Waterways Advisory Committee - Regular Meeting

Meeting order. Roll call, please.

Member Mascoupe? Here. Member Rohanna? Here.

Member High?

Here.

Vice Chair Winter?

Here.

Member Schneider?

Here.

Member Woodworth.

Here.

Chair Lewandowski.

Here. Okay. Can we please stand for the pledge of allegiance? Before we move on, let's just do a moment of silence for chair of records that passed. Okay, moving on, approval of the agenda. Any discussion? I have one

comment on that. There was some confusion with the thinking we are going to have a muck workshop. And I don't think that you can pull together what I envisioned of internal experts, outsiders coming in and all that within getting three weeks on the agenda. I was thinking something further down the road. But upon reflection, I'm wondering what value there is in it.

I've harped on having a all encompassing water quality workshop in order to come up at the end of the day with a strategic plan that brings it all together in one place. And if we can't do that, I'm not sure what I'm muck only. I've made three presentations on viable alternatives to attack the muck. Doesn't seem like there's any motivation to go to the next step. So I'm not sure there's any value in going that direction unless somebody disagrees, but I can bring it up on the agenda and see about that. So just that comment.

Okay. I do have a comment on the agenda. Basically, in its current form, I can't approve the agenda. We have a what looks like something that's framed out as a Waterways Committee led prioritization document. I don't know who pulled all this together, but this is completely contradictory to all the time we spent polling the committee members as to what they thought were the priorities. And this feels to me like it's driven from outside interest and doesn't represent clearly what the Waterways Committee decided and voted on to be their priorities. So let

me make a comment here, since I don't always know all the procedures and how it goes down. We had voted to do a workshop for this meeting. And when the city had contacted you and you said you couldn't do it, our two options were to cancel the meeting. I think that was really our only option was to cancel the meeting. So I said, well, why can't we go back to the agenda items that we tabled? And then so staff contacted the people that we tabled, but they couldn't do their items. So I guess another member came forward with this and that's how we got to the agenda we got to today. That makes sense?

Well, I think it's pretty clear to me where this came from, But it's pretty sad that the member doesn't even put their name to it. And we have discussed advanced water treatment at above and beyond. It's outside the reach, in my opinion, now with the Waterways Committee. It's at a city council level. So I don't really understand why we continue to bring this up.

Other than making some comments about the Black and Veatch report, which is relatively new information, I think this pony is done. And I don't really like the fact that outside interests are prioritizing the work that we've done when we have already prioritized it in a prior meeting where we spent hours with flip charts deciding what were going to be our priorities and now we're trying to reverse that. So in the current form, I cannot approve the agenda.

Discussion?

You want to comment or No,

just discussion because we gotta make a motion to approve the agenda. Okay. Does anybody wanna make a motion to approve

the I'll make a motion to approve

the agenda as is. Okay. Alright. We got a second. Alright. Go ahead. Back in oh, no. We got a second. We're going you had a the comment?

Well, the only reason I submitted these two items was when it became kind of clear that the workshop, if you will, wasn't really gonna proceed. I got, I think, an email from city staff saying, do you have anything to put on the agenda? Because otherwise, we don't have an agenda.

Why why are you getting an email from city staff? I I really don't understand the process that has happened here.

Well, I don't remember exactly how it happened, but

The when we were putting this agenda together, and I think, the chair, explained it exactly how it happened. When we're putting this agenda together, what was agreed to from your last meeting was that this was going to be a workshop. And at that workshop, we were going to discuss the, the items that, member Rojena had talked about. So when we reached out to member Rojena for the attachments for the for the agenda for this item, we were informed that that was not going to be ready. So at that time, the choice was do we cancel the workshop since there was nothing else that was gonna be on the agenda?

Or do we so the the staff reached out to the the chair, and chair mentioned about doing the other things that were tabled from before, which was member Winter's items. And they reached out to you, member Winter, and you said that that was not going to be ready. Mhmm. So at that point, it was whether we cancel the agenda, and we got an an email from member Woodworth saying that there's no sense in canceling the agenda. Why don't we discuss these items?

We proposed that to the chair, and that's how the agenda got put together. So at this point, you can either approve the agenda or reject the agenda. But if you do, there's one more item on here. It's just approval of the minutes minutes. And then if if if the vote ends up in rejecting the agenda, then there will be nothing else to discuss at

this I am sure that the vote will not go in favor of my position on this. But what, quite frankly, frustrates me is when people critique other people for going out into the community and voicing opinions on anything, yet they generate a document that says this framework sequences the committee's recommendation by root cause. That is an incorrect statement. It is not the committee's recommendation.

That's what this committee does to deliberate.

All we

were discussing right now was if the agenda is going to be approved or not.

So the reality is the agenda goes to the vote, and I'm sure it will pass six to one because other people perhaps don't share my view on ethics and the way things should happen.

So I Okay. And refer for the the chair on on discussion?

Yes. I one issue that I had asked at the last meeting was that we make sure that we include the MarCO Marine Police on the agenda, and that is not on the agenda. And I think that's very important that, that is a monthly event for the public, extremely valuable that it should be presented.

Yes. Even if it's not on, if they're here, we'll go over it. Okay. So let's take a vote all in favor of the agenda the way it is.

Before you do that, what you just mentioned, if you want to, amend the motion to include the police update on the agenda.

Sure. Let's amend the motion. You made a motion.

With that amendment, yes.

Okay. Guys good? I'll second. To amend the motion to add the police.

So the motion is Elliott to amend the agenda to include a report out from Olinen. Correct. That's the motion. I'm happy to second that motion. Thank you.

Okay. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Okay. Motion carries. Okay. Approval of the minutes from last meeting. Can I a motion?

Do we know

how There's already been a motion and a second on it.

No. No. This is for the That's

all new one. Okay. Minutes. I'll make

a motion to approve it. Okay. Second. All right. I'll second it. Discussion? No? Good? All right. All in favor of minutes approval of the minutes from last meeting? Aye. Aye. No old business, let's move on to we'll add actually in the Marco Island Police. We'll do it now and before the old business.

Can we just from a formality point of view, Chris, I think we should vote on the actual agenda because I think we my understanding is we voted on changing the agenda and adding Marco Island Police.

That's what

I thought we're doing is just adding the police to the agenda on that vote. Now we have to back to your

have to come back to the agenda. I thought we did.

I

thought we did too. No, did not.

Right. Let's go back a second just in case. Right. We also originally had the motion for the vote for the agenda. And then Elliot, you seconded it.

Yes.

Okay. So let's go back. Discussion. The discussion on the original agenda, Any more discussion?

Yes. I have a thought. Martin brought up something that initial my first pass on it didn't catch. And that is the way this paper, I I don't know if it's a white paper or if it's it's what it what the submission that that was submitted by Rick, it does have, like, framing in it that looks like it's from the committee, like it's our priority, like it's the official document. And I think if we bring that into the conversation like that, it is leaning it's not a neutral presentation of these issues.

So in looking at it and reading some of the wording, I do agree and I do have a concern about would you consider submitting it with like a neutral like presentation? If

look at the third line at the top, it says draft on it. For committee review. It was draft for committee review. I submitted it as a draft. That's all discussion. You know, you don't like the format, you don't like the topics, that's what it's here for.

So but I don't have

a problem with the topics because we've discussed pretty much all of these before. I have a problem with the weighting of the Tier one and the Tier two, and this is an official document that goes out to the city and the and it feels like it is being positioned around very much the view of Marco Waters LLC and that is inappropriate. It says draft at

the top. All right, but can

we I'm not arguing with you on being I with want say

the motion is on the approval of the agenda. If we pass the agenda, then we can always talk about this part when we get to that part. The

other thing too is we've had workshops on this and the number one and I'm trying to find my notes. The number one priority of the committee in our workshop was not AWT. We and specifically, we said, not that this committee is taking a yay or nay stance on it. It was already up to the city council.

You know what? I get that. You could take a pen and put a big x through tier one because we already agreed on that. That already went to council. This was a draft for discussion purposes. This is not Great. This is not an official work of this committee.

Okay. Which is great

to discuss that. Official work of this committee when it gets put into public record, Rick, period. No. It isn't. But you're saying this is not public record?

It's public record, but it's not public record that the committee approved it. It was here to discuss it.

I would

just I think

my foot I would just

ask vote.

Mister chairman, I would just ask that it be presented in a neutral format without any Waterways Committee letterhead on the top of it or statements that this is the priority as determined as the priority of the committee. I think it is weighted to look like it's been decided on. And I love the dialogue and I love the discussion, and I learn a lot every time we do it. But just in the format, Rick, I do now that it's been pointed out, have a request that they come back and before I get into the record officially on agenda, be a clean, neutral presentation.

Guys, can I can I just weigh in a little bit? We're working on the third of this meeting academically with nothing of value for the city. And maybe what we're discussing here is has some worth and certainly protocols are important. But he did a hell of a lot of work on something we brought up several times in the past year and did nothing with it. So this is an opportunity to take somebody's hard work and take it for what it is instead of discussing and throwing darts at it. Take it from a starting point. Let's work on it and move it ahead and do something with it. It's almost ten it's almost 09:00 now, guys.

I I have no issue with discussing any of these items, but I think this particular document should be stricken from the agenda because it has a weighted view of this is the view of the Waterways Committee, and it is not. It is a misrepresentation.

I I Mister chairman, you're gonna have to take charge of this and move us ahead here in some way. Otherwise, we're gonna be on this for an hour and a half.

I I think just put it to the vote, Chris.

I would

Put it to the vote.

Mister chair, I would suggest doing what you said earlier is right now, we're we're discussing the agenda. The approval of the agenda, we need to take a vote on that. If it does get approved, then you can discuss that in detail whether to strike it, to discuss it at all, or changes. But right now, we're you're discussing the approval of the agenda. I suggest to take a vote on that and then that would

Yep. Let's take a vote on the approval of the agenda. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Nay. Well, I

think you should put it to a formal vote.

Alright, that's a roll call. It's your roll call.

Member Mascoop? Yes. Member Rohanna? Yes, please.

Member High?

No. Member Winter?

No.

Member Snyder?

No.

Member Woodworth? Yes.

And chair Lewandowski?

Yes.

Four three passes.

Alright. Moving on. Sorry. We did the minutes. Okay. Can you can you, speak now? Sure. Okay. Let's move on to the Marco Island police.

Sergeant Montgomery, Marine Sergeant for your police department. This month or since our last meeting, works has fixed the markers in Factory Bay, which was kind of a we had to move them and get them in the right spot. End up everything's back in order there. Short of that, we made it through spring break. No major issues. Obviously, boat traffic was heavy this last couple of weeks, but like I said, no major issues and everything seems to be status quo for us. Any questions from you guys?

Any questions?

Yes. Just a comment. I think I've been informed that in the Marco Pass, marker nine is missing, green marker nine, which is in the pass. I don't know if you guys have gotten that report.

Yeah. We went and got it. It was three miles offshore. We got it, brought it back, so we should be back in its proper location soon.

Thank you.

Surprise. Any update on the, what? Seakeepers. Seakeepers. I'm I'm sorry. On the Seakeepers, the that program, have we gotten more more participation? How far along are you?

Rosemarie and I believe Josh had a meeting with what's that? The flotilla ninety five. They had their second meeting with more people. So it's starting to get traction. A lot of people have reached out to Rosemarie. She told me last time she was here. We just had a meeting, two weeks ago with with another organization. Actually, and we did a news. There's gonna be a it's televised on on one of the news channels. We did that she did an interview with us and, or they did an interview with us, and we brought her with us out on the boat and explained how it works.

So it it is getting traction. People are asking a lot of questions, and people are volunteering. So it's taken longer to get the participation we want, but we got several I think right now we're over 30 citizens involved on from the island. FWC jumped on board. So it's it's growing quickly and as we get more and more, that's just more and more data that's going to go into that mapping program.

Really great news. About what percent would you say, has actually been mapped or accomplished at this point?

That's hard to say. 100% of our canals are mapped, but that's one line going in and out. So the more people that we get, that's going to broaden that line farther and farther. As people ask you questions, let them know it's free. You just have to log, go through our website. It's on our city page. And it's a do it yourself thing. It just plugs right into the back of your console there. And it's very easy. I mean we do it and we're not engineers by any standpoint.

Thank you so much. I'll do my part. I appreciate the update.

Yes. So I have a couple of questions on it. The first question is the data. Obviously, we've got a certain amount of empirical data now that we've collected. When are we going to get this overlaid? And this I don't know whether this is a question for you or

We actually had it last month.

Yes. That's done. And the way it works is one color of the dots is the new data. And then you can click on a dot next to it that's a different color. And that's the old data. So you can just scroll through the canals and see what it was last time from the 70s or 80s whenever they last did the data compared to what it is now. So it's very they made it really user friendly for us.

So I'm sorry, that leads me to two more questions, unfortunately. So my question would be to you, Justin, is now that we've got this data and we can see what the difference is between the old data and the new data, when will we be in a position to report out as to how much sediment and muck we

have in canals? Well, but I think that the data is not 100% ready yet, right, Because the city was working on the IT department was working on overlaying it correctly to use it in GPS. Correct.

Want to do it a little bit more thorough, but there is some data you can look at. I was surprised to see that some passes are a lot deeper than what they were. But I think that's through obviously, that's sand with somewhere. But it's there. You can look at it, but I don't know how accurate it is. We need more and more passes through to get you really good data.

But from a general perspective, would you say that we have an issue with sediment buildup in the canals in the majority of them?

I have not gone through all the I haven't gone through all the data. That's not really my specialty.

Okay. I appreciate the input. And then my final question on it is, in order to give this more traction, would it be sensible to actually have this highlighted at a City Council meeting? Because obviously, the number of people that watch City Council is significantly more than number of people that watch Waterways. I don't know whether you can

write You do present you've presented City Council multiple times?

Chief brought it up as City Council, correct.

Yes. So I'm talking more about from a point of view of trying to get broader adoption. I mean I

think that was discussed, but Okay. I missed

it's been brought up and highlighted several times. I think our main thing is if you guys are know of local boating, fishing groups or whatever, I'm more than willing to go talk to them or send one of my guys to go talk to them. Miss Moore comes with us sometimes if she's available. So we're willing to talk and give demonstrations to anybody we can. I think the news interview that's coming out is going to help out a lot too. So we're getting out there and trying to spread the word the best we can.

Awesome, thank you.

One comment is, if you noticed that well, from a couple of weeks ago when the boat decided to put themselves on top of the dome homes, can we like maybe get a buoy out there?

I think that's Collier

County. It is, but I mean

We have put buoys out there. You guys all know the area that any little storm that comes through, that current right there rips. So we've lost several buoys that we put out there, but yeah, we could put a buoy out there. The thing is each one of those buoys cost money and when you lose them, they're gone. But yeah, we market from time to time, but it is Collier County. But our citizens go there, we do market when we can. But we, like I said, sometimes we just don't have the buoys because we we we also use those buoys, to mark everything else that we find.

Yep. You. Okay, moving on, new business, proposed water quality, remedial actions and priorities. This is the paper that we got. I do want to make

a What happened to old business?

We have no old business.

Martin, how come your old business isn't on the agenda and Dan Hice, since the committee or since counsel bounced back your whole dredging thing, how come that's not out here for old business?

Well, both of them have gone back to the city and said that they weren't ready to present their information. So that's why I skipped over the old business. Okay, new business. On this document that we got, my only comment on it was I was reading through and I was kind of concerned like what they were talking about, but then I did read that it's a draft for committee review on there. So I do understand what they are saying from me because that was kind of my initial thought process.

But I think it's a point that we can start to talk about, but going back we did go over this last year and correct me if I'm wrong, maybe Ali, if you got some things here, but we said navigation was the priorities we had was one, two, three, four, five, we had five priorities. Navigation, water quality, marine construction, education and communication. And of the navigation, the items that I had was like well, we can go into this detail later, well I guess we're still on this. I had big Marco Pass water management, had the Etan procedures, derelict vessels, sea keepers, Collier Creek awareness, under water quality I had muck eating bacteria, septic conversion that was Alice Capri and Goodland, dredging, fertilizer which those two we talked about a lot, Marine construction, the seawall process, where do contractors unload their stuff at. Education, we talked about navigation, educating the city.

Navigation, fertilizer, landscaping materials and canals, conservation. And then communication, we talked about external bodies like all agencies maintaining a safe and secure boating and navigational and surrounding waters. Now I may have missed some things, but that was through my notes that I had. So I thought those were our priorities.

Mr. Chair, what date did that list was that list generated in that order? I think it was

April or May. Hold on, I'm looking.

About a year ago.

Yes. I'm trying

to find that.

I think in my 2024 file, water quality was number one, followed by navigation. And then in 2025, we had a whiteboard session here and we prioritize based on what is in our span of control, what we can do. That's why water quality was removed from number one because it was already kicked up to City Council. So that was my comment in that agenda discussion. I understand at one point it was the number one topic in 2025. We moved it down because it was not in our span of control anymore. It went up to city council. So I want to just clarify that.

The August meeting in 2025 is when we did the whiteboard. We came up with these priorities. So these were so everybody understands. These were priorities that we all whiteboard and voted on, and navigation was number one. Then water quality, marine construction, education, communications. So I have no problem going over this stuff here because this inputs into here, but I think we would if we're going to put out a document, we should go back to our priorities of what we said last year. And if we want to adjust the priorities, I'm more than happy to adjust the priorities.

Well, I think the priorities that were on this August 2025 list were a vote, a tally of all the members' input based on the testimony they heard from professionals and the status of certain issues within the city. So I mean, no offense to you, Mr. Chair, I don't think you can rearrange the priorities without doing another vote of all of us.

Do you want to address this based on our priorities from last year?

Well, to me, and I understand the priorities we all voted on, this is like a subtopic of the whole water quality discussion. It it's only part of that one item. It doesn't discount all the other items that we voted on, but none of the other items appeared on the agenda. So I thought, well, hey, if there is no other items on the agenda, why not continue to deal with the water quality issues which, whether you rank it number one or number two or number five, it was still amongst our highest priorities. So I look at this as a subtopic of water quality wherever you want to put it on your priority list and that's why I threw it out there.

Alright, so if we go back to what we did last year, underwater quality, the major topics was the muck eating bacteria that you were working on, the septic conversion for Alice Cabringo, dredging and fertilizers. So we have talked about dredging a little bit, we are going to do a workshop on that. Fertilizer, have talked about.

When we get to that, I have some additional material that I would like to present.

So since we have time today and we don't really have any other items here, I think we should, since he has already got it on the agenda for water quality, like kind of actions and priorities, let's just take this topic and look at what he has got here and put it back into our if you guys agree this is what we talked about. Let's go through here because he has different items in here like the Bubblers which we talked about. He is talking about deep well injection here with the AWT stuff.

Can I make a request to get this cleaned up? Would you be amenable to taking this document and let's call it neutralizing it a little and then submitting that into public record as an agenda item. My concern is that this gets put into the agenda in six months' time, no one goes back to the dialogue of what happened at the meeting and they'll read this and think this is de facto. So I think that might be a good path forward is to take this as an action item and clean it and say that this is a subset of our priorities. I think it was clean water was priority number two or three?

Two, Water quality.

And and put it as priority number two and then just resubmit it.

I mean, I Mister chairman, he put out a good document. There's good material, kicking it down the road to sanitize it or change this or is a bias of that, but let's get to work and take this as a good framework for something to move forward. As far as the conversation, this is water quality. I don't I think it's different than what was discussed before with our priorities with the board and all that kind of stuff. This is one of those priorities.

And circumstances do change. AWT, we voted five to two down just to get a price for AWT. Council rejected it, picked it up, and are moving forward. The situation has changed. They're moving forward with AWT. To say that we're not gonna discuss it or anything, we should be supporting. They said we wanna move forward with AWT, won't it? It should be part of the discussion. Having this tier one on something that is actually moving forward, we should be talking about supporting our work. We're supposed to be knowledgeable about this kind of stuff to say, okay, you got it. It should be on here and it should be discussed.

I have never said I'm not supportive of AWT. I've always my position has always been it is not state mandated and we do not know the cost. Now Black and Veatch have given some insight to that, but there is little we can do on AWT now it's at City Council level. Know, Martin,

I hate to interrupt you again, but would you read down here under item number one, status, already moving at city council level with Black and Veatch report. Committee role, stay aligned with city council and maintain momentum.

That's all it says.

I understand what it says. Can't read.

Justin? I think what they're asking for is, and I'm not sure what the price procedures in this, they just want this document removed from the agenda and a new one put in that doesn't say Marco Island Waterways Advisory Council Committee something like that.

It's up to the committee if you'd like to take a vote on that.

Okay. So I think that's I think the biggest issue we're seeing right now. So let's take a vote if you guys want the document removed and then rewritten so it doesn't say that this is our priorities. Is that what you're trying to say? Yes. Okay. All right. Let's take a vote. Do a

real I think if I was writing this and put it in any topic and put it in a certain light with priority highest priority this and that, I think I would get a reasonable amount of the similar comments saying, hey, that looks like you're overrepresenting what the committee the body as a whole is saying. So that's my perspective, is just trying to neutralize the make neutral the way it's presenting it. And let's discuss, but I think

I don't have any problem at all if neutralizing the document to everybody's satisfaction. I am going to say it again, it says draft for committee review. Okay? Your comments, some of your comments, are edit the stuff off of here. I am happy to do that. I think going to Ralph's point, let's talk some substance at this meeting, not a bunch of procedural BS and get to the heart of the matter. So can we have a vote?

Can we have a motion?

Mister chair, yeah, I would suggest a motion to bring it back as a neutral white paper. If you can get a motion a second.

And then you'll as we go through this, you'll draft the white paper based on what we're talking about right now when we're done. So can somebody make a motion to make a motion that we that you go back and just remove this one and kind of put it to what we're going to talk about going forward. I think

you need a

little more clarity on the motion there.

I remove this one and neutralize it. Let's just go with that and make it easy. Well

I think align I think remove it and align it to the priorities

Of what we're gonna talk about.

Committee that we all voted on and So are you

deferring discussion until I come back with a neutral document or

are we going to discuss?

No, I want to discuss water quality because it is on the agenda and as we are talking about here, but we need to go through and set, I like the idea what you're trying to do here, but now let's all agree to the numbers that go on here. Can we agree to that?

I'm happy to have this revised, discuss it now on some of these points. I have no issue with that. But I I think it should be aligned with what what we had previously done. That navigation is our number one priority.

Okay. So let's make a motion that you align the document to what we're gonna talk about in a moment.

But I don't understand. It's two different things. You're talking about navigation.

What I'm trying to do is get this meeting moving and we're talking about a document.

This is nothing one has nothing to do with the other. This is a water quality initiative.

Think the issue

is navigation or any of the other priorities.

I think the issue here is the way it's structured, it looks like we all agreed on this and not everybody agreed on this. I think that's the whole issue.

So why are we discussing it as one of those priorities, navigation, everything else?

No. We're gonna take watercooker. Since nobody else had agenda items and he decided to do this, let's actually go through water quality today. We have items on here, he has items on here, let's create a priorities of water quality.

I'm fine with that. I have no issue with the topics discussion.

I would really to move along. We've already waited for former an hour's worth of valuable time. I have done been doing some intense research with experts on these issues and not going to get to talk about it because we're talking about this.

Okay. So I'm making a motion, let's try this again, that you remove this document and replace this document with the items that we're going to prioritize right now, today, on this for just water quality. Second?

I'm a little confused.

I just want to get moving.

Can I perhaps make the motion? Go ahead. A motion for Member Woodworth to edit this document for further future discussion, removing references to a certain priority and our name as a committee plaster all across it. That's all. Do have a second?

I'll second that.

Okay. Roll call.

Member Mascoupe?

Yes.

Member Rohanah?

Yes.

Member Hai?

I'm sorry, can I get clarification on what the motion was to clean it up as a committee, right?

Yes.

All right.

Member Hai?

Yes.

Vice Chair Winter?

Yes.

Member Schneider? Yes. Member Woodworth?

Yes.

And Chair Lewandowski?

Yes. So now I'll

take one more suggestion on this or get off of it. You all have comments, take this thing, mark it up, exit up, reprioritize it, send it to Justin and have him send it to me. And that way I'll have the benefit of all your thoughtful comments before I do a neutral draft. Okay, so moving on, I want to thank

you because nobody else had agenda items, you at least started this. Was hoping we could just talk about water quality on this. I didn't know it was going be a big deal. I didn't like the document but I understand what you're trying to accomplish. So let's go back to what we talked about before, muck eating bacteria, septic, that's for alsopreneur, dredging and fertilizer.

Now on here you also have all that plus you have AWT, you have the bubblers, you have deep wells, and then you have the culvert interconnect project, that's pretty much most of what I think you had here. We want to add out of the water quality priors we already talked about, do we want to add any of these in there like the culvert interconnect or the bubblers or the deep wells and start to talk about that. Because I thought what we talked about before was under water quality, we were trying to come up with ways to improve the water quality, these were options and that's why remember like Hina has been working on dredging and muck eating bacteria coming up with ideas that we can work on and move forward with. Because I'm looking this is like septic, like if you guys want to do this then maybe somebody starts to work on the process of it?

Well, I already got a document. It's already in order of what I thought the priorities were. As I said, you all want to reprioritize it in a different document, I am happy

Let's to do go through it in order on what you think is the order.

Let's talk

about AWT first and then knock through this list because I think we can get through this list in

Pretty quickly.

Pretty quick order because it has been discussed a Okay.

All right. Go ahead. Number one, it says it is already at City Council. I think the committee's role should be to stay aligned with the process that city council is on even though it was voted down five-two last year. But I think we ought to support city council. And that is really all I have to say about AWT right now. Any other discussion?

Yeah. I will make a comment on it. Again, I want to reaffirm we should stay on top and help city council and oppression needs to stay on. The back end of the first reading of AWT, the last city council, I was concerned with the last ten minutes, but a conversation seemed to concentrate on how do we get out of it down the road. Are there loopholes to say, do we have to vote yes, but later on when we see more information, I'll say no.

I was a little concerned with how much conversation there was with that, which tells me that I thought it was an opportunity to gain trust, but the conversation was so much directed towards how do we get out of this if we say yes now that we need to stay on top of it, have the pressure because it relies on their integrity and agreement that this is the right way to go. And that's what I'll say about it. We need to stay on top of it.

Okay. I've been go ahead, Ralph.

I'd like to say that I really appreciate this report and it is excellent. I mean, I have no problem with it. I understand the procedural issues, but I have been doing a lot of running to programs that are hosted and presented by experts, researchers, professors, universities, University of Miami, also presentation up in the Fort Myers area. As I said at the council meeting, I don't know if anybody watched, but we can't afford not to start now on this issue. When we are breathing in the cyanotoxins and other toxins in our waterways, We are doing each one of our residents and every one of us a major disservice in the health consequences of what lurks in our canals.

And there's a lot of new information that's come out in the last year since we had that five to two vote. And I have already gone before counsel, I've already said that my vote would totally change. Now knowing what we are dealing with and we're not discussing it yet, I've got some information that I can present. But there's a whole lot out there that we don't know, and it's coming out. And it's very important that this is taken very seriously at this time. That's all I want to say.

Yes. I mean, my comment to the city council thing is I think that clearly, city council are responsible for spending the taxpayers' money. So they have to tread a careful line between what the populace of the island want and how much it is going to cost. And I think that's the only reason that dialogue happened. So I just want to clarify that point. I

thought we just made a motion to have this brought back this document.

No, we're gonna we're going

to it.

We're gonna talk well, we're talk about water quality.

I just I just have a follow-up to to Ralph's point. I don't think it's this committee's job to put pressure on city council. I think if if that's something that people wanna do as an individual citizen, I think that's absolutely fine. Or if you wanna be affiliated with another group outside of this group that does that, it's our job to come back and make recommendations. The city council city council picks up the banner and runs from there. But I don't think it's our job to put pressure on city council.

It's no. It was the words were support city council.

You said the word pressure three times.

Keep up. Well, maybe I did. I apologize, it's the wrong word.

Okay, good. I just wanna make sure because I don't think that's our job.

On the AWT thing, again, still because you have root cause on here and that was kind of my concern because I'm not sure that AWT has any root cause to the problem. But because if you look at where the water actually goes, not all of it anywhere near the canals, so you've got canals that are miles away from the water that's possibly getting into there. So that's my concern. But what we're trying to do here is underneath our original water quality thing, do we want to add AWT into our discussions going forward under water quality? I guess let's just take a quick poll if you guys want to add that into our part.

I personally do not want to have in-depth conversations about AWT further at this committee level. I do believe that we need to stay abreast of what is happening and how it progresses forward at City Council, but I don't think we need to do anything more than that.

I would say yes.

Okay, so we got all right, so let's just take it Not just not arena roll, but you said yes.

One more comment. Yep. I mean, is looked upon. This committee is exists. It was supposed to be the nexus of resident intelligence and knowledge about this issue. To walk away from it is doesn't seem right. If we should be engaged in it to give assistance to city council who are not technical experts in this arena. So the answer would be yes.

I consider myself an an expert at AWT.

Think what okay, maybe agree to this. Can we agree to keep AWT as an item underneath our water quality, but we're not going to have to spend hours talking about it. We want to stay abreast of what is going on and have a quick discussion each meeting or possible. I will tell you what.

I will make a motion that we support City Council's efforts to pursue AWT. That this committee supports

That not a

correct motion, Rick.

That we support the council's efforts on AWT, whatever they do.

It is not a correct motion. This committee voted AWT down five to two. So if you're saying you now wanna go back and get everyone to recast their vote on that, I don't see I mean, you're you're trying to steer this, get everyone on this committee aligned to saying, yahoo, AWT, it fixes everything. It doesn't fix anything.

Well, that's what we vote on. That will be your opinion. I see no reason given that it was a year ago

It's quite frankly out of our hands. You've said this many times.

Hang on

a minute. Let me just make a comment here. We voted a year ago, five to two, turn it down. City council rejected it. I see no reason with all the new information and all knowledge and all the discussion that's gone go on to say, we wanna reverse our five or two against and have a vote on it?

What new information? Well There's been nothing new presented since this has all been Yeah. Every the all the testimony was heard last year.

How can you say that?

All the all the testimony was heard in prior years, all the reports that we are acting on. The price report, I guess, is new.

I would say that's a significant piece of new information.

Well, yes, I think it's the that's to be decided. But as far as the reason for or against all the professionals who have weighed in prior years, I

mean, You so can vote no again. I just made a motion. I don't hear a second yet.

I second.

Yeah. But can we actually have a motion to it's not If

if you're discussing about, reversing the vote that you had last year. That was an agenda item at a waterways committee meeting. So I would suggest that you bring that back as a future agenda item and then take a vote on that because a vote for that has not been published. So no. The public did not expect that as an agenda item here.

What you're discussing now is what's what's in this document, what changes you wanna make to it, deletions, additions. So I I I don't think taking a vote now to reverse that would be appropriate because it hasn't been published and it needs to be an agenda item on its own.

Think Do want to rescind your Do you want to rescind your motion? Well, all I am trying to do here today is to fix this document back to our thing so I am not I wasn't in

yeah. Well, a lot of people make motions that aren't on an agenda. It happens at city council, it happened here before. If Justin thinks it is more appropriate to put it on the next agenda item, I'd make a motion then to discuss a motion to support City Council's actions on AWT.

I don't think we need a motion to discuss the motion.

Can we just I think we've read the AWT, Rick. Can we just say, let's agree, we need to keep a watchful eye on it. We don't need to necessarily revoke on how people feel because it's outside of our purview anyway. And let's move on to the fertilizer ordinance.

Yeah, think what you're I think what they're saying is let's take out tier one root cause one highest priority. Just take that part out. Well, I'm not going

to take it out because I think we should support city council's actions on it. You guys could take it out. That's fine. But I I it's my opinion. It's the same way Dan High has an opinion about dredging, you know, the entrance to the Marco River. Martin's got opinions on stuff. We all got opinions. Then then I have If

the council votes down AWT, are you telling me that you are going to stop and you are not going to push forward anymore?

I am not going to tell you that, but I will support city council's decision no matter what they do.

Okay. Maybe the issue that I think people are having now, maybe with the document, if you don't want to remove the Tier one root cause highest priority, we take the whole top part of this and we put your name at the top and say your priorities. I mean, that might be the better way to approach this.

That's exactly Rick Widworth's priorities. That's what this is.

And I have no problem discussing. If

I could remind everybody that there was a petition and the petition said AWT. So the city council has to either pass an ordinance or put that out for a vote to the public. It's going to have to be one or the other. So that's going to happen. And, you know, and I think that we should support whichever way they go.

Okay. That's what I would do. Move this on. Keep can you change this as a document to put your name on there? We'll go through this. But I wanna get us to have since we're talking about water quality, I want us to get kinda prioritize what our next steps are. So let's go on to number Can can he

come back with this cleaned up and also move on to landscape ordinance?

Yes. We could do that. You want to do that?

Why would we do that? It's on the agenda.

Just because we we all agreed. We all just we all just agreed for him to present it in a non we have

sorry, what do you guys want

to do? I thought if we just all voted to clean change the document to be Rick's priorities or Rick's white paper on the subset of of our priorities, which is water quality, that that then this will come back in a future agenda to be discussed, and we would move on to, landscape ordinance on the agenda today.

That's not what we voted on, but we voted for them to clean up and make a document and put that in the public record. Has nothing to do with changing the content or most of the technical stuff here.

We did. We did.

But discuss and make some progress on it.

We we did, but he won't remove the priorities. And I think that's where people have to hang up at. So if he doesn't wanna remove the priorities, then I think he just needs to take the Waterways Advisory Committee name off of there and put his name on it.

I I

is it But that has nothing to do with the technical discussion of the content. Well,

So I'm saying can we move on to Yes. Fertilizer.

Right. Let's move on.

Because fertilizer was one of our items under water quality. Alright. Let's move on. Can you start on that? Yep. Okay.

It seems silly for me to read what's already on a piece of Correct.

Martin, can you scroll down?

The concern I have is your recommendation here to do a one year ban on fertilizer. I'm not sure how that would work.

Well, I'd rather start at the top. First item, this is ridiculous, is make sure that we get assurances from the city that all of the fertilizer vendors are in fact registered and adhering with the controlled application rights. I am not even sure who is in charge of the registration of the fertilizer vendors. Mark, Justin, do you know?

Yes. The growth management department handles the registration of the fertilizer vendors and then any violations are handled by code enforcement.

But but code enforcement is responsible for enforcing registration?

There is no mechanism for that right now. Registration is required, and the growth management department is the department that administers that. But as far as specific enforcement of whether landscape companies are registered or not, I can't speak for code enforcement. I don't know if those if they're pursuing that or not.

I can tell you that when this thing first kicked off, it was actually code enforcement that went and looked at landscaping trucks to see if they

had the sticker

per se in the window. So I think they're the kickoff point for it. I think that the administrative piece is handled by Dan. And I think, obviously, anyone that is deemed to be in breach of fertilizing without a sticker to say that they can fertilize on the island is a code enforcement issue that goes to magistrate.

I have some information. I'm just this would probably be great for everybody to be aware of. I have an article here. It says, if you're not cutting your lawn to four inches or more, you're doing it all wrong. It's a very interesting article. It just came out in our paper this past week. Basically, and I've actually been practicing this, so I can tell you it works. If you cut your if you make sure that the landscapers are cutting four inches or even a little bit higher, four, four and

a quarter, four and a

half here in Florida with the typical lawns we have, you basically can cut your water and your fertilizer requirements way, way down. It makes a big amount of a difference. I do that on my lawn. I don't have to put very much fertilizer at all ever. Maybe twice a year, April, May, and October, just a little bit of nitrogen, no phosphorus, potassium maybe, few trace elements, and hardly ever have to water it because I'm cutting it high.

Now, if we just change the ordinance to get the landscapers to do this, much less water and much less fertilizer has to go on these lawns. We have the lawns and we can make changes. We can go to Florida Friendly. It's all great ideas. But these are some very non costly changes that could be made if that was at least something that were to be looked at as a not a total solution to everything, but it could really help.

Just So a I think it's a valid thought and clearly you're an expert in fertilization and all that kind of stuff. My concern would be this to me is just an educational thing.

Correct.

You just need to educate people to do it. When you start trying to write up ordinance to say your grass can't be cut shorter than four inches and all the rest of it, you got to remember that every ordinance that we put on the books has to be enforced. The department is overstretched already. And you look at some of the other issues that are coming up, we're going to end up with code enforcement 400 people strong on this island if I we don't watch what we're didn't say ordinance.

You I actually think public education.

Actually, you did.

Did I say ordinance?

I'm sorry.

We moved that direction. Moving on. I think it's purely educational.

Okay.

That's just one

Pardon me pardon

me, mister chair. I hate to interrupt. I'm signed up for public comment, but I do have a 09:30 meeting with the city manager. Would you grant me some latitude for a quick statement?

Go ahead.

Please. I showed up for one reason, guys. First of all, thank you all for your service. Darren Palumbo, Marco Island City Council, also the current chairman of the City Council, reside at Chatterbridge Court. When I saw your agenda, I felt like your efforts are a failure on our part.

As a council, we have given you no direction, and we spent an entire meeting talking about what type of direction you should try to try to figure out while we sit here and watch you fight for supremacy over the direction you think we want. I just want to come and say thank you for your service. I will be speaking to counsel about all the advisory committees, what our expectations are, also what your expectations are. We'll talk about blending those and talking about having productive meetings that don't create this because we have failed to give you the direction you need. For that, I do apologize. I appreciate your good work and we will talk soon. Thank you.

Thank you. Thanks, sir. Thank you.

So, Rick, can we, again, I was going to say that this is a educational piece. So, but I think that maybe can you look into the registration and seeing how many people have registered versus not. But I think we had the police chief talk about that one time. And maybe as a committee we actually create a new document, I know there is a document out there, maybe we can find it and update it because not only for the vendors that are putting it down but for the homeowners too of what we should do. I think maybe you can do a draft of that, but don't put Waterways Committee on the top, but do a draft of that and then at a meeting we can have Elliot help us with that because we can't communicate together.

So if you would like to take the start on that and then we will because you can do the research from the Clearly, clear

Elliot's suggestion is education, part of the education piece and public education is on the list and it's a critical part of the whole process, you know, whether it should be Tier four or Tier one or whatever you want to put it, it's education first before we go making more ordinances that we can enforce.

Yeah, I think we just need to go back through the documents that we have already have for education on fertilizer and tweak it. I agree.

Education is better. Use Elliott's information also. One thing I didn't get a chance to add was, I mean, I know that Florida, I think mandates what we do And we can't do what we should do because if you wanna do effective fertilizer, it's during the rainy season. We're not allowed to do that. That's when the grass takes takes it up, uses it, grows, gets healthy. You don't really have to fertilize in the winter when it's asleep. And we're as I have mentioned before at meetings, we're throwing tons of this fertilizer on our lawns all over this island during the winter when the grass is not using it when it's asleep. It's not taking it up. There's no rain. There's no water.

It's sitting there. And then we get into May and June, rainy season, washes into the waterways, and we wonder why we have a problem. We're not allowed to put it when it's using it, and we're letting it go out there or mandating that it's okay when it's not okay. And so this is the science and with the politics and the science are not meshing here. But it's what we have to do. So I don't I don't know what to say about that.

Can you work on something that we could somehow present to city council on that exact part of it? Because we thought you had a whole meeting and we talked about this before.

And Eileen Ward here who is an

expert But on maybe we can have something that we can all agree on that we can present to City Council and then add that to whatever piece that you've got for the fertilizer ordinance for the vendors. Let's see if we can can we do something with that?

I can go to work on it. Sure.

Good. Okay.

Sorry, Chris, you're out of time.

The next topic is landscape ordinance reform, which, you know, we could produce a document like this to accommodate your suggestions and make a recommendation. That is all we can do is make a recommendation. Counsel can take it and throw it in the garbage or they can say research it further or

Well, I think we have some knowledge on that, so I think we need to actually pursue this a little further. And that includes the next item, which is Florida Friendly Landscape and Turf.

Well, I was not really done on this. Am sorry.

Kirsten, I think you can turn off the timer.

I still think we should we should do random testing of fertilizer products on the island. I think there is some evidence that some of the fertilizer vendors are using phosphorus and we should do some random checks. If it proves they are not doing it, stop doing it. But if you begin to find that they are using it, it is against the ordinance, we should enforce the ordinance, my only point. Stopping the landscapers from blowing debris into the canals, This has never been enforced. It's part of the ordinance, part of the storm water ordinance.

I had discussion with them on this because I've complained about this for years. From what I understand, they have to see it in action. So it makes it very difficult. Well, they can't see it if they

are not patrolling the canals.

Yeah, but that's a lot of canals.

Yeah, but, you know, somebody could do a very simple time study of how long it takes to cover a 100 miles worth of panels.

Sorry. Dave Crane. Just one quick comment on that. As a citizen, you can take a video of them doing it across from your calendar or whatnot and then come to code enforcement. And what they will ask you to do is to go in front of the magistrate Right. And testify on it. You don't you can do it as a citizen. It doesn't have to be code enforcement. Okay. Thanks.

Thanks,

Dave. But I think that is a huge piece of the educational piece that we need to get to the landscapers because I have complained about our landscapers doing it and also get to the residents.

Well, one of the ancillary problems is all of the seasonal homeowners are getting ready to go home and they can't see what their landscapers are doing when they are not there. And if if code enforcement is driving down the street, it is very hard to see what they are doing behind the house, which is where I think most of us

What would your solution be, Rick?

That they have some budget for periodic patrolling the canals, maybe while they are doing the bathymetric survey and that if they see landscapers blowing stuff in the canals, that they issue a warning or citation, video it if they have to because they do not want to get out of their boat and go up and whatever.

Why don't you write to city council and put that in as a proposal because clearly it is tied to budget and we don't really have very much in the way

Well, it would be nice if there was support from the Waterways Committee.

I support it. I mean, I don't have an issue with this. If grass clippings, you know, kind of an issue, it's to me, it's somewhat educational. But if you want to put teeth behind it, then you need to have the budget to go and do code enforcement or get the police to look because code enforcement don't have a boat. The police are the only people that have a boat. So from the backside of the house, the only people that can view it are the police.

Well, they got boats, a guy from code enforcement could be riding around with them.

Absolutely. Why why not make a proposal to seek it? Because it will take some budget to do it and enforce it.

Because the ordinance is already there, right?

Yeah. Yeah.

It just it just isn't enforcement. It's not it's it's not that we need city council to do anything different from an ordinance perspective. We're not trying to pass anything that isn't really Yeah,

I agree. Mr. Just wanted to understand.

I have a question. Wouldn't there be a record of all of these landscape companies that are working on Marco Island? I mean, is there a way to get them and to just go to their home offices and see what their practices are and to public I guess, educate them on this problem? And also, wouldn't they be able to tell us what the chemical composition of the fertilizers that their landscape crews are putting on the lawns of Marco Island? I mean, do we have a record or is there a way to investigate the companies? I mean, there can't be that many. Maybe, I don't know, ten, twenty, There

is a record of each company and that's what I was having you go back and look at and talk to the city to figure out cause there is a record, but what is, what are we telling them? What is the, what is the information that we are giving them?

I'd want to find out what they

are doing

and I'd want to also let them know what

they can. How about, how about nothing? There is no mechanism currently in place other than then code enforcement did write up tickets and sticker trucks and whatever and they do have a list and I am happy to get the current list and I am happy to talk to growth management and code enforcement and see what they are doing and bring that information forward to another meeting. I think that's a good idea. But but it would be nice if the committee supports me doing that. I am not gonna do it if I put it on the wrong sheet of paper with the wrong headings, and you do not want to talk about it.

That is a little bit of an asinine backslap comment. But I have no issue supporting that. It's an ordinance that's in place. If it's an enforcement issue, we enforce it. To my knowledge, there was something like 129, I think it was, landscape companies that had registered. Now the issue the other issue that we've got is again, I'm not very well researched on this, but my basic understanding is that you actually have to have a in Florida, you actually have to have that certification by the person.

That's correct.

Not by the company. Correct. So one of the things I would say might be a better plan of attack for you on this is see if we can change that to it's not your company that has to be certified, it's the person applying it.

Well, that's already part of the law. I mean, the person that applies it has to be licensed.

So Yes. But from a Marco perspective, I think what you'll find is what we have on the books now is the landscaping company has to be certified and they get a sticker to put in their truck. And really, it should be down to that personal level in Florida State. It's my understanding, but I'm not very well researched on

it, so maybe that's something you want to I think what we're I think we're still trying to get at is the educational piece. So I think what if you can get the ordinance wording correct, we'll look at the ordinance and then we will look at what the city is doing towards you. You don't have to go talk to code enforcement and all that anyways right now. We already know, I just need to know what we are handing out. So like are we educating them because I think we are not and I think if we can put a document together that says that it's got to have this, this and that, don't blow your stuff in the canal and then add grout stuff to it of what type of chemicals to use, I think we have a good start to look at that.

Well, just a comment on practicality. I know I'm going back almost a couple years now. When I made a complaint of seeing landscapers blowing garbage and tree stuff in the canal, I went and spoke to a police officer that was at a location a couple of blocks down. I was told then, and maybe it's different now, that they needed a warrant to go on private property. And I said, well, there is no expectation of privacy.

You could see them from the public sidewalk. Then they said, they can't do it. And I said, well, you can knock on the door and ask them if you can go into their backyard to go and do what they need to do to protect their own water. Nobody is going to say no. And then I also said, isn't there a public right of way?

Because when I was when I first moved here, they said, there's a right of way public to get to the seawalls and you can walk the seawalls. That's part of it so they can inspect them. So I said, well, can't you just walk down to the seawall on top of the seawall and see it? I gotta go. So no matter what we put on paper, if the priority from the enforcement side is, well, that's not really important for us or whatever, we're barking up the wrong tree.

I think that's a good piece to add to it.

So I think the issue there, Ralph, is some debris in the canal, in my opinion, doesn't become a police issue, it's a code enforcement issue. So if you're talking to the police guy, the police guy is going say, I'm more concerned about speeding ticket and someone getting shot than some grass in the canal. So to David's point that was made here at the podium, if you see it, video it, timestamp it and then take it to magistrate.

Code enforcement is under the police. And it wasn't and it just didn't happen to be a code enforcement guy, But I

I would I would say if you if you are Ralph, if you're saying use a utility easement as a avenue for police to walk through people's houses to get a better view of what's going on in the backyard, that would have epic pushback from every citizen this, almost every citizen. I mean, you might be okay with it, but I wouldn't, you know, enjoy that, and I don't think many citizens would. I think there's a more practical approach to it. And it is neighbor it's got to be neighbor input. I mean, we're all in each other.

We're all in our own backyards looking across the canal at our neighbor's house. If you see something egregious, repeatedly, yeah, video it, go to code enforcement, be part of the solution. But short of that, I think it's difficult. I mean it's education. And unless you want to enact like checkpoints and checking going gestapo level on the fertilizer guys and landscapers.

I think that's just the reality of where we are. But going between people's houses and using utility easements as a mechanism to, you know, see what's going on in people's backyards, I would not see that happening. Well, do

you have an idea of where we're going on this? I do. Okay. Perfect. Let's move on. We're running out of time here.

Florida Friendly Landscaping and Turf Reduction, obviously it is a topic we have talked about. I don't know what the exact procedure is to encourage that more actively. That's the committee discussion item. It's not my particular area of expertise. The stormwater ordinance reform.

I had a brief discussion with Justin about it. I had given him a sample of the stormwater ordinance reform that was submitted to counsel back in 2020 that was referred to the planning board and it was rejected at the planning board level because they felt that it was a extra cost that they had to pass along to homeowners. And so it got voted down primarily by Jason Bailey.

So I mean, comment on that would be, I think that was what we did there, think was the right approach to get reform is to put it into the planning committee because ultimately, the houses are getting much bigger on the lots because of the septic situation. And so that's sort of the way to go. I mean, if the planning committee rejected it from a cost point of view, it's disappointing to me because I do think that those kind of things of permeable driveways and some kind of catch system for significantly big developments on new lots is the way to go. Well, it was also

six years ago that, that was proposed and rejected. I think you were on the committee then when we

I was, yes.

We approved it and set it to counsel and counsel accepted it but put the planning. Justin, is there any movement at the state level to close this loophole for the single family homes abiding by?

During our, excuse me, during our last MS four audit inspection, we were told by the inspector that the homes individual homes on Marco Island are part of the overall development, which was done by Deltona. So, therefore, there is no exemption, And we the that needs to be followed. So I can ask for further clarification from DEP, but that's what we were told during the, audit inspection.

Do you think it would be appropriate to recirculate the document that I sent you to the committee to see if there is support to resubmit it to city council and to the planning board again?

I I'd certainly share it with all the committee members if that's I what the committee would

would say, since a lot of time has passed since that was put forth, many members of the Planning Committee have most probably changed. So maybe they have a different view on it now. So I see no harm in giving it another try. But again, it's one of those things. It's like you can only do things so many times and you can't just keep repeating, I'm going to do this again and again and again and again because I don't like the answer. There has to come a point when you say,

Well, as you say, the world's changed six years later. He's getting different feedback from FDP now that it may be required. We've already done the groundwork. We've got the draft amendment.

Yes. But I think the feedback was that you can't change the development code because it was set by Dale Toner. Is that a correct understanding of your statement?

No. What we were told by the DEP inspector is that they're not looking at this as individual homes. They're looking at Marco Island as a development, as a whole. And therefore, it's not exempt from those requirements, MS4 requirements.

Right. But there's nothing in those requirements that say that there's a certain amount of impervious ground required on a single development?

No. The MS4 requirements would be related to discharging from each home site pollutants that would contaminate the city's waterways.

Mhmm. Can I add a little bit here? I mean, mister chair, I attended a Calusa water keeper program, and that was up in the Fort Myers area. I can't find one here in Collier County. And they have a report, cyanobacteria and cyanotoxins and BMAA.

And it's really brief. Are two little paragraphs. And when I read this, I realize exactly what we're talking about. And if I can have a permission to read this briefly, it's cyanobacteria, cyanotoxins and BMAA. There are over 1,000 different species of cyanobacteria, and many have the ability to produce toxins that can affect the nervous system or liver function, excuse me, of animals and humans.

BMAA has been linked to neurodegenerative diseases such as ALS, Parkinson's disease, and Alzheimer's. Calusa Water Keepers, this is the program that I'm going to join because it's extremely valuable. And they do the testing called ADAM, ADAM, but I'll mention that in a minute, is particularly interested in examining the potential human health risks from chronic cyanobacteria exposure in Southwest Florida. And we are uniquely situated as an organization to do so. This includes our groundbreaking airborne research, ADAM, initiated back in 2021.

I got to take a look at the machines. They've only got, I think, five or six of them yet. But I'm just wondering, would it be worthwhile for this committee to look into contacting them and seeing what they could add? Not that they are going to have the solution, but they are going to actually tell our community exactly what we are doing to ourselves when we're eating the fish that swim in this bacteria and toxin and when we breathe it because this was a whole two point five hour presentation that I heard that I have some material on. This is absolutely the more we talk and the more we discuss procedures, the more we're breathing these toxins and eating them in the top of the food chain when we eat grouper, when we eat shark.

Hopefully, nobody is eating the dolphins. But this whole issue I mean, I hope not, this whole issue is really paramount to the health of people. And this pollution and this toxic air goes over four miles away from a toxic canal. So even if all the canals are not badly affected, mature on one or you are within four miles of one and the wind is blowing in the right direction, you are getting it. And this is actually serious material that we are dealing with, and I think it's extremely important that we take it seriously.

I just wanted to add that. So and I the last thing I wanted to say about this was we really have two main issues here when it comes to water quality and where it's coming from. The AWT affects from the medians, the roadways, the condo lawns, the golf courses, and that's tonnage of pollutants being put out there. The other is, of course, what we're discussing, our personal private properties. They both impact our water quality in a huge way.

They both need to be dealt with seriously, the AWT and getting public education out there and enforcing whatever ordinances we can to help clean this up. Then I know we go to the cleanup, but we gotta stop putting it out there first, I think. That's just my opinion.

So a couple just can I

tag on to what you're the fish toxins and whatnot? Have you reached out to FWC about from their biology and research division about what is going on with fish in our area because they are on the island sampling fish all the time. I would reach out to them before you to help you understand the degree of which you may think fish may be, you know, exposed to these toxins?

Well, I can give you a direction to the program with the University of Miami and the other research professor that did the comparison of the brains of the dolphins and the brains of humans that have been autopsied with Alzheimer's and Parkinson's and neurodegenerative diseases and how similar they are. In fact, you can't tell the difference. And when you have the blue green algae and these toxins, you're getting that particular toxin going beyond the blood brain barrier in the brain, and it's staying there. And, it's not I mean, I I understand what you're asking. Our area

Just a Just a resource for diving into what's going on with the edible fish. Sure. Sure. And the other one, just a comment about the residential. Yes. And you mentioned reuse water.

Yes.

And just a point of clarification, the residential properties don't get the reuse water.

Correct. Pulling that out.

Except the condominiums.

Not all of

The condos.

The condo lots.

This is just some of them on Collier.

Mister Chen, I wanna pause this to get through the rest of the agenda and then return Alright. To

Took too much. Yeah. Well, yeah.

And I wanna consider that.

We're we're gonna miss a couple items here, keep going. You want to go on the next one? Okay.

Obviously, as you noticed, this was broken into addressing causes first and then second, it was moving on to remediation and we have talked about sediment removal and canal dredging and there's not a lot of hard suggestions here, but you know, we've got to continue to explore it, particularly the bioremediation. I know there are some of the counselors that are interested in that and I know that there is some, you know, evidence of the bioremediation working. There was a canal in Cape Coral that they did it on where it seemed to be effective. Whether it would be effective, you know, on a broad scale, I don't know. I am just this was on the work list of things to talk The canal bubblers, there is a demonstration program.

I think it is starting just and soon.

Yes, that is correct. Before we continue, I have been informed that there is public comment that has been waiting for a while to don't know if you want to entertain

You that

want finish to that up and then I'll Yes.

Yes. Justin, when is the program starting on the bubbler?

Yes. That's slated to it's based on water temperatures. So when the water temperature start coming back up, and typically that's been, in mid to late May. So that's, slated to start again, in about a month. And, it would go through October, and we would be putting the diffusers back in, the compressors and all the lines.

Everything's there, except we didn't leave the diffusers in the canals because they would've been sitting there getting barnacles for the past year. So that is slated to go back in, and with that, the water quality testing so that we can then gauge, you know, what it is in the before, and the during, and the after. And then following that, we would get the report from the engineer on the the actual improvements from these bubblers in the canals, in this one canal that we're doing the pilot in.

Who who's doing the installation and monitoring? What what department?

Well, the installation is by the contractor, and the the the water quality testing is the the same lab that we had last time, which was Sanders. And the the actual report, the engineering firm is Jacobs.

And any city staff involved in any kind

of meeting Public works. That would be myself and and Tara.

So so, Dow, if you wanna have public public comment.

Hello, everybody. Dave Crane again, Marco Island resident. Just wanted seem to be going back to reliving the past, so I'm gonna be part of that as well. So I just wanna kind of after the last the city council meeting before this last one, a lot was on there regarding AWT, and I just wanted to go back to where this all started. If you can turn that on, Martin. Was now almost five years ago where we had doctor Harper with ERD. Can we turn on the overhead, Martin?

There you go.

So the final report was finally, we got to it September 2021. That was during COVID. It took about them about six months longer than anticipated to get the final report, because the isotope testing, that lab had been shut down because of COVID out in California. So it took a while. And I only get four minutes, so I better move along.

Just wanna bring up a couple highlights of that. You haven't read it, at least read the summary. It's only 10 pages long, but I'm gonna bug you and show you a couple things I just wanted to bring up. So this is and I'm gonna do it on pages rather than being up here telling you this is on page this. I'm gonna just show you the page and you can see it.

Doctor. Harper states here the largest annual hydraulic input into the five waterways that he broke it up into is groundwater seepage, which contributes 60 to 72% of the total annual hydraulic inputs. Going down, hydraulic residence times in the waterways are relatively long ranging in five to eleven months. Landmark Basin being at least eleven months is what he came up with and that's when he went into that. Going down to the bottom, nitrogen loadings.

The most significant annual mass loadings of total nitrogen to Marco Island water bodies originates from sediment nutrient release, which contributes 61% to 77% of the annual nitrogen. The second most significant nitrogen loading to the water bodies is groundwater seepage. If you add those together, it's between 7690% or more of the nitrogen is from those two applications. Okay? Phosphorus loadings average annual basis significant loadings of total phosphorus to Marco originate again from sediment nutrient release which contributes 42 to 72%.

Okay? So this is what's already there. Okay? This isn't it's there. No matter what you do, it's still there. Okay? Just moving on real quick. Stormwater management, one of the recommendations. If I go down on that. It is recommended that the city consider adding stormwater management requirements for future homes or redevelopment.

That's what you were talking about earlier. That was one of one of the things we as a board suggested. In fact, one of the members of Clean Water, Marco, Bob Roth, was instrumental in that. I believe in the presentation we did at the seminar for the city council, Something like six football fields of of arid land are being overdeveloped every single year on the island, getting rid of that. And I'm running out of time. So let me just get can I get a little extension

here for

thank you? Just like two more topics and I'm done. Harper when both went on and said both historic and current data collected by ERD indicate areas of dead end canals with poor water quality resulting in lack of tidal flushing. And you can go on and read that as well. I won't bother you with that.

Lastly, I mean, what doctor Heper one of his biggest issues in his report and what he kinda has claimed to fame was the use of what is in coming in up through the bottom of our canal walls and coming into the thing. And so that's where the isotope studies came into. This is just one example where he was showing reuse water. This was done both directly out of the reuse tank at the wastewater plant and then again at the pond at one of the golf courses showing that the manure and sewage shows up in both of those areas at those locations. The green is the pond that it's been in there for a while.

It's diluted, so the number's a little bit farther to the left. But it shows it's yes. Does it come out of our our reuse water as that? Yes. But And this is the the key to me is the groundwater seepage. In the testing, 74 tests of groundwater seepage, one showed possible manure and sewage. All those to the left are all showing fertilizer. Okay? That's the DNA of the isotope test. It's fertilizer.

It's not reuse water. Okay? So we're wasting our to me, yes, it'd be nice to have. It's not mandated. It would be nice to have if we had everything else done beforehand, but that's not the issue.

Now the only one that did show up was actually SP. Anyhow, so that's that. As far as and I wanna just cover one real quick, the deep drill deep well at the end of dead end canals. I spoke again to Steven Hanks, who's the technical principal civil engineer down in The Keys for their project down there. They're putting five more in at Key Largo.

What they're finding is they anticipated getting about a million gallons a day down one of these wells that they did. It turns out they're getting 2,000,000 gallons a day through that. Improved so much that the biggest cost that they're having down there is because their canals were built so deep, in some cases 45, 50 feet deep. They're bringing that up to only seven and a half foot depths, but it's very expensive for that fill. What they're finding is because there's so much more flow coming through there, they're looking at eliminating doing that moving further. They don't need to fill up the canal. They got enough water movement.

The But

on the deep well injection Yeah. How would we do it here?

Here, we spoke to I spoke to the engineer in Cape Coral that handles this area. They he's been involved here with our deep well injections that are, like, 3,000 feet. I ran this information from the Keys, the earlier information, like, ten months ago to the to him. His concern was, one, at the depth of about a 100 to 220 feet. There is an aquifer down there that is a saltwater aquifer. We could drain to. It would be totally legal. If it was a freshwater aquifer, that would be an issue. It's not. It's saltwater.

We could dump into that. His concern was do we have is the is the ground underneath porous enough, as porous it is in the Keys? He he didn't know if we could get as much water movement. My point being, my particular canal, one, I'm in El Marco. Our canals are only 65 feet wide.

It's about five feet deep at high tide in the center. So roughly, I calculated out it's approximately 2,300,000 gallons a day. If we would get 200,000 gallons or even a 100,000 gallons, we'd be moving the water at least every thirty days, if not sooner than that, rather than it never over turning over. And that's something and the initial thing to do would be he said, you could have a a two inch well dug at a cost of about 5 to $7,000 to test it to see if will this work or not here? So very inexpensive to do that.

I would be more than happy on my canal. We do have an empty lot at the corner. I would be more than happy to kick in and pay a portion of that along with we'll see if my neighbors would do that as well. But it would be something to try at least from that aspect. In The Keys, they're doing aeration. They've done aeration as well. They've gone to this and it's worked very well. They're very happy with it. So sorry to

bother you Can so

I make a couple of comments? Yes. Specific to this well, when I bring it up, I get told that, well, we are kind of locked into this under San Marco Road project. A year or even more than that, I have had my concerns with the model that bought into it and how much value it is now that the property is long San Marco makes it more complicated. I think it should be looked at again in conjunction with this.

I have asked the question, well, how do they tell how much flow there is in the wells that are done and I don't know that yet. But I think it should be looked at. I think it's valid. As far as the muck thing, he is exactly right. A hopper report said muck was number one, but because in the executive summary, says muck is everywhere, costs $189,000,000 to hydraulically dredge it, kind of pushed aside, move on to the next thing.

But if you remember in one of the proposals, there was indications in the Harper data with the Harper team evaluating those things that the muck is not everywhere, that it may be concentrated in a few places where now dredging maybe looks like more cost effective to do, but we need a survey to confirm that how much muck. And if you recall last year, asked for $300 of equipment to try to find out how much muck, where it is, get us rolling and it was turned down. So I would say the first thing about saying that muck is something that's viable to go after that we start looking at, let's have that survey to see where the muck is. We should have done it before we even discussed Seahawk to know what it is we need to do, and we didn't do that. So, again, we've mentioned that as something we might be able to go after.

You can you do can you do your dredging thing for next meeting? Not not as a workshop, but as an agenda item. And then we can bring in the deep wall injection and bring in the muck.

Sure. We can have sure. We can have more conversation with more information and see what we do with it. A workshop, as I said, I don't think it's gonna get us to that strategic plan that we really need to do. But I think it's worth discussing with some new information and see if we where we go with it.

We need a survey to see where the muck is?

Well, we're going by extrapolating with the Harper report 26 core samples and all the data that's But been

move that to the next meeting because

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. But yeah. Pretty much isn't it everywhere? Well, that's the whole point.

Well, yeah.

So we can discuss it at I the next

mean, understand Marco, I'm a proponent for that as well. The issue being dead end canals like Rick's, like mine, that's not gonna help us a bit. It's just not. I mean, it's it's not gonna help. So but for for certainly Landmark Basin in those areas, it'll help a lot. It'll help the entire island, but just the dead end canals are still gonna be an issue no matter what we do. And this is one alternate to do that. I don't know if you would I don't know if this gentleman would even wanna do a a phone a phone in to to you guys to talk about what they're doing in The Keys. If if you're interested in that, let me know. And then I again, I haven't talked to him about doing that, so I don't know if he would be

Why don't we get together and see what we can do about that? Yeah.

Okay. Alright.

Okay. I mean, there was some pushback on having outsiders video because I tried that with the marketing bacteria. Yeah. And somehow we weren't able to have this expert come in and talk to us. Yeah. But he can broach it again.

Okay. Yeah. I don't think he's gonna drive up from the keys to do that. But I thought over the phone Yeah. Possibly we could do something like that. But

just a thought. Alright.

Thanks, guys.

We are kind of getting close to the end here. Do you want to just go over a couple more items here

quickly? Wanted to say, Dave, if you have got information on this deep water, whatever Well injection? You know, send some information to Justin and let us circulate it because I think I think he brought

up like a year and a half ago or so.

Yeah. About a year. I went down that when I was still on the board. I think I went down and looked at the keys, what they were doing then with the aeration stuff. Because that came from our meeting Right. That we had with city council as well as, you know, aeration came up from one of the city councilmen. And I went over to Key Largo to look at that and wasn't thoroughly impressed with that one. But the issue is the biggest issue is marine growth in saltwater, especially down here. I have a brother-in-law that had a yacht up in New York Harbor. Once a year, you'd have to have the bottom scraped. He brought it down here. Every sixty days. He had to have the bottom scraped. I mean, it's just so aggressive. The the water temperature is so high.

There's just so much more living organisms in in saltwater than than the even up north, but let alone freshwater. And that's I would hope you know, I sold aeration equipment back in the day. I love aeration. But, again, saltwater is just so aggressive on those. Keeping them clean is tough. Yep.

Because we are probably going to run out of time, would just like to throw one thing out. Historically, the committees had a budget of about $10,000 a year and we never seem to spend it and it's available and budgets coming up now with the city. So we still have $10,000 I think Justin, isn't that the right number?

That's correct.

Leftover from last year. If we want another appropriation for $10,000

From this year, current year?

Current year. Right. It'd be nice if we could think of some way to spend it. And maybe if for the next meeting make that another topic item on the agenda. Well, Ralph might spend 300 of it, so we'll see. Well, hey, there's 300, maybe we could put a hole in Dave's canal for $5 and see if the whole system doesn't drain down and and but anyway

take what is a vote from from the committee for the expenditure, what it is and how much in a roll call vote and we can do it.

I think that was a great idea to put it on the agenda for the next meeting and see if we can spend $9,700 that's left to do something like this, particularly if we can do a two inches pilot.

Well, it's all

I have suggested. Let's get it on the agenda and talk about it.

Absolutely.

And be ready to send a budget to counsel for next year's budget if we have some ideas on how to spend that $10. We are never going to probably get more than that. But if we have got it and we can think of a good use for it, let's do it.

I think also budget is one of those things where if you don't spend it, you are likely to get it taken away.

Eventually.

I'll be all in favor of like, yep, let's do it. Let's put something on the agenda and let's go spend the money.

Go on. Do you want to go continue on with yours quickly or do you want to end here on your

Well, the other stuff is not as significant. I have an opinion about the whole tide leveling hydraulic culvert interconnect. We could almost have a whole meeting talking about it.

Justin, where are we with that?

It's waiting on additional funds. We have, several grants that we've, obtained.

The

the city's lobbyist, We we tasked them with trying to obtain the remaining $1,920,000 in a legislative appropriation. We won't know the the results of that until the governor takes action and and I think it's either June or July. Yeah. It has to be done before July 1, so we'll know that in June.

And that was at the request of city council. Correct?

Yes. City council directed the lobbyists to, seek those funds for that. I do also wanna mention that it's it's one of the items in the city's four e alternate restoration plan as a commitment. So in June, I will be preparing a report to DEP an update and it won't look good if we say we're gonna pull the rug on it.

I'm not sure it needs this that needs to be in or to me, is kind of like AWT. It has been passed up to the latter. City council has got it. They are

working on it. I don't know if

it needs to continue to stay on there or not.