[0:05] Many of you either have post construction stormwater
[0:08] control facilities on-site. Raise your hand if you
[0:10] have one on-site. Yeah, yeah, you guys have
[0:15] one. Yep. All right, raise your hand if
[0:18] you're here just a resident to learn more
[0:21] about these facilities. Cool. Raise your hand if
[0:26] you're here because we're from the city and
[0:28] I asked youtold you. Nothing wrong. Yay, thank
[0:33] you. So this year we are requiring all
[0:38] owners of post construction stormwater controls for water
[0:41] quality to be inspected and maintained. Maintaining them
[0:45] could be a variety of different things depending
[0:47] on what kind of BMP or best management
[0:49] practice, what's installed on your site. We do
[0:52] have some engineers here that I've reviewed many
[0:54] of their plans. So yeah, we're really glad
[0:58] to have you guys. I have my inspectors
[1:00] in the back, Dan Kern, Samuel Miller, and
[1:02] Jeff Parker. They're behind you, so you may
[1:05] see them out on your facility or they
[1:07] may be the ones you guys contact us
[1:09] to have some more insight in the field
[1:12] on what your controls are, how they're supposed
[1:14] to function, if they're looking okay, if you're
[1:16] doing the proper maintenance. I left my business
[1:19] card on everyone's table, so please feel free
[1:21] to reach out. There's also a form on
[1:23] your table that if you guys could go
[1:25] ahead and fill out. It's not the inspection
[1:27] form. It's the other it's just a single
[1:30] page form. The inspection form will go through
[1:32] together at the end with some pictures to
[1:34] kind of get everyone a feel for what
[1:35] it is that they're looking at and looking
[1:37] forward, but that other forum helps us with
[1:40] tracking and reaching out for those annual inspection
[1:42] reports and operation and maintenance documents a little
[1:46] bit later in the year. Awesome. Well, you
[1:51] guys for helping protect our water quality here
[1:53] in St. Joseph. I am here with Amy
[1:56] and Caitlin, my Black and Veatch consultants, and
[1:59] they are going to go ahead and go
[2:00] through a presentation. Do you want them to
[2:03] raise their hand if they have a question
[2:04] as you're going or would you prefer? Yes,
[2:08] please interrupt me as you'd like to ask
[2:12] a question. If you're joining us from online,
[2:15] welcome. We want you to utilize the chat.
[2:20] I can see it from here and I'll
[2:22] address your question if pop it in there.
[2:26] Can they go ahead and put their contact
[2:28] info in the chat as well? Oh, yes.
[2:30] Please put your contact information in the chat
[2:36] and please tell Colleen if you have a
[2:39] stormwater detention facility. Think I she'd love to
[2:42] know that. I think that was one of
[2:45] the entry or the entry questions. And then
[2:49] please feel free to grab a snack if
[2:50] you guys need to get up and use
[2:51] the restroom or in the hallway to your
[2:54] right hand side. If anything comes up, just
[2:57] let us know. We're here to help and
[2:58] answer questions. Thank you guys. So as Colleen
[3:02] said, my name is Amy Dietz. I've been
[3:05] with Black and Veatch for about four years
[3:08] and I've been an engineer in Kansas City
[3:11] area for about twenty. And I'm here today
[3:15] to talk about stormwater protection and inspection. It's
[3:19] not enough to build. A stormwater facility. We
[3:23] also have to maintain it, make sure it's
[3:26] still working. This live training is being recorded,
[3:35] and by participating, you are consenting to being
[3:39] recorded. Fantastic. The purpose of this course, we're
[3:44] gonna go over post construction BMPs. So things
[3:48] that we've put in place to manage water
[3:51] quality and water quantity. And then just some
[3:55] common maintenance issues that we see around the
[3:58] city. We're gonna review permitting requirements and what
[4:02] the city code says we have to do,
[4:05] and then we'll review some inspection form requirements.
[4:11] And we'll let everyone into the lobby. There
[4:20] we go. So the city has an MS4
[4:24] permit, and that's defined as a municipal separate
[4:28] storm sewer system. It's operated by the city
[4:34] and it's audited by the Missouri Department of
[4:38] Natural Resources. One of the most common deficiencies
[4:41] that pops up on an audit just anywhere
[4:44] in the nation, not specifically here, is documentation.
[4:50] That's kind of one of the hardest things
[4:52] to do. We do a pretty good job
[4:54] of everything else. We're going to go over
[4:58] the types and common maintenance issues of some
[5:02] of these facilities. When I talk about post
[5:05] construction BMPs, I mean all the water quality
[5:10] things that have been built in the last
[5:12] probably ten years. And before that, we were
[5:15] still building detention basins, which do have some
[5:18] water quality benefits. So some common issues we
[5:22] see with detention ponds are beaver, rodent activity,
[5:26] potable sedimentation, scour, and invasive species. Yeah. See
[5:35] the screen. I can see the screen. Thank
[5:39] you. Okay. Glad you asked. So the picture
[5:45] in the center there is the Amur or
[5:48] bush honeysuckle. I don't know if you're familiar
[5:50] with it. It gets these lovely white blossoms
[5:52] on it, and once you know what it
[5:54] is, you start seeing it everywhere. It's not
[5:59] enough to chop it down, you have to
[6:01] poison the stump. If you look at the
[6:04] understory in the center picture here. It's there.
[6:09] Nothing lives underneath this. This is a non
[6:13] native and a pretty expensive invasive. Counties are
[6:19] spending a lot of money getting rid of
[6:20] this stuff, cutting it back, trying to trying
[6:24] to manage it. And then there's the other
[6:27] things that you might be more familiar with
[6:29] the eastern red cedars. You have a cow
[6:32] pasture, you'll see those growing real commonly in
[6:35] it. Johnson grass and Reed canary grass. They're
[6:39] a little harder to identify. I have a
[6:42] picture here somewhere, but they just kind of
[6:46] look bully and overground really tall grasses. Another
[6:51] common issue we have with tension ponds is
[6:55] eutrophication. That's a fancy word for saying buildup
[7:00] of nutrients. The reason this is a problem
[7:03] is that lowers the dissolved oxygen in the
[7:06] pond, which kills your fish, and significantly tanks
[7:10] your recreational ability when there's dead fish in
[7:13] your pond. This happened in Krug Park Lake.
[7:20] Let's see 2023. So a couple years ago.
[7:25] And oh, Lisa, you can't hear me, I've
[7:32] gotten a notification online that we're having some
[7:35] audio issues. Paul Free notified me that he
[7:42] could hear me. So I wonder if the
[7:45] problem is on your end, Lisa. Anyway, the
[7:50] Department of Natural Resources, they do track these
[7:54] harmful algal blooms. There's a website, you can
[7:58] Google it, real easy. And it has a
[8:01] lot of, it really is pretty harmful. It
[8:05] can harm humans, pets and wildlife. Pets are
[8:09] the most common victim of this cyanobacteria. This
[8:14] examples from Jackrabbit Lake, which is in Jackson
[8:17] County, Kansas City. And And it can happen
[8:24] here. This cyanobacteria is not, you know, not
[8:27] super rare or anything, and it can cause
[8:30] neurological or liver damage to to pets. Turn
[8:40] off the speakers. There we go. And I
[8:42] will add here, a couple of years ago,
[8:45] this happened at the Lake Of The Ozarks,
[8:48] and there were reports of a lot of
[8:49] dogs getting sick from drinking the lake water
[8:53] down there with neurological diseases and issues like
[8:59] that. So it can be pretty dangerous and
[9:03] very unsightly. No one really wants to see
[9:06] a bunch of algae sitting on top of
[9:07] a pond. It doesn't look very pretty, but
[9:10] it also can be quite harmful. There we
[9:22] go. Another common issue we see is inlet
[9:26] scour. So scour is just a fancy word
[9:30] for velocities, water erosion, or, you know, nearby
[9:35] a facility. And in this case, we have
[9:39] a loss of the inlet riprap that was
[9:42] originally meant to protect the facility. And so
[9:47] normally, you know, I don't really care if
[9:50] everything looks absolutely perfect, but this kind of
[9:53] of scour over time can lead to failure,
[9:57] failure of the you know, because it supports
[10:01] the inlet and outlet structures. Okay, there we
[10:08] go. So erosion and scour, what's the big
[10:13] deal about that? You know, this picture just
[10:19] makes me very sad because this facility is
[10:23] less than five years old. I was able
[10:25] to use Google Earth and kind of use
[10:28] the time thing and it almost immediately within
[10:33] two years it failed. Scour at the outlet
[10:38] caused if you can see my cursor, it
[10:41] caused soil loss up here and it caused
[10:44] soil loss down here where my cursor is.
[10:48] And then that lack of support around the
[10:50] end section, you know, caused it to separate
[10:54] and fail. And as an engineer, I really
[10:58] strongly believe in blaming the contractor. But at
[11:01] this point, it doesn't matter. We, know, we
[11:04] have to maintain the facility because this is
[11:06] a brand new facility that could last for
[11:08] many, many more years if, you know, if
[11:11] we get a handle on it now, we
[11:14] certainly it's just going to get more expensive
[11:17] to maintain if this kind of thing is
[11:19] left to go. Some other common outlet scour
[11:26] that we see is this HDPE pipe is
[11:31] engineering wise, pretty fair product. It's light, the
[11:37] walls are thin, easy to handle. It all
[11:41] kind of snaps together with the end section
[11:43] here where my cursor is. But it is
[11:47] vulnerable to UV. So having this much of
[11:50] it exposed from the embankment is just not
[11:52] great for it. Where my cursor is, there's
[11:55] a big crack in the side of this
[11:57] pipe, so we're already experiencing some failure and
[12:01] whether that's due to UV damage or maybe
[12:04] perhaps it was hit by a mower, it's
[12:05] hard to say. But it really should have
[12:10] been protected from sunlight and damage with a
[12:14] little bit more riprap. In general, I like
[12:17] to see whatever the diameter of the pipe
[12:19] is. As a rule of thumb, I want
[12:21] like two and a half times whatever that
[12:24] the diameter of the pipe is. That's how
[12:26] wide I want that riprap usually at an
[12:29] outlet section. And then up around the top
[12:32] of it just to protect it from stuff
[12:34] like this. You can also see, not so
[12:37] only did they not make enough riprap on
[12:40] width wise, but I'm not sure they added
[12:43] enough length or if they did it, it
[12:45] got washed away. Because now we're seeing some
[12:47] scour at the toe right here where my
[12:51] cursor is. So this is the kind of
[12:54] thing though, that with a little bit of
[12:56] riprap and some landscaping landscape crew, we could
[13:00] address this pretty easily before the failure gets
[13:02] any worse. Certainly, you could also cut the
[13:05] pipe off here, reattach the end section and
[13:09] just back the whole thing up and then
[13:11] that crack wouldn't continue. I love this picture.
[13:18] This is beaver and muskrat damage from just
[13:23] one winter. So we see this bright, bright,
[13:27] bright white wood because there must have been
[13:30] an absolutely an army of these guys. This
[13:34] was not a St. Joseph City Park, but
[13:39] it was a city park. And boy, this
[13:43] is just a lot, a lot of damage
[13:47] to the trees. And if they don't do
[13:50] something about this beaver and muskrat damage, not
[13:54] only are they not going to have any
[13:56] trees in the wetland here, but they're also,
[14:00] when this wood dies, guess where it ends
[14:03] up? Blocks the inlet, you know, it ends
[14:06] up against the outlet structure and it creates
[14:10] more problems. Can I add something too? Oh,
[14:14] please do. Another thing with beaver and muskrat
[14:18] damage. I know of a property that had
[14:22] a huge Beaver Dam, the biggest one I've
[14:26] ever seen, and it had drained upon three
[14:29] feet back into and flooded the upland area
[14:34] of it. So it definitely can damage your
[14:39] facilities, the structures you have on your facilities.
[14:41] It definitely needs to be maintained, looked after,
[14:46] because they're really good engineers. They're really good
[14:49] at building things, and they can really wreak
[14:54] havoc on the things that we build. So
[14:57] definitely something to watch out for and just
[15:00] be aware of. So a detention pond is
[15:07] not a levy, but a lot of the
[15:10] maintenance recommendations and deficiency, you know, solutions are
[15:19] similar to a levee. So if you look
[15:22] at my picture here, we should really have
[15:26] a vegetation or I mean woody vegetation, woody
[15:30] vegetation free zone about 15 feet on either
[15:36] side of the embankment. And then the crown
[15:39] and both sides of the embankment should also
[15:41] be free of that woody vegetation. Our kind
[15:46] of standard size for having to address some
[15:50] of this is four inches. So if you
[15:52] have a wildlife burrow or a tree that's
[15:56] four inches in diameter or larger, then we
[16:00] not only need it removed, but we need
[16:03] to backfill it with something called mud pack.
[16:06] And mud packing is a solution of 90%
[16:10] soil and 10% concrete. And it's kind of
[16:14] a cure all for issues that you might
[16:18] have with your embankment. If you're seeing some
[16:22] scour, if you're seeing, you know, some embankment
[16:25] failure, if you're just, you know, noticing that
[16:28] you need to freshen your, you know, to
[16:32] stop some of the erosion that's going on,
[16:34] that's a great remedy. So we've talked a
[16:37] lot about, you know, the damage or deficiencies
[16:40] that you can have with your detention ponds.
[16:43] And that's a great, really inexpensive way to
[16:47] remedy some of those maintenance issues. Some other
[16:51] issues that we can have are colonizing species.
[16:56] So cattails aren't a terrible thing. But if
[16:58] they take over, you won't have in a
[17:02] bio retention system very much biodiversity if you
[17:07] let cattails take over. Bioretention is a terrific
[17:13] means of trapping and removing sediment from stormwater.
[17:17] We use it for that all the time.
[17:20] Trash and floatables also get caught up in
[17:22] it, and that's great. That's what we wanted
[17:24] it to do, But it doesn't magically vanish.
[17:26] We then have to remove it from the
[17:29] facility. Some other common issues we can get.
[17:36] Oh, this is the same The same thing
[17:38] I just talked about, but for a bioswale
[17:40] versus bioretention. So it's just basically linear. The
[17:46] photo on the bottom. Well, the photo on
[17:49] the top there, the higher photo, that's Johnson
[17:51] grass. A lot of it. So I talked
[17:54] about invasive species earlier. That's what it looks
[17:57] like if you're interested. And then the lower
[18:00] picture has cattails in it. And I think
[18:03] this photo is interesting because I can't quite
[18:06] tell what's going on. I'm not sure if
[18:09] it was designed to treat the runoff from
[18:12] the lawn before it enters the gutter. Or
[18:16] if it was meant to treat the runoff
[18:19] from the street as it leaves the gutter.
[18:23] And it doesn't matter. At any rate, it's
[18:26] completely full of cattails, whatever and sediment, whatever
[18:29] function it was providing is. It just needs
[18:33] a refresh, a little bit of maintenance here.
[18:39] So moving on, underground detention. Boy, howdy. It
[18:44] is tough to get a picture of underground
[18:46] detention. We cover it up and we forget
[18:50] about it. But I would argue that it's
[18:53] one of the more important things to inspect
[18:56] and track. Because, you know, if it gets
[19:00] forgotten about, and it gets plugged, or drilled
[19:05] into for something else, for a utility, for
[19:08] a sign, you've decided, okay, I want to
[19:11] put some fence posts in, I'm going to
[19:13] put them right across the street here, and
[19:16] oops, I hit the hit the tank of
[19:20] the underground attention. So yeah, we do have
[19:23] to they're not visible and it does create
[19:27] a little bit of an extra maintenance and
[19:29] inspection challenge there. So, yes, I'm going to
[19:38] turn it over to Caitlin. Can I skip
[19:42] a slide? Sorry. Yes, I'm going to turn
[19:45] it over to Caitlin, and she's going to
[19:47] talk about city's requirements, the code, and the
[19:50] permitting requirements. Yes, I get the super exciting
[19:55] topic of permitting city code regulations, try to
[20:01] stay awake. I will try to make it
[20:03] interesting probably won't be but I will try
[20:07] so, permitting requirements and city code Amy talked
[20:13] about we have an ms4 permit for the
[20:16] city of St Joseph With that, we need
[20:19] annual inspection and reporting for the general permit
[20:23] for stormwater facilities. General permit section division four,
[20:30] section 25 through 97 basically says, hey, we
[20:33] can go inspect your stormwater BMP, and we
[20:36] will. So if you're curious about what the
[20:41] code says, if you're into that kind of
[20:42] thing, you can go look it up. Readily
[20:45] accessible if that's something you want to look
[20:49] at for yourself. But all this says is
[20:52] that we can inspect your stormwater BMPs and
[20:56] we're going to. So the MS4 permitting part
[21:01] of your MS4 permit is you have to
[21:03] write reports. They want to know what you're
[21:06] doing to maintain your MS4 system. Colleen writes
[21:11] a report every year. It's lovely, but she
[21:14] is required to report how they're meeting their
[21:17] requirements, how many inspections they do, what your
[21:21] inspections consists of. Even things like this, educational
[21:26] events, she will write about in her MS
[21:28] four report. So thank you for all attending
[21:31] this. We will get credit for this and
[21:34] this report. So that's great. But, yeah, the
[21:37] big thing is, like Amy said, documentation. We
[21:40] need to know what's out in the city.
[21:42] We need to know how it's functioning, and
[21:45] we need to have records of that because
[21:47] when you submit your report, they wanna know
[21:49] all of these numbers. They big fan of
[21:53] data, and they wanna know all of it.
[21:57] So these are some pictures because I'm trying
[22:00] to class this up a little bit, make
[22:02] it interesting. A couple of things that we
[22:05] talk about in these reports are, like, cleaning
[22:08] up after your pets. Like, did you put
[22:12] educational signs out saying, like, this leads to
[22:15] pollution or how many illicit discharges did you
[22:18] have that you had to clean up? That
[22:20] kind of thing. Is there a couch in
[22:22] the river? I don't know. Did you have
[22:26] any leaks? That kind of thing. K. Let
[22:29] me build off of what she said. Mhmm.
[22:31] So I may be the one that's doing
[22:33] the reporting and helping facilitate our stormwater program
[22:36] here in the city of Saint Joseph, but
[22:37] it does take us as a city to
[22:39] be in compliance and to have good water
[22:41] quality. So whether you have kids or you
[22:44] have pets like we've covered, it's really good
[22:46] to make sure that we're making those smart
[22:47] decisions to keep everyone safe and for our
[22:51] kids to be able to play in creeks
[22:52] and streams as they continue to roll over.
[22:55] I for one love to play in creeks
[22:56] and streams, even as an adult, and I
[22:59] want them to be accessible and clean and
[23:01] healthy so I can continue to do that,
[23:03] as well as for all the babies out
[23:05] there. So thank you, guys. Yeah. Awesome. So
[23:12] why are inspections and maintenance records important? I'll
[23:15] go into that a little bit. So they're
[23:19] directly linked. Right? You need to know what's
[23:23] out there. You need to know what condition
[23:24] it's in. You need to know how that
[23:26] condition is changing year after year because, you
[23:29] know, things don't last forever. You need to
[23:31] replace things. You just need to know where
[23:35] your assets are and what condition they're in.
[23:38] Reporting also helps transfer knowledge when your property
[23:42] changes hands and ownership. This picture here is
[23:48] a facility that is directly upstream from a
[23:51] drinking water source. And you can see, well,
[23:55] all of these little arrows are where filter
[23:57] socks are, which is very important because it
[23:59] cleans up the water discharging off of this
[24:03] site before it goes into the drinking water
[24:04] source. Now this property was sold. The new
[24:09] property owners did not know that they had
[24:11] BMPs on-site. They did not know what these
[24:14] weird filter socks are. They did they just
[24:17] weren't aware of it. So as the years
[24:19] went on, they lost four of them. They
[24:22] never replaced them because they didn't know about
[24:25] them. And then that was impacting the drinking
[24:27] water downstream. And it's not because the owners
[24:30] didn't want to, they just didn't know about
[24:33] it. But if we had inspection forms, and
[24:36] this is not St. Joe, by the way,
[24:38] if we had inspection forms and we had
[24:40] that reporting and you could give a packet
[24:44] or a piece of paper to the next
[24:46] owner, you'd be like, oh, I should probably
[24:49] put some filter socks on this or something
[24:51] like that. And then you would have your
[24:53] protection for the drinking water downstream, and it
[24:56] wouldn't be a big deal so it's just
[24:58] like the knowledge is power type situation where
[25:03] you can't take care of something you don't
[25:05] know about so reporting and inspections help aid
[25:08] in that. Okay, and I have one thing
[25:10] to add to that, which is that Saint
[25:14] Joe does a really good job. The reason
[25:18] that few so few of my examples come
[25:20] from Saint Joe is a direct reflection on
[25:23] the terrific job that you all do for
[25:25] water quality in your city. I would just
[25:30] wanted to add that. Thanks, Caitlin. Yeah, of
[25:33] course. Is there any responsibility go through the
[25:36] title companies, property transfers, things that have been
[25:40] permitted legally through all this stuff, know, like
[25:45] with HOA and talking with HOA and then
[25:50] when the owner of the properties are gone
[25:52] and gone, how's any of that ever is
[25:54] there anything in place to transfer any of
[25:56] input down the road? I don't think there
[25:59] is currently. Personally, I feel like there should
[26:03] be. Like, when you buy a house, you
[26:05] know, you have your, like, this is what
[26:06] you should disclose about the house. It we
[26:10] don't currently have anything like that set in
[26:12] place, but I would love to get there.
[26:16] Amy, Colleen, you wanna add In HOA, you
[26:20] have, you know, HOA fees. Those go to
[26:23] a pool. That maintains all the post construction
[26:27] stormwater BMPs that were built with that HOA.
[26:32] So that is the mechanism for maintenance for
[26:35] an HOA owned stormwater facility. But for a
[26:40] facility like the one in my slide, so
[26:45] that was, it's one of the very first
[26:47] water quality things I ever worked on when
[26:49] I was in EIT twenty years ago. And
[26:53] there were just, that warehouse changed hands and
[26:56] changed hands again. And there really was no
[27:00] mechanism for, for continued maintenance or even awareness
[27:07] that that this had been built with the
[27:08] facility. And, you know, I don't. Obviously, I
[27:14] wasn't involved in the sale or the title,
[27:17] but I mean, that would have been one
[27:19] way to to enforce it. The other way
[27:21] to enforce it is that if it were
[27:24] being inspected annually and they were required to
[27:28] give an annual report to the city, then
[27:30] at least the city would know, hey, we
[27:33] haven't gotten a report from you, why? And
[27:36] they would say, well, why would we give
[27:38] you a report? And that's the city's chance
[27:41] to say, well, because you have a facility
[27:43] on-site. And they say, a what on-site? Yeah.
[27:46] Then you go forward from there. It gives
[27:49] you a trigger, basically, and a reason to
[27:52] ask them for maintenance. Yeah. And like Amy
[27:56] said, we are going to be requiring the
[28:00] inspection reports to be on file with the
[28:02] city. So Colleen will be reviewing them. Her
[28:06] team will be reviewing them. And if a
[28:08] year goes by, two years go by, and
[28:10] you don't have an updated inspection report, the
[28:13] city can call that facility or go out
[28:15] to that facility and say, hey. This is
[28:18] what's going on to kind of, you know,
[28:22] get them back on track, tell them they
[28:23] have one if they don't know about it,
[28:25] that kind of thing. But to get back
[28:27] to your original questions or statement as far
[28:31] as like real estate and disclosure of it
[28:34] we don't have anything like that right now.
[28:41] So for inspections everyone kind of does it
[28:45] a little bit differently, but we want to
[28:49] track the inspection and maintenance forms we made
[28:52] forms they are sitting on your tables you
[28:57] don't have to look at them now but
[28:58] I made them so if you want to
[29:00] make me feel useful you can look at
[29:03] them but we would want if you're doing
[29:07] an inspection on a bmp on your property
[29:10] or you're the city and you're inspecting we
[29:12] want you guys to use these forms that
[29:14] way every inspection form is the same that
[29:17] comes back so we can build a database
[29:20] we can have all the information that we're
[29:21] really looking for and it kind of takes
[29:24] the subjectivity out of it and so just
[29:28] get better data and hopefully make it easier
[29:30] for you guys if you're inspecting something because
[29:33] we're telling you exactly what we want you
[29:34] guys to look at. We also want pictures
[29:39] at the end of this packet. It says
[29:42] site plan and photos. We want you to
[29:44] take pictures and then just include it and
[29:47] then send this whole thing back to the
[29:50] city. And then the city will have record
[29:53] of it, city will hold on to it,
[29:56] and then each year we will know what
[29:58] state your VMP is in. I will put
[30:01] these on the city website as well as
[30:03] send our copies to everyone who's in attendance
[30:06] and people who are not in attendance that
[30:09] we don't have facilities that may or may
[30:11] not have made it today. So with these
[30:14] forms, don't have to try to remember to
[30:16] hold on to it, take it back, work,
[30:17] and make copies of it. You will have
[30:19] access to more of them. Yeah. And then
[30:21] we also made the definitions page as well.
[30:24] Yes. So that would be helpful when you're
[30:26] doing your inspection if you're confused about what
[30:29] word needs or if it applies to your
[30:30] facility. Yeah. So I printed off a couple
[30:33] of definition pages. I think they're sitting over
[30:36] on this table, but when Colleen puts this
[30:39] on the website, the definition page will be
[30:41] with it. So, yeah, if you have any
[30:45] questions on anything like what erosion is what
[30:47] scour is what we mean by I don't
[30:51] know anything it is there and defined. And
[30:56] the great thing about the definitions is that
[30:58] they do vary from person to person and
[31:01] from across the nation. And just yesterday, well,
[31:06] Caitlin and I talked about what's equipment and
[31:10] we had two different definitions for the same
[31:13] piece of equipment. It can happen even for
[31:16] people who work in the industry every day.
[31:19] That the definitions were really important. Thanks, Caitlin.
[31:21] Yeah. So when is maintenance required? So when
[31:26] you first build something new development when the
[31:29] BMP is installed and during the establishment period
[31:32] it's super important we want to make sure
[31:34] that the BMP was installed correctly and that
[31:36] it's functioning. Putting in a BMP is not
[31:41] helpful to anyone if it is not currently
[31:43] functioning. So during that establishment period, which is
[31:48] typically two to three years, you want to
[31:50] just keep eyes on it to make sure
[31:52] that it's growing the vegetation that it needs
[31:54] to. It's not like short circuiting anything like
[31:58] that and it's just how it's supposed to
[32:00] be. After rainfall events yesterday we got some
[32:04] rain I don't know if you guys knew
[32:06] that but after about two to three inches
[32:09] of rain you wanna go out and inspect
[32:12] your BMP. It rained really hard really fast
[32:16] yesterday, at least down in Kansas City where
[32:18] we live. It was it was a lot.
[32:22] And so we wanna just make sure that,
[32:25] like, rip rap didn't move or we didn't
[32:29] have mulch go everywhere or any kind of
[32:33] damage if you have like high winds or
[32:35] branches or things falling out like you just
[32:38] want to make sure it's still functioning after
[32:40] big weather events like that Oh short circuiting
[32:45] short circuiting is when you like bypass your
[32:49] pre treatment bypass your BMP and it just
[32:51] kind of finds the path of least resistance
[32:54] which is not where you want it to
[32:55] go. And then time we've been talking about
[33:00] doing this every year, so at least annually
[33:04] if not more often based on rain or
[33:06] if it's a new development things like that.
[33:09] And we have them due on December 1
[33:12] annually for the MS4 permits because pulling will
[33:17] write them in February, March? It's due the
[33:20] February. February. So we need all the inspections
[33:24] done by December 1 so we can put
[33:28] that all in the report for the EPA
[33:31] and the good thing about doing inspections then
[33:35] is it's after the growing season you're not
[33:37] having like active growth you can kind of
[33:40] see like if things have died back, if
[33:43] things need to be replanted, how your mulch
[33:45] is looking, so it just makes it a
[33:49] little bit easier when it's not actively growing
[33:51] you can see that the growing season's done.
[33:53] If you do have a native planting as
[33:55] a part of your BMP, I really recommend
[33:58] downloading an app like Seek or iNaturalist or
[34:01] one of those apps where you can look
[34:02] to see if you're not familiar with what
[34:04] native plants look like, taking pictures while you're
[34:06] out there to see what you have growing,
[34:08] And then also doing that during the growing
[34:11] season because sometimes it can be really hard
[34:12] to tell what something is after it started
[34:15] to die back. So you could say, my
[34:17] plants were out there not realizing that they
[34:18] were none of the intended plants. Yeah. And
[34:22] for this picture I just think it's really
[34:24] interesting that there's that hole, there's that corrosion
[34:29] that's happening and it's not by the waterline.
[34:32] So you can tell it's coming from the
[34:33] lawn and the lawn chemicals used that got
[34:37] in there or like a lawn mower clipped
[34:39] it or something which is causing that so
[34:43] I just thought that was interesting things like
[34:47] that you kind of want to look for.
[34:50] Okay so if you get out your inspection
[34:54] forms that should be on your table I'm
[34:58] just going to go through pretty quickly what
[35:02] they entail and if you guys have any
[35:04] questions or anything just raise your hand or
[35:06] interrupt me that's fine as well. So the
[35:13] ones that you guys have are for buyer
[35:16] retention which I should probably rename to just
[35:22] say like green infrastructure, because this will be
[35:25] anything that is green. It is not for
[35:27] underground detention, it's for everything else. We have
[35:31] a separate underground detention form if you have
[35:33] an underground detention facility. Also will be available
[35:37] on the website, but we're just going to
[35:39] go through the bioretention one. So the first
[35:43] part up here, pretty simple. Your project name,
[35:49] your NPDES tracking number, location, date, time, who's
[35:54] doing the inspection, general contact information should be
[35:58] pretty easy to fill out. Your MPDS tracking
[36:01] number is the state land disturbance permit number
[36:04] that your project was issued. So some projects
[36:07] may not have that. And if you're not
[36:09] sure, we can help you find that number.
[36:10] Yes. Thank you. What did you say? What
[36:12] does it say? So if you have a
[36:15] project that is over an acre of land
[36:17] disturbance or common plan development, you have to
[36:20] get the state land disturbance permit before we
[36:22] will issue a city land service permit. And
[36:25] it's called a Mora number. It's a very
[36:28] operating permit something something. Uh-uh. But, yeah, so
[36:33] it's the number on that permit that's issued
[36:36] to United States or the Department of Natural
[36:38] Resources. Yes. We can look that up for
[36:42] you guys if you don't have it. So
[36:45] under this line, you have the BMP owner's
[36:48] name, BMP owner's contact information, just in case
[36:51] we need to contact you or if you
[36:53] have any questions, things like that, we can.
[36:56] Next type of d m or BMP detention
[36:59] pond, buyer attention, bioswale, just so we kind
[37:03] of know what we're looking at. And then
[37:04] at the bottom weather information, Like, today would
[37:08] be like, oh, beautiful day, partly cloudy. Last
[37:11] time it rained. Yesterday, how many inches you
[37:14] got of rain, that kind of thing. That's
[37:17] important to know because BMPs are designed to
[37:20] slowly release water within forty eight hours of
[37:24] the last rain so you know if there's
[37:28] standing water in it and it hasn't rained
[37:30] for six days we're like, oh, that's not
[37:34] great. We need to figure out what's going
[37:36] on. But if there's standing water in it
[37:38] today, we're like, yeah, that makes sense. It
[37:41] rained yesterday. So, it's important. A good resource
[37:45] for finding out rainfall amounts here locally in
[37:48] your extension is a weather station. If you
[37:50] just Google in your extension, Buchanan County, weather
[37:54] data, and it'll year to date, you can
[37:57] also look up historical rainfall amounts as well
[37:59] for the fill out here. Perfect. Thank you.
[38:04] Okay. So that's all just general information. Next,
[38:08] we're getting into some of the details. First,
[38:10] we want you to look at your inflow
[38:12] points and structures. And if this is just
[38:15] like, whoo, I have no idea what you're
[38:18] talking about, crazy lady, hopefully, it will make
[38:21] more sense. Amy's gonna go through some examples
[38:26] where we will have you guys talk through
[38:28] them, rank them, that kind of thing. So,
[38:31] hopefully, it'll start making sense when you're actually
[38:33] doing it. I get it's a it's kinda
[38:37] theoretical at this point, and so it's like,
[38:40] don't know what you're talking about. But oh,
[38:46] I'm getting all sorts of I'm just skipping
[38:48] the slides and just going. I think we
[38:52] all can figure out bio retention versus underground
[38:55] attention. Bio retention is everything above the ground,
[38:59] everything green, and underground attention is underground, and
[39:02] there are two different forms like I mentioned.
[39:05] So underground can be literally a giant container
[39:10] essentially that they put underground that their inlets
[39:13] flow into. Typically they have a wall or
[39:15] something in them where they pull back the
[39:17] water, let sediment, and any floatable settle out
[39:20] and then it has a discharge point downstream.
[39:23] We have a few of these facilities in
[39:25] town but yeah just imagine a giant container
[39:27] that could be the parking lot. Yeah it's
[39:29] like a big concrete box mostly and it
[39:32] is to hold back rain until the system
[39:35] can handle it downstream so it's just kind
[39:38] of a little storage box for water until
[39:41] the rest of the system can handle it.
[39:44] Okay, so going through the BMP components, there
[39:48] are different sections calling out each part of
[39:52] your BMP that needs to be checked. So
[39:54] we have inflow points structures pretreatment area, which
[39:59] would be your forebay, your grass swale, which
[40:03] are just areas that water flows through before
[40:06] you get to your main green infrastructure, your
[40:09] main BMP, your perimeter, your side slopes, the
[40:15] bottom of the system, your outlet structure, your
[40:20] overflow structure, and then some general other areas.
[40:23] So each of these sections is set up
[40:26] with a yes a no an na and
[40:29] a notes area so the thought process here
[40:33] is if you go and you look at
[40:34] your inflow structure and you're like it looks
[40:37] pretty good. I don't see any issues. There
[40:39] are no obstructions. There's no erosion. There's no
[40:43] riprap fabric matting issues. You just circle no
[40:47] for all of those. You give it a
[40:50] score of great, good, fair, fail, and then
[40:54] you move on to the next section. And
[40:57] if you wanna put notes and comments, that's
[41:00] definitely helpful as well. So the thought is
[41:03] just to go by each section fill out
[41:06] yes or no questions and then call it
[41:09] a day so, the overall BMP condition there
[41:16] is a reference matrix at the back where
[41:21] you have the overall rating, you have your
[41:23] description, and, like, an example comment. So if
[41:27] it was great, a rating of great, you're
[41:29] like, this BMP is awesome. It looks amazing.
[41:33] There's nothing I would change. That would be
[41:36] a great. If it's good, it'd be like,
[41:39] well, it's functioning, but, like, maybe there's some
[41:42] trash there. Like, I need to pick up
[41:43] this plastic bag or this bottle or something.
[41:48] Fair would be, like, maybe some of the
[41:50] function is impaired. We should probably do some
[41:53] maintenance on this to get it back to,
[41:54] like, the higher level it needs to be,
[41:56] but it's still functioning somewhat. And then fail
[41:59] would be, like, it's just not functioning. There's
[42:02] invasives all over the place. It needs some
[42:05] serious work. So you can use that reference
[42:08] matrix to kind of gauge where your BMP
[42:11] is at as you're ranking it. So and
[42:14] then at the end here, you have additional
[42:17] comments and then site plan and photos that
[42:20] you can add. Yeah. I do wanna point
[42:22] out that if you do your inspection well,
[42:26] when you do your inspection this year, if
[42:28] your BNP, you feel like it's failing or
[42:31] meets the failing, overall condition, that does not
[42:36] mean we're going to start doing enforcement or
[42:39] you're not going to get in trouble. This
[42:41] is to assess how our BNPs are on
[42:43] our property and they give us a baseline
[42:44] on where we need to go to start
[42:46] maintaining them and maintain them correctly. So that's
[42:50] why also why I want pictures. We're not
[42:51] gonna get mad at you if it's failing.
[42:53] We want to know what the condition of
[42:55] it is and then help you get to
[42:57] where it needs to be so that it's
[42:58] protecting our water quality functioning as designed and
[43:01] maintained. Yeah and if you have questions on
[43:04] what you need to do with your BMP
[43:06] after the inspection, you're like well feel like
[43:08] I need more plants or things like that
[43:10] you can contact water protection and we'll be
[43:13] happy to help you guys reestablish your BMP
[43:17] so it's functioning as it should. And there
[43:19] are we put out a few years ago
[43:22] I printed some off for different types of
[43:23] BMPs, it kind of boasts of general maintenance
[43:26] what they are how they're supposed to function
[43:28] things like that and there are lot of
[43:29] resources online as well as myself and my
[43:32] team so we'll help out as much as
[43:34] possible. Okay. Going into operation and maintenance documents.
[43:40] So we should all have operation and maintenance
[43:43] documents for all of our BMPs that we
[43:45] have. The owner should have a copy, and
[43:49] ms four operator should have a copy should
[43:52] be all electronic and then the city will
[43:57] also have copies of all your inspection reports
[44:00] with that same thing, O and M document
[44:10] requirements with your inspection forms. You need to
[44:12] know who's inspecting them and what the findings
[44:16] are. And so, like, you would just want
[44:18] your inspection form to be with your O
[44:21] and M documents. So if you have, you
[44:25] know, your O and M documents saved on
[44:27] your computer in a file just keep your
[44:29] electronic copy in the same folder on your
[44:31] computer so it's all in the same area
[44:33] so when we need to look at it
[44:35] we can. Very similar type data that you
[44:41] would need. The O and M documents are
[44:44] your plan for maintaining your BMP and your
[44:49] inspection forms are how it's actually being maintained
[44:54] and how it's ranked We also for o
[44:59] and m document requirements, we want information on
[45:02] follow-up actions and enforcement actions. As Colleen said,
[45:07] we're not gonna start enforcing things right away.
[45:10] We're not going to get mad at you
[45:11] if your BMP is not quite where it
[45:13] should be but we do want you to
[45:16] make a plan what you need to do
[45:18] to bring it back up to functioning where
[45:20] it is and then how you plan to
[45:23] do that and by when. So we want
[45:26] dates of like, hey, I'm going to be
[45:28] replanting in the spring with x y and
[45:31] z plants or something like that with photos
[45:34] documentation when you do those things. So it's
[45:37] really just documenting all of your actions so
[45:40] we have all the documentation. Make a photo
[45:43] comment? Absolutely. Okay. So in this photo, we
[45:48] have inlet scour, and it's not real evident
[45:51] because they took it in a corrective action
[45:55] of putting old fence posts. That's the rounded
[45:59] things that you see in the background there.
[46:02] They put old fence posts instead of riprap
[46:05] to try to stabilize that inlet scour. And
[46:08] the issue with that is it's not, it
[46:11] doesn't really bring it back to before it
[46:14] was damaged. You know, the fence post ends,
[46:19] that waste time kind of rolls around, whereas
[46:23] riprap really works all together. It has bedding,
[46:26] it has geotextile beneath it, The gradation of
[46:31] the ripraptinal locks itself together. Old fence posts
[46:35] don't do that. So that's what we're asking
[46:38] for your corrective or follow-up actions. It's not
[46:43] to knock anyone down, it's just to make
[46:45] sure that those maintenance items really truly address
[46:49] the inlet scour before we get a failure.
[46:52] So that's pretty new concrete that wasn't cheap.
[46:55] We want to make sure that it hangs
[46:58] together for you. Yeah. And as we've mentioned
[47:01] multiple times, pictures worth a thousand words. Take
[47:05] pictures of your sites, submit them with your
[47:07] inspection forms. I'm sure Pauline is going to
[47:11] have a great filing system for all of
[47:13] your pictures that you send her. So yeah
[47:17] just make sure you take pictures. All right
[47:21] we are almost done you guys have been
[47:23] great. We are going to go through some
[47:25] practice inspection forms, to hopefully make it a
[47:30] little bit easier when we ask you guys
[47:32] to go do this. Amy, would you like
[47:35] to start? Sure. Yeah. This first one here
[47:39] is an infiltration basin. And all of them
[47:43] here, we are going to use the bioretention
[47:45] form. We're not doing an underground detention one,
[47:47] so we'll all be in the bioretention. So
[47:52] I'm gonna use my my cursor to kind
[47:54] of point at what I'm inspecting here. And,
[47:58] and some of it is going to come
[47:59] from my memory. So you're going to have
[48:01] to trust me on some of this because
[48:02] I really only have this one picture of
[48:04] the facility. The inlet looks great to me.
[48:07] I don't see scour. The pretreatment area that
[48:12] would be like this side or or maybe
[48:15] this end looks fine to me too. I
[48:17] don't see erosion undercutting. I don't see debris
[48:23] sediment accumulated here. So it looks I I
[48:27] sport it as a great on the inflow
[48:29] point and the pretreatment area. I also give
[48:32] it a great. Unwanted vegetation. I think I
[48:36] noted that there are 5% weed cover. All
[48:40] this over here. Moving on the perimeter side
[48:47] slopes, the embankment. I noted the weeds again,
[48:51] but I said overall it looks great. The
[48:54] bottom of the system. The bottom of the
[48:57] system, I didn't note that there was any
[49:00] trash like floatables, old bottles. I didn't see
[49:05] any bare ground or excess sedimentation that was
[49:10] clogging this gravel. So I I thought it
[49:14] looked great. And then on the let's see.
[49:19] For the outlet structure, you're gonna have to
[49:21] take my word on this one because it
[49:22] drained that way and I didn't get it
[49:24] in the photo. But the outlet structure, I
[49:27] didn't see any scour around it. I didn't
[49:30] see any sediment or debris in the pipe.
[49:33] I didn't see displacement of the of the
[49:36] decorative, pretty decorative gravel or riprap. And I
[49:41] didn't see displacement of the vegetation or any
[49:45] of the measures. And the outlet flow structure
[49:49] itself. Again, I rated it great. I didn't
[49:52] see anything there. And in general, it is
[49:58] not access restricted. So, I really like my
[50:03] green BMPs to have restricted access. I don't
[50:07] want the lawnmower man to come in here
[50:09] and mow everything. I've actually seen them fail
[50:13] that way. And it's always kind of sad.
[50:16] I guess it's somewhat access restricted by the
[50:19] curb. So that's good. I did not see.
[50:25] I do not know what the original proof
[50:27] plan is for this one, so I couldn't
[50:28] really score that. But overall, I gave it
[50:32] a great. Other than a little bit of
[50:33] weediness over in the corner, it looked pretty
[50:36] good to me overall. And so my, at
[50:40] the bottom, the reference matrix, I would have
[50:43] rated it great and said, it looks the
[50:45] best it can be. You don't really need
[50:47] to do anything well done. I'm going to
[50:51] move on to the next one and inspect
[50:53] it. So, these inspections don't have to take
[50:56] a ton of time. It shouldn't be a
[50:58] lengthy exercise. I'm asking you to like I
[51:02] do not need a dissertation. All day to
[51:05] look at your BMC. Just, you know, we
[51:07] want you to have your eyes on it.
[51:09] Just be aware of what's going on. We
[51:11] do ask that you have boots on the
[51:12] ground. Don't just, like, grab on to take
[51:14] a picture, like, get out, walk around. Yeah.
[51:17] Look at your inflow, your outflow. Make sure
[51:20] you can see the bottom clearly. Boots on
[51:22] the ground is always good just to really
[51:24] get a view and an idea of what's
[51:26] going on out there. And the form pretty
[51:29] much reflects that. I mean, it talks about
[51:31] the inlet, the outlet, the bottom, the sides.
[51:34] The form really does assume that you've inspected
[51:38] the whole facility with your feet. So let's
[51:43] look at the inflow point first. I rated
[51:46] it fair. You'll have to kind of take
[51:48] my word for it, but I see about
[51:50] four inches of scour at the inlet here.
[51:54] I noted erosion and undercutting. I noted four
[51:59] inches of scour at the inlet here. In
[52:02] the pretreatment area, which was over here where
[52:06] if you can see my cursor, I noted
[52:09] sediment and debris accumulation. I noted erosion on
[52:14] the side well, right here in the forebay.
[52:17] I noted unwanted vegetation. It was pretty weedy.
[52:22] I noticed no bypassing or short cutting. It
[52:27] does appear that everything that was designed to
[52:30] flow to the facility is still getting there.
[52:33] That was good. And then I noted the
[52:35] vegetation. There's some cattails in the bottom of
[52:37] it. Moving on to the side slopes, I
[52:42] rated those fair. I do not see the
[52:46] kind of establishment that I would hope for
[52:48] on the side slopes here after five years.
[52:52] Within five years, I would expect 100% establishment
[52:55] of these side slopes here. I noted debris
[53:00] and accumulation or accumulation of sediment. I did
[53:05] not note a lot of erosion on the
[53:07] side slopes. It does appear like the side
[53:09] slopes aren't experiencing erosion. I do see some
[53:13] unwanted vegetation. I'm pretty sure these willows were
[53:17] not purposely planted there. Willows aren't a huge
[53:23] problem, though. And then I just said, overall
[53:27] fair condition, poor establishment on the side slopes.
[53:32] I next rated the bottom of the system.
[53:34] I rated it fair. I noted some kind
[53:37] of weedy, unwanted vegetation. I noticed some sediment
[53:41] accumulation. I noticed some evidence of inadequate drainage,
[53:47] So I'm guessing that this bare spot here
[53:50] was because there's probably usually some water that
[53:53] sits there. It's meant to be dried tension.
[53:57] If you have basin with a permanent pool,
[54:00] obviously that's fine. Let's see. And then I
[54:05] noted that there was some bare ground and
[54:07] erosion over here. You can see it in
[54:09] this part of the photo. And so I
[54:12] said that it was fair and then I
[54:14] estimated about six inches of sediment sitting in
[54:18] the bottom of this thing. It may never
[54:21] have been cleaned out after being used as
[54:24] a temporary sediment thing. The outlet structure looked
[54:28] great to me. I didn't see any obstructions
[54:30] on it. I took a peek inside. I
[54:33] didn't see any chunks of Styrofoam or card
[54:37] mats or anything like that in there. You
[54:39] never know. I've seen some really wild things
[54:41] inside of an outlet structure. I didn't see
[54:44] any erosion around this part, the supporting part.
[54:50] I did not note anything else. It looked
[54:53] great to me. Rated the outlet structure great,
[54:56] and the overflow structure as well. Caitlin has
[55:00] this separated on the form just to point
[55:04] this out because the outlet structure is where
[55:06] my cursor is, see. But the overflow structure
[55:10] is the path when the outlet structure is
[55:13] overwhelmed by a big event. Where's the overflow
[55:17] structure? Like, where does it go next? So
[55:19] that's what that's referring to. So that was
[55:22] this, a swale that you can just barely
[55:25] see in my photo. And, it had good
[55:28] establishment. I rated it great. Enough said. In
[55:33] general, I did not find that they accessed,
[55:38] that there was any restricted access to it.
[55:40] You could theoretically, I suppose, mow it. That
[55:43] wouldn't be super desirable, though. But it doesn't
[55:47] have a permanent pool. So maybe they wanted
[55:51] to leave it unfenced. Don't really have a
[55:53] problem with that. I did find evidence that
[55:57] maintenance hasn't been conducted since it was built
[56:00] five years ago. And I based that on
[56:03] the scour at the outlet, the loss of
[56:07] riprap, and just the general condition of the
[56:11] vegetation and the and the sediment accumulation. So
[56:16] overall, I rated it fair, and I noted
[56:19] that the inlet end section failure due to
[56:21] scour here and the loss of the riprap.
[56:27] I noted trash needs to be removed. It
[56:29] needs to be weeded, damaged to the inflow
[56:32] pipe. If I were turning this in every
[56:37] year, then I would know exactly when this
[56:42] end section failed. So it wouldn't be any
[56:45] kind of mystery to me as to how
[56:47] long the design lasted from when it was
[56:49] built. If I'm taking photos of it every
[56:51] year, I can look back and say, Oh,
[56:54] well, last year this thing was fine. There
[56:56] might have been a big storm or something
[56:57] that damaged it. Yep, there is one more.
[57:04] So inflow, the rain garden looks great. I
[57:10] didn't see any loss of riprap erosion. I
[57:15] didn't see any obstruction, anything obstructing water from
[57:18] getting into the rain garden. The pretreatment area
[57:23] that would be up here, I think. It
[57:26] looks good to me. I don't see any
[57:27] sediment accumulation. The perimeter and side slopes. I
[57:34] didn't note any erosion of this area here
[57:38] that slopes into the subgrade. I not note
[57:45] that I thought the bottom of the system
[57:46] looked good too. There's mulch covering anywhere there's
[57:50] not plants, so there's no bare soil. I
[57:54] didn't see any areas where water was obviously
[57:57] standing and should not. So I think it's
[57:59] probably infiltrating pretty well. And I noted that
[58:04] the mulch adequately protects the soil. So if
[58:08] we want to replant in the middle there,
[58:09] we can. But in the meantime, the mulch
[58:12] is doing its job. Moving on to the
[58:16] outlet. This picture came from the city and
[58:20] I didn't have pictures of the outlet, so
[58:22] I made up stuff. I just said it's
[58:25] great, probably is great. The outflow structure too
[58:28] looked great to me. And then in general,
[58:31] I gave this BMP a great overall condition.
[58:36] I said it looks the best that it
[58:38] can be and nothing needs to be addressed
[58:40] or changed. I did say that it wasn't
[58:44] access restricted, but it appears that there's enough
[58:49] of a landscape barrier that it's not really
[58:53] vulnerable to mowing. One of the biggest failures
[58:56] that I find with rain gardens is having
[58:58] them accidentally be mowed. And I will say
[59:01] what what we mean by access restricted. The
[59:07] big thing would be, is someone going to
[59:10] accidentally mow over it? Are you gonna be
[59:13] like, wow, there are a lot of weeds
[59:15] and grass. It's really tall. We should mow
[59:17] that. Why did someone let this go? That
[59:20] happens a lot. So we like to have
[59:23] a little bit of a barrier, whether it's
[59:24] the rocks, things like that. Just something that
[59:27] indicates, like, don't actually mow it, don't go
[59:30] in there. If it is a wet retention
[59:34] pond, something like that that has a permanent
[59:36] pool of water, we want, you know, more
[59:40] access restriction like fences and stuff. We don't
[59:43] want kids falling in to a pond or
[59:47] anything like that. But we don't necessarily mean,
[59:50] like, there has to be a fence around
[59:52] every facility. It just, you know, needs to
[59:55] be obvious enough that this is actually a
[59:58] stormwater facility, stormwater asset that we're not going
[1:00:01] to just mow over, ignore. But then now
[1:00:06] we have the safety concerns too if there
[1:00:07] is standing shelter. And with that, I'll open
[1:00:12] it up to questions. Our friends that are
[1:00:17] joining us virtually, I'm watching the chat more
[1:00:23] closely. Don't see any questions from the chat,
[1:00:26] but I'd like to take some time and
[1:00:29] answer any questions that you might have or
[1:00:32] even just discuss stormwater concerns that you are
[1:00:36] thinking about. I mean, we we have time.
[1:00:39] So a question or even just a discussion
[1:00:42] that someone would like to open up would
[1:00:44] be, this is the time for it. Will
[1:00:46] all the inspection forms be paper or will
[1:00:49] the in the future be like, we're driving
[1:00:51] just put down a link, fill it out,
[1:00:53] submit it with the pictures attached? We would
[1:00:57] like it to not be paper if it's
[1:00:58] there. So we are trying to build it
[1:01:02] database to where it it will be all
[1:01:04] electronic. You can type your, you know, inspection
[1:01:09] information on it, submit the pictures with it,
[1:01:12] and then just upload it all. I don't
[1:01:14] know if it'll be Google Drive. I don't
[1:01:16] know if it'll be a database that the
[1:01:18] city maintains or anything like that. But, yes,
[1:01:21] we are trying to move to the electronic
[1:01:23] versions only. The paper forms here are just
[1:01:29] to, you know, start some. And we could
[1:01:33] do a PDF format too in the in
[1:01:35] the meantime. Yeah. Like it's it's notable PDF.
[1:01:39] But, yeah, the the paper was just a
[1:01:45] little easier to give everyone. Also, really need
[1:01:49] to staple 40 coffees. Yeah. Caitlin loves using
[1:01:57] her master's degree staple paper. Yep. So do
[1:02:00] I. I went to the school for this.
[1:02:06] Any other questions? Comments? Yep. For a newer
[1:02:13] project that supposed to have BMP is going
[1:02:15] in the next few months, if everything gets
[1:02:17] put in, like, August or something, will you
[1:02:19] still hope to get a BMP inspection report
[1:02:20] by December? Yes. Okay. Just because it would
[1:02:25] be the establishment period. Mhmm. So once you
[1:02:28] install it, you would want, you know, record
[1:02:31] of that, that it is installed and it
[1:02:33] is functioning. And we also do that as
[1:02:36] a part of our final inspection for those
[1:02:37] type of questions. So if you're you've submitted
[1:02:42] plans for one and it calls out, like,
[1:02:44] seeding with mated grass seed or forks or
[1:02:47] something like that, we're probably not going to
[1:02:49] close out that project until we have establishment
[1:02:52] of those needs. So we are recommending that
[1:02:55] people use gloves to make it put in
[1:02:57] the library. So thank you. And I want
[1:03:01] to also point out that you guys doing
[1:03:02] these inspections and doing the required maintenance is
[1:03:05] also protecting an investment that you made with
[1:03:08] your property and your facility. So not only
[1:03:10] is this good for us, for us in
[1:03:12] the city to be in compliance, but it's
[1:03:14] something that your facility paid for to have
[1:03:16] installed. So if you're not maintaining it, you're
[1:03:19] kind of wasting that money you've already spent
[1:03:21] and then it costs more money to come
[1:03:22] back in and fix it later. I'm like
[1:03:25] paying you now, paying you later, how much
[1:03:27] more expensive is it going to be later?
[1:03:30] And the advantage to inspecting your BMP in
[1:03:33] the first year is that it gives you
[1:03:35] that baseline. Here's what it looked like when
[1:03:39] it was new. And because I mean, I
[1:03:43] do, we do work nationwide. If I didn't
[1:03:46] have a picture of something I looked at
[1:03:48] a year ago, I would not be able
[1:03:50] to tell you what it originally looked like
[1:03:53] or whether it was built a plan. So
[1:03:56] it's just that institutional memory. It helps us
[1:03:59] all. Yeah. And as long, like, we're not
[1:04:03] going to score you badly or get mad
[1:04:06] or anything if, like, your natives aren't established.
[1:04:09] We know it takes time. So if you,
[1:04:11] you know, do your inspection in August or
[1:04:14] September and they're not all established, we know
[1:04:16] that, and that's fine. Like I said, please
[1:04:20] feel free to reach out to us. You
[1:04:22] guys have my business cards. Sam's business card
[1:04:24] is up at the sign in table. I
[1:04:27] will send out all these documents, the training,
[1:04:30] everything, so that you guys can go back
[1:04:32] and review. There's a definition sheet that I'll
[1:04:35] send out as well, because I realize some
[1:04:37] of these terms are probably not as familiar
[1:04:40] to you as they are to us who
[1:04:41] are in the industry and work in it
[1:04:43] all the time. But we want to protect
[1:04:46] our water quality, we want to provide assistance,
[1:04:48] We wanna save you guys money on your
[1:04:50] property so that you don't have to completely
[1:04:52] redo something that you already paid to have
[1:04:54] installed. And also doing those initial inspections, it's
[1:04:57] really important too to make sure that what
[1:05:00] we were told that were going to get
[1:05:02] as a part of your project is what
[1:05:04] was installed and it was also installed to
[1:05:06] your liking because it's your property and you
[1:05:08] want to maintain it a certain way. So,
[1:05:10] some of these facilities can be incredibly beautiful.
[1:05:14] If anyone's aware of our stormwater mountain just
[1:05:16] for the forming pond, that's something we do
[1:05:18] put a lot of work and effort into
[1:05:20] it, it's also gorgeous and it provides a
[1:05:22] lot of habitat for our native pollinators, our
[1:05:25] local wildlife. They were here first, so we
[1:05:28] might as well learn to live with them
[1:05:30] and provide them habitat for them. Does anyone
[1:05:34] have any questions for me?