. And I think that it's up to the board, but I think that it
may be an opportunity for the board to voice some opinions about what we're looking for
in that executive director role and ultimately have that vote. Maybe we have it next month.
30 days from now with the game.
This is going to be-
There's a joke that goes with that.
It's like a pharmaceutical joke.
Anybody want to give their opinions or comments on the executive director position?
Now is the appropriate time.
Yeah, right there with Mitch in terms of the discussion,
but I don't want to see it go any more than 30 days.
I think time is of the essence.
The quicker we get there, the quicker we move on.
And the biggest thing for me is that it's a candidate that can hit the ground running.
Mr. Williams.
I would just like to say that I think we need a person for the Executive Director position
who knows South Florida issues, who can hit the ground running,
who has institutional knowledge of the district,
who can help us negotiate our way in Tallahassee and who the staff will rally around to get
the job done, and also someone who knows the incredibly complicated issues that are Everglades
restoration.
So that's who we ought to be looking for, in my opinion.
Other comments?
Executive Director?
I just want to...
Did we get an accident?
I can't hear you going...
Did we get an acceptance from Mr. Barnett should Mr. Barnett can we hear a firm that he will
Or would you like to address the board?
Chairman, I would be honored.
I am buoyed by the confidence that the board has placed in me that ACTAs are in this critical time period.
I think the stability of the agency going forward in the next 30 days, I have such complete confidence.
And men and women sitting next to me at the table and those behind me and the 1600 people who come to work every day
and carry out the mission of the Water Management District
and we'll be honored to do that.
I think I would provide a sense of continuity
as you go through the process of selecting
the permanent executive director.
And I also would like to say that whoever is selected
as the executive director, I think
I speak for each and every one of us sitting here at the table.
We are very honored and flattered by the comments
of wanting to keep the executive team together.
I think that's very important.
And I will tell you that I think it's still comfortable speaking on behalf of all my colleagues
because I think we are a lifeline to this that each and every one of us pledges our full support
for making whoever becomes the next executive director a success.
We owe it to the citizens and taxpayers of our district, we owe it to our fellow employees
and equally important to you and each and every one of you sitting up there at the dais.
So I'm honored, I'm flattered, I'm humbled and I would be honored to be part of this
continue to be part of this leadership team, and we'll all work together pushing forward
the mission for the next 30 days while you deliberate on the permanent executive director.
Thank you very much, Ernie, and it's a testament to your professionalism that there's enormous
support here for you to serve in that role, and the institutional knowledge, the relationship,
have people skills, technical skills, that you have and embody are, you know, really
a service.
Can we make that stop happening?
So thank you very much. So with that, unless
there's further discussion about the process, I think this will come back up as an agenda
item next month for further consideration of the permanent position.
And just under that, and I appreciate that, since I'm one of the newer board members,
I haven't really had the opportunity to hear a lot about your vision and direction.
And so I wanted to share with you a little bit about what I was looking for,
and it's very similar to what you guys have stated.
But, you know, obviously the South Florida Water Management District has a very unique set
of issues, so we need somebody that clearly understands those issues.
I'm looking for somebody that has an appreciation for the executive team,
because I think we have a fantastic executive team.
I'm proud that they're here and I look forward to continue working with them.
I think we need somebody that's committed to transparency.
I've seen in the past where as a regulated user it's been difficult to interact with
the agency and I think that's been dramatically improved over the last number of years and
I want to see that continue.
I think we need somebody that's a strong communicator, is an innovative problem solver
and it's demonstrated.
That through their work effort. Somebody that recognizes that the governing board is the policy
agent and will allow us to make those policy decisions. And somebody that's got a track
record of streamlining and driving efficiency with focus on core mission. One of the other
issues is I think we need somebody that has a very strong understanding of the operation
and maintenance. That's an area that I've got a concern. The funding of those ongoing
operation and maintenance, so I want somebody that completely grasps that, because I think
that's one of those quiet tigers in the background that we're going to have to live up to one
of these days.
So that's just my outline of what we're looking for.
I'm looking for it.
Mr. Sgt.
I'll just real quick thank Melissa for her leadership.
Wish her a happy birthday, Ernie, congratulations, I know you're going to do a great job
leading this organization, and I think we're all on the same page as far as the
direction that we need to go and the type of leader that we're looking for to bring
in and run this agency long term.
Okay.
I just want to make one more comment.
You know, I'm looking at some folks sitting in front of us, the executive team, you know,
with Tommy, with Ernie, with Len, Dan, you know, there's a number of people here that,
in my view, could lead this agency as the executive director that are right here in
this room and others that are behind them.
But if we're bringing in, if it happens that we bring in someone from outside
the district, I think we must insist that that person, not that we tie their hands,
but that we insist that they keep our executive team in place because, and I know some of
you are new, but you're very experienced in matters, you know, in South Florida with
water management and our core mission, but this next executive director, if we do it
in 30 days or if we do it in 60 days, that's going to be our third executive director
in the last two years, because we had Carol Whealy, she resigns, Melissa comes
in, she resigns, and now we're going to have another person, and we have to
think about morale from the rank and file, the 1600 employees that Ernie referred to,
and it's not just the morale of the rank and file, but it's the morale and the job security
of the executive team that brings us the institutional knowledge and the real depth of understanding
of the really unique issues that this district faces.
So I just want to put that out there so as we consider, and maybe we will separately
received phone calls from applicants, from folks in Tallahassee, from stakeholders, I
just would urge you to consider that we need to be demanding of that type of commitment
from whoever it is, if perchance this person, this applicant comes from outside the district.
If that's an unofficial motion, I'll unofficially second it.
He's very eloquent.
Mr. Pertuando.
Yes, Mr. Chairman.
And I would just like to add to Glenn's comment that one of my key concerns ever since I arrived
here has been the continuity issue and the wealth of knowledge and experience that sits
in front of us at every meeting and the realization that each one of these folks has been around
for a while. And because of that I had had discussions with Melissa about putting in place
a succession plan and make sure that we have a knowledge bank and I start grooming the people
that will come when the fine folk on the executive team decide that they've done enough
And it's time to ride another elephant.
And I think we should make that one of the top priorities, as we may or may not enter
into discussions with the different applicants.
I think that it's the kind of thing that falls by the wayside because we're in the nature
of fighting fires.
But unless we make it a priority, it will always be next months and next months and
really never gets done.
And I agree completely, Juan, and I think that that type of a senior mentoring program
may have started in the past and then fell off, like you said, with all the other priorities,
but I agree that that needs to really be a priority.
And I think that the message from the board to the executive director
and to all the leadership needs to be that that needs to be a priority.
We need to make that happen, and it really needs to be kind of throughout the organization
because it's not just at the senior management level also.
It's in the field.
It's the folks that really do the stuff that makes our flood control
and our operations and our systems function.
And a lot of them have been doing it for a very long time
as we see when we have the recognition awards
and how long these people have been serving the district.
And it is important to make sure that that knowledge is being passed on
and then forward and trained.
So I agree with you a hundred percent. I think we need to make that a big priority for for the district on foreign
if there's no other comments at this time, then we'll look to
agenda this item for next month and
And have further consideration of the executive director position
Do we have to formally accept Melissa's resignation or I I think we may
Carolyn, do we need to formally accept?
Okay, was that a motion to formally accept?
I'll make a motion, sadly, that we formally accept
the resignation.
I'll say, electrically second it.
Okay, we have a motion and a second.
Discussion, all those in favor?
All right.
Oppose no motion to accept Melissa's
Meeker's resignation reluctantly, passes unanimously.
Okay. Now, abstentions by board members from any of the comments?
Mr. Chairman, if I may, just before we break from this topic, it just occurred to me that it might be possible that we identify a candidate before the 30 days.
And if so, we may want to have the flexibility to have perhaps a special meeting or we can leave it the way it is and look at it next month.
Yeah, I think we're, you know, I'd be flexible on that, I think, with Ernie as the interim
DE that might not be necessary, but certainly it's, you know, if somebody wants to request
it and there's support for it, then we'd – I mean, you know, I personally don't
think it's necessary.
I think, you know, certainly we're in good hands for the time being.
I would just say that if there are candidates, I'd like to make sure that I'm aware of it,
because I want to sit down and have a face-to-face conversation with whoever we're considering
before we make a decision.
I think being able to look at them in the eyes and ask them the questions is important
before I get ready to make any decision.
Agreed.
Okay.
We're going to close this matter.
We're going to put it on the agenda for next month, and now we're going to pull
all the board members for any abstentions or items on the agenda.
Mr. Barber.
Yes, Mr. Chairman.
Under individual permits by authority, delegated executive director in
Coyer County, item one, that's a current client of ours,
although we did not work on this permit with abstain.
Okay, noted.
No, Mr. Chair.
None.
None, Mr. Chair.
None.
No, and I have to just have one more comment to make.
One of our fellow board members, there's not an empty chair here, but Sandy Batchelor is
not here, and I just wanted to recognize Sandy who could not be with us, because as I think
most of us know, her father passed away earlier this week.
For those of you who didn't know that, so if anyone wants to get a word to her or
do it through the executive office, certainly that can happen.
but I wanted to recognize our colleague, Sandy, whose father passed away earlier this week,
and to let her know that our thoughts are with her.
Thank you, Glenn.
Yeah, thanks, Glenn.
That's a good point, particularly when we're down here in her backyard in Miami-Dade,
and it's unfortunate that she has that heartfelt tragedy to deal with,
and certainly our thoughts and prayers are with her.
So on the back to the abstentions, I have no abstentions this month and so we will move
on to Mr. Sargent and a report on the RAC committee.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Well, we had a very exciting and outstanding meeting on June 6th at District Headquarters.
Jeff Kivitt provided an update on district flood control operations and discussed
district activities in preparation of the wet season.
It was very timely.
Vice Chair Kevin Powers invited anyone that wanted to to go back and check out the control
room.
Staff provided an update on the land assessment activities and recommendations for the semi-area.
Ray Palmer will be presenting this information later today, so he'll incorporate any RAC comments
in his presentation.
The group also received an update on the Lower East Coast Water Supply Plan.
We'll not be discussing that today.
However, I will call on Terry Bates to give us kind of the comments from RAC on the plan.
Just a quick update in the interest of time.
We'll schedule this for July.
Normally, we would have presented it this month.
I think we had a very good discussion.
Lower East Coast Water Supply Plan are largest, most complex water supply plan.
112 local governments, 50 utilities, major agricultural industry, all of our really significant
environmental resources in the Everglades Biscayne National Park.
I think one of the things that we were encouraged to hear in the feedback from RAC,
we spent a lot of time working with the different stakeholders from agriculture,
from utilities and getting the demand numbers right that everybody agreed with
going into the plan and what the expected future water demands were going to be.
So we'll have our next public meeting, first time of rolling out the entire plan together.
And that's what I really wanted to share with you, and that's June 27th.
That will be at the South Florida Regional Planning Council.
We did include a copy of the presentation in your backup folder.
We appreciate Mr. Portuano, who has kind of served as our governing board member liaison for the Lower East Coast Water Supply Plan.
And probably the one interesting thing of note from a public water supply standpoint of where we were with the boom
And the expected growth that has certainly been moderated is out of our 50 utilities.
There are only seven utilities that have projects that are needed to meet their future demands in 2030.
So our utilities have really stepped up having infrastructure in place and permits in place to meet that 2030 demand.
So it's eased some of that pressure.
the big focus is going to be on the environmental restoration projects that
help to make the water supply bigger both for the environment for water supply
and for agriculture. So we'll do our very first big public meeting on June 27th
and we'll bring that feedback to the board in July. Thank you, Teri. Lynn Lindo
and his staff also discussed the, with the group, the proposed revisions
for the delegation of consumptive use permits. A lot of great discussion
around this. Lynn, do you want to try to summarize that discussion?
Yes, sir. Thank you. And I'd like to, on behalf of the staff, just quickly congratulate
Ernie Barnett on being the name, the interim executive director we look forward to his leadership
and are there to support him. On the delegation, we had brought this to our May meeting
for the board and took it back to RAC. We had changed the items a little bit from a discussion
as far as the key points that would trigger it to be elevated up to the board.
Overall, there was a very, very strong feeling that nothing should change,
that the delegation should stay the way that it is.
The efficiencies that have come about through delegating everything to the executive office
is significant, and the benefits they don't want to lose, risk losing.
There were some support with regards to change in the process, and if you did change the process,
you would want to have very, very specific – even much more specific than our revised criteria
so that it would not be something that the Executive Director would just be able to elevate on their call.
It would be something that would be very specific.
But, by far, the majority of the RAC members were in support of keeping the process the
same way.
Okay.
Lynn, from a staff perspective, so what's the next step in this, or what's your plan?
Our plan would be to work with the interim executive director and the executive director
and determine if this is something that we would bring back to the board and the
timing of that.
Okay.
Thank you.
Ernie Burnett provided an update on the legislative session to the group.
He updated members on the SEP and the conceptual agreement to acquire the Mecca property.
Several members requested that SEP be brought back to RAC,
and staff is looking at options for a special RAC meeting in July.
However, I did want to discuss this because as Glen pointed out,
You know, we want to be able to vote on this at the next meeting.
There is no scheduled RAC meeting in July.
And I just wanted to kind of get the board's feel.
If you look at the Central Everglades Plan, the plan's in place,
so there's not really a change to the overall plan.
And Ernie, you can help me out on this if I misspeak.
But it's more of the legal ease that we're kind of looking at
and trying to get into the draft PIR.
So I'm not sure if it would be appropriate to bring it back to RAC or not.
I just wanted to get Kevin and you've been in the RAC a long time and get your input.
But some members did request that we bring it back.
I'm just not sure what kind of comments they would provide given the issues that we're trying to work through.
You know, yeah, it would be difficult to obviously change the schedule and throw a July rack on there.
You know, I think we just have to see what we have in August.
Definitely solicit, perhaps, that we can email solicit feedback that way, you know, and make sure that they have access.
Thanks to the latest and the most current information on this, is a thought.
Okay.
Yes, Ernie?
Or should I call you Mr. ...
Yeah.
... or the executive director?
Yeah.
We're going to go by titles.
Thank you, sir.
You know, I, you know, based on Mr. Hutchcraft and others' comments, I do believe, you
know, transparency is really, really important.
I think it is unfortunate, it's just by chance that there's not a RAC meeting scheduled.
But I don't think there's anything to preclude us from noticing a public meeting.
You know, the agency can do a workshop.
You know, we can – I think it would be very, very important to have all the stakeholders,
you know, input and thought on the draft plan that would be being brought forward for the board.
I think it'd be difficult, but, I mean, we could even schedule it the Tuesday,
you know, prior to the Governing Board meeting.
I think it'd be important to hear from the RAC members who have raised the concern,
know because there is the sort of institution that is RAC and the role that it plays and
I think that's very important to the agency as well but we'll make every effort if it's
the will of the board to have additional opportunities for public comment and input by scheduling
a workshop and embedding the plan publicly and inviting all of the stakeholders to
participate.
There is a very considerable sunshine issue that we would need to be careful of because
Because it makes it awkward for RAC members.
They can't come together in that forum because they would be discussing issues that often
come before the board.
So I think that's an important consideration.
We just need to figure out if there's any way to make that happen.
Maybe other representatives from those interest groups and stakeholders can participate.
And there's always written comment and we'll meet individually with anyone because this
is a very important step in the process and we need to make sure we have all the
opportunities to get input. Okay. Thank you Ernie. Any other? Mr. Sergeant, I think we'd
leave it to your leadership to whether or not you want to schedule a workshop as kind
of a compromise item and maybe with the advice of council as if that is an effective alternative.
Okay. Okay, thank you. Is that it on the record board? No Mr. Chair, we have some
more.
It keeps coming up.
Dan DeLisi also shared with members the potential changes to the attendance provision in RAC policy.
And boy, did he get some comments.
And we have pulled that item from this month's agenda to allow...
Look how responsive we are.
We listen.
So this will allow our staff time to reach out to more people on RAC to get their
specific input and to make changes as necessary and then bring back something to you that
I think RAC should be comfortable with.
Thanks Dan.
Members also requested future presentations on updates to the Central Florida water initiative,
water farming, aquifer storage and recovery, and the district's physical year 14 budget.
The last thing, there's a RAC issues workshop on June 17th at district headquarters and the
next regularly scheduled RAC meeting will be on August 8th.
And that's it, Mr. Chair.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Sergeant.
Mark your calendars accordingly.
Do we have any public comment on the RAC report?
Okay.
Okay, then I'd like to take this opportunity to recognize Lourdes Casio with Congressman
Mario Diaz de Lard is here and I'd like to give her an opportunity to address the board.
Deliver a letter from the congressman?
Support obviously of the Central Library's planning project.
Okay, well thank you for taking the time to come out and hand deliver that to us and we'll
certainly take that under due consideration.
Reagan will get copies of that
to the board members.
Okay.
Are there any items, Mr. Bauer? If I can, Mr. Chair, before we move away from
rat comment, I want to have a conversation
briefly about the delegation of on
on Consumptive Use Permits, you know, it's one of those,
I don't see any reason to wait to have the conversation.
RAC has just gone through it and weighed in.
I think I would like to see it come back to this board
sooner rather than later.
It's our discussion, it's a policy discussion
regardless of where any executive director
is gonna land on it.
What I don't wanna happen,
I don't wanna wait for that permit
that's floating out there to drive us to that point where now we've got to have a conversation.
Let's go ahead and have a conversation while there's nothing out there if we're going to do that.
I tend to agree. I think it's a policy decision that is right that might stick it up and have that discussion
and come up with a conclusion. So writing one more thing for next month's agenda.
Thank you, Mr. Powers.
Okay, are there any items that any of the board members would like to pull from for discussion from the consent agenda?
If none, then are there any comments on the consent agenda?
And then if there are none, then do we have a motion to accept the consent agenda or approve the consent agenda item?
So moved.
Second.
The motion is second.
Discussion?
All those in favor?
Aye.
Opposed?
motion carries.
Okay, this is an opportunity now for general public comment. Reagan, do
we have any general public comment speakers?
That's not going to sound okay.
I thought
we had one coming forth. Okay, so then next up is our voluntary bates for
ecological conditions report.
Just don't turn the mics up.
And I'll make this a shorter report. I kind of condensed it down just to focus on a couple
of issues because you have such a full agenda today. But I did want, and you do have a copy
of this presentation. It might be a little easier to see than what's on the screen there.
But certainly in the St. Lucie Estuary we're seeing declining salinity levels.
This month on the right here you can see versus where we were back in May.
And I will say that's all from basin inflow with a significant amount of rainfall that time you'll go through seven, eight inches of rainfall.
There has been no discharges from Lake Okeechobee. This is really all just basin inflow coming in from C44, C23, 24 and 25.
You can see on the graphic here, very significant inflows coming in through the basin.
That started to subside. Discharges now through the S80 structure from basin inflow is about 500 CFS.
this morning. Similar condition in the Clucinaceae estuary with all the rainfall.
You can see the salinity has been pushed substantially downstream.
It's really fresh water conditions all the way through the middle estuary.
Those discharges continue again from the basin inflow.
They were at a peak up about 5,000 CFS this morning as I looked that they had ramped back up.
And so we're trying to again moderate those local basin inflow.
So no discharges coming from Lake Okeechobee through the system.
One issue to mention, both in Lake Okeechobee and the Kalusa Hatchee, it's not uncommon
this time of year as the conditions heat up and you get some cloudy days and nutrients
working over time that you start to see some algal bloom conditions.
We're seeing some sporadic areas of algal bloom in Lake Okeechobee, kind of small
scale, but also in the Kalusa Hatchee, as you can see the picture there, pretty
much along the shoreline where you don't get good water flow, and so it's kind of stagnant
conditions in the shoreline. It was significant enough for the Olga Water Treatment Plant,
which is located just upstream of S79. That's one of the very few facilities that relies
on surface water for public water supply. It's very difficult for them to moderate their
treatment system to deal with big changes in the algal level. So they have brought
that facility offline and are transferring the demands to the other facilities in Lee
County to meet the public water supply demands.
Biscayne Bay, I'm only going to show this to you because now a good many of you have
had a chance to get out there in the field and see beautiful Biscayne Bay and so you
will forever now know where this station is, this BBC W-10 that wooden platform was
the last place that we visited yesterday afternoon and you can see here the salinity
levels from all those discharges coming out of the canal who have really moderated salinity
levels in those near shore areas, and I'm glad I got a chance to see it where you could
actually see the mixing of the fresh and salt water, but when we showed you this slide,
that's that one station that you all had a chance to visit yesterday out in the
field.
The STAs, I'll just mention how high the levels are, and that certainly has been
a constraint on our operations.
This bar across horizontal bar is the operating level we try and maintain the STAs from a vegetation
standpoint and treatment efficiency. With all of the rainfall directly over this area,
6 to 7 inches, the STAs have jumped up substantially in depth.
We don't want to keep them at those depths for very long because of the impacts to vegetation.
We get a lot of pressure, move more water south, move more water south,
But we really are constrained with our STAs and water quality treatment.
If you overload those STAs with too much water for too long, you lose your treatment capacity
and we can't let that happen.
Last time, that occurred with discharges trying to not send water from Lake Okeechobee
to the estuaries.
We sent it south.
We ended up with STA-1 West was literally offline for almost two years before we could
rehabilitate it and get the treatment level back in efficient operations.
And this just kind of gives you a graphical depiction of the major STAs.
We had cells that were offline in STA1Es due to construction.
And where you see the depths that are bluer, that's much deeper than we want to see these conditions persist in the STA.
Similar in STA3-4, we had vegetation rehabilitation going on.
Those cells were offline.
The other cells, we maximized the depths that we thought those facilities could withstand.
and then ultimately ended up needing to divert water around from the SDAs directly to the
refuge, and Tommy will address a little bit more of that in his presentation.
You can see the change in water depth throughout the Everglades in response to a really early,
very strong start to the wet season.
And with that, I'd be happy to answer any questions or let Tommy pick up on him.
Thanks, Terry. Any questions or comments on Terry's report?
Tommy is going to address water conditions.
He's got a wet report.
Not much.
No,
it's not yet.
We've got two up over here.
Good morning.
Just briefly, I'll cover the significant amount of rain that we received in the early part of this month.
But before we get there, just give you a sense of the dry season overall.
And we'll talk a lot about distribution of rainfall.
but we had a number of very dry months early in the dry season.
It could have been a record had we not received the rain that we received in the last part of the dry season,
which turned out was the start of the wet season.
When you had all that together, we had an average dry season.
So the experience through each month was obviously a little different than that.
In May, we started to see rainfall particularly on the Lower East Coast intensify.
Districtwide received 6.08 inches, about 163 percent of average, or around 2.3 inches above average.
All the basins but one recorded above average rainfall, and that was in the western EAA.
And as I mentioned, the wet season started early around May 18th.
That pattern has obviously continued into June with Tropical Storm Andrea.
Andrea district wide so far we've had
5.15
Inches of rain which is over like 200% of average or 2.67 inches above average and
Tropical storm Andrea produced around 3.1 inches district wide. We'll talk about that in a minute
But this is the distribution that I mentioned you see from November
Through March we had below average rainfall with March in November being particularly dry
November was the dryest November we've had since 1932
but again in April and May the early onset of the wet season changed those
conditions significantly. And then tropical storm Andrea produced about as
mentioned 3.1 inches district wide. Our meteorologist kind of came up with a
baseball statistic that is interested. Tropical storm Andrea provided in those
three or four days the same amount of rain as we get on average annual from
tropical activity. So you know if you look at an average year we've already
used up our tropical average rainfall. So anything we get is grading from now on.
And again, just to point out there is where we were hit the hardest, the conservation areas here.
Conservation area 2 was hit pretty heavily around 8 to 10 inches of rain.
Conservation area 1, the central portion of the air blade's agricultural area, anywhere from
5 to 6 inches. Rain in conservation area 3 and some of the balance of the glorious coast
was around 4 to 5. So significant rainfall that occurred in the period between June 5th
and June 8th. As a result, we had a lot of flood control operations that we had to move
into obviously C-51, Western C-51 again, similar to Isaac, was hit fairly significantly. Maximum
discharges were made out of C-51 canal via 155A in the center part of the basin and 155 out
the coast to discharge water tide to mitigate any flooding. We also were put in a situation
of having Terry mention to divert around some of the STAs. She mentioned STA-1 East
in one west. It was a diversion directly to Conservation Area 1 via G300301. That diversion
started on June 7th and around 4.30 in the afternoon. It was terminated on the 11th and
around 2.30. And again, she covered very well the hydraulic capacity limitations that we
have in the STAs that were part of that issue.
As I mentioned, we had excessive rain in the central portion of the EAA, south of
Lake Okeechobee. And because of that, flood control pumping to the lake at S2, typically
referred to as back pumping, started on June 6th around 4 p.m. That was secured at 6 a.m.
on the 12th. And again, the southern pump station, as Teri mentioned, was moving water
to the maximum extent we could without negatively impacting the central flowway of STA-34.
And at the same time, we were diverting around STA-34 via G373. That initiated
and around 12 p.m. on the Miami Canal on June 7th and was terminated at midnight on June 11th.
And again, the capacity limitations that we had of moving water through the STAs were discussed by Terry Earley.
When we look regionally, yes, sir.
Can you go back, yeah, on the S2, does that mean that that was also, was that ongoing or is that terminated there?
It's terminated.
Okay, thank you.
Yeah, it was secured at 6 a.m. on the 12th.
Okay, thank you.
So regionally, now where we are with regard to water levels, you can see in the upper
chain of lakes, Lake Toho, we were kind of following the recession, we moved through,
we started seeing significant rainfall there at the early start of the wet season.
We didn't really get as low as we typically get to.
Then Andrea hit and now you're seeing water levels bounce up and they'll probably bounce
right into the regulation schedule here in the next week or so, if not earlier.
Similar situation for Lake Kissimmee and for Lake District Hoga.
So the water in those areas will, as rainfall continues in the wet season,
will move up to the regulation schedule, which point there'll be a regulatory release
south through the river down to Lake Okeechobee.
In the water conservation areas, a similar pattern.
Water levels rose pretty significantly above the regulation schedule.
And, of course, as the wet season progresses, that will be something we'll need to focus
on as we try to move water in coordination with the Corps of Engineers from the water
conservation areas down into Everglades National Park.
So when we look at Lake Okeechobee, today the current elevation is around 13.9, a little
above that.
You can see here the jump as a result of Andrea.
We may see continued increases to some degree, but we think it's moderating a little
bit right now to be independent on what rainfall we get moving forward.
Again, today's stage is 1392.
The bottom one-third of the load is subman.
The tributary hydrologic conditions are in the normal classification for this week.
And the guidance under the water control plan is the 2000 CFS at S79, up to 730 at S80.
No releases to the water conservation area since they're above the regulation schedule.
As of June 6, the Corps was continuing. S79 discharges around 1,500 cubic feet per second.
And an S80 discharges to the east coast around 250 CFS.
And it's important to note that S308, which releases water from Lake Okeechobee to the east,
had been closed since May 20.
So prior to the event, there had been no releases from the lake to the lower east coast.
Adaptive protocols obviously aren't applied in this condition.
And Terry talked about the STA operations and Lake Okeechobee regulatory releases.
Someone will go into that in detail just to say there are a number of issues that can
strain our limited ability to move excess water south from Lake Okeechobee.
Obviously, the regulation schedule needs to call for that.
We have to be mindful of flood control operations in the EAA.
And of course, our limitations on stage and flow do either ongoing construction
and includes maintenance and vegetation management or issues with endangered or protected species.
And just to just again count statistics, so far in 2013, there have been 22 weeks, 14 of those weeks,
releases south from the lake were recommended to the south into the conservation areas.
For about 10 weeks releases were made into the order of 200 to 250 CFS.
And those four weeks where those releases were not made were either due to limitations in the EAA
because of flood control operations or the high stages in water conservation area 3A.
But given those constraints, we released about 85,000 acre feet south from the lake into the water conservation areas.
That was the largest quantity since 2006.
And since we're here in South Florida, we're going to talk a little bit about Biscayne Bay and S700 operations.
This is a hydrograph of flows and you can see as we're going through the test that we've briefed you on just about every month through that period,
you can see that water that was moved through this area here further to the right are more of our storm flow operations that are typical of S-700.
We look forward to the U.S. seasonal precipitation outlook, climate prediction center, at least through June and August.
I'm actually, the rest of the wet season are showing an equal chance of an average above average or below average rainfall.
Lake Okeechobee, as we look forward again, you can follow this magenta line through the last position analysis assessment,
but this little circle represents where we are today.
And that's sort of the lower end of the probability scale.
But that's going to shift, obviously, the pattern that we talk about as we move forward,
Because as it stands, from that projection, we were in pretty good space pretty much right
where you want a hydrograph of Lake Okeechobee to fall within that shaded band with a very
small percentage, obviously, of going into the lower regions of the regulation schedule
and also an equally low chance of it rising into higher stages.
That's changed with this latest outcome and we'll present the implications of
that to you next month.
Again, it's hurricane season.
Last month, I wasn't able to show you the National Hurricane Center projections.
There are between 13 and 20 named storms.
Colorado State was 18.
Obviously, yet we've had no landfall events from hurricanes.
But, again, we don't look at this from an indication of what to prepare for in the way of storms.
We're always prepared for that.
But there could be issues, obviously, if we have a significant number of hurricanes.
So does that get any questions?
I'd be glad to answer them.
If not, we can move forward.
Any questions for Tommy on water conditions?
Do you have one public comment?
Okay.
Mr. Drew Martin?
I'm sorry.
I will just say thanks, Tommy, and your team.
And Susan, they did a great job during the last rain event.
My neighborhood was in the crosshairs of that last event,
and no problems. The system worked great. Good job.
We have all you on the map, by the way.
You're ahead of schedule.
Jerry Martin.
Drew Martin. I'm here on behalf of the Locke-Satchee Group of the Sierra Club up in Palm Beach County.
I just wanted to comment a little on the salinity issues and the fresh water and what's going on in both the
Klusatchee and the Indian River Lagoon, St. Lucie River area, were just, I was at the
South Atlantic Fisheries Management Council meeting yesterday, and a lot of the anglers
are really concerned about water quality, and they really felt that this is impacting
the industry, and particularly the wasters, which cannot tolerate this amount of fresh
water, and I think we're going to talk about SEP and how important it is, but just to talk
about why we need to change how things are happening, because this is causing huge damage,
and they were not even able to release water from what I understand in the newspapers
on the east side, because the canal system was already so full that they couldn't even
release water from Okeechobee into the canal system.
So it just demonstrates why we need to fix this problem so that we do not continue to inundate these estuaries. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Martin.
Okay. We're going to call on Tommy for the next technical report on flood control operations.
Great. Just very, very briefly because I know the number of very important items on the agenda. I'll move this pretty quickly.
This June is typically our flood awareness month. We had our first flood awareness.
This is a very important topic.
I'm with you.
So I'm going to just give you a brief summary.
We're going to focus on Dade County and some of the issues over the past decade or so that have affected flood control in this area.
Again, the Central and Southern Florida Project, everyone here is familiar with that.
It was authorized in 49 and constructed between 50 and 70, and we were created by the legislature to be a local sponsor,
and we operate the system largely under the auspices of the federal sponsor, the Corps of Engineers.
And again, the basic plan for the system was to wall off the Everglades, and that was basically
what we now call the East Coast Protective Levy, was to separate what was going to be
the urban area and also the area south of Lake Okeechobee in the EAA from inundation
while maintaining water levels to some natural extent in the impounded water conservation areas
with the intent of providing flow to Everglades National Park.
Also, to drain in those improved areas to the ocean.
In the 1950s, it was relatively inexpensive. It was pretty
effective. There have obviously been a lot of impacts associated with that
because we've lost a lot of water. And I'm sure you'll be talking about more of that later.
Again, this is more of the flow directional, but again
we focus our flood control operations in areas south of the lake
in urbanized areas all along both the east coast, the west coast, and areas north of Lake Okeechobee.
We have eight regional fuel stations across the district, and they were established to provide a two-hour response time
with vehicles and equipment. So that's why they're distributed the way they are.
And of course, our major function is maintenance for the structures, pump station canals and levees,
in the operation on a 24-hour basis with orders given from the control room in West Palm Beach
by the operators and engineers there, and they're affected in the field by the field staff.
Again, the primary and secondary system and tertiary systems are important.
It's important that they work together.
One of the reasons, Mr. Sargent, your neighborhood didn't flood was
because you had a well-designed secondary tertiary system as well as the primary canal.
And the canals operate a lot like street systems where you have neighborhoods that have their own streets
and they connect to county or city streets which connect to the Interstate Highway.
Our canals are more like the Interstate Highway.
It's a federal project where the locals sponsor a lot like Interstate 95.
Then you have the secondary canals that are much like state and county roads.
So it's a cooperative effort and we work a lot with our local entities.
But the surface water regulation program provided a big benefit to the system.
It's one of the reasons that we haven't enlarged canals the way you see roads being enlarged
because we tried to store the additional runoff from these neighborhoods in the neighborhoods
in a way that is non-damaging or doesn't have an impact.
And so that ensures that the peak rate of flow from a developed area is no greater
than it was when it was in some developed condition.
And the voices have to increase the capacity of the canals.
So here's an example of a residential system that is working as designed.
Now, most residents wouldn't see it that way because the streets are all flooded,
but you'll notice all the houses are above the flood elevation.
There's no damage associated with that flood, and the inundation
of the streets is relatively limited to a few hours or a day.
And again, that's a major event, one that would occur once every 10 to 25 years.
Storm readiness is a big part of what we do.
We've conducted on-site table top exercises and all of our field stations, provided district-wide
training on our emergency roles and coordinated with all the water management districts, DOT
and the Department of Environmental Protection, coordinated renewal of our debris contracts
so that when large storms come and there are damage that we need to clean for our canal,
we have the facilities and the people available to clean those canals and move that material out.
We had our annual Hurricane Freddie exercise, which simulated the impact from the category
four storm.
We fully activated the EOC for a day, and our system information line, the Lewis and
Field Station COOP simulation, and participation of our external partners.
With that, I just want to talk a little bit about some of the past hurricanes, and
again, focusing on Miami-Dade County and some of the lessons that we've learned
from that.
Our tropical system operations, you're familiar with that.
We have pre-storm operations based on Hurricane Center watches and warnings.
We have preliminary storm facility and field inspections.
We lower the regional canal network in response to areas that may be impacted
and we coordinate extensively with local governments, 298 districts,
and of course we're prepared for onslaught and post-storm operations.
Just to kind of wind back the clock and look at some of the history,
In 1992, Hurricane Andrew hit south Florida. It was a devastating wind event.
We were fortunate that it wasn't a very wet storm.
Here's an example of what that storm looked like.
You can see all the trees that were in areas adjacent to our canals were either in...
In some cases, crossing the canal. Here's our water control structure here. Had it been
a wet event, that would have been a severe impact to flow along the area. And, of course,
the wind was devastating in Homestead and Florida City in areas that weren't affected
by flooding. Significant storm surge. This boat floated in between the structure and
this home, and landed just a few yards from that. So you can get a sense of just
how high the storm surge was was generated from the high winds in Andrew. After the storm
was extensive cleanup and it took months to get everything that was in the landscape,
trees, houses, cars, out of our canals, some airplanes, and the bottom right-hand corner,
you can see the tree impact to the canal system. In 1999, Hurricane Irene crossed the southern
part of the state. It dropped anywhere from 10 to 15 inches across most of Miami-Dade County,
Homestead, and into Broward County. This map represents the actual phone calls we had gotten
into our citizen information line to demonstrate where the flooding was. Flooding was extensive
across all of South Florida. A year later, it was considered a 100-year event, a one
percent chance of reoccurrence. A year later, we had almost exactly the same amount of rain
in exactly the same place. No name storm was not tropical, it was subtropical. It later
became subtropical depression Leslie. It was in October of 2000. And again, once again,
the areas, the similar areas we saw in Irene were flooded extensively in for a period
of several days to a week. As a result of Irene, Miami-Dade created a flood management
task force, we participate in that along with communities that were affected and the Florida
Division of Emergency Management, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
After the no-name storm, the Governor, Governor Bush created the South Florida Flood Task
Force that was a little bit more widely participating in with participation from FEMA and National
Park Service.
And also at that 2000 event, the Water Management District created a technical team to look
look at alternatives for improving flood protection. We looked at forward pumping, canal conveyance
and storage improvements and improvements to the secondary canal system. And so what
came about, this is one of the areas that hit the heart, it's the C4 and the C6 area
and here's the graphic representation of flow areas and flow vectors in those canals.
And what came out of that was two forward pumping stations, one at S25B, S26, improvements
to manually operate Structure G93, we automated that, and we constructed a detention basin
in the western end of C4 to try to bring water like we did in Isaac up in C51, bring water
to the west to get it out of the basin as well as trying to push more aggressively to
the east.
Here's a photograph of the emergency detention basin, there west of Sweetwater, one of
the pump stations associated with that, it's around 1,000 acres in total,
each
for total storage of 4,000 acre feet
that we could divert from the basin.
Here's the pump station.
Here's a spillway, gravity.
Before this pump station was constructed,
the only way water could get out of the C4 basin
was by gravity through the structure.
During Irene, the storm surge was so high
that it was higher than the water level in our canal.
We had to close the gate in order
to prevent water from making flooding worse,
water from the bay making flooding worse.
Of course, that was a very popular operational action
and we had several months explaining that in response to that we built a pump station
that could push water out regardless of the level of the tide.
And we also did it as 26 and here's a photograph of that pump station in operation and we use
them literally in every rain event we have in Miami-Dade since that time.
We're also making canal bank improvements to raise the level of the canal bank so
that water from the canal doesn't back into the adjacent communities. We have three of
those segments completed and three are under design and they go all the way from the Palmetto
Expressway West to Southwest 132nd Avenue. And here's a photograph of some of those
completed phases in Berlin and Sweetwater. And this is an area where in Sweetwater
we sort of incorporated a linear park into that. So the town of Sweetwater has a park
along the canal but it also serves as a flood water.
In addition to that, not
not necessarily in response to the storm event in the intervening decade since those
two storms, a number of pump stations and flood control systems have been put in.
The ones in C-4, 14 pump stations in all in the last decade, the ones I mentioned here
in yellow on C-4 as a result of those two storms in 1999 and 2000.
But along the L-31 East, as part of the Mod Waters Project, the Corps of Engineers
is built as part of the Sparrow Emergency,
as part of the C-111 South Dade Project.
There have been a number of pumping stations
that have been installed to mitigate the need
to increase water levels in Everglades National Park.
The C-111 Spurter Canal is another example of that.
So all of this pumping horsepower has been put in place
to help manage floods when we're trying
to restore the ecosystem to the east
and maintain flood protection,
I'm sorry, into the west
and maintain flood protection to the east.
A couple of projects that have been recently constructed.
You've seen these, the C-111 spreader canal project.
We have the frog pine detention basin in this photograph at the bottom.
The S-200 pump station is at the north.
Construction cost of PR estimate, which was a planning level estimate, was around 46 million.
The actual cost came in around 16.
The C-111 spreader canal also had an aeroged extension.
S-99 pump station and concrete line channel.
The estimated cost for 16.7 million, the actual construction cost came in a little over 12.
And then the Biscayne Bay during the state pump station that we've been talking about
for the past few months is also there to help during flood times.
The estimated cost of 7.4 actual cost was just a little under 5 million.
And we have some valuable partnerships that I want to take an opportunity just to highlight.
And that, the one of the most important ones, is with the National Weather Service.
They continue to be a key partner with our meteorologists in dealing with flood events.
For the past 15 years, there's been coordination between our meteorologists and the meteorologists
of the National Weather Service to best predict flood events and to help us operate the system.
In 2000, we coordinated with the Weather Service and their participation in developing the
U.S. Drought Monitor, and during the dry season every month, we show you that tool that gives
us an indication of what the projections are for drought conditions.
Obviously, emergency weather communications are important.
We don't broadcast flood alerts.
Our responsibility is to operate the system, but the Weather Service is in the forefront
of that.
Every area that looks to get flooded from either high-intensity rainfall could be very localized or could be regional.
They issue immediate flood watch and hazard bulletins.
It's been a great tool for us.
That started around 2011.
And Robert Malita, who is one of the chief meteorologists here today, is the forerunner of that effort.
We also were given a distinction in 2012 to be the first agency in South Florida to receive
the National Weather Service's storm-ready government designation, and we're proud of
that again, it's with cooperation with the Weather Service.
And if I could just take a minute to ask Mr. Malita to come up, I'd like to present
him with a little token of our gratitude, and maybe say a few words.
Absolutely.
Thank you.
Welcome.
Thank you very much. This is an honor and a pleasure to collaborate with the district.
As you mentioned, it's an ongoing effort. We started the briefings that you see there,
the picture there. We started those back in 2010, if I'm not mistaken.
in the fall of 2010, we started with the dry season outlook. We have two outlooks that
we do every year, the dry season outlook, which we do, of course, in the fall, then
the wet season outlook sometime in early or mid-May. And they've been rule-successful
from a press standpoint, press participation. I think it's great to have a unified effort
to get the word out as far as what the current water conditions are and what we might see
down the road. And I know we've worked closely with Susan Sylvester and Gabe Margesack to
coordinate to get those briefings scheduled and get people out there so that they can
at least have an idea what might happen down the road. These outlooks are obviously they're
not 100% accurate forecast. When you're looking at conditions three, four, five, six months
down the road, you have to give us a little bit of leeway. But I think for the most
part, especially for the dry season outlooks, we've done a pretty decent job of anticipating
what the water conditions or what the variations in the rainfall might be during that time
of year.
Actually, I want to briefly mention that you talked about the warnings that we issue,
flood warnings.
Just last week, we had an excellent example of how the district rainfall, the data
that we have access to, really helps.
One of the gauges, I believe it was S-29 up in North Miami, they recorded over
14 inches of rain in really about six, seven hours.
It was a very short period of time.
And we were monitoring that gauge real time.
And that information really helped us as far as not only
putting out that flood warning for northeast state and
southeast Broward, but also monitoring it and letting
people know that the rainfall in that area was
extreme in a very localized area.
So we really appreciate and we use and depend on the
information of the district.
And lastly, the storm ready designation. That's something that we just don't hand out freely.
We work hard with the entities. The example here from the district, we worked with the
emergency management folks back in 2011. And really all the plans are in place. There's
absolutely no reason to think that the district is not ready. Of course, you all know this
district is fully ready to handle any kind of severe weather events for the
employees and also for the people that they serve. So on that note, I thank you
again very much. Thank you very much. We really appreciate it. And thanks to have
the expertise of your organization to utilize. I just wanted to point out that
we don't have any billboards to broadcast those flood warnings, so I'm
an insight. What would I say?
Mr. Chairman, that's it. I mean, that's your
main question. Thank you, Tommy. Any board questions for
Tommy? Tommy, I understand from what you said, you just
presented us that we had three 100-year events in a period of about eight years. We certainly
had two 100-year events in two consecutive years. That doesn't mean that we're okay
for the next 200 years.
No, sir.
Not at all.
It's a 1% chance of occurrence every year.
Thank you, Tommy.
Any public comment?
Yes, Mr. Chair.
Mark Perry.
Mr. Perry, good morning.
Welcome.
Good morning.
Good morning, board.
Thank you.
Yes, as we get ready for rainy season here and, you know, preparation for that, just
like last year in the tropical storm, Isaac came by and dropped lots and lots of rain.
in September, October we're discharging a lot of water out of the canals and that's
what's happening now on the Upper East Coast area particularly as you know we're
trying to get the lake down but they can't open 308 because you know the
canals are full and we've been discharging out of there and in that
basin when when we're getting ready for these rain events and trying to
prepare for that you know we've got out of that 480 and 498,000 acre basin
in St. Lucie Estuary, Indian River Lagoon,
there are eight major basins and 186 subbasins.
And even in the major canal basins, C44, C23, and C24,
those major canals, there are 91 of those subbasins.
And I'm asking the district to really look at managing those
so that we have that same kind of water management guide
up in that basin, you know,
irregardless of LACO discharges.
Laco discharges are going to come once the lake gets higher and 308 is going to open
and it will come down as well to add to that.
But having all those discharges come into the system is really causing a lot of bad
things to happen.
And the oysters, as we mentioned, are pretty much good standing just before these events,
but as the salinity drops below that five parts per thousand, which it has now for
seven days at the Roosevelt Bridge area, we're going to start to see some degradation of
our oysterry, so we're doing everything, I know everybody's trying to do everything
they can to prevent water from discharging any canals out there, and the lake as well
trying to keep the lake down, but as we get these rain events, they're all coming through
the basin and this is really a difficult time to really put all that fresh water
input inflow as well as all the nutrients that come with it.
So we're real concerned about those systems up in that upper coast and it really, as I
understand the back pumping S2 into the lake started back in early June and I think the
protocol is that when those canals reach 12.5 feet, but as I saw them still discharging
or have back pumping into the lake and the canals dropped down to 10.5 feet, I was
still questioning why we continue to back-pump when they didn't need to.
So the more water that goes back into the lake, either from the north and all the
semi-valley or back-pumping in, is going to eventually end up in the coastal
estuaries and we're real concerned about that as we go forward and prepare
for this rainy season. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Any other public comments?
None, Mr. Chairman.
Okay, next up is Mr. Barnett to talk about Central Everglades Complaining Project.
I think we have quite a few people here who are interested in this topic and have signed up for public comment following Ernie's presentation.
Mr. Chairman, thank you. This will be sort of a joint presentation.
I'll introduce the topic and I do have Lieutenant Colonel Greco and Kim Taplin here with me.
There's also Mr. Greg Munson from DEP, the Deputy Secretary, who is with us as well.
As we've gone over the last three or four governing board meetings, sort of the status
of the update of the key issues that we're working diligently to resolve in order to
be able to release the draft project implementation report, water quality remains the most paramount
issue that we're working on, as well as cost share, the savings clause, project
and water supply analysis we're doing, implementation, phasing, and cost.
I'll give you a brief update of each of those.
Starting with water quality, I would like to introduce Mr. Greg Munson.
He's been working in close coordination with us with dialogue with Washington
and sharing some information on the water quality language that we would like to see in the draft PIR.
So with that, I'd like to introduce Greg briefly.
Greg, welcome. Good morning.
Good morning and thank you. Appreciate the chance to address the governing board today.
Thank you for having me at your meeting. And I will address the
water quality piece. I'll tell you what I know on that. I'd like to take a minute if it's
alright to just sort of talk generally. It's the first time that I've spoken to the board
as a group about Central Everglades and I wanted to come down here today
and sort of remedy that omission that the department has been relatively silent
and talking to the board, and that's partly why I'm here.
But I wanted to start with a recognition that it was just
about a year ago that the district and the department
reached agreement with the federal government
on restoration strategies.
And that is obviously still a historic milestone
in Everglades restoration that garnered the support
of stakeholders in the environmental, agricultural,
and South Florida community.
And it was a testament to everybody's efforts involved
here.
And as most of you know, Governor Scott recently signed
House Bill 7065 into law, bringing this kind of opening phase of restoration strategies
to a close.
That law incorporates the plan that we developed by our agencies and the law identified a dedicated
funding source through the completion of the project.
So first, I think I just want to start by saying congratulations to the Governing
Board for getting through this, what I consider the opening phase of restoration strategies.
Obviously, I'm here mainly today to talk to you about SEP, and as I said, just trying
to be here to signal that the department sees our role as a shared responsibility with the
Water Management District.
It wasn't so much.
Thanks for restoration strategies and so on.
You're on your own now.
We're still here to work hand in glove with the district.
And SEP has a lot of potential.
It promises to sort of be the light at the end of the tunnel, implementing hopefully
much of what the National Academy of Sciences has recommended for Everglades Restorations.
But the department and working with your staff and just watching your governing board meeting,
I've seen the concerns. And we share those concerns. I take them very seriously. Any
plan that comes out of the SEP process needs to meet state water quality standards and
needs to address all the issues that Mr. Barnett has up on his slide that you
all have been tracking. We take those very seriously.
And they can't just be
waived away, and I'm not here to say that. That's going to take a little time to work
through those issues. They deserve our collective time and attention, and they'll get that.
And without, of course, any unnecessary delay, but it's important to get the issues right.
So I guess I don't have any specific comments on any individual issues, although I guess
I'll end it to address water quality. But just generally, the key to success in
getting this done to me is first and foremost, good communication between the district
and the department moving forward, and my pledge is here to continue to work hand in
glove with the Water Management District and the staff in particular to make sure we've got good
coordination, and then beyond that, to continue working on good communication with all the affected groups.
In fact, my first question to my staff is typically, they come to me with an issue, well, where's the
district on this? And that will continue to be my first question. So I continue to
commit that level of coordination and look forward to generally working through these issues.
I'm optimistic that we will, but we'll take it issue by issue.
And in water quality, the only thing I'd say is that in an effort to try to move through
this issue, we, myself and a lawyer with the Army Corps of Engineers have been trying
to, we've been talking about concepts that we might get into the PIR that would address
everybody's concerns.
Of course, I've been doing that after talking with Mr. Barnett, with your general counsel,
just to make sure I'm getting those thoughts in there.
And we're making progress.
We just lost about a week, frankly, because I just came back from vacation last night,
so we lost a little bit of time there.
But I think I feel like we're headed in the right direction.
I don't want to make any commitments yet.
And I will continue to work with your staff, and I know they will be in touch with you
to try to get something that we can all get comfortable with that safeguards the district's
interests over the long term.
And one's a good time for questions, Mr. Chair.
Would you like me to?
I'm happy to take them.
I can do it now.
Now I can wait until the end of Mr. Barnett's presentation, however you'd like to do it.
Let's wait until the end of Ernie's presentation, and great thanks for your comments, and I
know that you are working very hard to try to come up with solutions and maybe the concerns
that everybody has and do that in a positive manner, so I appreciate your hard work on
that important issue.
Thank you.
Great.
Thanks, Greg, and Mr. Chairman.
And I also, in the form of sort of the introductory remarks on all of these issues, I think it's,
as Greg mentioned, you know, there's no light between us and the department.
You know, we are long-standing partners in everybody's restoration.
And I think the same holds very much true between us and the Army Corps of Engineers.
These issues could easily be characterized as issues that the district is raising,
but these are issues that we jointly share for a steadfast commitment to work through
as fast as possible. There's no light between us on these kind of key issues. And I think
we've made considerable progress since the last time we've met. We're moving closer
toward resolution, and that's the intent of this presentation, which is to sort
of give you an update. I think if you go back to the original intent of SERP as
as well as the planning objectives under SEP, you'll hear people talk about table 5.1,
water supply and the assurances language which date back to the word of 2000 are very, very important.
We did collectively agree that we would need to potentially do some additional water supply
and project assurances analysis. The overarching objective of that is the last two bullets
that we would be able to evaluate the selected plan
and if the modeling was successful,
we would identify that there is additional water
available for water supply in the project assurances
and to be able to document and get robust analysis
that would meet the requirements under NEPA analysis
for making sure that we demonstrate
to all the stakeholders in this restoration process,
not just those who we share joint objectives with
of restoring the Everglades,
but also those who want to make sure
that we don't inadvertently cause a loss of level of service of their water supply or
flood protection. And that initial analysis is a three-step process. We have the initial
model results in. It looks very promising. Our initial sort of assumptions that this
selected plan would provide water supply benefits. It looks like it's coming to fruition.
We still have some concerns in Miami-Dade County as well as Biscayne Bay. We have
some stakeholders that we're working very closely with.
I think through the next iteration of the modeling,
the refinement of the model,
and some operational tweaks of the plan,
we'll be able to sort of work those things out
and be able to document that the plan
actually provides the environmental benefits as attended
as well as meeting some of the other
water related needs of the region.
We are on track to have that final modeling
hopefully completed in early July
as we're working towards that,
the July governing board for the next round
of discussion and decisions to be brought forward to the board.
The other key thing is, in the implementation and phasing, there's a lot of other stakeholders
who have other CERT projects that already have chiefs reports that are already in the
queue for authorization of this King Bay Coastal Wetlands, C111 South Day, the Broward
WPA and C43. Each of those projects are very, very important. And there's also other
elements of the restoration projects that this plan is dependent upon being completed,
such as the restoration strategies, the governor's plan to meet water quality standards in the
Everglades, the sort of cornerstone of the success of this plan means that we're meeting
the QBEL, we're discharging good clean water into the Everglades, and that's important
prior to going forward with the hydropattern restoration and the backfilling of the
Miami Canal and some of the other key elements that are required under SEP to
forward, as well as the other elements such as the modified water deliveries next step
project, completion of modified water deliveries and others.
But for us, there's also a very, because we are legally bound as a permit holder under
the MPDS program, our discharges, discharge directly into the Everglades Protection
Area.
We just need to make sure that the proper language is included in the project implementation
report.
That's just a restatement of law, a reiteration of the fact that these project elements can't
proceed unless it's determined that the construction operation in the future won't cause or contribute
to a violation of water quality standards.
We couldn't be the local sponsor, nor could the court build an operator project that
doesn't meet water quality standards, as Mr. Munson mentioned.
That is just a restatement of fact, but it is very important as you look at the
implementation in sequencing.
We can't cause or contribute to a violation of the permits and the discharge limits,
the MPDS and the EFA permits that we hold in the specific conditions.
Once again, just a restatement of fact, but very important that everybody involved in this understands
that implementing this federal project will not put this district in jeopardy of violating
an enforceable permit requirement that we currently are obligated to do
as we move forward in implementing the project features needed to meet the water quality standards
in the Everglades. And then the last bullet is also consistent with the Clean Water Act,
you know, that there's reasonable assurances exist that there won't be adverse effects
on flora and fauna in the areas influenced by the project. And this is really intended
to say, in the future, if there's an overwhelming agreement and relief provided by EPA and
DEP under the Clean Water Act, we could move forward with restoration sooner, as long
as we stay within the four corners of the Clean Water Act, and we make sure that
We're always in compliance with our permit limits,
as well as our obligations under the USA case as well.
So these are just very important phasing and legal mandates.
Nothing controversial here, just a restatement of law.
But I think this will be one of the driving factors
going forward in restoration.
The other elements are also going
to be very strongly dependent upon other factors,
including when the authorization for this project
and other projects occur, the level of federal and state appropriations, the state funding
that comes forward, and then any available cost share credits for some of the other
projects that are necessary for this plan to be successful. We have to, as I mentioned
earlier in great detail, be in compliance with state water quality standards, including
the QBEL and Appendix A under the settlement agreement and consent decree. Nothing goes
forward until we execute a project partnership agreement and the letter of local sponsor
support will be the next step and the letter of financial capability will be the next step
but this board in the state of Florida will not be financially liable and have any financial
exposure going forward until such time post authorization and there is a negotiated
contract and only at that such time will we be contractually bound to committing
the financial resources of the district and the state.
And we also will have the opportunity going forward
with incremental operational and adaptive managing,
which is sort of a cornerstone
in which the project will go forward.
There's no particular order and sequence
of these groups of projects,
but you can see what we've done
through looking at these project elements.
They'll, certain ones will work together
at accomplishing incremental benefits
in some form of sequencing that includes
Not only these projects, but also the other projects outside of SERP that are dependent upon the planet for success
or dependent upon will be included in the draft PIRs as a sequencing of how the projects will go forward.
So just a refresher, these are the tentatively selected plan.
If you look to the north, those are the project features that are very much dependent upon us achieving the QBEL
and being in compliance with our permits and consent orders as well as the
features to the south and I think they'll come up sort of in sequence. Also
you just saw at the very southern end of the system the C111 South Dade
modified water deliveries project those two projects together are essential.
The next set of projects going forward would be the A1 Res award to
the north so that means we've completed restoration strategies and
in achieving the Q-Bell.
You see the project features that just showed up
in the north part in white,
where the restoration strategies,
that would come next in one logical set of sequencing.
That would require the achievement of the Q-Bell
to redistribute flows
into currently unimpacted portions of the Everglades.
And then the next feature would be the Miami Canal.
That would be benefits arrived
in water conservation area 3A from rehydrating
the overdrained portions of the north everglades. The L6 degrade and shifting
flows over into that area comes next and you see the benefits showing up in
water conservation area 3A and then the the little purple dot just showed a box
just showed up would be the C11 impoundment is next that provides
water quality improvements that flow
And then you begin to get benefits in the water concentration at 3B that just showed up. And then you'll have the next step of the additional up to five miles of bridging for the Tamiama Trail next steps on the L29, and then the device structures to redistribute the flow into Northeast Shark River Slough, and those benefits then accrue into the southern part of the system.
And then, of course, the water conservation area 3A benefits come in with the blue shanty
and the additional features on the L-67 canal.
So there's a very logical set of sequencing dependent upon some external projects being
completed.
Then all in all, we feel this is a very good plan that long-term achieves great benefits
to the Everglades, and it's the logical next step after we achieve the water quality
standards through the governor's plan to the north.
And with that, I'd be happy to answer any questions, and the Colonel and Kim here as well that could address any concerns or questions the district has.
Lieutenant Colonel, would you want to address any items before we get to questions?
Sir, no items in particular. But I did just want to reiterate the point that I've been making, and we discussed.
You know, I think Ernie's spot on, we are working very closely together to resolve these issues.
They're being worked at several different levels within the core and within the state, obviously.
But we clearly recognize that there's a need to resolve these policy issues to your satisfaction and to our satisfaction.
But I also want to reiterate something that I mentioned a couple of months ago.
When we were talking about the release of the draft PIR, which is vital to this process,
I mentioned to this board that, you know, it's not really an ending point when we release
the draft PR.
In many respects, it's a starting point, especially when it comes to public comment and continued
input by stakeholders.
So, to that end, as we're doing right now as partners and with stakeholders working
very closely to, you know, move this process along.
But once the draft PR is released, I think it's vitally important that we continue
the dialogue and continue analyzing the plan to ensure and provide as much visibility on
it as possible because we are seeking to provide the best benefits to the central Everglades
and I think this plan is getting us there. We are working very hard in concert with
the Water Management District and again with stakeholders to solve these issues.
Like I said, many of them are technical issues that are being worked on at this
level and I think there's a strong commitment by many to see this through to the end
And we're committed to doing that and to working with your staff to get it done.
Thank you very much.
So subject to your questions, sir.
Okay.
Board members or comments or questions to either Lieutenant Colonel Ernie or Greg with the DEP?
Mitch?
I just wanted to comment on good communication.
I heard it mentioned by a number of folks.
And I appreciate that.
And I'm thankful that Kim Taplet and Lieutenant Colonel Greco were able to participate in the briefings.
I think it's helpful to see that there's that ongoing communication on all levels,
and I'm thankful to see Greg here as well.
And I know everybody's been working hard on resolving these issues.
And we've gotten a lot of, I've gotten a lot of communication about moving forward in June.
And so one of the questions I have is, is the PIR ready to be released right now?
Or are we still putting the finishing touches on those additional items?
Sir, as we discussed, the quick answer is no.
If you were to vote today to release it tomorrow, we would not be able to do it.
The outstanding issues that Ernie mentioned, the policy issues that are being resolved,
but there's also a matter, there are technical issues.
Savings clause, we've always discussed in this forum and others that it has to be
compliant with federal laws. One of those is the savings clause.
And the other piece which we still have to work through and provide final information on
it is overall cost, which is forthcoming within the next couple of weeks, so no, sir.
And we are working to get it done as soon as possible.
Thank you for your answer.
And again, I appreciate all your hard work.
Mr. Perchlondo.
Yes.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Ernie, if you could just touch briefly on how the plan is addressing not only the
construction costs of these projects, but each one of these projects that gets built
comes with an operation and maintenance cost and perpetuity and, you know, if you could just briefly.
Mr. Portuondo, great question, and I missed my last slide.
Oh, sorry.
I thought I'd get forward.
Do you want to go to your thunder?
No, no, no, sir, you were a very good question.
I stopped prematurely.
We, as Lieutenant Colonel Greco mentioned, there is a team.
We're going through the core process to refine their overall construction costs.
Right now we just have gross estimates of construction and contingency and operational costs.
Between now and the end of the month, we'll refine those construction costs.
There'll be a higher level of certainty of what the actual cost of the construction will be.
As that changes, our contingency will drop because there's higher level of certainty.
Conversely, the overall construction cost will probably go up somewhat as well, but probably
not one-to-one.
But that will be in the final draft PIR that you'll have for consideration before you take
a vote.
We've made a firm commitment that this board would kind of know what the overall cost
of the plan itself is.
And as well, we're doing the same analysis and computations of what the long-term
ongoing annualized operation maintenance cost of adding these additional features
to the system will be.
So you'll have sort of a full cost accounting of both the construction and the cost of the
district for operating these features will be prior to any consideration of the release
of the final PIR.
Okay.
And if you could just reiterate what those who haven't heard it before, the cost sharing
agreements.
Yes, sir.
Under the Water Resource Development Act of 2000, SERP is unique and it has, if
If approved by Congress, these projects are eligible for 50-50 cost share for the operation
and maintenance cost of the additional features that are added into the system.
We are also working very closely with the Corps to include language that since the project
is dependent on using our water quality features for treatment, the additional incremental
O&M cost that would be associated with flowing the water through our water treatment facilities,
the A-1 Reservoir, STA-34, we would cost share that pro-rata incremental benefit 50-50 as
well. And we've been working on that language. I don't know if we'll get complete resolution
on the second part, but we will certainly have a recommendation in the PIR will be
50-50 cost share on O&M on the features that are generated from this project, and
that will carry forward to the chief's report that gets approved by the chief of engineers.
We will also have the opportunity to fully describe that, cost share expectation, and
we will be able to condition our financial capability letter contingent upon full knowledge
of what the construction and O&M costs will be and the expectation and requirement on
our end that it be a 50-50 cost share.
Thank you, Ernie, and Mr. Chairman, I think that's critical to the success of this project
because usually you have a conflict between the entity that's building something and the
entity that has to operate it.
They want to build it as cheaply as possible, which results in the highest maintenance cost
down the line.
And the fact that we're all responsible jointly in perpetuity, I think, is a very, very
a very good sign for this project.
Mr. Walman.
Ernie, in any previously executed PIR,
do we have a 50-50 cost share in operations and maintenance?
Or is this new?
Yeah, Mr. Walman, in all of the SERP features
that we have PIRs since the passage of work 2000
under that authorization, the Indian River Lagoon C-44,
Reservoir and STA, as well as PICCUM,
we do have that 50-50 cost share.
There are older authorizations prior to Word of 2000 that isn't eligible.
We have some where it's 100% local sponsor and other different types of percentages.
But since the passage of Word of 2000 and the projects that are planned under that authorization,
we have been able to get the 50-50 cost-trival.
So what we're negotiating and asking for here is not new?
No, sir.
The only little nuance is the flow-throughs are facilities.
And in the scheme of things, it's not the giant cost,
you know, an overwhelming number.
It is just something that we feel pretty strongly
about protecting the financial interest of the district.
If the plan is dependent on flowing water through our STAs,
it's a small, incremental increase in operational cost of our facilities.
That incremental cost should be cost shared.
That's the only nuance that's new,
and we'll continue to try to ask for that.
But the overwhelmingly more paramount question is the cost share of the new features
It's pretty standard.
And I heard that the PIR is not now ready for us to review and authorize, certainly, at this meeting.
We couldn't do it now, but do you both anticipate having it for us in advance of the next meeting,
so it's something that we can review in advance of sitting together and then, you know,
asking questions because it won't be helpful not to have reviewed it before the meeting?
Yes.
Mr. Walman, it will not be from a lack of effort from the district or the core or DEP staff.
We're working diligently to resolve these issues.
As Mr. Munson said, the big one is the water quality sort of external factors are outside
of our complete control of that, but we're hopeful that can be worked out.
Our goal is to get this done as soon as we can to bring it to the board for a vote, and
we'll do everything possible to meet the next board meeting.
With the understanding there are some factors that, particularly the water quality one,
is a little bit unknown.
The reason I ask that is because I'm sure you're aware, but we're being made aware from
stakeholders that the window is closing on the time within which we need to authorize
this PIR because of the potential for funding in Congress.
So that's why I ask because this is just not one of those kinds of things that if we
delay this until potentially August or September while all these issues are being worked
out we may lose the opportunity here.
Well, let me clarify one thing, so I think it's important for the stakeholders and the
board to understand the next step.
The next step will be the release of the draft PIR.
There will be no formal action or approval of the board until October, and that would
be whether the draft is released in July or August.
Our real deadline for the board action is in October, and that's sort of the critical
path to be able to meet the Chiefs Report final PIR and the rest of the review to have
the letter of support and the letter of financial capability, and that will be the formal board
vote of support in October.
We are with the Corps.
We're trying to do whatever we can to resolve these issues.
As I mentioned, the modeling came back favorable.
That was one of the big unknowns, the initial round of modeling.
There's still additional work and post-modeling processing that the Corps is going to have
to do.
We're going to do everything we can to get all of the modeling done by the end of this
month and then we'll hand it over to the core and it will be somewhat in their hands
on the scheduling.
It's really joint effort.
There's the savings cost analysis and the water management district staff does.
So modeling is coming out July 1st and then we will all be looking at it processing
it and going through stakeholder coordination with the final results and like I said,
Like Colonel Greco mentioned, our cost estimate will do the end of July, so we'll incorporate
that.
So there is some footwork to get the report actually put together, but we will have a
plan that's been evaluated and we can present to the board and talk about the plan and
what we've heard from stakeholders about the support about it, but actually getting
the final report written will take a little more time in a couple weeks, I think.
Thank you, Kim.
Actually I have two or three questions. Do you mention about the draft PIR? It was my
understanding that the board would have to vote on that. Isn't that not the case?
What we, the direction we received at the April governing board meeting was that we as
staff and the board would want to have these issues all resolved prior to a draft PIR.
So that is not a formal vote in the traditional set of how you get the process through.
The formal sort of approval of the plan.
You still haven't approved the plan at that point.
Your final approval of the plan would come when we actually have gone through all of the public review.
The draft PIR is out there.
You've gone through the public review of the plan, received public comment from various stakeholders.
that would be then incorporated into the final PIR.
And the final PIR is where you do the letter of support
and letter of financial capability.
And that is the approval that takes place under the critical path
to get the chief's report done by December.
That date is October.
And so we are not agreeing as a district or staff
or nor is the core prepared to release the draft PIR
until these issues that we're working diligently on are resolved.
And we were going to come back to the board prior to that decision.
What are the mechanics of the district consenting to the draft PIR?
It would be a board approval. We've inserted that into the plan.
And I apologize for the confusion. It's not the...
But you're still not, even at that point, nor we, nor is the chief of engineers agreeing that the plan has approved yet.
But there's still another step before there's final approval of the PIR.
This is just getting the draft ready to move forward.
The final approval of the draft PIR will still come back to the board for support in October
and then by the end of the year for a chief's report for the Army to approve the plan.
It still has to go through the Civil Works Review Board and the process in which
the Army follows as well.
Well, the point in that is there's still some more work to be done and additional steps
for approval prior to December in order to have a final chief's report done.
I'm not understanding you, Mary.
Okay.
How does the South Florida Water Management District consent to the draft PIR?
Thank you very much for your time.
Thank you.
Is it by vote of this board or is it by staff decision?
No, sir, vote of the board. We have always said since the issues and concerns were raised
in April, we have said and continue to say this agency will not release the draft until
these issues are resolved and the board approves that. We don't resolve and approve the resolution.
We'll make a recommendation to you. You are the decision-making body. You will approve
the draft to be for us to be able to consent to the release.
And you're telling us that that won't be until October?
No, sir. That's the next step, is the draft.
After the draft is released, there will be a process,
the federal process will go through, and there will be public comment,
there will be input, that will all get rolled up into a final PIR.
And at that point, there will be a second point of approval
by the governing board and we're shooting for the October timeline to have the letter
of support, that's the formal letter of support of the final PIR and the letter of financial
capability at that point in time.
So you'll be asking for two votes by this board as to the PIR.
One will be for the draft and one will be for the final.
Yes, sir.
The final will be in October.
On this schedule, yes, sir.
When will the draft be?
What month?
We're shooting for trying to get everything we can and working arm-in-arm with the court to get it as soon as possible
We're shooting for July. Okay. So so in other words, you'll come back to us next month and ask for us to vote on the draft
PIR subject to these issues being resolved and most importantly the water quality piece being resolved. Yes, sir
All right, just a couple more questions if I'm in this dream, you know, we've been working on this for 19 months and
And during that time, we've been working, you've been working, everyone's been working
on getting these key issues resolved.
Issues to be resolved, water quality, savings clause, implementation, phasing and cost,
and I know everybody's working hard, but I'm not hearing any proposed solutions for
these key issues.
I mean, here it is, we're coming up in July, going to be asked to vote on a PRR, maybe
be on October for the final vote, and we haven't seen any proposed solutions for these problems.
When will we see that?
Prior to the July vote.
We will, we are, we are, have not resolved these issues to our satisfaction yet.
We've made great progress, and that was the intent of this presentation.
For example, to give you sort of cost of, you know, estimates of timelines.
For example, on the water quality assurances, the draft model results just came in.
We're now doing the model refinement.
We're targeting to have that completed prior to the 1st of July, and then we will know
that the savings clause analysis is sufficient and we're ready to go forward with that.
Our target is to bring something back as soon as possible.
We want everything possible for all these issues to be resolved.
The only big concern is that there are a few items that are outside the control of just
this agency and this board, most importantly, is the higher level.
There has to be agreement on the water quality piece, and that is not something that I can
look at, modeling resources, staff time, the NEPA analysis type of preparation that
we have to do jointly with the court that can give you a rest estimate of the time.
We're hopeful that will be resolved prior to the next board meeting.
Well, thank you. But, of course, most of these major issues to be resolved aren't minor tweaks.
You know, these are monumental problems. Water quality, for instance, whereby we're constrained
by the consent order and by the restrictions on what does it appendix A for the park.
I mean, are we going to have proposed solutions for those problems?
Yes, sir, there will be language in the – you want to take that on the – because Greg's
been taking the lead on the water quality piece.
Sure.
Thank you for the chance to address your question, Mr. Moran.
You're right.
Those are huge issues.
And so far in conversations with the Army Corps, they recognize that.
And I don't feel like they have been – or I should say I think they've been cooperative.
They obviously have to be careful about language they put in this PIR and how it could
come back and affect them in other situations nationally but I have not heard them saying
absolutely not. We're not going to help you out there. We're continuing to try to work
through it. I appreciate your concern about don't dump this on us and expect us to make
a huge decision. I think the PIR language that will be in front of you pertaining
to water quality is probably all confined to about a three-page section. And it's
It's fairly manageable, it's not technically complex, so I think it will be fairly straightforward
if and when it does arrive in your hands for review.
Well, will it be a solution, a proposed solution, or just a condition that there's be a solution
in the future?
Boy, I hesitate to say at this time, I'm not sure exactly what that's going to look
like or if those are even mutually exclusive.
You may see elements of both.
I don't know.
Okay, thank you. And I do have one more question for Ernie, if I may.
Absolutely.
Cost. I mean, that's not the whole question.
But this is another situation where we've been looking at this for 19 months,
and we're getting ready to make some big votes on it,
and we haven't seen dollar one estimate of how much it's going to cost
or where that money is proposed to come from.
When do we see that?
The actual final cost will be done through this collaborative partnership following the
course process for cost estimating that will go into the PIR.
So prior to any consideration, before July, the end of this month is the target date.
We'll have the final cost determination for both the construction cost, operational
cost, and contingencies.
And that overall project cost will be what will be placed into the PIR, and that also
has to include the ongoing operation and maintenance costs associated with these additional features.
So you will have that, and that's one of the things that has been a necessary step
that has yet to be done collaboratively with us in the Corps to finalize those costs
so you know exactly what the numbers are.
So that will be in the recommended plan in the draft report prior to any consideration by the board.
So you will have that.
How far in advance of when you ask us to vote on it?
We're hopeful you'll have it by the end of the month, end of June,
and we'll have detailed board briefings with each and every one of you prior to any board discussion.
Ernie, when you get some preliminary numbers,
You might want to give a pre-briefing to Mr. Moran and some of the other board members
because it sounds like the more advanced notice everybody has for consideration, the more useful that information is, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, gentlemen. Mr. Sargent.
Thanks, Ernie, for the update.
And thank Lieutenant Colonel Greco and Kim for coming in and meeting with us all personally, and thank you, Greg, for coming down today.
This is a big issue that's coming up.
and we're getting a lot of correspondence from stakeholders.
And I just want to make sure that the stakeholders understand
that we're for this plan.
We believe it's the right thing to do.
However, there are some hard constraints here.
And that's what the team is working on, from my understanding,
working on very deadly, very hard
to get those hard constraints resolved prior
to the July meeting.
And so I see all the emails and they say,
well, please be the local sponsor.
Well, we're up here to be the local sponsor.
We're working hand in hand with the Corps and DEP to resolve these issues and move this
plan forward.
So I think thanks for your help and just wanted to clarify that.
Thank you.
And a couple of times it's been mentioned about the Lieutenant Colonel and Kim attending
the briefings.
And for those who aren't in the details of this with the board, as we went through
In this process, we had our staff briefings on SEP, which we've had numerous briefings
on.
But the last ones, Lieutenant Colonel and Kim from the Army Corps, both attended those
briefings and were there to answer questions and concerns that we had.
And so the comments with that regard were regarding their involvement in the board briefings,
which at least for the two years that I've been here, we've never done something
like that before.
and it was very helpful, and I think it also shows the level of commitment from the Army
Corps to work through these tough issues with us.
There was no light between them.
Someone can explain that to me later.
I'm just taking Ernie's lead there.
I know.
If you want to ride that elephant, that's fine.
I want to apologize to Melissa about the elephant comment.
We were not calling Melissa, Mr. Walden.
Ernie, I've been getting some questions from some local officials in Broward County and
from some other stakeholders.
There appears to be some confusion with what Mr. Moran calls rightfully the cost associated
with SEP and what the board has already committed to spend to resolve some of the other issues
in the federal litigations, the 880 million.
how much, if any, so that you can answer this directly in this public form, how much, if any,
of the set anticipated cost, whatever they might be, overlap with what we've already committed
to spend, if any of it overlaps. And if it doesn't, we need to know that, too, because this is
a separate financial commitment that we're going to be, I guess, preliminarily authorizing,
perhaps as early as next month and then finally so in October.
Yeah, Mr. Wallman, there's no overlap of the 880 million. There's an implementation relationship between the two because the plan is dependent upon those features being built and implemented and achieving the QBEL, the water quality standards in order for these features to go forward.
So it's not in parallel, it's in series, it's in sequencing.
So you're going to have to do the restoration strategies.
That is the implementation sequencing
as we best understand it today.
Achieve the cue bell.
And then other features are necessary outside of CEP,
such as the Broward WPA, you know,
the C11 impoundment is necessary
for water quality improvements going in the S9 structure
that discharged into the L-67, as well as a lot of the project benefits are dependent
upon mod waters being completed, which is very close, as well as the C-111 South Dade
project being completed, as well as the Tamiami Trail next steps project being completed.
So SEP builds upon all of those activities achieving the incremental benefits that each
of them achieve.
So there's no overlap, but there's benefits that build upon the benefits from each
of those individual projects and programs.
So it does, and it ties into the overall sequencing
of the plan, and then to alleviate any concerns
of SERP stakeholders outside of this planning region,
we do have to complete Picky and Strand, the Broward,
I mean, excuse me, the Indian River Lagoon C44 project,
and as well as the C43.
Those are also in the mix, and then the new projects
to get authorized under the next word, which would include the Broward, I mean, excuse me,
the Biscayne Bay Coastal Wetlands, C-11 spreader canal, and I guess I mentioned C-43 already
as well. So there's a lot of opportunities for restoration to move forward. This plan
is in sync with those. It builds upon the successes of the others, and to a large degree
is very dependent upon those projects being completed and done, and that was the intent
of showing this sequencing and how all these elements relate to each other.
So there's no overlap, but it is built upon those other projects.
All right.
Thank you, Ernie.
I mean, the short answer was no overlap, but all the other information was very helpful.
I got that, but Ernie was trying to put a good face on that.
Mr. Portuondo.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I have a couple of follow-up questions.
And first I'd like to jump in on what Mr. Sargent said that, you know, it's really critical
that everybody understand that we are very much committed to being the local sponsor
of SEP.
What you're hearing is we want to know what that means in terms of dollars and cents
before we sign off on a check, in fact.
Ernie, you mentioned that the cost estimate will follow the Army course process.
Is that both for construction and O&M?
And do we participate in any way in the development of those estimates?
Yes, we do.
Yes.
The tool we're using is a tool that we actually jointly use to budget O&M of your current facilities.
So if, you know, we have to plan the O&M budget with you all five years in advance.
So we're using the same tool to estimate what O&M of these pump stations and new features will be that we use today to budget.
Thank you.
After the timing,
do we need to commit to be the local sponsor by July in order to be eligible for congressional authorization this year?
or is that or do we have until October until October what what what are the
deadlines in other words that this board has to comply with in order to ensure
that we get authorization this year the the the timeline that we're striving for
is to get if we can we're doing everything possible to get to the
July board for the release of the draft.
I understand, but there's a possibility we may not.
And if we don't, there still would be time with August.
It's my understanding.
I need to defer to the colonel and to Kim.
If the July date is not met, because there's not
resolution of the water quality language, for example,
I still don't think you're.
You're boxed out of still getting to the December date, just that month, losing that month makes it very, very difficult as far as, and I think the way that Colonel has described it, and he must not be in the room, oh, there you are.
Certainly, ideally next month, July, but I think, and I've asked the board before and
you guys are committed to this, we all are, we'll continue to work with, you know, timing
this to make sure it's done properly and within the power of the chairman and the rest of
the board, perhaps moving up the governing board in August or holding a special one
in July would be suitable, but again, and as we all recognize and I think we've been
discussing it, you know, times of the essence. But again, we're trying to jointly solve these
policy issues, so we'll get there.
So if I understand correctly, by no later than August, we have to commit to continue as a
local sponsor. And then in October, we have to approve the PIR.
Sir, what we're seeking in July is for you to endorse the release of the draft
FPIR, which is basically the plan for public comment.
You make your, as Ernie mentioned, you make your official commitment after that public
review period of 45 days, so more about October.
Okay.
So the commitment really comes in October when we approve the final PIR on this trip.
Thank you.
Mr. Sardin.
I just wanted to ask Ernie, as we approach the July meeting, we look at these costs.
I think it's important that we also look at the cost of the other projects that you showed that
Must be completed before these are implemented for example to Broward WPA and some of the other projects so that we can see
They're you know, they're not
That they're in addition to what we're talking about here
So we can see the full picture the timing and where we propose to get those funds from
So we know we go into this knowing exactly where we stand
We'll include that. And I think it was the camouflage why I could see him before.
Any
other comments, questions for Ernie or for the Army Corps or for Greg from DEP?
Okay, seeing none,
we'll open this for public comment. I know we have...
about 24 public comment. Normally we do three minutes on public comment. I'm going to ask
in the interest of time if we could limit our comments to two minutes today. And if your
comment really is just the same thing that somebody else has said, if you could just
to indicate your support or opposition to SEP
and why we would appreciate that.
So Ray, you want to?
First up, we have State Representative Jose Javier Rodriguez.
Welcome, Representative, and thank you for taking time
to attend our meeting today.
Thank you, Mr. Chair and board members.
I actually wanted to do the same for you to welcome you.
I represent a district in the Florida Legislature that
It includes a lot of the city of Miami, part of Coral Gables, and a village of Keevis Cain,
so welcome.
A lot of us are very happy that you decided to have your board meeting here.
And I simply wanted to say, with respect to the decision you're going to take, you know,
as you're looking, I know you mentioned the cost and that some of the questions that
are unanswered may require the state to be a partner in going forward.
And I just wanted to say that myself representing this district, and I know that a lot
of my colleagues would be very enthusiastic about working with you to try to get that done.
So I just wanted to ask you just to express my support as a Florida resident, resident
of South Florida, but also just to offer myself as a partner with you and other legislators
at those future steps.
So thank you.
Thank you.
we appreciate those offers of cooperation
and we probably will be reaching out to you
because it's gonna take everybody
pulling together on this one.
Absolutely.
Thank you.
Mr. Moran,
Reagan, thanks, public speaker.
We have Joan Gale-Blank, followed by Michael Chenoweth.
Welcome and if everybody could state their name
and address for the record
at the introduction of their comments,
it'd be fantastic, thank you.
I'm
rather small in the degree of height, stature, but hopefully I'm known on Keebus
Gaines as an author, and I was taken under Marjorie Stoneman Douglas's wing, I thought
I'd bring her spirit in today, and also I have a picture here of her sitting in the
Everglades,
where she was certainly the person who raised our conscience, whether she went
out and sat in a chair, raised
our water conscience so we finally understood that we in the entire
state and South Florida would be unable to live here if we did not have the flow of
the Everglades and the water from the Everglades.
So I think we should think about her today.
I think I would like to urge you all to proceed
with your job, to be responsible to all of us
who hope to live in Florida in the future.
And I would like to say that she knew
the governors of the state very well
and knew they were very important to saving the Everglades and they included such people
as Governor Collins, Graham, Askew, all the guys and I'm hoping that because of her interest
and because of her recognition by nationally that also we will definitely get the congressional
money.
So it's time to proceed. We've got climate change right behind us, and I think that we better do this before we get fish coming out of our faucets.
And so I hope that you all will vote for our natural resources as you fought for them.
Thank you very much for your comments. We appreciate you taking time to come down today.
Next up, Reagan.
Mr. Tinois, followed by Joanne Davis.
Welcome.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Board.
That's a hard act to follow.
My name is Michael Tinois.
I live at 31 Garden Cove Drive in Key Largo.
I'm the president of the Florida Keys Chapter
of the Issa Walton League of America.
I'm here today to ask the district, urge the district
to again affirm its role as the local sponsor
for this important project.
To quote Mr. Barnett, nothing goes forward without a project, partnership agreement and
local sponsor.
In 1969, I was fortunate to be recruited by Marjorie Stoneman Douglas to be the first
member of Friends of the Everglades.
For 30 years or so after that, we worked on Everglades issues together.
too often during that period, it seemed like the district was not on the same page as we were.
But in 2000, with the passage of WERDA at that time, things changed.
And since then, the district has done important work as the local sponsor for SERP.
And we have seen that Everglades restoration, including the whole panoply of certain projects,
is critical to the district's ability, effectively, to carry out its duties and responsibilities
for both flood control and water supply.
With the rain events' variabilities due to climate change that we're seeing with
with a dry, a record dry November, and then two rain events in two years, the 100-year
storms, and with rising sea levels, this is going to be increasingly important.
The district's continued participation as the local sponsor is essential for protection
of the resources on which we own the pen.
John, thank you for your comments if you could wrap up real quickly.
Yes, sure.
The Congress is considering WERDA right now, and I ask you to have the confidence in your
staff and our work with the Corps of Engineers and the watermen and the DEP to work out
the details, but to affirm your local sponsorship now so that we don't lose the ability
to get the WERDA funding for this project.
Thank you.
Ms. Davis, followed by Eric Draper.
Good morning.
Joe and Davis representing 1,000 friends of Florida.
The address is 1029 North Lakeside Drive, Lake Worth.
I won't take much time.
I'm sure you're going to hear it all.
We want to thank you for your engagement
in this very, very important issue.
The Everglades can't wait, and I know that you know that.
And we're looking forward to you all making the right decision and moving forward and releasing the draft PIR so that we can all get to work on it.
Thank you.
Mr. Draper, followed by Mr. Eikenberg.
Mr. Draper, welcome.
Thank you very much. Eric Draper, I'm the Executive Director of Audubon, Florida.
I think your staff pretty much said it all when they said they were doing everything they
could to get this to you by July for your tentative approval before your October approval, so
I won't add much to that.
I do want to commend Colonel Bregman and the staff at the Corps for their good efforts
and keep at it.
And same thing with the commend Greg Munson, who I worked with closely on water quality
issues over the past year, and that was quite an accomplishment, Greg, and I know
that you will be able to get this water quality issue work through.
I also want to commend Ernie for that very good presentation.
Certainly as a master of the details and the same encouragement to him.
I came here as many others did today to encourage the board to, in fact,
prepare yourselves to endorse this proposal.
It sounds like listening to most of you, although there are some doubts
that are expressed about the water quality issue and the cost
that you are moving in the direction of offering a tent of approval in July, so
I'm not going to walk past the cell. I just encourage you to keep an open mind and
trust your good staff that they will in fact bring back to you something in July
that you'll be able to send forward. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr.
Draven.
Mr. Eichenberg, followed by Prudence Gill, then Steve Hagan. Welcome.
Good morning. Good morning, Karen. Eric Eichenberg with the Everglades Foundation.
It's a pleasure to be here at my first meeting.
I share with Greg the good work that you all do,
and thank you for your service to not only the 16 counties,
but also to our state.
I'm a little perplexed, actually,
and I had some remarks to give,
but I'll be brief on my confusion
based on the presentation we just heard.
The foundation we met with Assistant Secretary of the Army,
Joellen Darcy, twice in the last 60 days
in her offices in the Pentagon, and she was pretty clear to us,
go back to Florida and work with the district to get a July
decision for the district to be a local sponsor. Secretary Darcy,
the colonel's boss, said that when that happens, the Corps has a 45-day
public comment period followed by another 30-day period.
She laid out to us the process that would take the
SEP plan through the fall. With the hopes
and the desire to have a chief's report submitted to Congress by December of this year.
As you know, the word of bill is moving through the Congress.
It's already passed the Senate with four of the five projects included.
CEP was not included in the Senate bill because we don't have the process finalized.
But the House is already beginning to figure out its own approach.
And having spent some time in Washington to understand the need and the importance of a word of bill.
So they're working through their own processes in the House side.
We have to ensure that as the House moves the word of bill forward that we are sticking to these schedules
that are, in our view, quite solid that the core and the district have informed of us as the foundation.
I encourage you to keep the staff at the table. We will do the same.
The water quality issue that was discussed.
We are also sympathetic to that point that will be worked out.
But we cannot miss this opportunity.
Congress is talking about a word of bill every seven years.
We're no longer in this two-year cycle of a word of bill.
So let's not miss the chance.
You're going to authorize it.
We're not asking you to appropriate it.
When we go to Washington, we talk to authorizers,
and we talk to appropriators.
When we come before you all, you play both roles.
This first step, in order to allow the additional water
that's needed in the Central Everglades is for you to become that local sponsor.
Authorize the plan.
July is what we were told by the Assistant Secretary of the Army.
This is the first I've heard of an October issue.
I'm sure it all fits in with the timeline.
Let's do it next month so we can all come back in a month to herald the great work
work.
The efforts that this district and the state are committed to the next phase of Everglades
restoration. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you.
Prudence Gill, followed by Steve Hagan.
Ms. Gill, welcome.
My name's Prudence Gill. I live at 600 Great Tree Drive. I'm Keebus Kane. And I'm an artist
and I address issues of water and environment and our relationship with nature through
my art. And I want to say I appreciate everything people have been saying here. Some
Some of it has been confusing, and I'm hoping that what the last gentleman said about clarifying
timelines is going to be taken into consideration so that everybody knows when they need to
have things done, and I appreciate all the work of people who are trying to bring this
forward in a timely manner.
Previous centuries' ideas of human progress as paramount over nature is an approach to
our future that will not work, and I think all of us know that here today.
In this new century, we have the opportunity and the ability to step forward and correct
our well-intentioned but naive mistakes of the past.
I thank all the experts who have spoken today and hope that they will bring this draft before
you by the July deadline.
I ask this governing board to act for the benefit of all, just as we are one nation
and indivisible, so too do we reside within one ecological system, indivisible.
Please vote in favor of sponsoring this crucial project to restore the water flow to the Everglades.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Mr. Hagen, followed by Jennifer Hecker.
I think Mr. Hagen had to leave, Jennifer.
Good morning. Jennifer Hecker on behalf of the Conservancy of Southwest Florida
in our more than 5,000 members here today to express our strong support for the district
becoming a local sponsor for the Central Everglades Planning Project. As an advocacy group focused
on preserving the natural resources in Southwest Florida and the Western Everglades, we recognized
the critical importance of moving water south not only in benefiting the Central Everglades
but also in order to reduce the harmfully high flows from Lake Okeechobee to the
Klusahatchee River. We know that this will complement other Everglades restoration
efforts in our region, including the proposed C-43 reservoir, which is equally important
for restoring the ecological health of our portion of the Greater Everglades ecosystem.
As such, our expectation is that the district would continue to support the C-43 reservoir
project and will not defer or delay it as a result of supporting SEP.
The current preferred alternative for our provides immense ecological benefits while
not compromising existing levels of water supply.
Timing is critical.
We need the district to advance this project in order to ensure that it can move forward
for congressional authorization in a timely manner.
Specifically we're asking you to take such actions as necessary to allow the draft project
implementation plan to be released as soon as possible.
Doing so will not obligate the district to funding, nor preclude any opportunities
to resolve water quality concerns.
As Marjorie Stoneman Douglas so eloquently said, there is no other Everglades in
the world.
Today, you have a historic opportunity to advance restoration of this unique international
treasure by becoming the local sponsor and supporting the release of the PIR, and we urge
you to do so.
Thank you so much.
Thank you very much.
That's Samantha Knapp, followed by Nancy Lee, Ben Christina, Margolis.
Ms. Knapp, good morning.
Welcome.
My name is Samantha Knapp.
I live at 7350 Southwest 89th Street in Miami.
Thank you for this opportunity to comment today.
I was born and raised in Miami and when I was a kid I was told how the Everglades were
shrinking, how it was a vanishing ecosystem.
Back then it was let's save the Everglades for future generations.
Back then I was that future generation.
Now I'm the one standing here before you today to say let's return the Everglades
to their natural state to the way they should be for future generations for the
kids who are now hearing about how fragile the Everglades are, how precious they are,
and how it could all be gone in the blink of an eye.
Step is a step in the right direction. Right now the southern Everglades are starved for
water because it's been diverted through canals that dump gallons of fresh water into
the gulf and the Atlantic when it rains too much, instead of bringing that water
down south. Our fresh water is being sent to the
ocean engineers in the 40s and 50s didn't understand how the Everglades worked and didn't
think that freshwater would ever be a valuable resource. I'm here today to ask the South
Florida Water Management District Governing Board to commit to being the local sponsor
for the Central Everglades Planning Project so that when funding becomes available through
Governor Scott and U.S. Congress' Everglades Restoration Plan, you will preserve the
opportunity to restore our Everglades and get back another part of what makes
Florida such a special place. Thank you. Thank you. Nancy Lee followed by Christina
Margolis.
Then we'll take Drew Martin.
Nancy Lee, 20448, Northeast 34th Court,
Aventura, Florida. Thank you for coming close by. I'm a Kramudian and I find going
to these Ackerman meetings torture but I really think it's important.
I used to
have a list of them so I knew what you were talking about but you know gave up
on that you know can't even do my computer anymore but anyway I thought
it was really important to be here to for you to do set even though I don't
really know what it stands for but in any it's just important to get the
Everglades going I look at you as doctors, and you know the everglades is on life support and I need you guys to you know
try to help this person will this place and
I
Also feel like don't forget this came Bay. You know, I know that's part of it
I love this guy because he actually goes like this. So you know you think he's listening. So I'm really looking
I'm listening. I really am
I really appreciate that.
A lot of people just text.
Anyway, I just really hope that you do this by July,
and don't wait till October.
Just get this done.
You know, this has been going on for so many years.
I've been watching it, and you got me out of bed,
which I hate to get up this early.
Just to come here for you to help.
Thank you.
Thank you for taking time to come in and dress us.
Ms. Margolis?
I'm Christina Margolis. I live at 420 Southwest 12th Avenue, Miami, Florida.
And I'm speaking today as a member of the Miami-Dade County community. I'm urging you
to please, you know, accept the alternative 4R for the Central Everglades Planning Project.
We as a community need the South Florida Water Management District to take a lead
before it is too late. Unless we approve and take action now, we will be needlessly delaying
the opportunity for Congress to authorize this monumental step to environmental protection
and conservation, and we risk irreversible harm to the already weakened Everglades ecosystem.
If we're concerned about the cost now, I can't even imagine what the cost would
be in another seven years. This opportunity comes around only every seven years, and
as a community cannot afford to remain passive.
By approving and sponsoring the plan,
you would be pushing forward vital efforts
to provide restoration to the Everglades.
Not only that, we'd be creating over 20,000 jobs
that are necessary in South Florida.
Approval of a plan will not
affect meeting existing water supply demands,
nor does it reduce the impact
of the existing water level supply we have now.
Because of the vast benefits that Alternative 4R would provide to our own water supply and
because of the lack of adverse impacts, I urge you to please approve the plan by in
July.
Thank you.
Thank you for your comments.
Mr. Martin, followed by Bruce Matheson, then Barbara Miedema.
Through Martin, I'm here on behalf of the Locks Edge Group of the Sierra Club and
our 3,600 members, I'm also elected to the Palm Beach County Soil and Water Conservation
conservation district and protection of water resources is so important to us in Palm Beach.
In the Everglades and the reason, I think one of the reasons the South Florida Water
Management District was created was to help restore the Everglades.
And so when we talk about cost, that is part of your budgeting.
And I don't really think you cannot do this project.
I grew up in San Francisco and I remember I learned how to drive with a clutch
And there were these very steep hills, and at the very top there was always a stop sign.
And you had a choice to go forward or race backward.
And I think racing backward was much more dangerous than moving forward.
So I think you're in the same position.
You need you really don't want to, you know, race backwards.
You want to you want to move forward.
It's the opportunity.
And I really think that the cost is going to be part of done part by the federal government,
part by the state, but what's important to remember is that that is part of the
responsibility of the South Florida Water Management District, and I don't believe
that not doing this will save money for you, because if you don't do this you will
have to do it in a different way, and you will spend the money regardless
whether you do this or not. And I think Eric Eichenberg made it very clear
that you're on a very tight timeline. We don't really want to miss the
Chief's report, and so it's, there are going to be, you need to have time
to work through some of these issues, so you really don't want to delay this, you want
to get it done quickly. I do not believe it will affect water for the area, and I think
that it will protect water, it will increase water supplies, and so I don't think you're
going to have issues with the savings clause. Water quality, I think you can do that,
but regardless, you will have to meet those water quality standards based on the
consent decrees. You will not get out of that, so I don't see any benefit to you
in not moving forward in getting this done and being the local sponsor. So we encourage
you to move forward. Thank you.
Thank you, Drew.
Mr. Matheson.
Barbara.
Followed by Martha Musgrove and Mark Peary.
Thank you. I want to...
My name is Barbara Amidamal with Sugar King Growers Co-operative.
I appreciate the opportunity to be able to address you again today.
I have been following this issue as closely as I possibly can.
It's difficult for stakeholders to get their arms around it
because so much is going on.
We applaud the work of the staff, the questions by the board.
You've raised all of the right issues.
We too want to get a better grasp or handle on what the solutions are.
In private business, we don't agree to move forward with an item or a contract
or a bid on a job until we have the answers.
We know what it's going to cost and how it fits into our overall budget.
And I think you're all asking the right questions.
We too would like to see more clarity, particularly on the water quality pieces.
We believe that's where we all can get tripped up.
Our future water supply is going to be dependent on getting the savings clause.
Issues correct.
The sub team for water supply, I understand that earlier this week.
We only get peaks into that, but apparently our future water supply is going to be dependent
on the complete build-out of the Indian River Lagoon South Project, which is $1.8 billion.
You've got $880 million.
This one's estimated at 2.2, preliminarily, you've got a lot of money in front of you,
you've got to see the whole big picture, and I applaud all of your efforts.
We will stay engaged in the process.
Thank you.
Thank you, Barbara.
Ms. Musgrove?
For the record, my name is Martha Musgrove, and I'm representing the Florida Wildlife
I live in West Palm Beach, Florida, 2432 Edgewater Drive.
I won't repeat a lot of things.
You heard Senator Nelson's letter read into the record,
and you have the letter that we sent last week
from the Florida Wildlife Federation
urging you to go ahead and vote today to release this draft PIR.
Now, we have been discussing, or these people, your staff and the Corps have been discussing
the same three issues for more than six months now.
Each time we're saying, oh, we're going to work through it.
Working through it hasn't yielded, apparently, the results that your staff wants.
To my knowledge, I have never seen any draft language on these water quality issues.
They are serious issues. There is no doubt about that.
But you don't escape from the water quality issues through a draft PIR.
You escape them through meeting the standards in the court,
because you've got both a court and a statute to deal with,
and there's nothing that you can do in a PIR,
or that the Army Corps of Engineers can do to change the statute or the consent decree.
So I would ask you to go ahead, not put yourself in the bind because of the tight schedule.
You don't know how fast, we don't know how fast the House will act, but we do know
that you do have to have a draft report to get out there to the public to start the
process to get to the chief's report so the sooner you do it the better and I'd
like to see it done today even if it's conditional. Thank you Martha. Mr. Perry
followed by Farina Khadir. Welcome back. Yes.
Thank you, Mark Perry, for the record. I thought there were a lot of good questions
by the governing board members, particularly Mr. Waldman and also Mr. Sargent, and relating
to when Ernie said that there's no overlap in those cost and factors. And I heard last
meeting in May at the governing board about the $2.2 billion figure of roughly cost
estimate. So when we talk about no overlap or you question, well, what is the sequencing
of these projects that are really dependent projects.
They're dependent projects if they get done
and there are cost associated with those
so I appreciate if you can get that sequencing done
and be that part of your decision.
Overall, I mean, supporting CEP is obviously something
that a lot of us have been working on
and following for a long time
and it's a first plan of trying to make
that missing link connection between Lake Okeechobee
and the Central Everglades and the Everglades plan.
And you look at the flow out of Lake Okeechobee, 2.2 million acre-feet coming out of the
lake on an average year, over 1.4 million acre-feet goes east and west to the estuaries, and
about only 200,000 acre-feet is going to roughly come south in SEP.
So it's a small piece, it's an increment, and we keep making sure that we want to
mention in the preface of the SEP plan that it's an increment, a first increment,
that more should be done as we move this forward
because that's important to know
that there's not enough going to the Everglades right now.
Only 13% of the water coming out of the Everglades,
out of the lake gets to the glades.
So we need more to go to the glades
and less obviously to go to the coastal estuaries.
So making this first step or this first increment
and the water quality component,
that 880 million cost is really,
it's got to be split up more
with the state and the EAA, including the state and federal government. Thank you.
This could be here followed by Laura Reynolds and Don Cherry.
Good morning. I'm a graduate student here at the University of Miami originally from England
and this project is very important to me because the first time I visited Miami a few years ago
I came with my brother and sister and we all had our own ideas of how to spend a week in Miami
me but one thing that all three of us agreed upon was that we had to take a
trip to the Everglades and since being here everyone who's visited me has you
know commented on it being one of their top things to do whilst here so I think
it's important to realize that this project is monumental not only for
Florida but also worldwide because it's an area that people feel strongly
about and love to visit when they come here so I think that's something that's
very significant too. Thank you. Thank you very much.
Hi thanks for being here. I hope
to keep my voice throughout the day but as you know from yesterday's field trip
I'm starting to lose it a little bit so anyway first of all one thank you for
going out on Biscayne Bay yesterday and thank you for being on Key Biscayne.
I know there's a number of people that would love to go to your
meetings, but of course they're on beach. So this makes a big difference. What I wanted
to remind you, I hear all the questions and the comments you're making on SEP. Two things
really. One is I made the rounds last year to all the county commissioners in Dade County
who had major concerns that this was going to impede, you know, water coming to Miami
Dade County and also impact the water flow to Biscayne.
Yet they were able to see that water is an issue of our future, that tourism is a huge
economic driver for Dade County, and they passed a resolution on, I think it was the
second of October last year.
And in their resolution, they talked about moving this forward this summer.
They support SEP.
And so what they did is they took a leap of faith, not knowing that everything was going
to work out okay, not knowing that the science was going to work out fine.
In fact, the current set of data that you have on there shows some impacts to Dade
County, but yet they're willing to take this leap and have bold action because
they see that water is an issue of our future.
They see that if we did not have more water flowing south that Dade County would
have to pay ten times more for their water supply. So Tropical Audubon asks you today to
take that bold leadership and move SEP forward in July. Thank you.
Thank you.
Don Cherives, followed by Miranda Stasali.
Good morning. Don Cheriffs at the National Parks Conservation Association.
Firstly, I don't want the point to get lost. The Water Management District staff under your
guidance has done an enormous amount of work to get this project to where it is
There's been more stakeholder support than we've ever seen before in an Everglades Restoration Project.
There's broader support, consensus. I mean, it's really mind-blowing.
So I really want to make sure that that gets highlighted because it should certainly be commended.
I'm not even going to give into the temptation to list all the ecological benefits, although it's difficult for me to do that.
But I want to focus on a couple of things.
What everyone has been asking for today is for a July date to move forward because it
will preserve the opportunity for us to continue to working together, resolving the remaining
issues.
There was a slide up on this PowerPoint presentation that highlighted the legal mandates that
would stop implementation.
We would not turn on this project and build this project if we had not squared away
the water quality concerns, and I know folks are working on that, but I want to really
separate this idea between authorization and implementation, because right now we're not
there yet.
We have that stopped in place in the future, so this is not going to create a problem
that would put the water management district on the hook for water quality violations.
Secondly, the fiscal reality.
I love knowing where my money's coming from when I'm getting ready to spend
a bill, but we're not spending a bill yet.
We're getting authorization so that we can continue to sort of advance this.
This is not like a resolution to litigation, where you are on the hook for $7 million annually
if that money is not available.
We are committed to helping identify the money through both state and federal partners,
but we can't do that unless we get this advanced forward.
I heard that staff feels that their direction is to resolve all conditions to their
satisfaction before they bring it back to you.
I would ask that you redirect them and ask for staff to bring it back to you in July
so that you can determine whether or not the conditions have been met to your satisfaction
and advance this.
The reality is the Everglades can't wait and Congress is not going to.
Thank you for your comments.
Miranda Sasali, followed by Angela Steiner.
Angela Steiner.
And then we'll take Raphael Tiberon.
Good morning.
My name is Angela Steiner and my address is 912 Ortega Avenue,
Coral Gables, Florida. I'm a Yale graduate student and I'm studying
environmental policy, but I'm here to speak to you today as a Miami-Dade County
resident since 1983. And I want to thank you for your support of CEP and express
my wishes for pushing forward for July. I wanted to shed a more personal
experience, my personal experience as a resident here and not reiterate what
of the ecological reasons everyone else has already gone into.
The Everglades has had a profound impact on my life.
My first tangible memories of the environment
are of going to the Everglades with my family,
going canoeing, hiking, and even on airboat rides.
The Everglades also had a profound impact on my career
as now I am pursuing environmental policy.
What is this concerning, though, is that through the years
I have noticed there is a diminished abundance of wildlife in the Everglades, all of the
waiting birds that I used to look at as a child.
I've noticed that they have decreased markedly.
And this is an indication of the ecosystem's degradation.
Therefore, I express my wishes that you move forward in July once again.
Thank you.
Thank you for your comments.
Good
morning.
Good morning.
My name is Rafael Chubran from Lake Worth, Florida.
My qualifications to attend this meeting are that I've read this book, The Swamp, I read
National Geographic, Water Issue, I read Hunter Ipsen's Enemy of the People play in
high school, and I have a very distinct memory of shedding off the train in 1955 after an
all-nighter from Philadelphia, and the first two things I noticed were palm trees and the
aroma wafted off of Lake Worth Lagoon at the hotel we were staying at across from
I'm grateful that in the interim someone maybe connected with this board has cured that problem
and there is no longer open sewage running into Lake Worth Lagoon.
But we have, that was a small example of what the Everglades problem is, I think.
I think too much of the wrong stuff is going in the wrong place.
I'm confident that when you, members of the board, talk to your grandchildren someday at the end of this century, maybe,
you'll be able to look back and say, at a critical point with the environment of Florida,
We took this issue very seriously. We dissected it. We read the reports. We almost went blind reading those tables.
And in the end, we made the best human decision possible for the Everglades.
And we did not count out any special interests in short-term, short-sighted people who were thinking about themselves
rather than the general welfare that we all want for the country in the future.
Thank you.
Thank you very much for your comments.
Mr. Allman.
Hi, Jonathan Allman, CR Club, Everglades representative here in Miami.
I wanted to thank you very much for having this meeting here on Key to Skaen.
And I also want to thank you for your consideration for holding a vote in July.
It's extremely important to our future.
And I also want to thank the people who came out here, the Floridians and especially the
Kibis Gain residents who came out to this meeting.
They didn't have to, but they felt strongly about this subject and they hope that Florida
comes through for them.
This is going to be the hundredth anniversary of the Miami Canal this year, 1913.
it was constructed. In 1962, the L-67A canal was constructed.
So that's a little bit more than 50 years. In 1966, the L-67C was constructed.
These were decisions that were made to disastrous effects,
and they're decisions that we're all paying for today.
But you have an opportunity now to right these wrongs,
and you have an opportunity to make the Everglades whole again.
And this is something that will pay off for future generations.
I encourage you to vote in July,
because you know that that is the deadline that we have
to be the local sponsor for this project.
And once again, make the glaze whole. Please don't let Florida down. Thank you.
Thank you.
Mr. Winnipole, followed by Miranda Stisali.
Hi, I'm Spencer Winnipole. I'll keep it short. I think you guys kind of know how the public feels.
I grew up in South Florida fishing and recreating in the Everglades.
I think everyone in front of me realizes its importance.
And for that reason, I ask that STEP be approved come July. Thank you.
Thank you for your brevity and thanks for coming out to express your opinion.
Welcome.
Good morning.
My name is Miranda Stessoli.
I am a resident here in Key to Stain.
And I've been listening to what everybody's been saying, especially all of you.
And it sounds like you're already ready to support this.
You're just waiting on them to come up with all of the details before you can support it.
So I'm just basically here to say that I support it, too.
And I wanted to thank everyone.
I'm like, the water supply and water is very important.
And I think what everybody in this room is doing
is really important.
And I'm very grateful for it.
I mean, because sitting here all day is just
like that woman said.
It's hard.
But I'm just very thankful and grateful.
For everybody in the room, so thank you and please support this when it does come.
Thank you very much.
That concludes our public comment.
Okay, that concludes the public comment.
I would like to mention also that in addition to what we've heard from the stakeholders today,
I'm sure that all the board members have received a huge amount of e-mail like I have
from stakeholders with their opinions regarding SEP.
and I just wanted to kind of publicly acknowledge the comment.
We missed one?
Hold on a second, Ernie.
Sam Van Leer.
We have one more public comment, Ernie.
Yes, sir.
Thank you so much for making a little more time for me.
I'm Sam Van Leer, president and founder of Urban Paradise Guild.
We are a Miami-based non-profit.
We have four coastal resilience projects ongoing
that served Biscayne Bay with three volunteer opportunities per week.
We invest thousands of hours in making the Bay a better place,
and I would like to thank you all for showing your leadership
in making Biscayne Bay a better place as well.
I really appreciate the fact that the Phase 1 Biscayne Bay coastal wetland projects
have shown so much promise,
and for the tests that have been ongoing that will help make better decisions in the future.
I'd like to say that the people who are in favor of the July approval for the sponsorship,
I totally support that. I concur with all the favorable comments that preceded me.
I'd like to add that the groundwater flows that provide the diffuse water flow into the Biscayne Bay Aquifer
or rather out of the Biscayne Bay aquifer are really important.
I think that in terms of working within the available water supply, it's a very economical
way of doing it, and I'd really appreciate it if you would reserve and protect that supply.
I also believe that this may help fight salt intrusion into our aquifer.
So once again, thank you very much for your leadership, and please become that local
sponsor.
Thank you for your comments.
Mr. Van Leer, you turn in a card for 37. Does this conclude your comment for 37? Okay, thank you.
Okay, Reagan, if we don't have any further comment, then we are going to move to agenda item 31 and ask Ernie Barnett to give us an update on modified water deliveries.
And Mr. Chairman, if I may, just one moment. There was one major point of clarification based on the public comments that we heard and some of the board comment.
And if you'll indulge me in one minute, I want to highlight a very important fact I
think would be important.
Sure, quickly.
I'll be very quick.
This is the central Everglades planning process, and I want to make it abundantly clear the
dates that we're talking about, and there's no disagreement between what the stakeholders
are saying and staff's view.
The next approval of being local sponsor and the draft PIR is that first red arrow.
And that's where we're at, leading up to the July timeline.
So that's our target.
And that's the important date that we're striving for.
And then that coordinated review process
goes through where the core process takes that draft plan
once the board has released it, and you
go through the coordinated review and public comments received.
And then the final PIR comes back to the board again.
So that's the October date.
We were never saying we've got up until October
to meet that important deadline, and I
want to make sure everybody in the room understood that.
Because based on the comments we were hearing,
It was obvious there was a lot of confusion.
And the bottom line is we're shooting
to toward the December chiefs report.
And thank you for that indulgence.
Okay, sir.
Mine waters.
I'm gonna turn it over to the core.
This is, since we're here in Miami-Dade,
we wanted to, this is one of the key fundamental projects
that we have to accomplish
in order for CEP to be successful.
And that's the sequencing on the implementation
and update on mine waters.
Thanks, and I think Ernie and I
They're going to tag team this a little bit.
The Modified Water Delivery Project was authorized in 1989,
and the Corps in the South Florida Water Management
District signed a project cooperation agreement in 1994.
And for this particular project, the Corps of Engineers
funds and constructs the project.
So it's 100% federal funding for construction
and for the land.
And the Water Management District
takes over those facilities, and 75% of the O&M operations
cost is reimbursed by the federal government for this project.
We amended that original PCA in July of 2001, and again in August of 2008,
to construct the eight-and-a-half-square mile area features of modwaters,
as well as the Tamiami Trail features, which are currently under construction today.
And the very important point about there's been some concern about what is modwaters
and what is the difference between central Everglades and modwaters.
And so it's important to note here, here shows you the general vicinity of the modwaters project
along Tamiami Trail here into the south.
And what's most important about what modified water delivery projects does is it redistributes
the current water that flows into Everglades National Park.
It redistributes from most of the water coming through the S-12s on the west and redistributes
that flow to the eastern segment to restore northeast shark of Verslew.
And part of this authorization was acquiring that 109,000 acres to increase the park.
And so the purpose of this project is to redistribute the flow and how it gets to the park and the existing flow.
And so it includes the Tamiami Trail Bridge and raising the roadway along this stretch of Tamiami Trail.
It includes an S-356 pump station that as we increase flow out of 3A into Northeast Shark River Slough,
you're going to increase seepage to the east, and we need to have seepage management to deal with that.
And the 356 pump station is that facility to do that.
And lastly, the 8.5 square mile area flood mitigation project that there's a community
that was west of the protective levee and there's the project features there provide
a pump station that allows to collect the additional seepage again that would come
in from increase in close to the northeast shark of a slew and that pumps that pump
station pumps into the C111 South Day project which is a core water management district
funded project.
I think Tommy Straub pointed out today, it's on the ground working today.
Lots of these features and pumps are online.
There's the tension area.
There is one more piece that needs to be completed and that's connecting the existing
detention areas up to the 8 1⁄2 square mile area so that pump station can pump
into that.
And so that's the purpose of the ModWaters.
Again, I mentioned that Tamiami Trail is under construction.
We'll complete the construction of that.
The bridge is opening and water is flowing under the bridge, but we need to raise
the other portions of the roadway to allow water stages in the L29 canal to be raised
up to eight and a half to be able to deliver the flows that were shifting to this portion
of the roadway.
Now the difference between modified water deliveries and then what the central everglades
do, and here you see the additional features that are included in the central everglades.
It provides an increase to this 3-3-3 outlet to deliver more water out of 3A than we're
getting under Maud waters and it also provides for a flowway where we can put a portion
of water conservation area 3B, degrade the L29 levee and create the L67C levee and flow
water through this portion to where the old remnant slews are in northeast Shark River
slew, removing the remaining portions of L-67 to have flow and further increase the volumes
of water we're putting into Everglades National Park. And again, that's what SEP does beyond
what Mondwater is doing. And to move more water into the park, you also need to ensure
that you're not going to overdrain water conservation area 3A. And that's why Central
Everglades includes the features to the north that take water that's currently going
to the estuaries, treats it, directs it south to ensure we're keeping, we want
to restore conditions in water conservation area 2 as part of Central Everglades.
And the other features of Central Everglades over mud waters, there's one feature here
that goes into the, puts water through into the remaining portions of water conservation
area 3B.
And we, there's a lot of concerns about the tree islands and the resources of water
conservation area 3B.
So we want to stop the continued degradation of this, um, peak soils in that area
and providing a means to do some rehydration in here
without getting water levels too deep
that may affect resources.
And so, of course, in bringing this additional water
into Northeast Shark River Slough,
we need to have additional seepage management.
And part of this, the Blue Stanley levee,
serves as a seepage management measure
by the water that we're gonna concentrate
and flowing into this portion
on through Everglades National Park
under an important part, I forgot to mention,
and the Tamiami Trail next steps, additional bridging along Tamiami Trail is required for
this to work. But we need to have additional seepage management and increase in the 356
pump station as well as seepage management along the L31 North through a seepage barrier.
So there's the difference between the physical features, mod waters, compared to central
Everglades. And what that results in is the geographic areas that get benefited
by the different projects are different. SEP is going to improve conditions within
water conservation area 3A, 3B, and all of Everglades National Park onto Florida Bay.
And Modified Water Deliveries Project does primarily its benefits, our south of Tamiami
Trail within Everglades National Park.
And this segregation of water conservation area into various zones, that's what we use
in central Everglades and calculating our habitat units, which I'm going to show
you next.
There are different habitats within the areas of water conservation area 3A in the
Park and it's divided into zones and we looked at specific performance metrics that we're
trying to achieve within those areas of all of Water Conservation Area 3 and in the Park.
And whereas the Tamiami Trail and the report that was done for that, it considered the
benefits of the physical features along Tamiami Trail, putting in the one-mile bridge and
raising the roadway, what benefits to connecting the system do you get into Northeast
sharp bruselou, instead of how it comes in today is through the S333 and goes delivered
through a series of culverts.
And so this is just further to reiterate where we expect that the benefits for central Everglades
go above and beyond South of Tamami Trail, which is included in the park.
And what you can see here, these are the different areas that will be benefited by
central Everglades.
The northern estuaries, 75% of the benefit to the estuaries is in the Colusa Hatchee
and 25% in the St. Lucie.
And then here's for the greater Everglades,
all those zones in the Everglades that I've just shown you.
You can see primarily,
a lot of the central Everglades benefits
are for what we're doing
and restoring Northern Water Conservation Area 3A.
So ModWaters provides benefits
primarily south of Tammany Trail and in the park
and SEP provides a much larger geographic area
of restoration of flows,
not only outside of Everglades National Park
because it does build on what ModWaters does and it increases the volumes of water that
you move through the park that get on the Florida Bay and increase the benefits of Florida
Bay and think, Ernie, you were going to cover this.
I had a question for you, Ken.
When you were talking about ModWaters and the connection portion of it that hasn't
completed yet, what's the timing on getting that complete and how much does that affect
the overall objectives of what ModWater is supposed to do.
And that is the exact next slide that Ernie was going to cover.
And be happy to stand back up here and get any questions after he goes through that for you.
Mr. Chairman, the next steps in order to the structural features that the core is determining
that are necessary to complete the actual construction of ModWater should be completed
by the end of the year.
That is the last remaining feature is the trail bridge and that's the core's determination.
this is the final feature needed.
The next steps to actually implement,
which there's two phases,
the construction and the operation maintenance,
we have the age old problem
before we can implement these changes and flows.
It's the recurring theme that we've talked about through SEP.
We have to make sure that we're not causing
a violation of appendix A.
We have to do an operational testing
of this structure, the S356 structure,
which is designed to return seepage flow back
and increase flow through the bridge
and into northeast Shark River Slough, we have what's called the S3273 test, which is
there's a trigger here that when stages reach a certain height, we want to make sure we're
not causing water quality problems or flooding the resident state and our square mile area.
So we're hopeful and we think SEPT has been a great sort of impetus to get resolution
of some relief on the appendix A sort of discussion that this needs to change in
in order to implement these features.
And once that test is done,
and we can demonstrate that operating the S-356,
an operational schedule can be developed,
and that operational schedule for the S-356
will allow the additional benefits to accrue.
The other key thing that we need to do
is Kim mentioned is Finish Contract 8,
which is the very northernmost construction feature
of the C-111 South Day project,
which creates a hydrologic variant
redistributed flows into Taylor Sloan,
and keeps good clean water in the Everglades.
That contract date needs to be moved forward
once we can resolve some cost share
and contractual issues with the Army Corps of Engineers
on the ability for contract date to go forward.
And then lastly, once all that is done and in place,
we'll have to develop a combined operational plan
for both ModWaters and the C-11 South Day Project
to operate in unison.
So those are the sequential steps
that need to take place in order for us to completely resolve and fully
implement the operational schedules for the model water project to be fully implemented.
Do we have some idea on schedule? Is that six months, two years, three years?
The key, we've had some very fruitful discussions with the South Atlantic Division of the Army Corps
on how to handle contract eight.
That is critical to this project being completed.
That really involves a very detailed discussion, which I know we don't have time for, but how to
manage our cost share credits on real estate and those types of things. My sense in talking
to Colonel Jackson, and all the way up the vertical chain on the core side, they are
highly motivated to resolve this, and it really involves making sure we get the proper
crediting for all of the prior expenditures for real estate that we've made in previous
issues in order for the C-111 South Day project to be completed.
But we owe you a better timeline, so we'll have staff develop sort of a reasonable timeline
working with the Corps and report that back to you.
But it does lead to sort of our summary point is that you've got to complete mod waters
and we've got to complete it sooner the better because immediate benefits are derived
from implementing the project.
In fact, it is a precursor by law, and more than 2,000, the Mod Waters Project has to
be completed prior to certain elements, including elements that are included in SEF go forward.
Most notable, the decompartmentalization of the water conservation areas, Mod Waters needs
to be completed prior to that.
And there are significant benefits to the park northeast, Shark River Slough, Mod Waters
as a standalone project will deliver a significant amount of more flow that's desperately
needed into the historic deeper part of the Everglades, and so the two projects in closing
are mutually beneficial to the Everglades National Park, and then SEP brings in the
additional features to improvements to water conservation aid 3A, 3B, and it is very, very
important for SEP to rely on the completion of mud waters to be in place for it to
but she was at the levels.
Okay, any board questions, Mr. Murray?
I've got some questions for Kim, if you wouldn't mind,
because I like her answers better than Ernie's.
We're talking about moving water into the park.
I understand that currently we move between 140
and 170,000 acre feet per year into the park.
You told me, or I learned from our briefing,
that when mod waters is complete,
we'd move about 340,000 acre feet per year
into the park. And if we did sep and it was complete, we moved 760,000 acre-feet per gear
into the park.
That's what the analysis from those two efforts, what the analysis that was done for Maud
Waters, Tammy, I'm sure I'll report on what we've done in Central Everglades. Those are
the numbers.
So if we complete the last leg of Maud Waters, which is the CA project, or if the
Corps does, then we'd be able to move approximately half of the water that sep
would move into the park and we could do that for how much money I've heard 20
million 30 million set sound reasonable to you for the remaining c111 now for
c8 contract contract a c111 piece yeah and that's around 20 30 million so if I
If we stand it correctly for 20 or 30 million, just a mere pittance, we could be getting half
of the water for SEP, and that could be done in a hurry, probably in a year or two.
But there's a lot of investment, and that's getting the benefits of the investments both
our agencies have made to date on mudwaters, and there's been 400 million spent on mudwaters
and another 300 and something already spent on sew and 11.
So, yes, we're very interested in getting through this hurdle and getting the flow under
Mondwaters because it is a significant benefit.
Although Mondwaters has been stagnant since 2009.
I wouldn't say that.
I think we've got construction on that bridge going on out there today, and it's expected
to be done in 2014, 2013, sorry.
Thank you, sir.
But you are, your agency is looking forward to a resolution of the situation.
Absolutely.
And like I said, we've both invested a lot already in getting there.
So we have an invested interest to get that done and get it resolved.
Okay.
And I understand for money's presentation that in order to get SEP done, that's a precursor.
That's a condition that has to be completed before SEP.
Yes.
There's the word of 2000 had language that you'd have to complete certain features
in mudwaters before you started the decomp piece of what we've included in central
Everglades.
And so that's true.
Okay.
Thank you.
And then lastly, I understand that the remaining bridging of the Tamiami Trail is about, what,
five miles?
That total is 5.5 additional miles of bridging.
It has to be done so that the 760,000 acre-feet per year that we're anticipating under SEP
would be conditioned on that project being completed as well.
We need to have the Tamiami Trail next steps work done to allow us to raise
water levels in the Tamiami Trail canal to deliver that additional water, yes.
Where does that project stand?
I'm, DOI is not, I'm not seeing a DOI representative, but, oh, Joan.
It hasn't been working on long water, but I believe that.
Well, please speak to that microphone.
Joan Lawrence, United States Department of the Interior.
And as I look around, I don't see anyone from Everglades National Park here.
But it's my understanding that we have an authorization.
It's a matter of how much do we go forward with and I think 5.5 is what we've been talking
about.
And the Department of the Interior has done a major part of funding for modified water
deliveries already.
So we don't have the, I mean, I know that they've gotten approval for 30 million in
the budget and they are currently working on a design bill contract for the first
2.7 miles that goes along with the Blue Shanty flowway of Central Everglades. So they have
got funding in design bills. They're working on a design bill contract.
Any other questions for Kim or Ernie? A question for Ernie. When do you anticipate we can
start testing? I know you had mentioned that we can't even test it yet until we get
some type of waiver, I guess, to allow us to put water into there.
Yeah, as I mentioned, the deliberations that Mr. Munson has been working on with the Secretary
of the Army involved this exact same issue.
This just is an earlier need to have it resolved.
It sounds like we're very close.
The ability to have some – and what it boils down to is as we redistribute flows
into the park, there's an understanding that Appendix A is going to change.
And as discussions have already started with the TOC, there's a special working
group working for.
I think the CEP discussion has been a great motivator for resolving this issue, and I think
the ability to do the testing will come, should break loose right after we reach agreement
on the water quality language for the CEP plan.
How long does it take the TOC to act, and should some of these emails be directed to
the TOC?
I've never seen Ernie speechless before, this is good.
I would not encourage that, only because the TSC is really a technical body that's reviewing
technical data.
These are policy decisions that are much better left to the South Stair group to handle.
Any other questions for Ernie or the court?
I think we have a couple of public comments on mud, water.
Yes, Mr. Chair.
We have two public comments, Michael Collins, followed by Martha Musgrove.
Mr. Collins, good afternoon.
Can I get, Ernie, can you kick this back a couple?
Just I think two back.
Can you go from the other end?
Stop right there, thank you.
I worked with the park staff, then Michael,
Superintendent Mike Finley, and Danny Fassell
and his staff on the mod waters legislation
in the late 80s and was pretty much unsuccessful in talking then superintendent into including
more components for Florida Bay. Representing that, as I do now, Florida Keys Fishing Guides
Association, you know, we were interested in Florida Bay, but we understood and supported
mod waters even though it didn't really solve our problems. The problem I've got
That today is Florida Bay, you know, to the degree that the district can do their work,
we built the frog pond detention area.
The water to deal with the salinities in Florida Bay and the restoration of those salinity
regimes was in the A1 reservoir.
That was the plan.
That water is no longer going to be available.
I've still got a problem, and I've brought this up a couple of times.
I've met with staff with the idea that we have a whole bunch of habitat units attached
to SEPP in Florida Bay.
Nobody has yet explained to me.
Going back 24 years ago, I understood full well, Tamiami Trail restored Northeast Shark
River Slope.
And now I'm being told that basically that project that's at interfaces with SEPP
now solves Florida Bay's problems.
I don't want Florida Bay included in the benefits of SEP unless somebody can explain to me how Florida Bay is benefiting.
Nobody's done that yet.
I understand full well how water gets there, and the only way water is going to get into Florida Bay through this system,
whether you put water at Tamiami Trail or not, is out of a pump somewhere way south.
We can do that today.
We don't need SEP to start those pumps running, what we need is water.
So if we're not going to build water storage, I don't understand where the benefit is.
If you can run the pump today, that seems like a pre-existing situation, pre-project condition.
I've brought this up a couple of times.
I would very, very strongly recommend that somebody on the staff either explain to me the benefits of Florida Bay
or get it out of the benefits that are being listed for SEP.
I've asked that before, nothing's happened.
I would ask you guys to support me in requesting that somebody give that to me.
Thank you.
All right, thank you, Mike and Ernie, if you can follow up with me on that.
Ms. Musgrove, welcome back.
Martha Musgrove, Florida Wildlife Federation.
And I am so glad that you have finally made the tie between the SEP project and
the ModWaters project.
And I'm even greater thrilled that ModWaters will be complete this year because that was
one that when I was a young and vigorous editorial writer, we worked very hard to get in and to
get the frog pond detention areas, et cetera.
I think that the completion of ModWaters helps a lot with the date, South Day's
see the whole and the understanding of how the flow of water will go.
So I don't want you to take your attention off of my water,
because you're very close to completing something.
And it will be very beneficial, not only to Everglades National Park,
but also the very parts of Florida Bay that the water coming out of the C111
Spreader canal should help with this will entity levels and thank you for that
You're you're taking you're going to get to take the vows of something like four previous sports
Thank You Martha I know further additional public comment
Then we're going to go ahead. It's it's
12.20 we're going to break for lunch. We're going to come back in a half an hour
and up next will be the land assessment process update. Thank you.
All right, we'll call the meeting back to order, and we are ready for item number 32 on
the agenda, and we'll look to rake hallmark for update on the land assessment process.
Right?
This afternoon I have two items for you. We'll begin with item 32, which is introduction
to the Everglades region, our last land assessment region of the five that we began
with back in January.
This region has 7 project areas and 27 assessment units. It is the largest
of the regions that by far it's larger than the other 4 units combined with 434,000 acres
to be assessed. The properties are located in Broward, Hendry, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach
counties.
There are of the seven areas that were talked about, the flow
equalization basins take up about 35,000 acres. These areas were needed to better
manage water and nutrient flow into the Everglades. They include the C139 NX,
the A1 and A2 basins. The stormwater treatment areas are located primarily in
in Henry and Palm Beach counties.
We have five different STAs, including one east, one west,
two, three, three, four, and five, six. There is a small out parcel in part of one west,
which we'll look at as we go through the process.
The water conservation areas are
For the largest part of this assessment, there's almost 240,000 acres.
In this total footprint of the water conservation areas, it's almost 850,000 acres.
But the district has ownership of the 240,000, which comprises about 28% of the total area
of these projects.
The northern part of the WCA's entails a national wildlife refuge, which is managed
by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
The C-139 Annex contains approximately 15,000 acres of – part of it is citrus grove and
the anticipation is that this will be restored to wet prairie and scattered cypher stones.
There are a couple of island hammocks and many depression marshes and slew ways that
will be put back into their natural state.
The east coast buffer, the maps will show – have two slides that show the northern
and southern parts, total is 31,000 acres.
There are 10 assessment units within this area.
It entails three counties, Palm Beach, Broward,
and Miami-Dade.
These include properties that have a variety of functions
from seepage management, impoundments,
and restored wetlands.
Some areas are used for recreation,
and a few small areas are leased.
We have some parcels that need closer assessment,
not supported by the district's core mission.
The south gate wetlands total almost 37,400 and almost 3,500 acres
includes the southern glades which is west of US-1,
model lands which lie east of US-1,
and the Biscayne Bay coastal wetlands which overlaps the model lands.
There are three unassociated parcels in this assessment area
including the L-8 parcel, which is 8,700 acres, along the L-8 canal in Palm Beach County,
an 800-acre parcel along the west side of the Loxahatchee Wildlife Refuge,
and the Deer Fence parcel, which is about 500 acres located in Hendry County.
Our schedule of events for this assessment area includes primarily public meetings,
which will take place during the comment period, which is that meeting will be held in June 26th.
There's also a follow-up public meeting during the recommendation period on August 28th.
We'll bring this also back to the RAC on September 5th and the governing board on September 12th.
I do want to bring your attention to the second line from the bottom,
which is Public Recommendation Comment Period concluded, and we don't want that to be misrepresented.
It is the time just to keep on schedule that we take it off of the website for comments,
but of course, we accept comments from the public or our staff throughout this process
and as we move forward with the follow-up phases of this exercise.
And with that, ask if you have any comments or questions on the Region 5 Everglades region.
Region 5, any questions on the WAN's update?
If not, Reagan, are there any public comment on this item?
Thank you, Ray.
And you want to move to Agenda Item Number 33.
The next item I bring to you today is regarding the second of our regions.
and this one, we have some recommendations for a few other parcels.
This request, just to give you the sequence of events that we anticipate as we move forward,
include that we will look into opportunities for exchange or surplus of these few properties.
We'll follow the DEP guidelines, which asks us to first seek exchanges to obtain lands
needed to achieve the district's core mission, also to conduct sufficient investigations
of each property to ground truth the data regarding natural and cultural resources and
opportunities to receive equal or greater water resource protection and economic value.
Following all of our investigations and due diligence, we will come back to the board
with each one of these properties before any exchange or surplus action or donation.
But this will be just asking your permission to move forward with the due diligence and
the staff time to investigate each one of the parcels to make sure that what we are recommending,
coming back to you in the final will be the best use for this property or the best purpose
for those.
The summary of results for the Kissimmee Everglades area totaled over 161,000 acres.
96% of the acre just to remain in its current use based on our recommendation.
There are only eight parcels recommended for exchange surplus or donation.
Those include three properties in their entirety and five proposed for only partial disposition.
I'll go through those eight properties fairly quickly.
The first one is what we call the Tiger Lake parcel.
It's a 31.7 acre parcel located on the east side of Tiger Lake.
When we acquired the lands for the Kissimmee Chain Lakes effort, we, for the most part,
on this lake, we only acquired easements.
We did not acquire fee.
This was one of the few parcels where the owner would not sell us just an easement on the property
and insisted that we buy the whole thing.
There are some areas, small areas below the 54-foot contour line for the semi-chain restoration.
And those areas, we will retain a conservation flow adjustment to meet the requirements
of the course restoration of these areas.
and the water elevation changes that are anticipated.
This is located in Polk County and it has a small older house on it.
There's no one living in it, but it does in the areas that would be transferred in be unencumbered.
There's just a few small areas and the house lies in one of those.
The second are there are two parcels located on the west side of the Kissimmee River
in what is known as Pool D.
This is the area poorly e. I'm sorry in the area south of the southern part of the
the
semi-river and the canal that is not anticipated to be restored these fall sites were created when the channel was dug and
Right now they are not linked or associated to any other
district properties and we feel that the
The best purpose for these would be to go ahead and surplus those and use those funds
For efforts that better serve the district's core mission. The
third entire parcel is a
20-acre parcel located in St. Cloud in Osceola County
Parcel was initially acquired to build a field station
Move the old field station from Kissimmee over to St. Cloud as it turned out there was an eagle's nest on the property
He has not left. She has not left
They have not left, and so we never built the field station there.
We acquired another piece of property for that, and that has already been constructed.
The property really is not joining anything the district can use as far as its core purpose,
and we are recommending the sale of this property outright.
Of the partial dispositions, again with what we call the four E's parcel,
This is located on both the north. The parcels are located on the north and south side of 98.
We're proposing to surplus only the part on the south side.
There are about two-thirds of the property.
It lies within the 100-year flood plain.
And we would retain a conservation flow adjustment on that to go along with the restoration of the river.
The part of the property that lies north and adjacent to the river,
we would retain that in full.
The Pierce Locket estate also located on the south side of Highway
98 adjacent to the river was donated along with a larger parcel on the north side of
the highway to the district with some very stringent deed restrictions which required
that the district retain this property for educational and historic purposes. It has
an old schoolhouse on it that is in poor condition that dates back to about 1915.
It has a cemetery-owned site that dates back to the 1880s, and it has several structures
including the historic house of the Pierce Lockett estate, and the requirements were
that this be retained for educational and historical purposes as part of the de-transfer
as the district does not have the funding or the expertise to operate a historic site.
we are recommending that we try to transfer the property to an organization that is better
able and willing to honor the deed restrictions that go along with this property.
The Telix Marsh Parcel is a small 20-acre parcel located on the east side of the Simi
River in Pool E in Okeechobee County.
It is actually adjacent to an Okeechobee County Park, and Okeechobee County has
as a long-term management agreement with the district for this property.
We propose to seek to transfer the property to a Kachove County if they so are willing.
Otherwise, we'll exchange surplus or donate the property and retain a easement along the
floodplain areas to protect those areas of the property.
The bulk of it is uplands.
The next is four pieces somewhat interconnected by access easements in the Paradise Run and
north of the lake areas.
The two northern properties that you see are total about 2,600 acres, more or less.
We would retain ownership of lands within the river flood plains plus adequate buffer
and benefit land management operations in these areas too and ensure.
That wherever possible, we can allow for public access and protect the properties.
We would seek to exchange or surplus the southern lands which are away from any of the floodplain
areas and utilize that for either through exchange process to get lands that are better
suited and to replace lands or acquire lands within the north of the lake and the Paradise
area, if at all possible.
The last of the eight parcels is what we call nub and slew. There's
an existing project you can see in the center of this that is where the white area is located.
This area is an existing STA that's been constructed and it's operational or almost
operational. The area in the northwest corner of the property has been restored to its
natural state and the area in the northeast is about 300 acres of pasture land that is
currently leased for cattle grazing.
That is one area that we would propose to seek an opportunity to exchange or surplus
that property and also about an 80 acre parcel in the bottom that's adjacent to Highway
710 that is not needed for the project and we would look into opportunities to
to transfer or exchange that property to someone who could better utilize it and benefit the
rest of our projects. Just a brief recap of our process. I just wanted to make it clear
that what we're asking for today is just to request that you all approve to conduct
additional exchange or surplus investigations, do more in-depth due diligence, including
in determining what the funding restrictions are and see how that would impact any transfer
of the properties to look at the land use and deed restrictions on these properties
to make sure that whatever is decided and brought back to you for a final decision
is the appropriate thing to do. We will do inquiries to other state and local government
interests first to make sure that there's no need for any of these properties or
portions to them, and then we would come back for final approval.
I did want to bring you up to date on also the rat comments, and we received a few comments
from that public meeting to retain several of the properties, especially some of the
properties along the Kissimmee River and the Chain of Lakes.
There were other comments for the most part that agreed with our recommendations to
to go ahead and move forward with further investigating each of these properties.
We had public meetings, two public meetings in this region, plus public comments, and overall
there was no significant objections from our staff, but we've considered all of those as
part of our recommendation coming to you today.
And with that, I'd like to ask the Governing Board to enact on this resolution and request
in your authorization to keep analyzing district options for the properties identified?
Thank you.
Thanks, Ray.
I just have a quick question.
Sure.
Just on the Pierce Locket parcel.
Why are we not, and maybe it's not possible to give it back to their heirs?
Because it was donated to the district.
I don't even know in what year for specific educational purposes.
And if it's too expensive or we can't do it, shouldn't we just re-deed it?
That would be one of the things that we would definitely look into.
I think that has been looked into before and then there was the active members of the family were not interested at that time.
But we will that's one of the first things that we would do is go back and see if there's any possibility that the family would be interested in taking it back over.
But up to this point, there hasn't been and that one is a pretty unique property and more than really kind of trying to sell it.
I think our mission right now is more trying to find a good home for it.
Oh, absolutely. This one, they're probably not a profit that, you know,
could take care of it and utilize it better than
the Water Management District.
That same parcel, Ray, how long have we had that?
I don't have the, let me see.
I might have it in front of me just a moment.
More than 20 years, yes. And I know it's been that long. Let me see.
Are there not-for-profits or historical entities that are interested in it that we know of?
Yes, we've had any number of government agencies that have looked into taking over the property,
including the county, Fish and Wildlife Conservation Service.
There's several non-profits who are currently interested in looking at it.
So we really want to do a lot of due diligence to make sure that if we transfer this,
it is being protected as the deed requires.
Well, they'll understand that they can't title it subdued to the dealership.
Absolutely.
But we want to get it to someone that can actually perform.
Right.
Yeah.
That's the resources they do it.
Mr. Petruanda.
Yes.
Ray, when you come back to us for final disposition, will there be an estimate of value on these
parcels?
Yes, we anticipate the steps will probably be that that's one of the things we will
need to do is, well, other than doing the due diligence, we will also go ahead
and acquire an appraisal, I think that'll be a minimum expense compared to what we're
going and trying to do with these properties for the most part.
We'll have that appraisal in hand when we come back to you, so you'll have all the
information and a very good idea if we did sell it or put it out for bid or whatever
what the minimum value would be to meet the statutes if it goes out for a bid process.
But we would have that information for you when we come back, including any environmental
or ecological information that we have or may need.
Thank you. Mr. Hutchcraft. On the Tiger Lake parcel, do you have an idea about what percentage
of that property would be encumbered by the flow adjustment? Just a general look at it,
it looks like it would be about 80, 75, 80% would be encumbered. Only small areas would
not be this. And they aren't even contiguous. They're one at the very southern edge and
one in the eastern, middle part of the eastern edge that would be uplands and
up for them to have highway access and be able to get in if they wanted to build a home.
And they would have access across the entire property to the lake.
Okay.
And then on the St. Cloud Field Station site, would that be free of any district restrictions
or are you looking at putting district restrictions on it?
No, we wouldn't put any district restrictions on it because there's really no significant
wetlands on that property.
and any protection of the ego would fall under other statutes.
I do think it's important to kind of point out that this is another step in the process.
And there's still substantial weighing of costs and benefits that need to occur.
And, you know, wow, I know there's some stakeholders that would love for the district to never sell any property.
I think we need to look at what our priorities are
and then what the values that these properties would generate and weigh that.
There's going to be circumstances where there's going to be property that has significant fair market value
and that if we can take that property that we're not getting much benefit out of,
convert that into real money and then identify real projects that now we can do
because of liquidating that parcel property,
then that's a win-win for everybody and that helps us to accomplish our goals.
There's other circumstances where the market value, once you put on the easements and the
protections and you look at the tiny pieces that are left over that we might say, you
know what, the benefit is just not there.
So this is a step in the process, this isn't the end of the process and there is opportunity
for more public input, but I think that there could be some, I think, exciting
opportunities to say, hey, we can do some stuff that we don't have money to do
right now.
So I thank Ray and the staff for doing a good job of drilling down on these, and I know it's a tremendous undertaking when you do it, you know, on all the different regions, and then you come back with, you know, 4% of the properties in this region.
And I really look forward to finding out what are the options, you know, and what are the values and what can we do with those dollars. And so I'm intrigued by what the next round of information will bring.
Any other board comment, Mr. Powers?
Just an add on thank you, Mr. Chair. Yeah, Ray, I really, you're going about this the
right way. I've been fully supportive of including an appraisal, as you've suggested, in all of
that. So we're going to have current market data as this board goes about making a decision
on these properties. Thank you.
Ray, as part of your report, do you include the overhead that each of these parcels
cost us to maintain each year?
We anticipate going through that process. We know what it costs us to acquire.
we know what it costs us to maintain on an ongoing basis, and that'll be part of our decision
to come back to you.
Anybody
else?
Okay, so we have a public comment.
We have two public comments.
Mr. Eric Draper, followed by Drew Martin.
Welcome
back.
Good afternoon.
Thank you very much.
It's an interesting listening discussion.
My organization is a property owner.
We have extensive holdings throughout the state of Ford.
I know the trials of having land that you don't necessarily want and trying
to take care of it.
land that you really do want to take care of.
I'm going to ask you today to just consider altering this resolution, some to make it more
consistent with what it seems to be, the express activities that Ray was talking about in
the presentation itself.
The resolution focuses on the word disposal, which has a very specific meaning, and even
Even though there's the intention of bringing this back, specific items back to the governing
board, I would ask that you maybe phrase this or give staff direction other than just considering
disposal.
Let me tell you why I think you ought to look at something other than just the idea
of disposal.
First of all, I just want to say that you are governed at least on some of these lands
by both statues 373.089 and an article 10 of the Constitution that put determinations
you have to have on disposable land.
And so some of these projects actually, some of these lands do in fact have significant
wildlife values.
And by the way, I should say that this is not our first time commenting on this.
My colleague Charles Lee has been at the public hearings and our members have submitted
extensive comments through the process that the water management district has gone through with.
I also want to pull back and say just one of the things I was looking through the agenda item.
I want to make a note of this point, which you're starting out with the Cassini watershed.
This is, you know, the Northern Everglades is overdue for some love and attention by the
governing board and the water management district.
Thank you for acknowledging that, Mr. Executive Director.
Anyway, we would like you to consider these projects also in the context of what you can
do for the Northern Epiculate.
So I'll just point out that a number of these have wildlife values.
Some of them also have potential for recreational values, and even though that's not the focus,
particularly under Governor Scott, and I know we changed a little bit the focus of the water management districts,
the focus less on recreational values, but you do have a lot of land, and part of
your charge is to provide some recreational opportunities. You've done a great job of restoring
the Kissimmee River, and some of these lands along the Kissimmee River might
just be ideal for just small-scale recreational
activities. I just got to see this film about the thousand miles and
a hundred days of people hiking and canoeing all the way up the wildlife
like corridor and the camping they did along the Kissimmee River was just inspiring.
So make sure the staff consider that.
All that goes to say that some of these big pieces, the 6,000 acres or so,
the Paradise Run piece, consider it on that.
Those pieces probably aren't appropriate where they are right now, but use them,
leverage those to help get something done with the Kissimmee River restoration.
There's still more that could be done there, and you could kind of swap those out or use
them for some kind of distributed water management types of activities that will produce long-term
conservation benefits.
I do appreciate your attention on this.
I would encourage you to maybe take a hard look at the resolution and see whether or
maybe you want to express it in a slightly different way.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
And I'll just note that I'm receptive to tweaking the language to provide the
flexibility in the resolution.
We'll address that when it comes up.
Next, public comment.
I would just say that, you know, I appreciate the fact that, you know, there may be parcels
that you part with.
I think it's important to maintain them as they're being used so that if you transfer
them on to another user or a landowner that they're not going to totally change the
way the parcel is being used.
For instance, the schoolhouse.
I'm not as confident, I know you stated in the parcel that had the eagles nest.
You said, well, fish and wildlife would take care of that.
But I'm not as confident that they would do as good a job as the South Florida Water Management District
and that concerns me because I have seen cases where they have allowed people to build right up next to eagle nests.
And, you know, eagles, they need a little more space than just, you know, maybe what the rules permit.
it. So I also feel that, you know, you talk about the cost to overhead to hold these lands.
There's also a cost. If you transfer the lands to another owner, if they build on it and
you have to provide flood protection, that's a cost too. So it's not, I don't think, you
know, in the case, and I think as the Chair stated that in many cases, I believe it's
the chair, but someone stated there's many cases that you're not going to really...
Receive that much income out of this, and so I think it makes sense, and I would agree with Eric Draper's comments that the focus should not be just on disposal, but the best use of the lands. Thank you.
Thank you, Drew. No further public comment, then do we have a motion on the resolution? Mr. Oskar?
I'd make a motion that, in recognition of Ray's hard work, that 4% of the lands in the
Katsumi Okajobi region are not deemed to be part of the critical core purpose, and that
we authorize STAC to take the, to analyze available options, to partner, repurpose,
trade, donate, or sale those lands.
And part of that report that comes back, we'd like to take a look at the cost and
the revenue options and operating and maintenance that we're currently paying.
Okay, so let me just make sure that I understand what the motion is because we have a proposed resolution in front of us.
And if
the motion, if the intent of the motion is to adopt the resolution with some adjustment to the language, let's be specific.
And perhaps what we could do is consider, it says the resolution of the governing board
of the South Florida Water Management District directing staff to move forward to analyze
options, instead of just saying for disposal, we could say to analyze options, including
but not limited to disposal.
I just listed a number we can add.
I said partner repurposed trade, donate, sale, sell.
About for disposal or other use.
You could just leave it at options, and that way you don't have to specify, and it could be open to what we choose to do.
You can just say options of land interest, and then that way we're, I think, covered.
Okay, well, I'll defer to the motion maker and then to our general counsel.
Whenever the general counsel stands up, that's what you said.
I just want to clarify real quickly because what you're looking at on the screen of course
is the title to the resolution.
The body of the resolution itself does have a paragraph that further elaborates what the
resolution itself does and it talks about, it does use a term disposal but then it says
which recommendations may include and it lists several bullets and those bullets
right now include conveying to a government entity upon terms and conditions approved
by the board, it includes conveying as part of an exchange transaction and then
And it also includes the third bullet, which is offering for the public bid.
All three of those, though, of course, just to be clear, do involve the conveyance of
title at some point in the future.
They don't involve reassessment of whether we hold it and manage it differently, et cetera.
So I just want to make it clear that we use the term disposal, but I think it's really
conveyance because the three bullets that follow all would ultimately involve
a conveyance.
Okay, but Caroline, if we're going to analyze whether or not to convey something,
If that's what it says, to analyze the options for conveyance, if you analyze it and determine
that the fair market value is not sufficient to justify conveying it, then you wouldn't
do it.
That's right.
Absolutely.
If we could change the title of the resolution to at least say including but not limited
to disposal, I would feel more comfortable.
Including but not limited to.
Absolutely.
We can do that.
So I'm fine with that.
So there's a motion, is there a second?
Second.
There's a bunch of seconds.
Discussion on the resolution.
Who's seconded?
Mr. Sergeant.
None.
Then all those in favor?
Aye.
Opposed?
No.
Motion carries.
Thank you, Ray.
Raise your hand.
Anybody?
Alright.
Okay, on number 34, fiscal year 14 budget update.
Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and members of the board.
I'm here today to provide you an update, a status report
on where we are in development of our fiscal year 2014 budget.
This report this year at this time,
We've done one every year in the run-up to July when we will ask the governing board to
adopt millage rates that we would then certify to each of the county property praisers for
inclusion on the truth in millage proposed property tax notices.
This is a little different than what we've done in previous years by virtue of the
fact of changes in the statutory process that have been implemented for the first
time this year, whereby we wrote and submitted a report to the legislature for consideration
of a preliminary budget back on January 15th of this year.
So what I'd like to do today is review the preliminary FY14 budget that we submitted
in Tallahassee very quickly, take you through the update of that budget as it stands here
now in June, look at some of the key projects, we've got a couple outstanding issues that
I want to discuss briefly, and then the next steps in taking this process then through
the remainder of the budget development process.
So very quickly, in December of last year we presented the preliminary FY 14 budget
that staff drafted to the governing board and in fact submitted that as I mentioned
on January the 15th to the legislature for their review presented to the
legislature and the legislative staff during the January-February timeframe in
the run-up just before the legislative session whereby their process is
geared towards comments being due back to each Water Management District by
March the 1st, you know, at the very beginning of the legislative session.
In fact, we did not receive any comments from the legislature or legislative staff.
And so the outcome of that process really stood as it was submitted, and we've continued
to work on that since March.
So the preliminary budget, as we submitted it, was about $589 million.
dollars, it contemplated about $271.1 million in ad valorem taxes, and the key assumption
behind that was levying of the rollback millage rate that would generate the same baseline
revenue as we have this fiscal year, about $268.1 million, plus the rollback millage
rate, not a tax increase, but it allows you to take advantage of new construction value
that's brought on to the tax roll. And we've made an estimate based on what the state economists
work has done earlier in this calendar year of just over 1% new construction value, which
brings in an additional $3 million. So those are the key assumptions behind that
$271.1 million of Advolorum tax revenue estimated.
That comprises about 46% of our anticipated sources.
The second largest source budgeted Advolorum fund balances of about $156.5 million or 26%
state revenue sources of about $65.5 million or about 11%.
Those are our three largest contemplated revenue sources comprised about 83% of estimated revenues.
Then when you combine non-Avalorum fund balances fees and others and our COP balances,
those five pieces collectively total about 97% of anticipated revenue.
On the expense side of the budget, as has been the case the last several years,
The two largest components of the budget restoration, 46%, operations and maintenance, about 32% at
$186.9 million, comprises almost 80% of estimated expenditures.
I'd like to give you a little update on those numbers now, now that we've worked them
for several more months.
The current tentative budget comes in at about $620.7 million.
It's a $31 million increase, largely driven by the results of the legislative session,
some of the additional state funding that's been made available, and I'll go over that
a little bit more in a minute.
Proportion-wise, the three largest sources I mentioned comprise the same percentage
of the budget.
At the bottom, you see percentage-wise is a little bit lower, but the number is
the same, again, contemplating the rollback millage rate plus new construction.
We've made some changes, and I'll discuss them again in a minute, on budgeted Avalorum
fund balances, 144.3 million or 23%.
State sources have increased significantly, as I mentioned, up to a total of over $100
million, with 16%.
Again, proportionally, those three sources comprise 83% of anticipated revenues.
and then with our non-advalorem, fund balances fees, other, and our certificates of participation prior to your balances.
Those sources in total comprise 98% of anticipated revenue.
We'll talk a little bit about some of the revenue adjustments.
You see the first two lines, we've anticipated no change from January to June.
The sources in the green are all the state revenue sources.
You see, we're planning to receive an additional $4 million from the Water Management Alliance
Trust Fund.
That corresponds to the legislative appropriation for the Corbett-Levy retrofit project, Sabre
River Glades Trust Fund.
In January, we incorporated the Governor's proposed budget of $47 million.
What came out of the legislative session was $70 million.
million. When you back off the 3 million that goes to the State Department of Agriculture
that leaves 67 million, that we plan to appropriate an increase of $20 million. We have some
save rubber blades prior year balances that we have re-budgeted, 5.9 million. 2.4 million
more appropriated by the Legislature and Alligator, I told money. Some local projects
that will, the money will flow through the district for the Loxahatchee River
Preservation Initiative and some additional available prior year fund
balances from state sources. All told, an estimated increase of over 35
million in additional state sources. Below that we've made some updates to
our estimates for Army Corps reimbursements primarily for some of the
South Dade operational pump stations that you heard about earlier today.
We've made some change in our investment income estimates because we're coming in a little
bit short this year.
We wanted to reduce those down.
The Advolorant Balances, due to re-sequencing a couple of projects that we had budgeted
in January and their totality and really going back to a cash flow on a couple
things results in shifting some Avalon fund balance out into the future year of our spend
down plan.
So that's what comprises that $12 million reduction.
An increase in non-Avalon balances, fees, and others.
We have some money, and I'll talk about it again in a minute when we get to future
issues that we have incorporated here as part of trying to address increased cost
of benefits and insurance claims.
We have an anticipated grant from DEP for a Dispersed Water Management Project.
That's really what comprises that increase.
And then a couple of other minor changes, all told resulting in an increase
in the anticipated revenue sources of $31.7 million.
Just wanted to show the trend in abnormal tax revenue.
You see the last three years we've been relatively flat going in FY 12 from 270.7 to a little
bit lower in 13 and then again anticipating $3 million of new construction in 14.
Moving to the expenditure budget, really again the same kind of proportions, $291 million
for restoration projects. That's restoration strategies, all the water
quality projects, some of the SIRP projects that we've gotten the state
funding for. All told, almost 50% of the anticipated expenditures, operations
and maintenance, another 31%. Those two components again comprise the biggest
portion of our expenditure budget at almost 80%, with the remaining 20 to
22% outlined in the other pie slices.
Just going to the same kind of view
as I went through on the revenues, on the expenditure side.
You see a jump up in restoration.
It's really driven by the state funding
that's become available for cert projects.
I mentioned the $4 million for the Corbett levy,
really driving the operations and maintenance number.
Some tweaking to cash flow on a couple
with different mitigation projects under our land management function,
resulting in a slight decrease for FY 14.
And as part of the reallocation of staff amongst our expense program categories,
we've had some change in regulatory, modeling, and scientific support.
Mission support. The change in water supply is really reflective of the latest allocations
from the Big Cypress Basin Board and some additional funding that they have wanted to put into alternative
water supply projects.
In terms of staffing, we have eliminated four positions as part
of balance in this budget, three in support functions, one within the Office of Council.
So that's where we stand today.
Just some of the other key expenditure items.
We spent a good bit of time putting together projections of new works.
And when you look at the FY14 piece, we're looking at an increase of about $2.2 million for new works.
primary among those being the start of the merit pump station and then during
the summer next summer the start of operations for the faculty union pump
station within Picky and Strand and then some cost changes in a couple of
other projects that we brought on over the last few years. The other big cost
change were the changes in FRS cost. We had included an estimated cost
increase of $1.7 million in our January submission based on what the legislature passed last
session. Now that has been updated with the results of this legislative session and it's
an incremental increase of about $300,000. And so we have covered all that.
Planned uses of the Sabre-Uberglades appropriations, 32 million for restoration strategies, the
additional 35 million going primarily.
Yes, sir.
Real quick.
The bottom of the slide says reduced unfunded actuarially liability, 19.3 billion.
The unfunded actuarial liability within FRS has been going up over time as the investments
that they've made have garnered less kind of return?
That's the total.
That's not our portion.
No, that's the total.
That's the total for the Florida retirement system.
And do you know our portion of that?
No, I do not, sir.
We're one of many participators in the FRS.
OK.
Really, the additional appropriations
outside of restoration strategies,
and Tom really mentioned this.
Ponteets really mentioned this yesterday,
trying to maximize cost-crediting for projects that have been authorized,
have been funded and are going forward.
So we've tied that to C-44 reservoir, stormwater treatment area, as well as picking strand.
And then the right-hand column, as I mentioned, we had some re-budgeted balances,
keeping funds within the restoration strategies, cash flow for LH.
And then you see Calusa Hatchee, there's an old appropriation that's really a water quality
Saver Everglades appropriation that's a kind of a state district, local government program.
And then the C-43 water quality BOMA project,
all told, planned appropriations from Saver
Everglades at almost $75 million.
Just
a couple of quick highlights, and I know Tommy hit some of these when he was talking
about some of the O&M capital program projects within Miami-Dade County.
Continuing the C4 canal improvement projects, just over $2 million.
Doing some additional canal bank refurbishment on C100A in South Dade County, $1.6 million.
of continuing to work on the design and starting some of the components of construction for
S5A, you know, our single biggest pump station. That'll be a multi-year, multi-million dollar
project. And then I just highlighted a couple of the other ones that are significant in
terms of cost. A contract that came to you a few months ago for the trash rakes
on the north shore of Lake Okeechobee, continuing to fund that construction contract, and then
starting the Hillsborough Canal Bank Stabilization Project, and some of the construction that's
gone that will go on there to repair the banks on the Hillsborough, you know, that
there has been significant local outreach already done in that regard.
For restoration specifically, we've got about $100 million budgeted for restoration strategies
projects. C-44, as I mentioned, benefiting from some additional Saviour Overglides Trust
Fund money, a $28 million. Piki-Yoon, at about $15 million. Kalusa Hachi, $8.6 million. Dispersed
Water Management, and I know you'll be getting an update on that in the following item.
12.3 million, C111 South Dade, the Corbett levy as I mentioned.
And then in terms of our spend down plan, this is something we've done for the last couple of years,
taking a look at the cash balances that we have available and trying to allocate those out over time
as part of a plan to spend down those fund balances.
The updated spend down plan for FY14 through 17, that comprises a four-year period,
$413 million as a tracking mechanism, we've added the saber everglades appropriations
to that.
And so you see for FY14 our spend down plan items about $254 million.
We've maintained our level of emergency reserves and O&M capital emergency reserves, restoration
projects, and I mentioned all those already, but $161 million of our spend down plan
dollars going towards those projects.
Dispersed water management, as I mentioned, and then, you know, as a result of the joint
meeting with the District Board and the Big Cypress Basin Board allocating $2 million towards
construction of the BCB fuel station for $14 million and $2 million additional, or up
to $2 million additional in FY 15.
Thank you.
Thank you, sir.
Outstanding issues, as I mentioned, there are a couple of them.
The upcoming, and we won't know this till July, any impacts or potential impacts from the reduction in prior year tax roll values, as I said right at the beginning, you know, our whole planning is based around levy and a rollback
millish rate to generate the same amount of revenue as this year, and then new construction
on top of it. As you recall, we had some significant change in prior year values that are part
of the formula that we used to develop the rollback revenue estimates, and that cost
us some money. So we don't know what that's going to be until July 1st when the actual
estimates come out from all the county property appraisals.
So it's been an open issue for us.
I pointed out because it's probably the number one important open issue that we have at this particular point.
I mentioned insurance and benefit.
Yes, but you the number you plugged in is a conservative number.
Do you feel OK with the number that you have in there and wait to see as far as we did not include any estimated
reduction in ad valorem revenue from this prior year value adjustment board
process. So we're still waiting and seeing I'm holding my breath. Right, but
that will obviously... So whatever the hit is, is a hit that we've not been
expecting, you know, we don't have plugged in. It's a hit that we have not
I like what you think.
So do I.
I mentioned insurance and benefits costs.
We've worked on trying to tweak our plans.
But with that, and we've made budget reductions as a result of
tweaking some of those plans.
Claims have not gone down.
We have had an actuarial engaged in reviewing our claims.
We had a report that we met on Earth.
earlier this week and so we're looking at some options there and as well as our
benefit staff is met with our insurance provider yesterday and I have yet to get
a download on what that is but that's an issue we'll bring back now we have
loaded up some one-time money to to address claims in the short term but
this is a this is an issue that we're going to have to lay out a multi-year
plan for for how to get right-side up and then last but certainly not
least implementation of employee pay adjustments. As you know we included in
our January submission a two and a half percent base pay adjustment for our
craft field employees that total about four hundred and forty to four hundred
fifty thousand dollars. What the legislature in session passed something
much broader for state employees. If and it goes like this if you make forty
$40,000 or more, you get a $1,000 base-paid adjustment.
If it's less than $40,000, you get a $1,400 adjustment.
If we were to implement that, our cost estimate for that's about $1.8 million.
So we have a $1.4 million variance there that we have to figure out what to do with, and
so that is not part of this budget up to this point.
We have drafted some options.
We're going to be reviewing those options with the executive team, and we'll come
back with a recommendation for that in July as well.
Just the next steps, you heard me mention July 1st is a key date, that's when our tax
roll certifications are due from each of the county property appraisers.
We will take all that, grind through all the numbers and come back up with the rollback
millage rates and update revenue estimates based on that.
The Big Cypress Basin Board is planning to meet Monday, July the 8th, and adopt their tentative
militaries.
And then we'll propose to do the same with the district board on July the 11th.
Then we will complete certifications for the county property praisers and certify
as well as numbers back to them as well as update our preliminary budget report and resubmit
it on August 1st, all of which leads to two public hearings in September to adopt the
tentative millage rates and tentative budget, which will coincide with the September governing
board meeting, and then a special meeting at the end of the month to adopt the final
millage rates and final budget for fiscal 14. Then we could start on 15.
Just like that.
With that, I'll take any comments, guidance, thoughts, anything that you might have.
All right. Thank you, Doug. Four questions for Doug.
Mr. Cuondo.
No.
The FEMA take back.
was that all written off last year or is that in any way reflected in this or
impacting this but it is not it is it's not been written off and it's not
reflected in here so it's lurking out there it's it's still out there we have
worked to try to accommodate it as part of our spend-on plan should it be
necessary
by 18 million dollars little more
Can we just get a report where we are with that?
I know we're in the middle of the appeal process on that.
Certainly.
We have filed the second administrative appeal with FEMA pursuant to the federal process.
We also have simultaneously filed the federal court case in the district court,
and we filed the district court case about three weeks ago.
Which district court?
Being the southern district of Florida.
Which judge do we land on that one?
You don't know yet.
So we're in the process of working through the issues on the second appeal.
As you know, it goes through the State Division of Emergency Management.
Any other questions of counsel on the FEMA issue?
Okay.
Questions for Mr. Berkstrom?
Mr. Murray.
Thank you, Doug.
Thank you, sir.
You've got a difficult job.
You're getting older and grayer every day, sir.
He's 27.
Wow, it's worse than I thought.
I'd like to get some clarification on the rollback rate.
You said that the rollback rate would bring us the same amount of revenue we garnered last year on Antelorm, plus the new construction.
Correct. The thing that the rollback rate does is, you know, that's the definition in state law as to what's a tax increase versus what's not a tax increase.
And so levy in the rollback rate is not a tax increase.
But what it does is typically as existing property values increase,
the millage rate that you would need to levy to generate the same amount of revenue,
this is the way, this is the concept, would go down.
And we've had times in the recent last few years where existing values dropped,
so the rollback millage rate was actually a higher rate.
And that's one possibility that we could be bringing you.
Still not a tax increase.
And how much more did you say that that increased construction would bring us?
$3 million is what we estimated based on the state economist's estimate of growth from new construction of about one percent.
What about the option of not using rollback military? I mean, is that an option and how
much more money would that bring us? Well, it depends on what the values come in
at, you know, how much growth in existing values there are. And, you know, all as we
We know at this point is that each June 1st each county gives us a preliminary estimate
and those values look like they would be about 3% or 3.25% higher.
We don't know the breakdown of that between how much of that is changed in existing values
versus how much is new construction, which is what we're waiting to find out.
Okay, so by July 1st we should know that you know that difference there about yeah
They're about we have to get all the data from all 16 counties and they don't all come in
timely
But whatever the end result is you know that that's a policy call this
We have the option to roll back or not
according to law you do yes, sir
Anything other than a rollback rate, it would have to be noted as a tax increase.
Absolutely.
Well, what exactly are the consequences?
No, no, no.
You would have to know this in the figure of proper consequences.
We would, your consequence would be to your reputation, my friend.
And across the board pay cut up here.
Questions for Doug. Mr. Dutchcraft.
Doug, I was trying to compare the free adjustment with the post adjustment and see where that money proportionally went.
Yes, sir.
And it looks like restoration got the biggest percentage increase.
And according to your percentages, O&M actually went down a little bit.
It was 32 percent in the origin of the preliminary expenditures, and now it's 31 percent.
And so I don't know if that's just a rounding error or the change, but that's an area of sensitivity for me.
It could be. I mean, both of them went up.
one proportionally went up higher than the other, which is probably what drives that percentage change a little bit.
And then the one area that went down was land stewardship, you know, just an overall reduction.
And so is that in relation to the work that Ray is doing?
The assumption that there will be lands that we will not be maintaining?
What drives that reduction?
We had a couple different mitigation projects, and we, instead of budgeting the full amount,
We sequenced it out over and on more of a cash flow basis.
There was a lump built in and so we made some reductions there and made it cash flow over time versus having it all budgeted in one year.
And then just so that you've got my thoughts on input, there are two areas that I want to make sure that we're fully thinking through and one of those is operation and maintenance.
And so to the extent that we can continue to put funds in there because I think we've been
doing as good a job as we can, but I think we have deferred some of that work.
And so when we do have monies that aren't restricted funds, I'd like for that to be one of the areas
where we consider putting money so we can be on solid ground.
The other one is dispersion storage.
I think that there's been some demonstration that those projects provide an alternative
water quality, water storage opportunity that maybe helps us in the interim period.
And so I think there's some financial and some qualitative benefits associated with the
dispersed storage and to the extent that we can look to put additional funds there.
I think we ought to.
Yes, sir.
I think one of the keys to that is what what are the tax roll values that come in in July?
And then what are the options for the further use?
It's all mystery now until we know that's how we'll try to go about laying that out for you.
Any other questions? Could you, let me think of where we're at.
Yeah, I'm sure I'm sure you will. And now you've got us all curious when that number comes out.
I just give us some, you know, by way of memo, when that comes out, I would appreciate receiving
some correspondence on this to have a feel as, you know, we adjust our thinking moving
forward beyond that.
We all expect a text July 1.
I'm trying to temper expectations a little bit.
We may not get all the counties on July 1, but as quickly as we can, we will certainly
certainly grind through all those numbers and we will certainly give you a
read as to what they're looking like. That would be helpful.
Any other board comments for Mr. Bergstrom?
Okay, do we have public comment? Yes, Mr. Chair, we have four public comment.
Jane Graham, followed by Drew Martin.
Hi, good afternoon. Jane Graham
for Audubon, Florida. And first of all, thanks for being in Miami and
welcome. It's nice to have a shorter drive, not all the way
First of all, I want to recognize the district staff and the governing board for trying to make the best out of an extremely hard situation over the last couple years with the budget cuts.
You've shown that you can really maximize the effectiveness and do a lot with cuts.
But that said, if you get into the nitty gritty, gaps are beginning to show and programs have
been reduced and cut and things that were moving at a faster pace may not be moving at the pace that we like.
Some examples, vegetation management, science and monitoring programs, water conservation,
if you really look into some of these things you'll see that there have been some cuts
and they're not such big ticket items,
but sometimes they get swallowed up in the discussion.
And additional funds are needed to advance restoration
for the Everglades, for Lake Okeechobee,
I think as Mr. Hutchcraft was talking about
this first water management, that's an area
where an extra push could go a long way.
It's really could make a great headway end.
And yesterday you were on Biscayne Bay
and you're right by the Biscayne Bay Coastal Wetlands.
One of those projects, the Cutler Flowway,
It's it was part of the Accelerate it had some extra
It's it's ready to go but it all it needs is just some funding in the next few years
So I mean what what can we do about this? You know these are some hard discussions and in July are gonna have to
Make some decisions well the first thing is I mean Audubon is up in Tallahassee. I'm happy Eric Draper came and you know
And Ernie Barnett. He's he's always up there beating the drum for more everglades funding and for other funding
And, you know, this year we got 70 million, hopefully we'll get more next year.
Something else to look at, though, is the ad valorem rates.
And this is where the hard discussions come in, because the value adjustment board proceeding
in Miami-Dade County, we know that there's a 4.7 million draw last year.
We don't know what's going to happen, but it's something to look at.
And we would really urge that in July you take a close look at whether instead of
rolling back the millage rates, you keep them as they are,
is the right thing to do.
There's so many important projects
that the district does.
I mean, it's so hard to decide sometimes
even what to put things into
because there's so many good projects.
So I just, I think you should be really having
some close looks at this,
taking a hard look at and keeping the millage rate
as it is, thank you.
Thank you, Jane.
Drew Martin, followed by Martha Musgrove and Lauren.
Martin, on behalf of the Sierra Club, I'm also serve on the Solemn Water Conservation
District and one thing that we don't see in this budget is much for water conservation
and really, you know, there's sometimes government spends money but it's really an investment
in protecting the future and one of the things that cost ratepayers a lot of money is
if they don't conserve water what happens is then their utilities have to go out
So water projects and those projects are very expensive.
They get bonded and then the taxpayer pays for that or the rate payer.
So in other words, conservation in many ways pays for itself because if you can motivate
consumers to water, to conserve through water conservation projects, you actually are saving
the money and you're also saving the state money because oftentimes the state picks
up a portion of those expenses for those projects.
So one of the unfortunate things is this budget just doesn't seem to have much in it for water conservation.
I think something like around $200,000.
And that's unfortunate.
You used to fund something for the Soil and Water Conservation District in Palm Beach County that was called a mobile irrigation lab.
And what a mobile irrigation lab basically does is it's a service where they can go out and help people modify their sprinkler systems
if they're not meeting the rules.
And that saves everybody money. It saves you money because when people overwater their lawns,
a lot of fertilizers and stuff run out, and then you have a lot of water pollution problems,
you have to preserve more wetlands to clean that up, you have to build expensive STAs.
And we're seeing this particularly in places like Wellington where you're seeing much more permitting
and more development. So it seems to me that water conservation is a good investment,
And so I'm sorry to see that just seems that there's nothing being spent on that.
I also served on a committee a couple of years ago that gave out water conservation grants
for people building, you know, so you could build a more efficient sprinkler system.
Somebody did something so instead of flushing all the water out when they cleaned their
fire hydrants, that it was done in a more efficient manner that didn't waste the water.
Somebody did low flow on kitchen, dishwashing systems, improved the water use in hotels.
So all that benefited the state and benefited you in the long run.
It also, I think when we talk about the fact of consumption that you're going to be in a difficult situation
of having to make decisions on consumptive use permits or your staff,
because people don't conserve water.
What happens, there's going to be conflicts during drought.
So I just would like to see water conservation become something that you we go back and relook at and
And try to add something to the budget if not this year next year to improve how much you devote to water conservation
Thank you. Thank you, Drew
For the record my name is Martha Musgrove and I come here on behalf of the Florida Wildlife Federation. I
Want to join?
My colleague over there Jane
in suggesting that you keep on your table until you do make a final decision, the option of raising your tax rate.
And I do this not because I just love to pay taxes, or because yours is so small relative to everything else that we pay for,
and that it applies to a very vital resources but there was a lot of
game-playing over the years as among politicians as the base went up with
growth and the rate didn't come down but stayed up. We are paying for that now
and you're going and the district is going to pay for this as we bring
restoration projects online and any other project that requires pumps and gates and maintenance.
And this expense is going to exceed your rollback rate growth.
And if it doesn't do it this year, it may do it next year.
And maybe next year is the 15 budget would be easier to raise your mileage than it would
be this year because if you do it for the 14 year, you're into an election cycle.
So then we can play the game that an odd year is when you're not going to the polls,
you raise your rate, and then even yours, you lower it rate, and then people are really, really happy,
even though they're really, really happy if they've got flood protection
and they turn their spigot on and clean water comes out.
Some of the rest of us are a little pickier about it.
I like to say that I looked at the budget and I do think you've got,
But you need to do a little bit more in the coming year on land management budget with
a control of exotics, a torpedo grass that's coming back in Lake Okeechobee as an excellent
example of that, but you also are behind in your fire regimes.
And when you get behind in land management, you get into serious and more and more expensive
problems.
Ask the folks out in Colorado right now as their million-dollar houses burn down.
We haven't had that happen in Florida and I don't mean to imply what we do, but we do get land problems.
And a land problem on your neighbor's land is your problem as well.
Your investment in recovery, the science program that backs up your Everglades Restoration program
by demonstrating for you what actually works.
and you need to rescue that crocodile study.
We have been studying alligators and crocodiles
here for 30 years, and I've been out into the refuge
and along the S5A recently,
and the state of the crocodile,
pretty pitiful, they're all heads of nobody.
And that shows there's something really, really wrong,
but we don't know what it is,
and we're not gonna find out unless we study them.
That study was exed out, completely zeroed out in the 2012 budget.
We found a little bit of money and it lived on fuel.
I think that study needs to be rescued. And finally, there are the flood control structures
along the urban coast here, where with the rise in sea level, we need some pumps put in,
and they need to be retrofitted, and we need to get that program going.
Thank you so much.
Hi, thank you. I still have my voice, so I'm going to keep talking. Keep talking for
the rest of the day. And I realized I didn't say my name for the record before Laura Reynolds
with the Tropical Audubon Society. And I'm going to focus my budget comments specifically
on Biscayne because we are out on Key Biscayne. And I'll get in the weeds just a little bit
and if you would just humor me on that. You know, first of all, the Biscayne Bay
Coastal Wetlands Project is the most visible of any project in the entire system. People
are headed to during a state, they've passed by the project on Old Cutler Road, and that's
huge because it explains to them that we live above our water supply, that open land recharges
the aquifer, and that's part of what we do at Tropical is try to teach people that thread.
So it's really important that we get phase one going.
So I want to reiterate the comments that Jane had about, I'm ready to take out my
checkbook because I understand the value of water, and that's part of what we're teaching.
So I think you should consider raising your rates. I know that's not politically popular,
but I think people are starting to understand the value of water as you see reverse osmosis
and other expensive procedures out there as an alternative. We're using those talking
points every day.
The three things I'd like you to consider in your budget, you're going to hear some
presentation today about additional Biscay and Bay Coast wetland projects that add up
to 2 million. I would like to support that and I'll speak more about that later. In addition,
you have one outstanding parcel of land for the Cutler Flowway at 330 acres. That land
owner is being really patient. I don't think that will continue much longer. I think
that he's not interested in a trade. I think that 1.3 million, which is the county
assessment is reasonable, and I don't think we've ever been able to get 330 acres on the
coast for less than that value.
So I would scoop that up.
So 1.3 million for those 330 acres.
And then yesterday when we were out on the bay, we saw a salinity program that's showing
us the benefit to Biscayne that's in danger of being lost, and all they need to keep
that program going is $80,000, $80,000 for 2014.
So that's the specific asks on Biscayne, and I want to thank you again for being out here. Thanks.
Thank you, Laura.
Any additional public comment?
Yeah, Mr. Chairman.
Okay. Any other board comment from Mr. Bergstrom? Thank you, Mr. Bergstrom. Doug, you need anything else from us? You done?
No, sir, I'm good. I just want to thank the governing board and this executive team for continuing to engage and help us grind through this. We'll be back next month.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thanks, though.
All right.
Next item, I'd like to call up Temperance Maureen.
Hey, there's Temperance.
Director of Office of Everglades and Water Policy.
She's the director.
She's going to walk us through Dispersed Water Management Program update.
Yes.
Good afternoon.
I'd like to start by thanking Mr. Hutchcraft for his earlier Dispersed Water Management
comments that offered a nice segue between Doug's presentation and mine.
The purpose of this presentation is to provide you with an overview and a status update on
the Dispersed Water Management Program.
We won't be seeking a specific decision from the governing board today, but we will be
coming back to you next month, so we're really trying to set the stage for next month.
And we'll be coming back with the results from two recent requests for proposal solicitations
related to the Dispersed Water Management Program that we've put out.
So today I'll focus on an overview of the program and a budget update, and that
should set the stage to come back next month.
Another thing I think you'll find as I present today
and as I present next month is there's a tremendous amount
of interest in this program,
both from the agricultural landowners
who'd like to participate in the program
as well as environmental stakeholders
and other stakeholders in the system.
So with that, the goals and objectives
of the Dispersed Water Management Program
are to provide shallow water storage,
retention and detention with a particular emphasis
and the Northern Everglades system.
The goals of that are to enhance Lake of Chobe and Estuary
health, reduce nutrient loading to downstream estuaries,
and provide groundwater recharge opportunities.
There's four basic types of dispersed water management
projects that we're currently implementing or hope
to implement in the future.
I noticed some activity in our area.
Should I just keep going?
We're going to get you a screen.
I have a nice ring for you.
Want me to keep going?
They've got the presentation.
Yeah, we have a copy.
Go ahead.
For the sake of time, I will keep going.
Yeah, thank you.
All right, there are four basic types of projects,
and in the coming slides I'll explain those four types.
We have local, regional,
payment for environmental services,
and water farming.
The map on the left side of your hard copies
for those of you who have them,
just depicts the number of projects
for the various types that we currently have in place
in the system. So with that, moving on to the first category of projects which are the
local projects. These are projects where we implement cooperative agreements with private
landowners. And just to provide some examples of these types of projects, we have the Nicodemus
Celia project which is a unique project in part because of its size and part because
of its location. This project is a 34,000 acre foot storage feature that's located
at the nexus of the Colusa Hatchee and Lake Okeechobee watersheds.
Another example of a local cooperative agreement project is the Harbor Ridge project.
In this case, we're working with the homeowners association of the Harbor Ridge community.
They have some detention systems that will allow us to pool water in off the C-23 canal system,
hold it in their detention systems, and therefore reduce discharges to tide.
So those are just a few examples of the types of local projects we can implement.
Moving on to regional projects, similar but in this case we're doing the storage on publicly owned lands.
For example, the lands the Water Management District has acquired for future SIRT projects such as the Indian River Lagoon lands
and the C43 or Barrie Grove site that we've purchased and there's a number of other sites.
There are also lands owned by the State of Florida and other public entities.
As you can see, we have a large number of projects that fit into this category that are in various stages of planning, design, construction, and operation.
The next category of projects is the Northern Everglades Payment for Environmental Services project.
This is a public-private partnership program that focuses on working with those private entities to pay them for providing environmental services such as water retention and nutrient removal.
The original emphasis of the Northern Everglades Payment for Environmental Services program was on ranch lands.
We piloted this effort, this concept initially through the Florida Ranch Lands and Environmental Services program.
It was, the pilot program was very successful.
We actually have two of the pilot projects that are currently being implemented now.
And because of the results and the success of that pilot program, we went ahead, the district went ahead with a solicitation for additional project concepts.
That was a couple of years ago, and as a result of that particular solicitation, the Governing
Board gave direction, and we negotiated contracts that ultimately resulted in eight approved
projects and eight contracts being let for these projects.
Six of those are currently operational, two are getting very close, they had a few issues
to work through.
Again as a result of the continuing success of this program several months ago, we put
out another request for proposal solicitation.
Again, for ranch lands, and as I mentioned earlier, there's a tremendous amount of interest
in this program, so we received 19 proposals as a result of that RFP.
And we'll be coming back next month and summarizing the results of those proposals, how they
compare to what we had in the first round of RFPs, and any other additional information
you'd like to see.
Similarly, we have the concept of payment for environmental services.
In this case, the term water farming has been coined.
The emphasis here is on doing payment for environmental services on fallow citrus lands.
We have a fair number of fallow citrus lands throughout the system, particularly in the
St. Lucie and Indian River Lagoon watersheds.
We had not done any of these types of projects on citrus in the past.
So the concept here is to pilot the program on citrus lands.
So as a result, we've entered into two cooperative agreements.
One with the Gulf Citrus Growers Association over in the Kalusa Hatchee watershed.
Shed, another with the Indian River Citrus League and the St. Lucie Watershed.
We've got feasibility reports that have come in or will be coming in soon out of those cooperative agreements.
We've done a request for proposal solicitation specifically for water farming in the St. Lucie Watershed.
The results of that solicitation were due in last week, so we're in the process of reviewing them.
We ultimately had five proposals from that solicitation.
And, again, we'll be back next month to summarize the details of those proposals.
Also in the St. Lucie Watershed, we've partnered up with the University of Florida and Indian
River Citrus League to submit an application to the Department of Environmental Protection
for a 319 grant.
This is a program that DEP implements in coordination with the EPA, targeting water quality improvement
projects, and what we're really hoping to do here is stretch our funds, take
our $1.6 million, see if we can get some match funds out of this program and get more projects
in the ground with our limited funds. We will get the results of our application. DEP will
be making their selections from that program in the September timeframe.
So there's a brief summary of the four types of projects, and that helps set the stage
for the slides I'm about to present, which give you a budget summary of where we currently
stand and identify some potential scenarios as to how we might incorporate some additional
projects into this program with our current budget as we move forward.
So as Doug mentioned earlier, and as I'm sure you are all aware, we do have a spin-down
program.
We have a reserve spin-down program.
And several years ago, as a part of that program, the Governing Board made the decision to
set aside $34.3 million out of our reserve spin-down funds specifically for dispersed
water management.
We have been using those funds to implement the projects I've previously mentioned.
We have 22 million of that original funding that's currently still available for this program.
So what we've done here is just laid out where if you were to continue your current obligation,
including the ongoing local projects, the ongoing local projects, the regional projects,
the original round of PES contracts that I earlier mentioned, and one of the ongoing press projects.
You're doing great, Temperance.
Thank you.
It's like a Saturday night life.
Just don't want to carry you away.
If you continue those ongoing commitments with the current pot of funds without incorporating
any new projects into the program, we have enough funds to fund through fiscal year 20.
But obviously that means we took our five-year reserve spend-down funds and we stretched
them over a much longer period of time instead of getting them spent out.
So if you really focused on just the next five years of funding and you committed to continuing those current obligations for five years, you'd have $7.7 million still remaining of our original pot to put some towards some of these other new projects that are under consideration.
So we've laid out a few scenarios. There's a number of scenarios that can be considered by the governing board. We just laid out a few scenarios to show you how this might work.
So in scenario two, what we have is continuing the current commitments, which I earlier mentioned,
but also including funding each year for the next five years for interim lands and cooperative agreements.
So again, this would give us funding for projects on IRL lands, C43 lands,
and some of those cooperative agreement projects with private landowners.
And with that, if you committed to that for the next five years,
you would have $3.4 million of our original spend-down funds still remaining.
So moving on to another scenario, in this scenario we have the continuing current obligations
for five years, continuing interim lands and cooperative agreement funding on an annual
basis at $160,000 a year for the interim lands and $240,000 a year for the cooperative
agreements including $3 million for the water farming pilot projects and we have
dependent on RFP results here because at the time we were preparing these slides, we did
not have the results from the RFP. As I mentioned, we'll bring those back next month so we can
see how that looks. But if you were to set aside $3 million for the three-year water
farming pilot, we would have $9,000 left of the spend-down funds at the end of the
next five years. A similar scenario, but focusing on the PES program. Here we're
continuing current obligations,
continuing funding for interim lands
and cooperative agreements,
and setting aside three million for the PES solicitation.
However, you would not have remaining funds
for the water farming pilot.
So what we've done in the scenario four here
is somewhat of a hybrid
where you have continued funding for the current program,
continued funding but at a reduced rate
from scenario two for interim lands
and cooperative agreements,
and funding for both the water farming pilot
and the second PES solicitation that had a reduced rate
from what we laid out in scenarios 3A and 3B.
So in this case, you would have approximately $1.6 million
for the water farming pilot over the three years
and $2.4 million to enroll additional contracts
in the second PES solicitation.
This slide simply summarizes all of those scenarios
that we've laid out.
And as I mentioned, there are obviously many other ways
to split these funds up over the various types of projects.
So, just to summarize, we currently have $22 million of the original $33 remaining in
the spend down fund pot for dispersed water management, until additional funding is identified
and that is one of our goals is to identify other funding sources for this very promising
and successful program. You would be able to continue to fund your current obligations
through fiscal year 20 if you don't enroll any additional projects in the program or
Alternatively, if you focus on the next five years,
continue your current commitments,
there would be 7.7 million of the remaining funds
available to split over the four categories of projects
that I previously mentioned.
And with that, the path forward, at least at this time,
is to come back to you next month,
summarize the results of both solicitations,
receive your direction on how you would like for us
to proceed with our negotiations on both RFPs.
Obviously in the meantime, we'll continue our ongoing efforts for the local regional projects and with the existing PES projects.
We're hopeful our fingers will be crossed that we're successful in the 319 grant application and we get those additional funds to stretch for the St. Lucie watershed.
And we will continue our efforts to identify alternative and additional funding sources for this program both through state and regional, excuse me, state and federal efforts.
And with that, I'd be happy to answer any questions or open up for discussion from the
board.
Excellent.
Thank you.
Mr. Sardin.
Good job, Temperance, especially with all the activity.
When you come back, will we be able to see comparatively the current projects we have
in place and what that cost is per acre foot versus the new projects coming online?
Yes, sir.
So we can see what range that we're talking about.
Absolutely.
That is our intent.
We will bring you back those numbers for each of the categories.
One other thing we can do is show you for the first solicitation what the original proposal
costs were and where we ended up after negotiations to give you some perspective on starting place
versus potential landing place after negotiations.
Okay.
Thank you, sir.
I'm afraid to touch this microphone, but can you hear me?
Yes, sir.
One other thing, I'd like to know, you commented on that these programs are popular.
I can understand that.
You know, we're paying people to keep water on the land.
I can understand that.
But you also said that they're very successful.
Have we seen the benefit to the system in exchange for how much it's costing us?
We have about 77,000 acre feet of dispersed water management storage currently scattered throughout the system.
We do believe most of those projects on an individual basis have been very successful because they're scattered
and because we have such a need for storage in the system.
I can't say that you've seen a tremendous change and discharges to the estuary as a result of this program,
but we do have information that shows indeed we are getting storage
And indeed, we are getting nutrient retention on a number of these sites.
So in that case, I would say, yes, it has been successful.
And the more of these projects that we have in place, along with our regional projects,
the more we'll start to see a real significant difference in the system as a whole.
Well, do we monitor any of these projects, any of these individual projects that way
so that we can actually have some kind of report on how much of the nutrients
are being retained?
Some of the projects have actual monitoring, particularly in the pilot phase.
We did extensive monitoring to look at those issues, so I think we can, if you'd like to
see that, we can bring you back some of the results of the more detailed monitoring during
the pilot phase.
The projects that focus on nutrient retention, there is monitoring to ensure you can quantify
the amount of nutrient retention you're receiving.
So yes, we would be happy to bring you back those results where we have them.
What are the other benefits besides nutrient retention?
Water retention and detension.
Primarily holding water back in the watershed so that water doesn't make its way either to the lake or the estuaries.
And do you think there's on those parameters?
The way the program works is we estimate based on 10 years' worth of hydrology.
We look at the specifics of a particular site.
How much storage do we have on this site?
And then we take a 10-year period of hydrology
and we apply it to those specifics.
And that allows us to determine on an average annual basis.
And this kind of relates to a lot of the stuff that Tommy presents.
Every year is different.
We're going to have some years that are very dry
and we don't need to store much water.
There's no rain to store or hold back in the system.
There'll be other years like this year.
We have a phenomenal amount of rain that we need to hold back in the watershed.
So what we do is we have tools that allow us to evaluate the site
and apply 10 years' worth of hydrology to estimate over a 10-year period on an average annual basis
how much storage we think we will achieve.
But on years where we don't need that kind of additional storage, we still pay for it whether they do it wrong.
That is correct.
Another part of the basis of the program is to give us certainty in what to budget,
to give the landowner certainty in what to expect in terms of revenue.
That is why we piloted the project and we determined that this was the best approach to allow both us and the private entities to kind of plan and budget for this program.
Instead of it going up and down with every given year is to focus on a 10-year planning horizon, use the best hydrology and information we have,
and to estimate that, but then just to have a set rate, a fixed rate based on that information that is applied on an annual basis.
Okay, but it just, in my mind, as tight as money is, and I just went through the budget
numbers, you know, it would be nice to have a cost benefit that we could see how much
it's costing us, and what kind of benefit we're getting for those dollars.
But you're telling me that we can't exactly do that.
It's only estimated over a 10-year period?
We have some real data from certain projects, and we'd be happy to summarize that.
In other cases, it is estimated, keeping in mind these PES contracts were only enlisted
two years ago, took about a year plus to get them in place.
So if you were to ask me this question in a few more years, we'll have a lot more data,
but we'd be happy to summarize the data we currently have based on the pilots and
our efforts today, knowing that with every year we gain more data to help us continue
to evaluate the effectiveness of this program.
But we will bring what we do have back to you next month.
Okay, thank you.
Mr. Portuondo.
Mr. Temperance, I think I know the answer, but I just want to make sure.
We're storing the water, but is there a mechanism for retrieving that water?
It depends on the particular project.
In some instances, yes, particularly some of the larger, kind of more complex versions of these projects.
Nicodemus Lou is an example of a project where we can take off a regional system,
bring the water in, and discharge it based on a particular timing.
I mean, some of the other projects are simply holding water back.
So what they're doing is when we're getting excess rainfall in the system that we don't
need.
You avoid the excess discharges, but you don't have the capability of reusing that water.
That is correct.
And that is one of the differences between some of the dispersed water management projects
and the regional projects or some of the more complex dispersed projects that have
that capability.
And at what point do you need a decision from the board on the different budget scenarios
you, the four different ones?
Ideally, the board would give us some direction at the July meeting on how you would like
us to proceed with negotiations on the two solicitations.
And we'll bring you back all the information we have, anything you'd like to see to try
to help inform that decision.
But do you have four different budget scenarios?
And those are simply examples.
We seek the board's direction on how you would like.
You could give us some scenarios today that you'd like to see us run, and we'd be happy to do that.
But as you can see, we have $22 million remaining in the budget to either focus on the current projects
or to distribute across an array of new projects under those four categories.
I guess I
would like to see when you want a decision what your recommendations would be and the reason behind those.
Fair enough.
But just back to the point on water supply, there is some benefit because if it's sitting on the ground it would perk.
It's just not necessarily like a tank in and out.
That's correct and that's right on our goals slides you may recall aquifer
recharge is one of the key benefits of this program not one that we're doing a
lot of monitoring on to mr. Moran's question but one that we know is
inherently there when you hold the water back and it's not discharging it's
it's eating and it's it's contributing to aquifer recharge okay mr. Sargent
just real quick and you probably told me this but as far as looking at funding
getting going forward, are these eligible for any of the Everglades funds from the state
on a recurring basis, or this would all be?
Depends on the location, there's certainly, there's a sort of audience and concept that
is included in the Northern Everglades protection plans, the Watershed Protection Plans.
So yes, the problem with the state funding is with any sort of funding source, it's
not, it's not ended in a year.
So some of the large capital projects, like the water farming, you may make a much more
large investment for landowners in the year three when it's finally able to actually hold
the water.
We might not have the funding for that in the environmental services payment.
So one of the things that we would, I think the question that will be posed before you
all next week, I mean next month will be that just to continue what we're doing,
Or I think there's a lot of value to maybe casting a slightly larger value, testing out some of the other types of projects.
Bill, use this next five-year period to collect data to make the strong cost-benefit analysis to which types of projects work best.
And also build momentum for a recurring potential dedicated plug-in source.
There's a lot of interest in this program from Audubon and some of the other environmental stakeholders.
There's a lot of interest from the ranchers and the landowners.
There's a lot of interest from the political leadership
and the House in particular has approached us.
So I think that's sort of what we'll work on
to making sure we have some of the cost-benefit
whatever place we can have on the price range of food,
how some of the options might stand up,
and then sort of lay that out.
And the question before you would be,
do we want to involve some more opportunities
to capture some more projects and data
and then build a momentum going forward
to hopefully look for a identified permanent funding
source.
Because as you all discussed in the system
where I pointed out in the previous discussion,
our recurring funds are pretty much obligated.
And if this becomes a priority, we
would have to decrease funding somewhere else out
of our current level or increase our funding options.
And that's to look in the federal and state arena
for a more reliable recurring source for this type of activity.
Thank you.
Mr. Archibald.
Timference, thanks for the presentation.
I think it's clear that I'm the supporter
of the program, the concept.
I think that it's one of those unique areas
where there's an alignment from agricultural interest
and environmental interests.
I think it's beneficial to the resource.
I also think that there is a budget benefit.
And one of the things that we look at
is we've got all these large projects
and we're not gonna be able to build
all of those at one time.
And I think that this gives us in varying scales smaller projects
that we can use to augment those big structured engineer
to get benefit in the end-time period.
And so I think it's important for us to be innovative
and look at these potential solutions.
One of the other things that you said that I really like
is I think that these types of projects present opportunities
for alternative partnerships, the 319 funding and other options.
And so to the extent that we can begin to identify and work with those landowners and
those other organizations to line these projects up, to understand the parameters that puts
us in a position where we can generate those additional partnership funds.
So I think we need to continue moving forward.
I do agree with Mr. Moran, though, that it's important for us to understand the
metrics.
I mean, I've seen some numbers on projects in state, across the country, and what
What I have seen is that there is a significant cost benefit on a cost per acre stored as
you compare it to the big structured engineered projects.
That's one of those things that I think it's important for us to understand what is the
cost relative to our other options, because again, we need to do some interim projects
to make sure that we're achieving success.
We definitely want to see a cost benefit.
And I think that there are some projects that give us the biggest bang for the buck.
You mentioned the C43.
It's land that we already own.
Right now, we have tons of water going to tide.
Why aren't we doing something?
Why don't we continue doing more of something smart on that property to just store that water?
And so whether it's that or Lake Hikpachi or other, you know, large, natural-based projects
where we can divert water in the high flow,
So I think we need to continue looking at that.
So I look forward to your presentation and your suite of options as we go forward.
Thanks.
Thank you.
Mr. Interim Executive Director, am I correct when we talk about options?
We had a presentation earlier about, you know, our discussion about lands and should
we decide that we actually sell some of those?
Are those funds that we could take and apply to a program like this?
Mr. Chairman, yeah, the answer is quite possibly, and I hate to give such a wishy-washy answer,
but it looks like I've been doing that all day long.
It's a definite maybe.
Why stop now?
Don't change your way now.
It's the...
I'm cut out for the syndrome thing, I think.
So,
all kidding aside, what we're really going to have to look hard at is the source of funds
that were used to acquire the property. So if the monies come from Save Our Everglades
or Florida Forever, they're going to be governed by the surplusing mechanisms that govern
that appropriation, because we're playing with someone else's money. If it was used
with Advalorum, the answer is absolutely.
If it was used for, if it would save our Everglades,
for example, there's opportunities to be very creative
through the appropriations process,
where we, through the surplusing,
or disposable, whatever the right word,
or otherwise, look at options, options.
Options.
Reusing.
We would, we could put together a package
that generated X amount of money,
return that back to the legislature,
have it deposited back into the trust fund,
And in the same action, with political leadership,
get it reappropriated back to this type of project.
So those types of options will present themselves.
And we will be able to bring those forward.
So that's the end.
That's helpful.
Yep, thank you.
All right.
Any other questions for Timbers?
Do we have public comment on this?
We do have one public comment from Drew Martin.
Totally fast.
I know you're in a rush.
Everybody's in a rush to go home.
Just tell us again that you're part of some soil district.
Right.
Why do I care about this?
Because this benefits your growers and your agriculture.
And I think this is something that's very, very good thing.
That was Carolyn's fault.
Stay focused, Drew. Stay focused.
Your time's ticking.
I mean, we just heard, I wish Mark Perry was here because he was talking about how he wishes
he could see more water stored, and here's an opportunity, and I definitely agree with
Mr. Hodgekiss.
You can call me Hodgekiss, that's fine.
Hodgecraft.
I agree with Mr. Hodgecraft, and I agree with Mr. Moran as well, that we need to
have some models that show the cost-benefit in the best areas to do this, but I thought
your comments were excellent, and I very much agree with what you said. Thank you.
Thank you, Drew. All right. Any other public comments?
No, Mr. Chair. All right. Any other board comment or discussion
on this one? Temperance, thank you very much. Good program. Look forward to follow-up
next month. All right. Next agenda item, number 36, Miss Cain Bay Dry Season Operations
Mr. Scott Burns, Chief Environmental Scientist for Water Resources Division.
Good
afternoon, Mr. Scott.
Alright, let's try that.
This is the first of three staff presentations pertaining to Biscayne Bay.
The first project that I'd like to talk about is some of the operations that we were able to conduct this dry season
to try to help moderate the salinities in the near shore area,
some of the areas that you all had a chance to visit yesterday in the boat trip.
This presentation will be followed by Tom Teetz, who will talk to you about a possible
opportunity the staff is looking into to try to move the Biscayne Bay Coastal Wetlands
project components, a few of those components ahead a little farther to even further improve
the delivery of fresh water to the near shore bay area in a more effective manner.
And finally, Don Medellin will come and talk to you and seek your action on adopting
water reservations to protect not only the project water for the Biscayne Bay Coastal
wetlands, but also additional uncommitted existing surface water flows into the bay
to be utilized to moderate those.
In deference to temperance, I was thinking maybe I'd use her slides instead of mine
for the presentation, but we'll try to continue this along and hopefully this
will continue to be in place.
As they covered yesterday in the boat trip, the flows to Biscayne Bay have been altered
significantly to accommodate growth and development of the area, in so doing that in a successful
manner, they have created a situation where instead of broad distributed freshwater flows
across an area for most of the year, the seasonal flows are now focused out of specific
point discharge areas at high rates, and those flows are really focused mostly in the wet season.
There's very little water left in storage to be delivered to the bay during most of the dry season.
As a result, the near shore area, which is extremely important for productivity, habitat,
for the fisheries and the like, experiences sailing conditions that are not conducive
development of those resources and frequently those, as a result of that, that is impacted.
While the Biscayne Bay Coastal Wetland program has been expedited and some of the project
components have been completed, there are still several components that are yet to
be done.
However, district staff were challenged to kind of look at existing operations and
see if there were things that could be done within the existing constraints in
doing with what we had during this dry season to try to moderate salinity
increases where possible in essence to try to see if we can buy time year by
year and eventually until the rest of the project components are completed.
Staff came up with and implemented three different options that I'd like to talk
to you about. First one, Deering Estates, which is the S-700 pump test.
Secondly is the S-21 regional freshwater delivery test.
And finally, we'll talk to you about the seasonal drawdown based salinity operations.
We'll start off with the middle one, the S-21 supplemental freshwater deliveries.
Working with the park service over several years,
doing some evaluations by their scientists and confirmed by our scientists,
It was identified that even a relatively small amounts of fresh water delivered to the bay
could be helpful in moderating or kind of halting the ascent of seasonal salinity increases along the bay.
Those volumes were not really tremendously large and so the concept was maybe we could look in the system
not only at the coastal areas but farther inland to see if there was water available in the water conservation areas
areas or the like, that we can bring into the area to try to moderate the salinities.
First couple years that we tried to look for that, we were looking at the end of the season
when the salinities were high, and by that time the water levels in the conservation
areas were far too low to be able to do that.
So the concept was maybe we can extend the lower salinity areas for a longer period
of time if we look for the water early on in the wet season instead of at the
end of the dry season.
November of 2012 gave us an opportunity to conduct such a test.
During that period of time, sustained onshore winds had caused the near shore salinity levels to really be much higher than they are at this time of year for that time in November.
And the concern was that as we got into the drier and longer, warmer months to get to come, that hyper salinity was really a risk and a concern.
At the same time, however, the conservation areas, specifically Conservation Area 3A,
was very wet and regulatory discharges were being conducted to bring the water levels down.
At the same time, conditions in Everglades National Park were wet.
To bring the water down in the conservation areas, the water was being moved to the northern area of the bay
where there isn't near shore wetland habitat.
There's a lot of sea walls and the like.
and the other area the waters being removed was down through the South Bay
conveyance and out through Everglades National Park. So in order to kind of work
on this changed operation we want to take a small portion of that and bring in
the middle part where it would be just right. So we speak to help that at that
area. So that required coordination and on November 8th with a lot of help
from the Department of Interior, Joan Lawrence, a meeting was convened with
member representatives from the district, from the Department of Interior,
Shannon Estinez, also the superintendent from Biscayne National Park as well as
from Everglades National Park to discuss the concepts, to talk about potential
operations. The meeting was very successful, it was held at FIU and at the end of the
meeting we had some conceptual plans and staff went off to see if we could
implement those plans. First thing we have to do is talk with the US Army
Corps of Engineers to see if they could get their approval for the modifications of the
operations.
We also worked with Miami-Dade County, and surprisingly, after mere 10 days, we were
able to initiate the test.
We were working very fast because the water levels were dropping as the regulatory discharges
were occurring.
The test was able to be conducted for a period of two weeks.
During that period of time, we were able to release about 220 CFS out of the S21
one structure, which is equivalent to about 145 million gallons a day of fresh water through
that structure. It was released primarily during the low tide period, a couple times
during the day. The test had some very interesting and impressive results. On the graphic that
I have shown here, starting from the panel to your left as you're looking at it, this
This was the average salinity conditions in the near shore bay area that were occurring
immediately beginning and proceeding the test.
You can see S-21 is the structure towards the north.
You'll also see S-21A and S-20F.
Those are two structures that were being operated and there was some discharge for the
seasonal drawdown.
I'll talk to you a little bit more about that in a few minutes.
Darker blue is not very good.
Lighter blue is okay.
Green has really targeted good conditions.
As you can see in the middle panel and towards the average salinities at the end of the two-week test,
you can see that the entire coastal region up through here across these structures,
we were achieving real, very optimal salinities for this time of year.
Now, it's not to say that the salinities that we released out of S21 in and of itself occur here.
There was a mingling of the discharges from this structure plus these two structures.
But we had a real good result here.
The other thing that was surprising on the results is those freshwater signatures lingered
well after the test was concluded.
In fact, on this slide to the right, you can see this is the salinity distributions
that occurred six weeks after the test was concluded.
And there's still some areas to the north where the near-shore freshwater salinities
were occurring.
The
conclusions of the test is that first off, the transfer of supplemental water from
the regional system from the conservation areas requires careful coordination and broad consensus
building.
It's a difficult thing, the waters are shared by parks, there's a lot of constraints and
things that have to be addressed.
It's also important to note that there's not a lot of times when there's ample
water available in the conservation areas even early on.
So, the likelihood that this type of operation could be routinely carried out in the dry season is not that likely,
but it's something that we can consider.
And finally, and most impressively, those supplemental deliveries coupled with the other operations that were going on
were very successful in proving the near shore-based salinities for a much longer period of time than just the test plan itself.
Next, after this test was completed we were able to shift our attention to
operations up to the northern end of the Biscayne Coastal Wetland project
components and you'll see up here that we're talking about the S-700 pump
station newly constructed pump station up by the Deering Estates and the
opportunity here was to operate that pump station taking water out of the
see 108 canal and bringing it through this portion of freshwater wetlands to rehydrate
this original freshwater wetland system, then have the water flow into the coastal marine
wetland systems and then through that area into the bay.
In this particular case, we had to change routing.
We weren't using water in this case from the regional system, but instead we were
able to move some higher water availability from urban canals farther north in Miami
through the existing canal network, through some manual operations of some control gates and the like,
and move it towards that pump station, creating enough water for those pumps to be operated.
Now, in this case, that's a much smaller amount of water.
It's about 25 CFS, which is about 15 million gallons a day.
The test was initiated December 18th.
We thought it would probably be able to go on for a couple weeks.
We were pleasantly surprised that it was able to continue to operate through March 12th.
Then conditions were dry enough in the upstream canals,
we had to terminate the test.
It was restarted again in April 4th
and continued on through the remainder of the dry season.
Overall, a total of over 8,000 acre feet of water
were provided into those wetland systems.
Results of that were impressive.
The wetland systems throughout that area
were well inundated and we were able to provide
a very good hydropuried pattern
for the wetland systems throughout that area.
But not only did we see the freshwater wetlands rehydrated,
we also saw and were monitoring groundwater responses in that area.
The groundwater elevations were coming up,
and over time the salinity within the groundwater in those areas were declining.
We were also able to measure salinities in the marine wetland systems
and in the outflow, and we were seeing freshwater freshening coming out in that area as well.
Now,
conclusions from this test that, one, we found a way of effectively being able to
move canal water through the S-700 pump station during the dry period, although it did require
some operations, manual operations.
The staff from the Homestead Field Station were extremely helpful.
And getting out there to help this project go through.
There may be some opportunities in the future to try to improve the efficiency of operating that on a more regular basis.
We also found that small volumes of supplemental water were very successful
in improving the hydrology of both the freshwater wetlands and the near shore salinities in the wetlands in that area.
There are some limits in dry season availability here, but since we're looking at groundwater storage within urban canal areas,
we feel that this operation is probably have a higher likelihood of being able to be repeated in future years.
Also, this test was unbudgeted.
It was an idea of staff and came on, and there were some unbudgeted expenses incurred during the operations.
We now have a better handle for what those would be,
and we'll try to address those and be prepared for those and for future opportunities.
Finally, I wanted to talk to you about seasonal drawdown operations.
This deals with a routine and historic operations associated with the S-21 structure and the
S-20F structure down here.
And what this deals with is operations that the district conducts in accordance to the
Army Corps of Engineers Master Water Control Plan every year in which we lower the water-level
control elevations of those coastal structures beginning around October 15 to provide drainage
to the C-102-103 basins to provide for and support agricultural activities within those
areas of Florida cities and Homestead.
Depending on conditions around the end of December, early part of January, when the water
levels are dropped in that area, those structures are raised four or five inches.
That's effective enough to stop the flow of fresh water into the bay.
And as a result of that, those flows no longer occur during that, and historically
we see around that time, February, March, April,
that's when we start seeing the near shore salinity
shoot up very high in the near shore areas
as there's really not much ground water flow into that area
and there's no surface water coming in.
What we did this year, working with a series
of stakeholders including farmers, NGOs,
representatives from the Park Service,
representatives from state agricultural organizations,
We put together bi-weekly stakeholder meetings,
where we talked about the operations, the conditions,
what was going on in that,
and talked about operations and efficiencies.
Through this process, we extended the low operational
settings beyond the end of December through January
and through the first week of February.
During that period of time,
the average flow out of both of those structures
was about 260 CFS to the Bay.
After February 5th, we continued to leave the S-20F structure, the southernmost, in the low settings,
and that continued to provide fresh water to the Bay when the other structures' flows basically stopped.
The average flow in that area continued through the dry season at about 160 CFS, although the last 30 days that flow was under 100 CFS.
Results of that are kind of shown in this graphic right here.
What we did here is we took the average salinity from three
near shore salinity monitoring sites north of the S21 structure.
This is areas where there was no freshwater being discharged into the coastal wetland systems.
And that is the blue trace here.
You can see that kind of hovers around 30 PSU in near shore salinity.
We compared that with the average salinity from three near shore systems
located south of the S-21, where the operations and the discharges of surface
water continued at S-21A and S-20F, and that's shown in red. As you can see, this
graphic starts on January 1st, which is the period of time when we started the
extending this operation. As you can see, the difference between the salinity is,
you know, pretty significant, and remained that way up until this point,
February 5th when we stopped the discharge from 21A and the graphic, the salinity started
to increase, but was still pretty well below the area to the north.
There continued to be some, this is a little rainfall event here in the salinity and the
area dropped, but it wasn't until the very end when the salinity, when even 20F was
kind of petering out that they actually approached and reached this 30 PSU, which
is sort of the highest target, the area that they'd want to be at any time.
So we were able to buy basically three months of time by these operations.
And we thought that that was very interesting and very favorable.
Conclusions of these operations, leaving the S20F structure at the low setting alone
from February 5th through April 30th, provided 31,000 acre feet of freshwater to Biscayne Bay.
The average salinity south of S21 was consistently lower than the salinity's north of S21,
one on average as a result of these freshwater discharges.
However, we notice that there are a number of variations
in salinity on several of the nearshore monitoring stations.
Reason for that is when you're putting out
large volumes of water out of those single structures,
and you saw them when we were in the boat yesterday.
There's a long, narrow channel, and there's the structure.
That water has a tendency to go out and through inertia.
Goes much farther out into the bay,
where it's caught up in longshore currents.
and it doesn't really nestle in close to the near shore area.
A much more efficient way of delivering that water, of course,
would be through a diffused delivery system, which
is the L31E canal component of the Biscayne Bay Coastal
wetlands.
And from here, I'm going to turn this over
to Tom Teetz, who's going to talk to you
about some opportunities that we
may have to be able to further improve some
of the facilities on that breach of the canal
and therefore be able to better distribute this water into the near shore areas in the future.
One thing, there's a lot of folks that were involved in these operations.
A number of folks in operations at headquarters as well as in the field station,
several scientists, special recognition of Baram Shukarin who was the project manager of this,
a tremendous advocate for this thing, a real ambassador for the district, working with Miami-Dade
County, who was extremely helpful through these operations. And of course we couldn't have done
this without coordination with many of the other state and federal agencies listed as well.
Do you have any questions? I'll be happy to try to answer them. I'm sure we might. Any board
questions for Scott? Just a real quick comment. I just wanted to thank you and the team and
and the different agencies for working together.
This is an issue that's been around a long time
and we took a fresh look at it.
You guys took a fresh look at it
and I appreciate you spending the time
and coming up with a creative solution.
This was a lot of coordination, a lot of effort
and it provided a, with a little bit of extra water,
provided a good benefit.
So thank you.
Mr. Hutchcraft.
With a little amount of water
providing pretty positive results
and what I'll call the durability
that it lingers around, as the water is declining, would pulses help maintain that, or do you need the consistent flow?
I think that there's a benefit to be had in the consistent flow, and I think that in addition to that,
there's benefits, again, tremendous benefits on how that water is delivered.
A diffused area very similar to how the system originally occurred is going to have much greater benefits
and much higher efficiency, even smaller amounts of water
delivered through those coastal marine wetlands
right to that near shore area
is going to go farther than any large point source discharge.
So I think that to try to improve the efficiency of this operation,
the stuff that Tom's going to be talking about
and moving the rest of the project components forward
is really going to be a good investment of resources
to achieve those goals.
Thanks.
Absolutely.
Any other board comment?
Nice job. I'm just always impressed with what you're able to do.
You're so constrained down here with regard to how you go about what you're doing operationally,
resource-wise with land and everything else.
And you guys do a phenomenal job by really going in and digging into the current operations
and trying to make incremental improvements.
I've been very impressed with what you've done.
Thank you.
Okay, any other board comment?
Do we have public comment?
Mr. Chair, we have several. Is Bruce Matheson still here?
Is that Bruce?
He's not here. Okay.
I thought that was Bruce making a comment back there.
We have Martha Musgrove followed by Laura Reynolds.
I signed up to comment on this because of the water reservations issue.
And I want to call your attention to the fact that we have these common permit systems and
the ERP, common universal permits.
And every time you get into these things, you hit this big wall and there are two walls.
The first wall is water reservations for the natural systems.
And there absolutely has to be a water reservation for the Biscayne Bay wetlands.
And this is the second Miami meeting where the issue comes up tangentially.
But we had one over at the water utilities, some of you may recall, a year ago.
And we're not making much progress in getting these water reservations out.
We're not making progress on it for the Kalusa Hatchee.
We're not doing one after another.
And yet it's very hard to do a water supply plan
without knowing how much water you're going to allot to various natural systems.
In the case of the Biscayne Bay,
you saw a little water bled off during the dry season, made a big difference.
We get that all through the system.
This board has a policy issue, has got to tackle the water reservation and make it possible
to develop a reservation.
You can do it the easy way with the federal projects that have to have them like this
came back. But if you did it right, you would have water reservations for bodies of water
that were not connected to Everglades restoration. And if you do it right, then you have some
way of knowing when you want, how long your permits should be allowed, your consumptive
use permits should be allowed. Then you have some way of recalling permits and reevaluating
them at a given set of time, you provide a legitimacy to the whole system of water regulation.
Without it, you've got these giant holes, and I just thought I would use this opportunity
to bring that to a board with two new members.
This is an old problem.
The water reservations were initially established authority for them in 1972.
Thank you, Martha.
Laura Reynolds, followed by Jared Jacobs.
Hi, thanks.
Thanks again for taking up this issue.
I know there's four different Biscayne issues,
so I'm just going to take it piece by piece if that's okay.
I wanted to thank staff and, of course, all the agencies
for working together to capture this extra water
and put it where it's most needed.
I think that was amazing.
I do know that it was a wet year and there was a lot of extra water in the system.
And so I'd like to see trying to continue to do this while realizing the dry season is when you're most limited.
So we have to figure out ways to come up with an additional water source for bisqueen.
And the second thing I'll say, and I'll say the rest of my comments for the other items,
is that realize that groundwater, when groundwater comes up and bubbles up into the bay,
It's the most biologically available and that's the term that I actually learned from Sarah Belmond from the National Park Service.
It is. It's how it mixes better. And if you put a lot of surface water out in the bay, it doesn't necessarily stay in the near shore area.
It goes out over the top sometimes and doesn't stay and affect that near shore salinity.
So as often as we can we have to figure out ways to a protect the ground water because it's most available for fish and wildlife and
Secondly, you know figure out ways to keep as much water as possible in the coastal wetlands
So that it gets into the ground and so that the ag drawdown reference that that Scott Burns put in here
I think we should explore that further
Thanks
Mr. Jacobs
I'm originally from Ohio. I've only been here about a year and a half, and all my friends, they like to come visit me.
I don't know why, maybe it's because I live in Miami, and one of the places I love to take them is Biscayne Bay.
It's a beautiful place. I like to take them kayaking. I got a nice little tandem kayak. I fit on the top of my car.
The car is a bit scratched up now, and I
take them underneath the mangrove mazes, where at night you can see the bioluminescence,
you know, you hit it with your paddle. It's just like Fringale. You know, manatees pop up.
It's a beautiful place. They want to come back. And I feel like this is a resource that, you know,
people can easily get out to, easily reach and bring them back here. And unlike the rest of my
environmental friends who, you know, went out to the Northwest of Portland in San Francisco,
I decided to come down here because I feel like this is where we're needed.
Everglades Restoration and Biscayne Bay Restoration, I feel like it's the first domino.
If we can succeed here, just imagine where it can go.
People over in Egypt with a mild restoration, they're looking to us for support.
They're looking to us for what to do next.
And, you know, if we can accomplish this, it's going to go into history books. This is where it begins.
Thank you.
All right, no more public comment. Any other board comment? All right, Scott, thanks again.
Next, agenda item number 37, this is Cain Bay Coastal Wetlands Project,
the incremental component options. Tom Teetz.
Thanks, Tom. Good afternoon.
It's gotten noted we assemble a team internally to take a look at some potential incremental options to consider.
So I want to kind of walk through that and give you a little bit of background on the overall project.
As I noted yesterday, to you, this is, you know, the map of the overall Biscayne Bay Coast Wetlands Phase 1 project.
project. It really made up of three components during the state, which is a project that's
already been constructed. And as Scott noted, we are actually operating now. Then there's
the color flowway component, which is the middle one there, and then the L-31E's component
at the far end. This project has a record decision from Chief Engineers. It's good
to go for the next Water Resource Development Act, and it just waits for the next Water
Water Resource Development Act to be passed.
We identified some potential funding for some incremental components to the tune of about $2 million.
It's some interest income from some Pinsuko project funds that we previously had.
So this is kind of the budget framework that the team was working under.
I started to look at a number of different potential options for these incremental components over the whole area
and focusing in on what was just something that was achievable
and that we could develop some partnerships as we implemented those.
The teams settled in on L31 East fairly quickly
and actually some of the things Scott said are why they settled in on that.
We see a lot of potential here for this particular area
and it's a good area that we can do things incrementally,
get some benefits,
and be able to test out the hypothesis of getting the water spread across these wetlands.
The L3-1E component from the overall CERP plan is what I have on the screen right now.
You can see that there's a series of pump stations starting at the top and working their way down.
There's a pump station at the north end that comes off of the C102 and rehydrates the wetlands.
Then you have a pump station that's number two there that takes water off the C-102.
Again, we're trying to eliminate or reduce those point discharges.
Move it on south to stage up the L-31 East canal.
And then there's a, number three is actually an inverted siphon under the military canal,
which isolates the military canal.
Now, number four is all the culverts that we would be adding to the area to rehydrate
those wetlands.
There's a series of 10 of those that the project identified.
And then as you move south, you have a pump station that comes off of the C-103, just
north of the park.
And that would be, again, staging up the L-31 East.
And then moving on south, you have this area that's a little bit more of a triangle
at Heads West, that's actually a freshwater wetland, and there's two pump stations that
have been identified to pump water into that freshwater wetlands and then let that seep
on over to the east end on across those wetlands just north of the Biscayne National Park headquarters.
Early on, as a part of our expedited construction projects with Biscayne Bay, we installed initially
four culverts, and that's the ones that have the arrows here.
They were constructed to
the tune of about $185,000. There's four 36-inch culverts, and there's also two existing culverts
for the south that were research culverts for some initial work that was done. Again,
it's redirecting water away from the C-102 and 103 and on south into L-31. Now, this
This is all by gravity feed at this point, and there's no pumps, so we only have a limited
amount of water that we can really send south in this particular situation.
Working with Miami-Dade County, our staff has gone out and done some mapping and some vegetation
control in the area for exotics, and this just happened, as you can see, in April
May, and the mapping that occurred was just in this south two-thirds portion,
So the northern two-thirds portion, it's not that it wasn't at no benefits.
We just haven't mapped it yet.
But you can see there at the south end that the Yellowish area on the map, that's an area
where just with a limited amount of fresh water, gravity feeds through that area.
And it's to the tune of about 4,000 acre feet for the whole area over the last couple
of years.
But you already see, we're already starting to see sawgrass move into these areas that
had been previously monocultures of Brad Mangrove.
So with that in mind, the team started looking at, OK,
what are some pieces of this project
that we could implement incrementally
and get some more additional benefits going
across those wetlands?
The first project, and it would call Project Day,
basically is installing a 40 CFS pump off the C-103
canal, and there would be plugs in the L-31 East just to the south of C-103 and also just
to the north of the North Canal, and to isolate this area so we could stage that area up,
and then an additional two culverts would be installed.
Now, one thing I do want to point out is that this one is slightly inconsistent with
the project implementation report, because the pump station is a little bit further
to the east here.
So that's something we'd have to work through the core, make sure that we could
to get our credit into this particular pump station.
But here, this component A basically is rehydrating
in that area that's shown in that segment
just directly north of the Biscayne National Park headquarters.
Project B is moving on north,
and this one is consistent with what's
in the project implementation report.
Again, be taking water off of C-103 canal
and pumping it on north and the L-31 east.
We would have plugs that's north and south ends
where they're necessary.
And then here we actually would be utilizing the existing culverts that we already have in place
when we stage up the L31 East.
And then at the far north end of the project, this would be a pump station coming off of the C102 canal to the south.
This one is also consistent with the project implementation report.
Again, it would be staging up the L31 East in this segment and utilizing the existing culverts that we have
and rehydrating that area.
And again, this is that area that you see the S23B.
That's that area right adjacent to where
those the saugrass is already moving,
starting to move in just from the gravity feed across there.
Feel like these are the types of projects
that have really got some opportunities
to have a lot of big bang for the buck
and get that water moving across those wetlands
and providing that recharges that wetlands
and then on into the bay in the near shore coastal areas.
These are just some rough order of magnitude costs that our team put together very quickly.
Looking at these, you can see the price range on these ranges from about $850,000 to $950,000.
We're going to go back and need to do a lot more detailed work on this
to determine if this is the right size pump station because this is kind of a ballpark.
Also, determine what is the operation of maintenance for this type of a project.
We've bought, you know, this is something we're really sensitive to just what is the
operation maintenance for this type of a facility to operate.
With regards to our remaining project lands, for these particular components that I've
identified here, we own all the lands, there's no additional land acquisition required.
There are some remaining parcels, out parcels that are between B and C that haven't been
and also the rock mining area just to the west there.
So we'll be looking at as a part of the land assessment process
and potential swap opportunities if there's any opportunities
to pursue these lands in the future for these particular areas.
So our next steps here, we'd like to proceed on
and look at, do some further investigation of these potential increment and project components.
If the board has any other ideas of other things we should look at, we'd be more happy to.
We're going to be looking for some partnerships, particularly with Miami-Dade County.
They've been really cooperative working with us out in this area and been really good partners here.
We want to look at obviously the more detailed engineering design cost and also the O&M.
And just keep in mind the land assessment and swap opportunities that we have.
Then we would be coming back to a future project in lands committee meeting with the results of our our efforts
And that's pretty much what we'll have to present to you today
Excellent Tom. Thank you very much
very presentation great projects
Questions for mr. Teetz comments
County departments are you interacting with?
the environmental
I'm not sure it's still called Durham, but yes, that group.
Any other questions for Mr. Teetz from the board?
Do you have any public comment, Reagan?
We do, Mr. Chair. We have several.
Dr. Joan Browder followed by Colin Creco.
Hello.
My name is Joan Browder.
I'm speaking today for myself.
I'm a systems ecologist working in Biscayne Bay.
but I'm representing myself rather than my employer or anybody, any other entity.
So I just want to say from this experience I've been working with the small fish and invertebrates
like shrimp and crabs in western South Biscayne Bay since 2002.
and I can say unequivocally that the species that are there,
the large part of the community is an estuarine community that lives in water
that is below the 35 parts per thousand of seawater.
So this community needs fresh water now and in the future
and it could potentially grow into even more estuarine components if we're able to bring
about some of the restoration plans, both of SERP and the Biscayne Bay water project,
coastal wetlands project.
So, I'd like to urge you to support item 36 on your agenda and also item 37 and also item 39.
I think all three of those will have great benefits to Biscayne Bay.
And I'd like to thank you for having your meeting today on the shores of Biscayne Bay.
and I think that hopefully demonstrates your commitment to helping us move forward with improvements
that will assure a good future for Biscayne Bay in the face of all the threats we have elsewhere.
Thank you, Ms. Browder. It was nice to be here.
Dr. Browder, did you still want to speak under Item 39?
I think I'm speaking for 36, 37, and 39, which I support very hardly, and I hope you will
support and move forward with.
We really appreciate your comments.
Thank you.
Collin Creco.
Is he gone?
Jane Graham.
Followed by Khalil Kettering.
Hi again.
Jane Graham.
Whoop.
Hands off the mic.
some kind of bomb or something. Okay, so yeah, Jane Graham out of Bonn,
Florida. I'm just speaking for all of the Biscayne Bay issues that we're looking at.
I want to really appreciate the fact that the district has made Biscayne Bay a
real priority in the last year and what you're seeing today is a suite of
solutions that first Tom, well Scott was talking about operational tweaks
for supplemental freshwater deliveries in the bay.
Something that wasn't really mentioned so much
is that there's also been some increased communication
between the environmental community and agriculture
during the agricultural drawdown this season
and that's been really helpful
to have an exchange of communication.
And then the last thing that Tom Pitz was talking about,
the incremental implementation of BBCW,
that's really important.
So what we can do is we think that you should definitely support this opportunity for the incremental implementation of BBCW to get the most out of what you have built so far, the L31E flowway.
I would definitely say that you want to see what's great about it is that you have pot of funds already for it.
And I think with land acquisition, you should see if you can make that happen as well.
There's a good deal on the table with Miami-Dade, so that would be really a feasible and good thing to do.
Talking about the land assessment process that's just kicking off in the Everglades region,
there are a couple pieces of land that are tied to the Biscayne Bay Coastal Wetlands project.
some of it said
Cutler piece. And me and my colleagues are looking at this right now. We think that you
should really keep them. They have a lot of good benefits. I see them almost out of time,
but I was going to put this together with my water reservation comments. I just say that
we support what you're doing, and we understand the importance for this rule for cost share
right now. But we do have a couple continuing questions, and staff has taken a lot of
time to speak with us. And we think that these can be resolved in the next step for a larger
scope protection of a water reservation. So thanks so much.
Thank you, Jane.
Mr. Kettering.
Hello, Kettering National Parks Conservation Association. There are about four different
agenda items that I wanted to speak on earlier, and I thought it would be more effective
if I just spoke now. So if I can take all those minutes and put in the 12 minutes
right now. I'd appreciate it. No, I'm kidding. First of all, I want to just give a bit of
recognition that's not related to this at all, but I know earlier this morning it was a packed
house in here, and your employee here, Armando Villaboy, took the initiative to request some
of the younger people in the audience to stand up so we could give up our seats for
some of the more senior people, and I thought that was very classy. I know my mom was
out there, I don't want somebody to do that, so I salute him for that and I thought that
was a very classy move.
The previous agenda item, I thought it was very important to move forward with that.
Any way we can find challenges and turn them into opportunities and solutions and be ingenious
and find ways we can get more water to Biscay and Bay as Scott Burns was talking about,
I support that, I think it's important we move forward with that.
I agree with comments that Lore Reynolds said earlier about funding parts of Biscay
and make coastal wetlands all parts of phase one,
moving forward with the cutler flowway.
And if there's an opportunity to get land that's needed
to move forward with purchasing that land,
we saw yesterday on the boat trip how important it is
to get groundwater and to move forward with these projects
with the Biscayne Bay Coastal Wetland Project.
I mean, it's a beautiful resource.
We saw turtles swimming by on the boat
and we saw fish swimming around.
And somebody earlier said the call has always been,
and let's restore the Everglades for future generations.
But I think more and more we're seeing it's,
let's restore the Everglades for our generation,
for right now, because we're seeing a change happen
faster and faster.
And then I guess I have one question,
which I didn't quite understand
and I guess I just posed a question,
but the part A, that was on this presentation,
I wasn't sure if that was part of this game
at Coastal Wetlands phase one
or something that was above and beyond or a change.
Thank you.
Thank you, Kalil.
Laura Reynolds, followed by Jerry Martin.
Laura Reynolds, again, with the Tropical Audubon Society.
And I only have a little bit of my voice left,
but I had the same question for Tom Teetz.
And I just said to him, well, maybe the thing to do is to kind of present this change
in what I would consider the PIR, the Part A,
moving that pump station further east,
just understanding the ramifications of that would be instrumental for our team to understand.
So we do have a meeting coming up on the 18th. It's out here on the key. I don't know if that's a possibility
I know we've requested a presentation already from Matt Morrison, but it could be just a quick
Add-on to that presentation. What is that part a change?
But certainly we support anything that is in the PIR
And I the two million dollars from the pin suco
funds, according to Terry Bates, who already had that budgeted for this, I would support
that effort to continue to take these incremental steps, you know, with Accelerate back when
Jeb Bush was around as an elected official, he saw the fact that we needed to do something
for 2.6 million people, and at that time it was probably around 2 million.
This is our economic driver, and so I would encourage you to continue to take steps
for Biscayne Bay. Thank you.
Thank you, Laura.
Mr. Martin.
Drew Martin, I'm just going to agree with everything that all the other speakers said.
I absolutely think it's essential.
And I mean, one of the important things is just to get the water right,
and we see that we're getting way too much fresh water in the northern estuaries,
but we see here in Biscayne Bay we're not getting enough fresh water.
So this is all a balancing act.
I know you're very aware of that,
but it's very essential that we get the water right
Because these estuaries are the economic driver of a lot of our commercial fishing and our recreational fishing, which are billion-dollar industries.
So I encourage you to fund this, both the land purchase and the actual programs themselves.
Thank you.
Thank you, Drew.
Martha Musgrove, fellow Vass Susan Shapiro.
Martha's waving us off, okay.
Thank you, Martha.
Ms. Shapiro.
Welcome.
Thank you. Good afternoon, and my name is Susan Shapiro, 10810, Southwest 69th
Court Miami, Florida. Thank you so much for having your meeting on the shores of
beautiful Biscayne Bay. I'm here to speak on behalf of the Biscayne Bay
Coalition. This is a new organization that's been around for a while, so we're
trying to revive it a bit and bring together both our traditional partners,
as well as what we consider non-traditional partners, and that's
the economic community here in South Florida.
So I would like to consider for the governing board
to consider as a whole in each of you individually
to consider joining the coalition.
And to do so with a resolution that I have here
and the resolution, like all resolutions,
start with all the whereases
and why Biscayne Bay is so important.
I think many of you heard that all yesterday
while you were there.
It has the environmental benefits
benefits, as well as the economic benefits. And it resolves three things. One is to include
Visgain Bay in the overall Greater Everglades Restoration Project. The second is to implement
a state rule to protect the current flow of surface and groundwater into Visgain Bay.
And the third is to support the efforts of the environmentally endangered lands program
– that's our eel program down here – as well as the Florida Forever program
to purchase the adjacent coastal wetlands that are needed for the Biscayne Bay Coastal
Wetlands project to proceed and to help recharge Miami-Dade's aquifer.
So if there's a way to incorporate this resolution into your minutes, I would appreciate that.
And anyone who wants a copy, I have many.
Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Shapiro.
Last public comment is Diami Derazio.
I apologize, I know I probably mutilated that.
Hello, my name is Yami Dorazio. I'm a student at Overland College. I'm going to be a second
year in my major's environmental studies, hence why I am here. I am also a resident
of Miami-Dade County and have been for not that long, like two years I think. My little
My little sister did a summer camp in Biscayne Bay last summer, I believe, or the summer before last.
And she would always come home really excited about all the things she was learning,
about the wildlife and the ecosystems, biodiversity and all that.
So that was really great that my little sister was following in her older sisters with steps.
So I will save your time.
I'm just going to read here.
Normally I would engage you all, but we're running over.
So I just want to express my support for the delivery of fresh water to Biscayne Bay,
the quality and timing of the water flow.
What seems to be monitored and executed with consideration to the Bay's ecosystem
has a significant role in our economy and tourism.
Fisheries and marine life are often more connected than we realize.
And simple steps for environmental consideration can improve the situation greatly,
which you all have obviously presented on for the past few hours.
and I'm so impressed and so excited.
I just really want to reiterate my support
for items 36, 37, and 39.
So thank you all so much,
and I look forward to seeing you all in the future.
Thank you.
That's it.
All right.
Is there anyone else from the public that would like
to comment on this item?
Seeing none,
is there any additional board comment here?
All right.
Very good.
Tom, nice job.
Thank you.
Next is agenda item number 38, and that is general public comment.
Reagan, do we have any general public comment?
We do have one.
Captain Dan Kipnis.
Nice to be here.
Nice to see you all here.
My name is Captain Dan Kipnis.
I've been on Biscayne Bay my whole life.
I ran boats on Biscayne Bay.
I'm now retired.
I grew up on an island on Miami Beach, so I know this bay.
We need the fresh water.
When I was young here, the bay was clear brown,
brackish. Now it's clear green, you saw that yesterday. We have to have the water
for another reason. Sea levels rise. We need fresh water to push back on that sea
level. We're going to have salt water in here very quickly. We don't add a huge
amount of fresh water. There is a problem. The water is basically
designated for the Everglades. We're going to lose, as this project, the
Everglades project goes forward, we're going to lose a lot of sheet flow
through Miami-Dade County that ended up in Biscayne Bay.
So anything that you can do to help this situation out is critical, and time is not on our side.
Right now we flood in Miami Beach with salt water at high tide.
South Biscayne Bay is doing it right now. The salt water is coming in.
All of South Dade is going to be underwater in 20 years or 25 years.
It only takes a foot to do it.
The agricultural drawdown, we need to save that fresh water and use it where we need it.
If they can't grow in it, they can't grow in it, the farmers.
Sooner or later, it's going to be salt water, and they won't be able to grow there anyway.
We've got to buy this time. You must move water down. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Captain Dan. Any additional public comment?
Yeah, Mr. Chair.
All right. And that concludes agenda item number 38, agenda item number 39.
time. The next agenda item, number 39, it's a public hearing to amend rule number 40E-2.091,
Florida Administrative Code and Chapter 40E-10, FAC, to establish a water reservation for
the SERP, Biscayne Bay Coastal Wetlands Project 1 Project, Phase 1 Project, as more specifically
described in the published agenda title. We will start with staff's presentation
and then hear public comments from those who have submitted speaker cards.
Each speaker will be limited to two minutes.
Questions from the board will be held until the end of the presentation.
At this time, I'm going to call Don Medellin.
He's already there.
I don't even have to call him.
Hey, Don.
Take it away.
All right.
Good afternoon.
Appreciate the opportunity to bring to you today the Biscayne Bay Water Reservation
Rule Adoption after many months of hard work.
We're anxious and happy to bring this before you today.
I'd like to just start off with a little bit of background
with the governing board direction that we received back in December 2011.
The governing board directed staff to pursue the scope of the reservation consistent
with the SERP Phase 1 project for Biscayne Bay Coastal Wetlands.
And the project implementation report primarily identified surface water flows
as the water identified needed for protection of fish and wildlife.
And the Board directed us to reserve water that was consistent with the PIR.
And the reservation is a critical path for receiving federal funding
and to be able to enter into a...
Hey, Don. Can I interrupt you for one second?
Just to be technically correct.
Our counselors over there say you absolutely have to be technically correct.
We need to say that the public hearing is now open, say those words, and I didn't do that.
Now I have.
And I've just got a wink from our council, and this is good.
This public hearing is open.
Thank you.
Exactly.
Pick up right there where I interrupted you.
Thank you.
That being said, the water reservation is a critical path for us receiving federal funding,
the Water Management District and to enter into that project partnership agreement.
And it's also looked upon favorably by Congress as we go for congressional authorization.
So I wanted to outline a couple of the rule development activities that we have done
through the process, the rule development process.
We've had three public workshops, four RAC meetings, three governing board meetings
today being the fourth.
We've had BBRRC team meetings, and then we've also held seven stakeholder meetings individually
with stakeholders.
And so, you know, we've had 21 external meetings with folks just to give the opportunity to
provide public input and comment through the process.
I wanted to back up just a bit and then briefly explain how the water was identified
for the restoration itself, and this graphic that you see has been updated to include an additional five years period of record from 1986 to 2011,
and we're really talking about annual flows here. The first line that I wanted to point out was the horizontal brown line that you see at the top.
That is the actual flow target that was identified to maximize the benefits for fish and wildlife.
life. The pink line that you see down below is the line that is actually water shows the
surface water that would actually be diverted by the project structures themselves, the project
facilities. That would be the pump stations, the conveyance canals, the swales, as well
as the project culverts. So that actually is what's required by the federal government
Thank you very much.
There we go. So the blue shaded area that you see below this pink line is all that is
required of the federal government to reserve in order to be eligible and to meet the word
of requirements, and it's the Water Resources Development Act requirements for the district
to receive its share of the federal funding, 50% share cost share. And however, in order
In order to go over and above that, the district wanted to try and meet this flow target.
So the district, in order to try and meet this flow target, is actually looking at
reserving water with this blue line that's above the pink line.
And that is the total annual surface water flows that would be discharged to the bay.
We recognize through our evaluation that all of the water that goes to discharge
to Biscayne Bay right now is important for fish and wildlife.
And so the district went above and beyond and we are reserving water up to the flow target.
And so any water that's above that flow target would be available for allocation.
However, the water below the flow target, that brown line, is reserved specifically for the protection of fish and wildlife.
And I just wanted to point out too that the difference that you've seen between this pink line and the blue line here
is water that was still discharged to the bay through many of the conveyance canals that are already existing,
but it still is important for fish and wildlife.
So that will continue to occur over and above what is actually delivered through the project facilities.
This is the map that we've identified as part of the rulemaking process that identifies
which water bodies would be protected as part of the restoration rule.
The red canal reaches are those canal reaches that would be specifically
were water withdrawals from the surface water withdrawals from the canals would
be specifically restricted and then also want to point out the area along the
western shoreline of Biscayne Bay called the near shore central Biscayne Bay
that near shore area is where the benefits to fish and wildlife were
actually occurring and so that's about 500 meters out from the shoreline
1640 feet. Those are the protected water bodies that would be you know
protected under this reservation rule.
In addition, there are some blue canal reaches
that you see on this map.
Those blue canal reaches would not be regulated
under this rule.
However, I wanted to point out that we already have
on our existing, under our existing permitting criteria,
rules that protect not only the canal reaches,
but areas between those canal reaches
to protect the resources in those areas.
And that would be the restricted allocation area rules
that we have for the Lower East Coast Everglades water bodies, as well as wetland protection
rules and saltwater intrusion rules.
I want to go over a little bit about the rule itself.
There is a prohibition on surface water withdrawals from the near shore central Biscayne Bay
area, and that's the yellow cross-tatch area along the shoreline, I just pointed
out.
Also, restrictions on surface water withdrawals from the canals contributing water needed
for the protection of fish and wildlife.
And those are the red canal reaches
that I just pointed out on the map previously.
The rule also identifies specific withdrawals
that do not use reserve water,
one of which is groundwater withdrawals,
another is dewatering,
which is usually a temporary short-term withdrawal
for roach instruction and things of the like.
And then finally, withdrawals of water
and excess of the target identified in the volume probability curves.
And so that's the portion of water that I told you is above that horizontal brown line
that can still be allocated.
So that water is not protected under the rule.
And I wanted to point out a little bit about the comments that we've received since our
March 14th governing board meeting where we presented on this game day rulemaking process.
And there were two issues that were identified by environmental stakeholders.
One was groundwater protection was needed to ensure that the existing canal flows to the bay are not adversely affected by future withdrawals.
And the second issue that was brought up, I'm concerned, was additional canal segments should be protected because they contribute significant surface water to the flow targets.
After hearing these comments, staff went and performed additional evaluations to address
stakeholder concerns. We met with the environmental stakeholders on April 23rd to discuss the analysis
and results. And one of the things that they also asked that we update the technical document
to incorporate our additional analysis, we have done that and that revised document
is posted on the web as we speak today.
So that has been updated.
And the conclusions that we came up with was
staff clarified the previous analysis confirming that canal reaches
contributed minimal surface water flows to the bay,
to the flow target for the bay.
In other words, those areas, those blue canal reaches upstream,
those upstream areas contribute very minimal water to the bay.
And then also groundwater modeling that we did suggest that increased demand will not
result in appreciable reductions to reserve flows discharging to the bay.
And then finally, minimal risk of impacts from groundwater, which all is affecting
the bay as expected in the future.
So there will be very little to minimal risk.
And I wanted to point out, as you heard from the previous presentations just a bit
ago that the district has committed a lot of time and resources to the Bay and trying
to make incremental improvements to the Bay. You heard Mr. Burns' presentation about
ongoing dry season operations to make sure that we're improving the near shore salinity.
And then Mr. Teetz also talked about trying to do the next increment of projects in the
future above and ahead of federal funding. And the district has already committed
and spent $4.5 million on the Deering of the State and the L31 for culverts that Mr. Teetz identified.
$4.5 million and we're looking at spending more in the future.
So the next important step is to move forward with the water reservation to have this water reservation rule
approved to protect not only the Bay but also the Phase I CERC project water.
And that being said, I would refer you to this recommendation for the Governing Board's action and consideration.
Thank you, Don. Very presentation. Great work.
You know, we talked about that at lunch yesterday, and you just reminded me how much outreach, how much goes into this.
And you really did a great job reaching out to stakeholders, but also through the very lengthy process.
So, nice work.
Thank you, and I will be quick to tell you that there is a very good technical team behind
me that's doing much of this work.
Excellent.
Good work to you and the team, thank you.
Board questions, board comments?
I'm going to take public comment first.
Keep me straight there, if you don't she will.
We have three public comments, Brian Carlstrom followed by Khalil Petering, then Laura
Reynolds.
Brian Carlstrom, Superintendent, Biscayne National Park.
Good to see all of you again, Board members, Vice Chairman Bowers.
Thank you for taking the time to come out yesterday to see the Bay firsthand.
I think that workshop you held out in the field created some memories of the Bay
and what the results of all the work that you're helping to contribute
towards me, towards the ecological integrity of the National Park.
I submitted a letter for support to Reagan yesterday afternoon.
and I want to make sure that ends up in the record.
This is a magnificent step forward in helping
to preserve the condition of the Skane National Park.
But I'd like to challenge you to say that it's just a start.
The Skane National Park is, at the end,
it's the beginning of the ocean.
It's the end.
It's the estuary system.
It's my responsibility to make sure that's
preserved in as good a condition possible
for the enjoyment of this in future generations.
What you're doing today with this proposed rulemaking will make that a whole lot easier,
but there's so much more that we need to do.
A lot of what we've been talking about today is what's the economic benefit to what you're
doing.
In the National Park, I threw out a figure during my opening remarks yesterday when we
were on our way out.
The economic benefit of Biscayne National Park, right in the backyard of Miami, with
approaching half a million visitors a year, is in excess of $34 million.
That's a significant chunk of change.
And that also is important to so many aspects of the economy.
Tourism is huge down here in South Florida throughout the entire state.
Making sure that the Bay is in as good a condition as possible
helped to maintain the viability of that economic resource.
Those visitors also include about 8000 school kids a year to get a chance to go out there and enjoy it.
We heard somebody mention that their little sister got a chance to do that not too long ago.
All this combined makes sure that the park will be preserved in perpetuity and water is what this game is all about.
It is the nation's largest marine park.
I want to continue working together with the South Florida Watershed Management District.
We've got a great history, all the environmental stakeholders, all the stakeholders that work
with us help to make the park what it is.
I'm going to wrap this up pretty quick.
I want to thank all those that have worked towards making this happen, and I also want
to support the projects that were presented earlier, if I can do that, for Scott and
Tom and Don for presenting those, and also for Sarah who's on my staff that works
on this stuff day in, day out.
Thanks so much.
Thank you and thanks again for your hospitality yesterday. It was first class.
You're quite welcome. And if you'd like to come down again, let me know.
We'll take you up on it.
Ditto.
Who's next?
Really. I mean, I think I agree. First of all, I've said it before and you said that the accessibility from your staff for this project was great.
They were very open to meeting with us several times, and we appreciate that.
And you saw a list of some of what our questions are about moving forward with this.
And I think it's important to get this done.
The National Parks Conservation Association supports this.
But as the Superintendents said, we think this is the first step.
It's important to think about some mechanism in the future where we can talk about
groundwater and protecting a larger body of the Bay in general, not just the restoration project.
I kind of liken it to it's like we're graduating from middle school now, but we still got to get our high school degree.
And that doesn't come tomorrow. It comes in time, but we still need to work forward towards that.
So we support moving forward with this and we look forward to working on something larger in the future. Thank you.
Thanks, Kalil.
Welcome back, Laura.
For the last time, I hope, I guess I get the last word here, but I do want to thank your
staff for reaching out as much as they did.
I don't think it was an issue necessarily with what everybody was trying to do, but
the constraints that you're under.
And so just so you know, I recognize that and I just wanted to say, you know, Beth,
Thank you for being patient and understanding that our community is worried that this affects
rulemaking across the board.
And it was a concern to me as an ecologist to understand how you could protect water
without protecting groundwater.
And so you received a letter from the Everglades Coalition on this issue saying, yes, this
is the first step, but recognize the fact that groundwater is important and they're
tied together.
And for this game, that's your goal.
Your goal is to create more groundwater.
So I'd like to give you all a copy of this
in case you missed my email.
And I just wanted to reiterate that this is a first step.
And again, I'm so tired.
I'm not gonna say anything else,
but thank you for my voice is done.
That's it, no more.
Thank you.
And the other thing I wanted to see
is there were a lot of people here.
There were a lot of people here that left, okay?
And they didn't get a chance to speak,
But, you know, I didn't have a time certain, so maybe in the future we can tell them when,
you know, at least say before lunch or after lunch.
So anyway, thank you.
Very good.
Thank you, Laura.
Is there any additional public comment?
No, there is none.
Okay.
Then the public hearing is now closed, and we will begin a board discussion.
Does the board have any comments or questions?
Any questions?
All right.
Seeing none.
And do we have a motion?
So moved.
Second?
Anyone?
I'll second.
We have a motion and a second.
Is there any further discussion?
OK, all in favor?
Aye.
Opposed?
All right.
Very good.
Thanks, John.
Thank you very much, John.
Just wanted to say thank you to many of the staff here.
Briefly, Beth Lewis, Scott Burns, Rick Auliman,
Millie Hunt, Karen Smith, Stephen
members, Jose Otero, I'm Miller, and the Coastal Section Planning and CERC staff.
Thank you for all their hard work, dedication.
They sat through and provided a lot of technical expertise through the process.
So thank you to many of these staff, and Linda Lindstrom and Peter Durant.
Great.
And again, nice job.
Thank you very much.
And of course, Terry Bay.
All right.
Next item is agenda item number 40.
This is also a public hearing for the rule amendments to be consistent with statewide
environmental resource permitting rules, as more specifically described in-
We will start with staff's presentation and then hear public comments from those who
have submitted speaker cards. Each speaker will be limited to two minutes. Questions from
the board will be held until the end of the presentation. The public hearing was opened
and continued on May 9, 2013 to address comments received from the Joint Administrative Procedures
Committee and the Department of Environmental Protection. Staff will please begin their
presentation.
Okay. Thank you. Good afternoon. I'm Susan Martin from the
Office of Counsel. Also here today on this rule is Anita Bain, who is the Bureau
Chief over the Environmental Resource Permit Program. We're here today to
request that you adopt amendments or repeal provisions in chapters 40e0, 40e1,
40e4, and 40e41 of the Florida administrative code. Also that you
repeal chapters 40E40 and 40E400 and that you amend and rename the Basis of Review for
Environmental Resource Permits. We're also asking for authority to publish a notice of
change to address comments received. The background for this is that in 2012 the Florida Legislature
directed DEP in coordination with the Water Management Districts to initiate rural development
to adopt a statewide consistent environmental resource permit rule program.
So, DEP and the Five Water Management Districts work together for over a year,
along with the public, environmental group, business organizations,
to come up with language for consistent statewide rule,
which is found in Chapter 62-330 of the Florida Administrative Code.
DEP is also doing rule adoption today and they are adopting rule 62-30 today.
The effective date for DEP's rule will be August 1st.
The basis for this rule is to rely primarily on the existing rules of the water management districts and DEP.
There were some differences however that we had to reconcile because all the water management districts did have different rules,
rules so we had to work together to reconcile those differences. Also, we were directed
to incorporate measures that would streamline the rules and make them easier for the public
to utilize and reduce regulatory burdens. 62-330 of the Florida Administrative Code
is considered a rule of all the water management districts. So, I do not need to ask you
to adopt 62-330 today.
However, I do need to ask you to adopt amendments to our rules
because our rules contain many provisions
which will now be found in Chapter 62-330.
So our rules have to be amended or repealed
in order to prevent redundancy or inconsistency
with Chapter 62-330.
Our water quality and water quantity rules
will remain for each of the water management districts.
They are not part of this rulemaking.
They are considered beyond the scope of the directive of the legislature.
They're replaced into the new applicant's handbook, Volume 2,
which is before you for adoption today, but they're substantially the same.
However, water quality will be addressed soon in upcoming rulemaking.
With regard to timing, our rules are scheduled to become effective when the statewide ERP rule, Chapter 62-330, becomes effective, which is scheduled for August 1st.
However, if something happens to delay the effectiveness of Chapter 62-330, our rule will not become effective until that chapter becomes effective.
So therefore, for recommended action, I'd like to ask you to adopt or repeal the amendments
to the rules that you see on the screen and also to address the changes that were requested
by the Joint Administrative Procedure Committee and the Department of Environmental Protection.
But before you turn it over for questions, I'd like to acknowledge the staff who worked
on this.
We worked on this for over a year, and many of the people listed here spent all day, every
Thursday, in all-day meetings with DEP and the other water management districts, and
then separate meetings with environmental groups, business groups, in order to make this will
come together.
So I'd like to acknowledge Anita Bain, Hugo Carter, Jennifer Krumloff, Mindy Parrot,
Joyce Rader, Jan Sleuth, Tony Waterhouse, and Liz Woods.
Thank you.
Unless there's public comment, we will, thank you, I'll come back to you in a second, sir.
Susan, nice job. Now we will go to public comment.
We have one public comment, Jennifer Hecker.
Hi, good afternoon. Jennifer Hecker, on behalf of the Conservancy of Southwest Florida,
and our more than 5,000 members here to comment on the proposed changes
to the environmental resource permitting rules dealing with ERP stormwater standards.
standards. Nearly a decade ago, on November 13, 2003, our organization challenged the
district's ERP stormwater standards because they were clearly deficient, and as a result,
water quality was continuing to decline in our region. The district at that time acknowledged
that the standards were not sufficient for the removal of dissolved pollutants such
as nutrients and agreed to put heightened standards into effect for all projects discharging
to outstanding Florida waters and waters not meeting state water quality standards.
This was in the form of policy guidance until rule language could be developed,
which it was in the years that followed, and it was known as the Southwest Florida Basin Rule.
Before adoption of the district's basin rule, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection
began development of statewide stormwater rule, and the district asked the
Conservancy to put its challenge in advance based on the understanding that they would update the
guidance requirements and that the statewide rule would be developed and implemented in a timely manner.
The Conservancy agreed to do so in good faith for a period of 18 months until April 2010.
The statewide rule never did get adopted, and now we are facing new statewide and regional
ERP rules, including the ERP Volume 2 being put forth before you for approval today,
with the same old deficient stormwater standards that we challenged 10 years ago.
With more than a decade of scientific evidence confirming that such standards are resulting
an insufficient stormwater treatment, and with the district's own prior agreement with
our organization to update such standards and rule, we strongly objected to the ERP
Volume 2 rule, because it would only perpetuate these deficient standards in new rule language.
We met with your staff to discuss ways to remedy this, and the result is their agreement
to seek immediately commencing rule development to develop heightened ERP standards, such
as those in the previously agreed policy guidance memos currently being implemented
for all projects discharging to any downstream outstanding Florida water and to any water
bodies not meeting state water quality standards. While we believe those standards should have
been incorporated in ERP Volume 2 rule before you for approval, we appreciate the staff
support and our counting on your support that the district will honor its commitment
to putting these more stringent stormwater standards into rule in the upcoming rule
development being proposed in the regulatory plan approved by you this morning. Thank
Thank you.
Do we have any additional public comment?
No, Mr. Chair.
Okay.
The public hearing is now closed and we will begin board discussion.
Mr. Hutchcraft.
I move adoption of staff's recommendation.
Second.
Is there any further discussion?
Seeing none, all in favor?
Aye.
Motion passes.
Thank you.
Congratulations and thank you again.
Thank you.
All right.
Next is agenda item 41.
This is a public hearing for the Rule Amendments to Write of Way Rules, chapters 40e-6 and 40e-62FAC,
as more specifically described in the published agenda title.
We will start with staff's presentation and then hear public comments from those who have submitted speaker cards.
Each speaker will be limited to two minutes.
Questions from the board will be held until the end of the presentation.
The public hearing was opened and continued on May 9th, 2013 to address comments received
from the Joint Administrative Procedures Committee.
Staff will please begin their presentation.
Jorge, good afternoon.
Good afternoon.
Thank you, Mr. Vice-Chairman.
My name is Jorge Petino.
I am the section administrator for the right-of-way section.
Our presentation summarizes the proposed changes to the right-of-way rules and recommends to the Board to adopt those changes.
This initiated rule development back in February 2012 upon approval by the governing Board.
We had a workshop on August 22, 2012, and all public comments that were received have been addressed to the satisfaction of the public.
We published a notice of rulemaking in the Florida Administrative Register on April 10, 2013.
The rule changes come summarized into three major categories.
We are basically taking 40E6, which is the main right-of-way rule,
and we're streamlining it, making clarifications to it.
We are also merging all relevant portions of Chapter 40E62,
also known as the C-18 rule, into Chapter 40 E6 to try to eliminate redundancies.
And we are repealing Chapter 40 E62.
We are also taking the criteria manual, which has all the technical criteria people have to follow
to construct something on the right-of-way and reformatting it to make it a little bit more user-friendly.
About two weeks ago, we received comments from Japsi from the Joint Administrative Procedure Committee
And we have since addressed those comments.
They fall into four major categories.
They want us to reconcile naming and referencing the criteria manual.
They want minor clarifications and corrections in the role itself.
They would like to have the word may replaced by the word shall through sections.
and they also would like the word May replaced with the words is authorized to in a couple of other sections.
All these changes are incorporated in the pack of documentation that you have.
So our staff's recommendation is for the board to adopt amendments to Rule 40e6 to reveal 40e62
and to adopt changes to the materials incorporated by reference in Rule 46.091 as described in this slide.
Okay, very good. Thank you, Jorge. Do we have public comment? We have no public comment. Okay.
The public hearing is now closed and we will begin more discussion. Mr. Moran.
I just had a question for you about replacing me with Shal on 40 e to 6.331 at all.
Can you comment briefly on what those rules cover?
I'll have to look it up real quick if you can give me a second.
And I have Andrew Ross here with me from Eagle so he can help me out if you can.
And Terry Bates is still here also.
Terry will now divine that slide.
Which section is that?
I mean, they were minor in essentially they do not seem to like the word may.
So we try to, you know, obviously this is a proprietary program.
So we try to in some instances we agreed with them in some instances we didn't.
And they accepted the instances that we didn't agree on.
And those that we didn't think that they were very – that we lived with, those are the
ones that we accepted.
This one deals with letter modifications shall be issued by the district.
Staff provided requested modification meets certain criteria.
And before we had May, so they – and we can live with that.
It's not that big of a deal.
All right.
Thank you.
My pleasure.
Sorry about that.
It's a lot of little changes here and there.
Tedious work, but good job there.
Okay, is there any additional board questions, discussions?
All right, we have a motion.
It's removed.
We have a motion and a second.
All in favor?
All right, motion passes.
If I may, Mr. Powers, I also would like to thank staff.
You say I may or I shall, would it?
Go ahead. Will you start messing with that thing over there?
I am authorized to thank it.
Now I would like to thank our staff in West Virginia.
They spent a lot of hours, especially Andrew Ross and Julie Russell from Lincoln.
They helped us quite a bit.
I couldn't have done it without them.
Jorge, thank you very much.
I appreciate that, and recognizing the staff as well.
I'm going to just spend some time with our audio visual folks down there.
Mr. Waldman just a crash course or something.
We're a fresher.
We can adjust the budget, too.
We can give out some money to some of these things here, too.
Next item.
And I know everybody's heading towards the wrap-up,
but I just want to remind you that we've got
a brief annual meeting after we go through
and get our monthly report.
So next is agenda item number 42,
Doug Berks from Monthly Financial Statement.
Just very quickly, Mr. Vice Chair.
We've included the Monthly FY13 financial report
through April and your report backup. Thank you sir. All right and agenda item
number 43 Miss Anse council report. Just real quickly I wanted
I want to advise the board that we are going to be losing Frank Bartalon next Friday. He will
be going off into retirement and I know he worked closely with all of you, 35 plus years,
a member of the Florida Bar, a lawyer who's dedicated the majority of his life to public
service. He's worked closely handling governing board services and other issues with the
board and I just thought you all would like to know that and you'll be able to put
him to work a little bit more in about two minutes as he does the leasing court
But I just thought I'd let you know.
Excellent.
Thank you very much.
Frank, thank you for your years of service and all the best.
OK.
Next, we're going to move to Mr. Interim, the executive
director for the executive director's reports.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Just want to bring your attention.
You're very familiar with the update on restoration strategies.
The one item I do want to highlight in the lower left-hand corner, we hit a great milestone
and completed the science plan that was published on June 10th.
There is a link to the actual document.
If any of the government board members would like to have a hard copy, we'll certainly
get that for you.
And the letter that's in front of you now is the submittal letter from Melissa Meeker
to Secretary Menier, hitting that key milestone.
This is a monumental step in the plan, a lot of hard work in developing sort
of the 10-year commitment of resources to actually further the knowledge and understanding
of what we need to do to achieve the QBEL in compliance with our consent orders.
Thank you, Mr. Barnett.
All right, is there any additional board comments?
All right.
Then can I get a motion to adjourn?
Who put this agenda together?
Great answer. All right, we're going to move now to the South Florida Water Management
District Leasing Corp. Annual meeting, and this meeting is now called the Order.
We would
like, can I get, do we all have a copy of the minutes?
Yes, sir.
and we've all reviewed them, they're in our package,
we've reviewed everybody, reviewed the minutes,
and I get a motion to approve the minutes.
So moved.
Act like we've done this before.
All right.
We have a motion and a second.
All in favor?
Aye.
OK, minutes are approved.
Reagan, do we have any additions, deletions,
or substitutions to the agenda of the annual meeting
of the Elysian Court.
No, Mr. Chair.
Okay, so none.
I would now for ratification of officers,
Article III, Section II of the bylaws,
I'd like to call Mr. Frank Bartelon
from the Office of Counselor.
Thank you, Mr. Powers.
The bylaws set forth that certain members
of the governing board become automatically members
of the president and vice president of the corporation,
and that would be Mr. O'Keeffe,
the president and you, sir,
fortunate enough to become the vice president, and the bylaws also provide
that an executive, assistant executive director is the treasurer, in this case
would be Mr. Lindahl, and I guess this is Ernie's first official recognition in
something that he's the executive director shall be the secretary of the
body, so he will be the secretary, so we just need a motion to ratify those
officers at this time. I move ratification of officers.
I'll second it. What is the delay, but I'll second it.
You should be quicker than that, Clay. I know, you all are.
We have a motion and a second. Is there any further discussion?
Okay, all in favor? All right.
All right, motion passes. Thank you very much.
a great swan song there, Mr. Bartolone.
Next is gen item number five, annual budget report,
article four, section six of the bylaws.
Back to you, Mr. Frank Bartolone.
Yes, sir, the bylaws require that every year report
be made to the governing board as to how much
or what funds are in the district's governing board
budget for the corporation.
And every year, the only amount that's placed in
is the debt service.
And next year's budget has $35,185,891.
dollars for debt service on the bonds for the next fiscal year so that's the
only thing that I have have to report. Excellent so then do we have so then we
need to approve we need to accept that report okay can I get a motion? Motion to
accept. We have a motion a second any further discussion all in favor? All right
motion passes thank you very much Frank.
So then next is agenda item number
Resolution 2000-13 is resolution of the Board of Directors of Supply and Water Management
District Leasing Corps authorizing the addition of facilities pursuant to the master lease
purchase agreement dated November 1st, 2006, authorizing the execution and delivery of
a second supplement to series 2006 ground lease and a second amendment to schedule and
in 2006 in connection therewith and providing for an effective date.
Mr. Carter.
Yes, sir, you adopted the similar resolution as the district governing board as the leasing
court. You must also adopt this resolution, which basically I believe it's been briefed
to you as to what the purpose of the resolution is regarding placing some land back into
the master lease.
Move to accept.
Second.
Any further discussion? We have a motion and a second. Any further discussion?
All in favor say aye.
Motion passes.
Is there any other business to come before the board?
If not, then can I get a motion to adjourn?
Don't move.
All right, so we stand adjourned. Thank you very much.