Waterways Advisory Committee - Regular Meeting

It's now 08:30. This session of the Waterways Advisory Committee on Marco Island is now called to order. I'd like to have a roll call to start. Member Lewandowski?

Here.

Member Rojena?

Here.

Member Winter?

Here.

Vice chair High?

Here.

Member Snyder? Here. Member Woodworth?

Here.

Chair Mascoupe? Here. Thank you. Let us stand and recite the pledge. I pledge allegiance to the choir of The United States Of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. I'd like to call for an approval of the agenda. Do we have any comments? Do we have a motion?

Motion to approve.

Thank Second? We have a motion and a second. Any discussion? Any comments? Anything anybody would like to say about approving the agenda? I think we can take a voice vote, if that's okay. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. The agenda is now approved. I'd like to move on to number five, the approval of the minutes. Approval of the Waterways Advisory Committee meeting minutes of 09/18/2025. Do we have any discussion, or do we have a motion to approve the minutes?

I have a couple of questions or comments. Rick, it's it's all yours. Go ahead. Item number seven a, we approve the motion to have you present a recommendation to the planning board. Did you

prepare something for the Did I respond? I found out thank you. I was informed that they would not be taking anything just from me without discussion and approval or a motion from the Waterways Advisory Committee to then go to counsel, and then council would then forward that to the planning board. So I found that out yesterday. So there would not be an an opportunity for me to get on that agenda without this committee first making a motion and approving it to go forward.

Mister chair, just a little point of clarification. Sure.

Go right ahead.

So, yeah, they'd like to see something formalized from this committee in the form of a a proposed plan or amendment or something rather than just schedule a presentation item at a planning board meeting. And they'd also like to see that being supported by city council. You don't have to go to city council because then you're kinda, you know, taking a leapfrog step. But what they'd like to see is if you could get the support of a city councilor who could bring that up during city council communications to generate some momentum that then that could filter back down and then go through the planning board. But, they felt that it was kind of coming from, you know, out of the blue, so to speak.

And they'd like to see some more formalized either in a white paper or some sort of a presentation with exactly this what they're being asked to consider, not just, in the form of a presentation out of the blue.

Exactly. And that's exactly I did talk directly to, to Dan Smith and to Mary Hogan, and they said that exactly. And so those are the procedures that this committee would have to follow.

So are you gonna draft something for us to review and approve?

I have spent this whole month doing a ton of research, and I have got paperwork this high. I've gone to the University of Florida. I've gone to authorities all the way on the East Coast, landscape architects and everything else involving that topic. And if this committee would want that presented, if there's a desire for it, I'd be more than happy to put one together. You know, we could get like a consensus.

Sounds like before it goes to counsel Mhmm. And before counsel forwards it to the planning board Right. You have to give counsel something or to get a counselor on board

is what I'm telling you. For me personally, I mean if the pushback is coming from Citi, do they want it done that way, I don't have an issue with it. So I think what we need to do is most probably present to here some kind of executive summary of what you think are the key points. Most probably needs to be five or six power points and get the approval from Waterways and then push it up, get some counselors on board if we can do that.

Can put that onto the next meeting and get that done without any problem. I'll be more than glad to do it. I have it already. But

Do we do we need to divvy up assignments? I mean, there's components. One is the code verbiage change. One is programs, educational programs.

Or Not necessarily. No. Just to present. And I'll tell you why. The city council already has this in code that if a homeowner wants to present a Florida Friendly yard and they approve, you know, that under the code, it's absolutely okay at this point. So it's not it's not there's no mandate that you can't do that. So the code will allow it and it has been explained to me by the planning board, the code will now allow that as part of what's permissible here on Marco Island.

So I think that to me that the minimal amount of research that I did, it's not actually a Marco Island issue, it's a Florida State issue. Florida State have already said, if you want to do Yes. Would

that be better? Yes. Mean to stop you there, Martin. Yep.

No, I agree.

Okay. Yeah. We can talk about this later. Okay.

So you're gonna put it on the next agenda what you propose to send to counsel. Yes. Then if they wanna do it, they'll send it on to the planning board. Exactly.

Was this by any chance a whiteboard topic?

Not yet. Okay.

Alright. I was just thinking because I'm looking at the next item and wondered if it was already fit into that. Okay. No.

Not not at this time. Okay. Alright. Rick, what else did

you wanna

One more. I'm I'm ready hit. Item 13, other committee communications. I volunteered to contact the existing contractor who does the testing for algae mats or algae and they told me that they could not discuss what they would do with the city with me, but if I wanted to, on my own, submit a sample that they would accept it and process it and whatever. The total cost was about, I know, $500 maybe it was $350 So I am willing to do it.

I know that the committee has some budget or at least historically it had $10,000 budget and so I am asking the committee if they would recommend the city approving up to $500 for me to take the sample and send it to the testing lab.

I would have to ask Justin, is that within our our purview?

Yes. You do have every year as was mentioned a budget and it hasn't changed from what it's been in past years. So you have that 10,000 available in FY twenty six. We're new in the we're just a month into the new fiscal year. So you have those funds available. However, just one caveat, it should be the lab taking the samples. We could coordinate, but the lab could come take the samples, and they can and do the testing. So it's it's an independent type of

Would there be no cost at that?

Well, there will be a cost. But what I'm saying is the cost can be paid out of the Yeah. Yeah. The funds that this committee has available. Rick, if you want to get with me and let me know the particulars of how you were thinking of doing it, I'll coordinate with the lab and then get a cost from them that we can then present to this, committee and approve those costs and have them move forward on that.

The problem is the algo mat boom does not occur every day. And so they would have to be on call to send somebody down on a day that the bloom is occurring. Now it happens we had two or three blooms this past week, which would have been fine. They could have come on any day, but I cannot tell you what day. Is that possible? It is gonna happen.

Well, I can't guarantee they'll be on call, but we will need to coordinate that. So if if you're seeing that and so these I I presume we're talking about this this mat that floats up and then goes back down. So when this happens, does it go back down the same day or does it stay up for a couple of days?

It varies. In my experiences, it is most readily apparent at low tide on hot days with a lot of sunshine. Now I do not know how they coordinate for hot days, low tide, and a lot of sunshine.

Are they forecast?

But that is typically when it occurs, although this past weekend, it was all over the place. In fact, it

Our water temperature is getting close to being below 80 degrees and you will you will not see it very much once it gets below 80 degrees. Yep. We are getting to the time of year where it pretty much disappears until spring.

Well, that

is why I brought this up. No, I understand.

I understand. Am just So

time is of the essence. Timing of it.

No, I I agree, but it is lasting longer every year because it it happened this weekend. I was over at the Marco Island boat show and the canal was full of it. A lot of them were. I sent pictures to city council, there is no council oh, there is one. I think you got the pictures. And I would have sent them to the committee, but I can't send them directly to the committee.

But Well, you can.

Well, you

can through that.

But I

sent them to Justin. He was copied. He saw it. He can forward it. So you tell me what you want me to do. I'm happy to do whatever. Let's talk

After the meeting? This.

And we could I think we can coordinate something where it if we're going to be counting on these results, we need to make sure that the chain of custody is verifiable and is intact and whether that's the lab coming down or whether that's some other method. But get with me after this and we'll discuss some options there.

Okay. I

mean, I can tell you the protocol is fairly simple.

Yeah. Let's let you and Justin coordinate and then we'll get the minutes approved. And we may be able to talk about this also as we do the whiteboard topic. So I mean, no, it can get in there. You know, just wanna get the minutes approved. I'd like to move along if that's okay. And then we'll, you know

I just wanted to bring it up because it

was I'm glad you did. Last meeting. I'm glad you did that.

Anybody else? I'll make a motion to approve the minutes.

A motion to approve the minutes. Do we have a second? Second. Okay. We have a couple seconds. We'll we'll let Tara figure out which one. And we'll just take a voice vote then. All all in favor of approving the minutes, aye. Aye. Any opposed? Minutes are approved. Thank you. Alright. We now move on to number 6, ID 254745. It's old business, but whiteboard topics and strategic planning.

And we were trying to do this on an easel last time, and it's not really television quality. It's not really broadcast quality. And we're going to do it the way we're supposed to do it on the projector on the electronic projector. So I'd like to move forward in that direction. I think the first thing I would need to do is to get a committee volunteer to be positioned right over there and to kind of help facilitate this particular maneuver.

So anybody wanna, you know, wanna take the reins and volunteer to go and, you know, be our facilitator? How important is penmanship? Just readable.

Well, I did it last time, and then mine's not very good.

So Well, hey. Martin was able to do it with There

you go.

That's a pretty low bar.

It is yeah. It's not a high bar. We'll put it that way.

I I could do it. How do you wanna record this?

Well, we want it to be written over here on the projector so that it can be, you know, viewed by the public, you know, and recorded.

You mean handwritten on a piece of paper and shown on the

I think that's the only way that we have to do it at this point.

Unless you have another whiteboard.

Right. Unless think Justin seems to wanna do this. Does that work for you, Justin?

He's willing. He's willing.

Looking for a paper.

Okay. It's up there.

Yeah. It's up there. It's all prepared. It's all ready. Yep. Writing utensil and paper is there for you. And we appreciate your your volunteering for us. Okay. So thinking back to where we were before, who would like to start with, how do we want to approach this? Because I I'm not gonna try to to put the hammer down and say how I wanna do it. I wanna see how the committee wants approach this.

I I have a question. What do you what's your goal out of this? Because we kinda came up with the six items last time. Do we wanna go into each six?

Well, let me preface this with I'm watching a deterioration of our canals, getting a lot of people getting in touch with me. And I'm going out and taking a look at a lot. I'm seeing a deteriorating water quality just in general. There are some canals, and I'm I'm not trying to be dramatic. There are some canals in which if you just take a look at the water, and then I remember my trip over Jeff Potit's wastewater vat.

And some in some places, the smell and the look is almost the same. And it's becoming a situation in which I think it's getting pretty critical in places at times. Right. So So with that in mind and with whatever solutions this committee feels can make a difference, those are the most important ones. I'd love to see I mean, we can present all to to counsel all of them in the order in which we feel that they're most important to least important, most most useful to least. So I'll just sneak in a moment, Martin, if you want, you're laughing.

Why don't we just take the water quality one as the first one and we'll just talk about that for right now then.

Go right ahead.

I'll throw

Chris? It

I mean, I think the question comes into is where do we think that the water quality is, what could improve it the most? And you've got an agenda item for the muck settlement.

We'll be going to Ralph after this.

We may have move him up a little bit. But just maybe if everybody goes through and says one item that they could do that thinks it would improve water quality.

Right. And let me see. Everybody can jump in. Rick, you are still on I the

am happy to go first. I have been a big advocate for advanced wastewater treatment for at least the last six years and counsel recently hired Black and Veatch to do a study of the cost of advanced wastewater treatment. So I do not see a reason to beat that horse now because it is already under consideration by city council and that would be my number one priority.

Alright, let us talk about that then because I have question for you on that. Let me, okay, on advanced water treatment though, are only treating reclaimed water. Right, the reclaimed water.

Yeah. 700,000,000 gallons a year that gets sprayed on the golf courses and the condominiums.

Yeah, so let me I have a map because I have a question on this. On the projector? Yeah. This is the city's map. Okay, so this is your reclaimed water. Let's find something to point with. So you've got hideaway here, which if it's is that is all on the grass and they got a beach, so that water would not really get to the water. Correct?

I am not sure it gets into the canal system on the bulk of the island.

Okay. So then, you only have, you got the golf course here, okay, and then the golf course, there's only this little part here that actually is anywhere near the water, right? So most of that water is gonna stay on the golf course. And then, you've got Rose Marina, and then you've got anglers here, which that water is anywhere near the water. I mean, with their, what they spray on because they got the docks and everything else in front of them.

Then you got the water treatment plant, and you got right here in these condos, but all those condos have like large concrete areas, seawalls, docks before it gets to the water. You got the Catholic church, or the church here, which actually has decent the amount of water, but there's still a sea wall and stuff there.

Lutheran

Lutheran church. And then, you got the park, and then you've got all these condos and hotels along here. And so, in here again, have all these docks and walkways and all that, so the water is pretty far out. Then you have the south end and a little bit here, but again they all docks. So I guess my question is that if you're doing advanced water treatment, you're reducing the amount of phosphorus, right, and nitrates that are in the water that's going be put on the grass.

Well, you're basically just about eliminating it.

Pretty close, but I mean it's still a very small amount, right. But if we do that, are we really going to affect the water in the canals? Because I see only a couple percent of this that would actually end up in the canal and it would only be like this canal here, bay here and possibly here.

Well, I think the point is that whole island is on a very shallow water table and that the unutilized fertilizer from the wastewater percolates down into the water table and it's transferred to the canals.

Alright. So that would be a question for you then. We talk about the Swale project, the whole Swale project was to reduce the nitrates and stuff that would get into the water because it filters through the ground, correct?

Yes, that would be a separate one from

the EWT.

Well, when the grass is actively growing and taking it up, it does a very good job, but it doesn't do all of it.

So, what I was trying to, what I thought about this last month was that, if we went ahead with AWT, I don't see how it's going to make any impact. The impact, if it is anything, it's just gonna cost us more money, but I don't, the water's not going in the water, the water's going into grass, which is then getting filtered through. So I think that there's still something else, that's why I love this discussion, I think there's still something else that's causing the problem and there might be a better way to do it because like I've dove in some of these bays and yeah, there's muck and I mean that's what's down there. So, but and then when you drive down the bay, the canals, I mean you get to these dead end canals, so I think we still have to do some kind of a flow of something, which city is working on, but I'm still trying to figure out on the AWT side, I don't understand how treating the water that is going on mostly grass and then don't forget to go to the Marco Shores, which doesn't get back to our canals anyways.

How that affects us. Now, if they went to all the whole city and, you know, like they originally talked about doing all the homes, but they are not talking about doing it anymore. Well,

when we did the caffeine and sucralose testing, clean Marco waters, We tested at six or seven locations throughout the island, and we found dramatic tracer amounts of sucralose and caffeine, and there's only one source despite one counselor's thoughts that it was caused by construction crew, that it could get there, and that's from the reuse water. And I could show you our maps of where we did our testing and we tested a good sampling of the island. And so our position, my position, is that the 700,000,000 gallons of reuse water percolates through the soil into the groundwater table and ends up in the canals. So that is

am going to agree with you in that I am realizing more and more, the more research I do, the interconnectedness of this whole situation. And there is no real way to say that none of that reuse water doesn't get through and have an effect. It's got to because it's got nowhere else to go. And when you get enough rain and enough wash off, there there there is that connection. I mean, for me to sit here and to say it doesn't happen would be ignoring some of the reality. And so I would have to concur, Rick, that there is definitely you know, you In our position Your position has merit.

It's the primary cause. The second one is your issue is fertilizer. And I've done some research.

I I don't mean to interrupt you, but I talked to some authorities, particularly some landscape authorities that are award winning on the East Coast Of Florida that they have been really really dealing with things in was it? Boca Raton and, I think, the Delray Beach area. That when it comes to fertilizer, and I talked I just attended a Florida Friendly Yard presentation, that if we went to just fertilizing in October when we can, and then again in May before just just basic not heavy and stop the winter fertilizing altogether. That is another thing that would make a big difference. So I'm getting a lot that I didn't know the more I look more I look into this.

So that's another component. But I think they're all there's no one answer. I

agree with you.

It's a multi pronged approach. My position is we we know that AWT is is a way of lowering nitrogen and phosphorus in the reuse water. The 700,000,000 gallons is only gonna grow as the island is built out. They have to get rid of that reuse water somewhere, and they are spraying it rain or shine whether the grass needs it or not. And it percolates into the canals. And I think that our sucralose and our caffeine testing proves without a doubt that that's happening.

And if I could add one more thing, it is basically proven and I can I can get you the data on this, that from November through April, this grass is basically doing nothing to soak up much of anything because it's not awake? It's half asleep, and it's not really growing. And for the most part, no matter what you throw on there, it's going to sit there until it gets washed off in the spring. What months? From November through April.

And I I'll I'll tell you on on the golf course that we significant regrowth of grass starting around Valentine's Day. So once the soil temperature gets above 75 degrees, that's when the grass that's With enough water. Grass starts to grow. With enough Correct. Help.

Correct. But the I'm talking about the basic yards, the basic lawns, the people that don't throw, you know, tons of water all all through the spring because I mean, the cost of water on this island, I mean, people don't want to throw their money into that. And it's not really feasible. And unless you do what you said, and you're right, you can get it to wake up, but you're still really fighting nature, and it's not efficient.

So regarding I'm sorry. I

your map? I don't mean to interject here.

No. We're good.

The floor is back to you. Sorry.

Go, Ralph. Just one comment. This is well trudged ground for the last seven years. It is. Unless there's something new that I don't know about or I haven't heard about, we're gonna end up in the same place anyway. And we've recognized that in past discussions by saying we needed a strategic plan to encompass all this kind of stuff.

This is the beginning.

And I know we can't get the time for a workshop, but if we're gonna end up in the same place after having hours of discussion, I don't know. I mean,

isn't city council already going to take a look at this? So I'm not sure why we're I I this is great. I love this. This is education for me. But I don't know if this committee needs to continue to discuss it if it's already up to city council.

That's right. And you already agreed that you were satisfied because it's going up to city council. Right. So, really, on this whiteboard component, I don't know if it's really necessary to rehash. But I will say, Chris, this, image is your points are well taken, and you can go to city council when they hear about the AWT price or or cost, and effects and reiterate exactly what you said here because you have valid points.

I know that this map does not mean that the property is using re reclaim water. Just because it's a map of where a pipe goes, it doesn't mean that the property is using it. So I can tell you if Rosemarie is not using reclaim water. But, and there's many properties that that probably don't because, you know, the parking lot has grown whatever you're feeding with it is growing by itself, and you don't need to even do anything. So it this red rash looks like, you know, kind of propaganda.

Like, right in these areas, it's being flooded with reclaimed water. I agree with you. I mean, I think there's a deeper dive, to see the actual impacts of the where it's applied, you know, how much soil, grass, whatever is between from where it comes out of the spigot to where, the water, the canal is. But, I would hope you you would bring this to a city council and just in the public comment period.

Well, that's kind of the point. I think that the amount of water that's going to ever end up in the canal would be such a small percentage that we can go down the path of AWT, but I don't think that's the answer. I think there's something else. But my question to you, I guess, originally was that when on one of your emails, you are talking about reducing the amount of water. So we talk about changing the grass and stuff like that and reducing the of water. But that water that's put on the homes is not reclaimed water. So, reducing that water, I don't think it's going to affect the canal because we're not putting, the AWT doesn't affect that.

Right. That doesn't. No, you're right. It doesn't affect the typical homeowner's lawn. Although, there is nitrogen in the potable water that's used for landscaping irrigation on all the homes on the island.

And 60% of a homeowner's water bill in a single family home is attributable to irrigation. So that also contributes to the problem. So as somebody said, is a many pronged approach is I believe AWT is first, fertilizer is second. But irrigating grass with water that has nitrogen in it is part of the problem. It might be further down the list. But

if I can interrupt you,

I'd like to let Martin have

point of clarification. So what you're saying is the irrigation that people use in their homes is got nitrogen and phosphorus in it. Yes.

It's got nitrogen in it too.

It's a different completely different water source. Portable water is

Very trace amounts. No nothing anywhere So near

again, I just feel that like that kind of comment spins this up into well, yeah, now it's everywhere and people can't irrigate even though they're getting the standard water that comes into the home that they drink. It's in there.

Ask Jeff.

Well, so another point and a clarification is, you say about all this stuff and it's reclaiming. If you read the Jacobs report when the isotope tested all of this stuff, they found one source where there were any traces that were isotopically the same as what comes out of the reclaimed water, just one, and that was low level. So we've already got the facts here on what this is and what this may or may not go or where it does or doesn't flow. And I think it's a valid point that Chris is trying to make here. You look at the percentage of area that we're actually potentially we could put this purple pipe water whatever you want to call it.

It's a pretty small area of the island. A lot of it is buffered by concrete and seawalls and all the rest of it. So my other question to you is 700,000,000 gallons, that is the total output that comes from the plant.

800 reuse water.

Right. But that reuse water, we spin up the number, 700,000,000 gallons coming on the island. A whole lot of this stuff goes off island.

A

big chunk of it goes off island. So again, we're trying to get open honest data here and we're saying 700,000,000 gallons when a whole lot of it goes off, it goes up Collier Boulevard and off island, doesn't even affect us. So is that really 700,000,000 gallons or is it half of that? I don't know. I just feel on this whole subject, there's such an incredible amount of spin that goes on with this.

Now AWT clearly has got sign off and we're going to spend $182,000 great. We'll burn the money and Jacobs hopefully will come back and say, if you do AWT, it's going to cost you $10,000,000 The reoccurring cost is going to be $500,000 a year for you to do it. And by the way, you'll see an improvement in the water quality in twenty five years' time. Hopefully, all that comes out of that Black and Veatch report, because then we can put that to the population of the island and say, how do you feel about taking a one time charge on your water bill or increasing your water bill or whatever it takes to do it. That's the correct way to do it if we want to go AWT in my opinion.

Well, you were at the seminar where the speaker said he thought if we implemented AWT, would see an improvement in the canal water quality in three to five years. I put the same question to Doctor. Harper. He said the same thing. You have got to reduce the nutrients, the loading, in order to see any improvement in the canal water quality.

So my point is that the amount of water that AWT would even affect is extremely minimal that's going to be into the water, into the canals. I think that there's another issue or multiple issues that are more important than AWT Cause I don't think that spending that money on that is going to affect. I don't see you three years. Like in your canal, AWT is not going to help you at all. It doesn't get to you. It would have to flow somewhere else and end up all the way to you, which would be minimal or like half of you guys, your canals are anywhere near where we claim the water is at.

Okay. I think where we're at now, we had last time six items that we felt were important. Am I correct?

Yeah, water quality was one of them.

What I would like to see here, I think the best way to proceed is to get, now take this one item AWT, and get each member's opinion as to where one through six they would put it. And then that would go on that whiteboard, and we would then take up the next put Next slide. The issue

of water quality or the issue of AWT?

Of AWT. Would AWT the first thing that you would say would make the most amount of a difference?

Wait a We pick we pick six buckets. We pick Water quality, we picked eight tons, picked, you know, blah blah blah blah. So now we're diving inside just one bucket.

Just AWT. And then we'll take up

No, we're going into water quality.

But then he wants to just wants us to rate AWT one to six, one being important, six being But non

versus what? Versus the other five.

Look, people, it's a moot point. AWT is already at City Council. They've spent $182,000 of our money, my money included, and we'll get the results. And we'll most probably get the results before the thing goes to ballot. And when it does go to ballot, we should say, this is the capital expenditure cost, this is the reoccurring cost, this is what it's going to cost you, vote yes or no. It's quite simple.

Yes, agreed.

And if the majority of the island people say, yes, I'm okay putting 4,005 thousand dollars in or whatever that number is, then the people that don't like it is a democratic process and you go with it. Simple as that. But what I'm saying is from the expert information that we've got at the moment from Jacob's report, there is no correlation of the water testing they've done and the leaching of the portable water into those areas. This map clearly shows that the concentration of most of the island isn't even getting

that water. Well, how do you explain the fact that we found caffeine in sucralose?

No, it's Oreos why are we talking about this? It's Oreos City Council.

That's fine. I'm not bringing it up. He brought it up.

Okay.

Alright. So do you wanna vote on on what everybody they wanted

if they think AWT's

gonna affect one through six or just yes or no?

Yeah. Well

Does it affect it? Does Personally, it

I don't think that's a good idea because I think we're going down a rabbit hole To in water me, the water quality issue is so done to death. We really know if we're all open and honest about it, what the issues are. Advanced water treatment, yes, it's a great thing. I'm in favor of it. But I want to know what the costs are and I want to know when I get my return on that investment.

Is it thirty years like Jacob says? You know? Or is it according to I I've not seen the statement from Harper saying, do that, it's in five years because I read through that report and there was no mention of it. All 700 and whatever it was pages that I chewed through. So if if Harper if Harper is truly saying that, go back to Harper and get him to put on paper to us and say, you do advanced water treatment and in five years time, your canals are gonna look great.

But he didn't say I didn't say he said that.

I said

So in in two like, two meetings ago, we we did a whiteboard and we we took a vote decided what we decided what items were our priorities as a committee based on what we can affect. Yep. And we took water quality water quality, not AWC, water quality, the whole bucket off of the number one point because we it's already being analyzed by a higher entity. So all this is just creating high blood pressure and divisiveness amongst this committee. It's passed on.

You have a great point. We agree. You know, we might agree to disagree, but it's going. It'll be settled and disputed at city council. And that's when that's really the only time they're gonna So pay attention to it and is that one vote is that's all this talk now is just gonna Yeah. It gonna Relevant. Fade away. Yes. So save it all for that meeting. I'm not talking to you, Chris. I'm saying, like, to us. And let's we put number one priority that we could affect was safety and navigation. That was our committee's thing like two two Except meetings

what I think what Ali was trying to do here was just go down the row and you happened to be How was And he first said AWT.

So what affects know water

even even that. It may not make a difference. It You're you you may be right. I mean, because it's very since the city council is working on this and they are spending the money to do it, they're going to come up with an answer.

So for if we're whiteboarding, I I just suggest that we don't whiteboard water quality right now because it really means AWT. And I guess to a certain point, it's not it was just pushed down the list based on what we can

let me be clear on the point because clearly we got some high blood pressure going. I believe that AWT is a great badge for us to have on our water treatment plant to say, hey, we got AWT. We don't from a legislative point of view, we do

not need it. That's your opinion?

No, it's the legislator It's of the legislator from Florida. We do not need it Then why is

Florida implementing AWT all up and down the coast?

AWT that I know is getting implemented where the water discharges directly into the water. We don't discharge directly into the water.

Yes. But the state of Florida is going to mandate by But

it is, maybe. At some point they will. And at that point that they will, we have no option but to go down that path. The fact is at this juncture in time, AWT is not mandated by the State of Florida unless you are discharging in the ocean. That is a true statement. If you want to rebuttal it, fine, go get the facts, bring it to the committee. That's a true statement. I agree

with you.

Right. So now I am in favor of AWT. It's a great badge to have and it will clearly help in this process of cleaning the water. My position is that I want to know how much bang do we get for our buck and is this the best way to spend City Council money, our money, taxpayer money to get the result that we desire. It could be this, it could be something else. We're going to spend the money, it's out of our purview. It's a problem for the city councilors now to get the results and decide where they want to go with it, whether they want to spend the millions of dollars in that or whether they want to use it for something else.

Just to go on record, Mike McNeese asked me as the chair to try to get this committee not to focus on cost. That's the job of the city council, to focus on the issues and let the city council handle cost. He asked me to do that. I'm just gonna throw that out there as a request from the city manager.

Well, so I would rebuttal that comment because if you look back at the Harper report, when the Harper report got issued, the top thing on that report was dredging, dollars 183,000,000 and it came down from city management, don't focus on this, focus on these other items on the list, So if they're in charge of the money and they say don't we don't care, don't focus on the money portion of it, What we really need to do is get in the canals and dredge up some of the crap that's been put in there over the last fifty years.

And if I could also point this out that if anybody has seen pictures from Hurricane Irma when half the Gulf Of Mexico you know, half a mile to a mile out there and the bottom was exposed. I know everybody was supposed to have mandatorily evacuated, but plenty of people did not. And they took pictures. And we can see parts of cars. We can see tires. We can see drums of chemicals. You know? We can see yeah. The AWT may fix some things, but it's not gonna fix that. We have multi problems under the waters of Marco Island and the the nearby the Gulf Of Mexico that that's many, many ways that this has to be approached. One thing is not going to do it.

So I

It might help. Agree with that statement. Okay.

You know, I guess,

maybe take AWT off this discussion. There's other things like Okay. Septic tanks around us. Yes. Yes. Okay. Surrounding. Surrounding. You know, there's other things we can do for water quality, you know. Maybe the tires and

the, you know, golf.

But It's there. You know?

They're there. I I think that was from the years Yeah. Years prior, but not Yeah.

Well, they're still there. They haven't gone anywhere. We just wanna point that out. Okay.

But but, Elliot, I think what you were trying to do is get everybody to come up with an idea. We've got

a list here. The guise of water quality. But I think if we wanna go back to the pure whiteboard, what issues affecting Marco Island, if we'd rather go back there and you don't want to Would this work? Very, very helpful. Underwater quality. Absolutely. And we can do another whiteboard on our other topics at another time. Because I do want to get this done, and I wanna also go on to Ralph's presentation. And I wanna have adequate time for that.

So do you wanna go one through six or one through

I I would like for everybody to have a vote and say, you know, and you'll just put a check mark one, two, or, you know, you know, number. That would

be How about this? What if we, okay, so we said AWT dredging, we've talked about Aeration. Aeration, circulation, debris, so like landscape debris, fertilizers, roof drains that drain right in Mhmm. And septic drain fields from a distance. Is there any more that we want to add to that?

That'd be up to the committee. I I think I think that would cover things pretty well under under water quality. Justin, would you have a comment?

I I wrote Right. This is his comment.

That is your comment. Thank you. And it is readable.

Yes, very readable.

Very little. The only thing I would say on that is our circulation is tidal flow, yes.

Well, you want to make a separate one tidal flow versus

mean to me you can encompass circulation tidal flow is same.

It's totally different and there are various options within the tidal flow arena, so you have to discuss it separately.

Well, we can break that down.

But in circulation, you meant That

would be under circulation. Is that what is

that Yes.

That'd circulation.

Tidal flushing. And you get circulation from the tides flushing water in the canals.

Right. Exactly. So would anybody like to start? I I'd like to get something here so that we have a committee. A member of our of our audience has raised his hand. Is this appropriate to have a comment at this time?

We can have public comment. I

you want.

Public comment at any time, I guess.

I don't know how appropriate it is, but I thought before you vote, I would just say a few things. We've you know, having been on the board for since Irma, let's say, or even before Irma, the water quality issue has been beaten to death since 2018. We've come up with many ideas and it's all fallen by the wayside for the most part. We're still looking at some of this stuff. Some of it's been already settled.

I would just say as far as what's on there and what the engineers that have looked at this have done testing on is circulation is a key to getting water movement in our canals. And all the dead end canals that we have, circulation is the major problem with that. As far as AWT, all well and good. As Martin said, it's a great idea if you can afford it. Water is already $100,000,000 in debt.

Are we going to add 5,000,010 million dollars on something that Jacobs engineers specifically said would take twenty, thirty, forty years before you see an improvement? This is not Tampa Bay. This is not we've had a wastewater plant on this island that has dumped raw sewage or even treated sewage into our waterways. Yes, it's in but there's no proof. The Harper report specifically, the isotope testing, as Martin pointed out, 73 of the 74 tests showed nothing coming from reuse water.

They all showed coming from fertilizer. So fertilizer is an issue by far, way over what AWT is gonna do. I mean, just doesn't make sense at all. And as you said, it's moved on the council. You guys need to move on from the water quality issue and move on to the other things that you're talking about that are should be important for this district.

We've beaten it to death for all these years. All the comments are out there. Everybody should know by now what got dropped, from our committee's recommendations years ago was the huge amount of homes, small homes that are being torn down with much larger homes being built on that same property, taking up much more space, much less ground to absorb the rainwater and stormwater. And what we recommended at that time is new homes should have to put in storage capacity for first flush. Now that needs to go to planning board at some point.

I would love to see that.

That's The

flush of the roof you're talking about? Yes. It already went to planning board and they rejected it.

Yes. Yes. But that should come up again because that's a big issue. I mean, it's yeah. Basically, all the all the water that that your roof Yep. Receives during a rainstorm, the first flush, it's called, the first half hour of rain, let's say Mhmm. You have enough storage underground. And all it is is like a 12 inch pipe you put underneath the ground to store it, and then it dissipates into the water as

What are you removing in

that what are you removing in that process?

That's all I'm

removing it from going over the canal walls and going into the canal. So you're trying to hold back that first flush because that's the dirty stuff because that's that roof has has received all the atmospheric deposition over the time that it didn't rain sits on that. The pollen nitrogen and everything else is on the roof. The first flush, it's like up north. Have wastewater plants.

They can't handle storm water up there. They have combined sewers that storm water and rain and sewage all goes into the same. They have enough storage capacities on their plants to handle the first flush to store that so they can treat it. Then they bypass it and it goes to the river. I mean, that's the problem. That's why Chicago spent over $30,000,000,000,000 on the deep tunnel system to try to hold the water, store it, and then treat it, you know, afterwards. I mean, that's

Of course, that's a whole different world from the little market. No. Exactly. No. I also wanna say I I wanna and Jeff, I've been putting in rain barrels at my house. I That's a great idea. I checked with code, and they said that's absolutely fine if they're attached.

That was one of our suggestions as well.

Was rain barrels.

Rain barrels now. Yeah.

That's

great. I'm doing exactly that because I recognize exactly what you're saying is true. Yeah. So it can help. Everybody who does these little things can make an incremental difference.

No. Exactly. MWRD in Chicago, that's they they sell rain barrels to their customers. They should be encouraged. A $40 to buy one that's like less than half the cost of what one is.

Here's just on that

point. The

real thing with that is first flush is an issue that needs to be addressed. But to your point, Rick, if it went to planning and they just rejected it, then that's problematic to me because it should be, if you're building a new home now on Marco, you should have some kind of water management thing for the home. And that ties into how big the home is, how much pervious land is left on the lot, what you do with it. I mean, we've still got people directly discharging into the canals of their roofs. So until we take up some of those issues and get those enforced and until we address what's come excuse the pun, coming down the pipe with new home builds, we're never going to get further forward on some of the stuff.

I got a question. I still have the draft of the ordinance that we sent to council forwarded to planning board. I'm happy to resurrect that again. I think you should. Just because it failed once doesn't mean that it won't have a different reception now.

Exactly. Particularly, we present have

different people on planning. You have different people on planning.

So we present it in a new light. Right.

It's just you have new counselors and you have new people on planning. So they're gonna view it differently. So I resurrect it.

Please do. What did we resurrect? But Justin, if I send you what we did before, will you circulate it to the committee?

So we just

looped. Yes. You.

Would you like to make a motion, Ray? I mean, I don't

need you don't need a motion. I will send every I will send it to him and

So I got a question about this chart here.

So the circulation or tidal flushing, and in the Harper report, I I, you know, remember that, basically, he was putting a lot of emphasis on that's the one thing that's probably the most tangible thing you can do to to help. But when it comes to things like the benthic mat that floats up, I don't think that's gonna go away. And that's just you know? So if we do the connections under San Marco and water's flowing back and forth because, you know, in the Marco River, there's that benthic mat that comes up in Factory Bay. That's got plenty of flushing, plenty of tidal flow.

Tides are ripping ripping through there. And Right. Seasonally, it rises, it settles. It rises so that's gonna that's not gonna be affected by any kind of interconnections. So I'm just saying, you know, we have to be realistic of what these proposals are going to

I agree, but

what they're gonna affect.

Again, until you reduce the nutrient loading and stop feeding the algae, it's never gonna go away.

I'm gonna agree with Rick here in that in in that response, are aspect, there are two things. One could be the tonnage of the nitrogen and phosphates that we are putting on with the reusable water. And the other is stopping winter fertilization. So one of the things I'd like to get I'm probably not going to get to it today. But I would love to get into sending seeing what the you know, this committee would think about it, but to send a council down the road, hopefully soon, stopping a code to stop fertilizing in the winter the lawns of Marco from November to April.

We we could tweak that. That, along with AWT and Flushing and all these other things, could make a big difference, incrementally piecemeal, but all getting to a better place than we are now. Because if you take a look at some of these canals right now, they're not looking good. And it's becoming a crisis in my view because I didn't realize how bad they're getting. And if we're gonna compare 2019 to today, they've gone I've seen pictures of 2019. I'm seeing pictures of today. We're we are going downhill. And I think it's I don't wanna call it a crisis or an emergency, but it's beginning to a lot of people that are talking to me. They're calling it

they can't on a canal, it's an emergency and a crisis.

To them, to to individual homeowners with this kind of a situation in their canals, and it's gonna hurt property values, it's going to hurt Marco Island's image. It's already doing that. It's not good for anything. And this committee needs to really consolidate, focus, and get something going here, help counsel, help the city of Marco Island and help the population change what is going on in our canals and our surrounding waters right now.

So, can we then, can we agree to this list maybe and then, just like we did the whiteboard, we'll drill down to the item that we think is the most important and we can

maybe try I like to leave I don't think we're going to get to the whiteboard part with, you know, the boater safety and everything else. And, you know, the if we can just be able to focus on this, consider this, if we get it, a success and go on to Ralph because he's got a major presentation for us.

What what I'm what I'm saying though is do we wanna do we want, as a as a committee here, figure out which one of these we think is the most important that we can actually

That's a good place to start, Chris. Well,

I may make a suggestion.

Please do.

I get kind of frustrated when I see going around in a circle.

I do too.

I mean, I would say we identify the one or two things within this realm that's new or that we can actually affect like the sucralose caffeine thing that's new. We should discuss that. Super low gas. And some of the things that you talked about, about the illegal outfalls and that going to the planning board, that's kind of new because it failed. Do we want to do it again? If we talk about those few things, we get it to some manager. We're going around the circles

We are. We are. And I

over the last seven years.

Right. And we're not getting anywhere.

Right.

So I think we agree on that. I'd like, at the very least, then why don't we pick each one of us pick the top three and tell tell Justin to put that down.

Before you do that, let me just go through this for a second here because this list here has some things that are preventative and other things that are remedial. And I just want to differentiate that.

Okay.

And maybe when you go through the voting and determine prioritize, you can prioritize, well, what's the highest preventative? What's the highest remedial type of thing? Okay. So That's great. AWT is preventative. You're preventing nutrients from going into the canal in the first place. Dredging is remedial. You're taking out nutrients that are already there. Aeration, same thing. You're doing remediation within the canal to improve the water quality.

Circulation is remedial. This single family runoff is the same thing as roof drains here. So runoff coming from single family homes, that's preventative. You wanna prevent nutrients from going into the canal. Debris landscape like grass clippings and all that, that's also preventative because you're preventing that from going into the canal. Fertilizers preventative and then septic drain field is also preventative. So that's that's the breakdown of those. So I don't know if then you want to prioritize, you know, what's the highest one two three.

One two three in each category.

And what's the highest one, two, three in remedial?

I think that could be helpful too. But I'd like to get that on paper. I'd like to get that for us to see.

So each person could pick three?

I would like to see that happen. Okay.

Could I get that to happen? Preventative or three

Three each. Three preventatives and three remedial.

So the

same thing I don't have enough spaces on

There's only

three on this chart for three for each person.

So No. Because because what you'd be doing oh, okay. I see what you're saying. Will fit in your estimation?

Well, you you can vote each person can vote on, you know, highest priority number one priority out of preventative and number one priority out of remedial.

That's what

I was gonna suggest.

Would that work for you, Martin?

Can we do two preventatives since there

out

is more preventive and there is less remedial?

Well, let's see. Preventative, there is one, two, three, four, five.

Remedials one, two, three. I honestly think we're going down a big rabbit hole here.

Well. I really do.

But I think chair, your decision to make.

I think on the preventive side, there's stuff that we can actually affect.

Yeah? We can

affect things on We

medial too. Yeah. We can affect both of us. I'm ready to vote.

Okay. I am too. Let's let's begin. Who'd like to start?

What are we voting on?

We're going to vote each person the top three that they feel under preventative and the top three under Well, there's

only three top. To top. Just three.

Just top. The top. Top one.

Up one.

The top

one. And under each category. And if we can, I'd like to take the vote in the order of the names which is in the order

of Okay.

So So Chris, you're first.

Each Chris. I would so you were just picking two items. One remedial

Are we

we are taking AWT off because we're that's already kicked up for the council?

No. No. I think I I think we need to know how how we feel.

This is We know how we feel because it got put to the vote. Right. And as a waterways committee, it failed five to two and it still went to city council. So I think we take AWT off. It's a it's a new point.

We're already there. We've already addressed it.

Until Black and Veatch come back to us with data

We've done our

work. What's the point here? We've done our work.

If I could just say that we are ignoring one thing that if we went through Nuquatics and Jacobs, it is said, I don't know how true it is, that grants could be found to cover the 3 to $5,000,000. I know that wouldn't probably be complete, but it can make a huge amount of a difference. If it didn't cost, I know it's not supposed to be about cost.

This is the issue. The issue is we need to look at this with cost set to one side. Cost is not our issue. Cost is the issue for the city councilors that are in the audience. They got to figure out how to fund $10,000,000 or $200,000,000 or any of these things.

Okay, that's fine.

All right. So I'll start. So for remediation, I would say circulation is my number one.

Okay.

And then for preventive, I would say debris. Okay.

Who'd like to go next?

I'm going in order. Ralph.

Okay, Ralph?

Let me bypass. I'm still trying to between one and two.

Martin's next. Okay, Martin, you're next.

For remedial, I would say dredging. And for preventative, I would most probably go fertilizer. Okay.

I'm going last. I don't wanna sway anybody. You won't? Okay. Dan. I didn't think so, Jim.

Dan, go ahead.

Remedial circulation and preventative debris.

Yep. Preventative fertilizer, remedial circulation.

Okay, Rick? Is AWT off the list or on the list?

It is on the list. I I want that to be there because My I need to

number one is AWT. You have the right. Mhmm.

For preventive. Yep.

And I don't have a vote on remediation. No

vote. Okay.

Okay. Time for your time for the chair. Oh. Oh, did you

wanna I I bypassed. I was torn between preventive fertilizer and AWT. I'm gonna go with the fertilizer, although I'm kinda torn there. AWT, I think, could be effective. But I've seen so much fertilizer tossed around. It's kinda I see these trucks with red hoses and you ask them, what am I spraying?

I don't know. They no idea.

No idea. And it gets and we're talking illegal stuff too.

Pest control is the same way. So

I'm gonna say fertilizer just because it's more in my face.

Okay, Ralph.

And as far as r, I was I think you missed one thing. Within the dredging component, I'm gonna talk about encapsulation. So I prefer that one, but I think I'll say dredging as a grouping is most important in there.

I am going to surprise everybody and I have got a tie. Under prevention, I am actually, with all the research I have been doing, I got reams of it, I am tied under prevention between the fertilizer and the AWT. And I know you're gonna be surprised to hear me say that. But the tonnage so I will go with fertilizer. But just to let you know that, for the record, I think it's close to being a tie. And when it comes to remediation, I definitely feel that circulation would be my pick. Okay. We have let's see where the strength is here. Circulation or fertilizer? Fertilizer.

Sorry, just point of clarification here. I'm going to be the argumentative person here. Is circulation really an Really what? Is it really R? Or is it preventative?

I think what he's trying to say is it will fix what we have now.

Get the water flowing.

It will be prevented in the future, but right now it helps what we yes, right?

Yes, because you have an existing condition now of dead end canals that don't have circulation. So if you correct that, you're correcting a situation in the canal, so that's a remedial thing.

Yeah. Okay. I feel it's a little bit of a split point

in the nineteen sixties when Deltona

Before they built San Marco.

It's kind

of a split. A split machine.

Right. Yeah. We don't have it We're not gonna get

it. We're

one hour in.

Okay. We are one hour in. Ralph has a major presentation. I see here circulation. Okay.

For remediation, and we have a a tie well oh, okay. I'm sorry. We have circulation leads in remediation and fertilizer leads in prevention. And I the for next meeting I I think this is very valuable. For next meeting, I would like to do, you know, a presentation and a talk when it comes to landscape, Florida Friendly, and the fertilizer component, and to see if we can send some kind of directive to city council and the city to help stop this huge tonnage of fertilizer that goes on our grasses all over the island, all winter long, doesn't get used, runs into the waterways, and causes massive mess in the May and June.

So that's the thing I'd like to just put on the record that we can discuss at that time. But for right now, any committee comments about our whiteboard that we have achieved?

Yes, have one. Go right ahead, Martin. Clearly, I'm somewhat of an outlier on the dredging thing here. But I do find it a little bit egregious that we spent $240,000 with Harper and he lists that as the first line in his report. So we went to the experts, they told us what the issue was, they put a big price ticket on it and now we as a committee are saying, well you know that's great but we don't really, we want to just bypass Harper. He is the expert but we know better than Harper. So just my point, I'm not expecting anyone to change their vote. I just think that

is I'll comment to that. Sure. I'm looking at things that we can do as a committee that can be implemented effectively and quickly. If money was absolutely zero, and I know they tell us not to consider it. If it was a zero option, we'd have AWT, we dredge every canal, we would bore eight fifteen foot holes through the island to move water out, we'd do it all. But we have to be realistic about what we can do quickly and effectively.

Great. But that's why I put the caveat on it is when you vote, don't consider the money, which is really hard to do.

I know. We've been asked to do that. It's almost impossible

to do that.

But some

sometimes you just can't take take somebody you know, you you can't convince somebody to think like that. If you're raised to value a dollar and Yeah. No. Money doesn't grow on trees, you can't separate the two. It's a fantasy land.

Agree. And that's that's my

And it just creates Anyway needless We should on. Okay.

For the city I really shouldn't

move on.

I concur. What do we wanna do? Just what do we want to do with what we have achieved?

I would say that another meeting we take the top two items and then break it down to what we can actually affect.

Does everybody like that? Yep.

Sounds great.

Is that good? Put that on the agenda for next time?

Well, that's Okay. Another

Thank you so much for everybody's work on this.

This great. This is good.

This is And your participation. Thank you for handling this, Chris and Justin.

Put that back up, Justin, for one second.

Yeah. Please.

You didn't memorize it?

I can't memorize it. Thank you.

K. Alright. I think we've done I I I think I'm proud of what we've done. I don't know of anybody else. I'd like to move along now to new business number seven, ID 254748, techniques and alternatives to muck to muck sediment remediation.

Member, Rohina, I'm gonna ask one question, and it's not going to change anything I am going to do. But has this been vetted as something that should this committee be interested in, and should it go to counsel, and should counsel want to do it, unlike what happened with the short term rental where they came up with this whole program and process and implemented it and found out from the state of Florida and Tallahassee that they couldn't do it. Do we know, Ralph, that what you are proposing is feasible under the entities or the jurisdictions above us that would not block us or come up with an answer that, oh, you can't do this no matter what this committee or Mark Wildman wants to do. Are we clear to doing this? Should we be interested and wanna forward it?

That's my question.

No. It's a valid question. What I'm gonna talk about, I'll mention it, it's education. It's to tell people this is what's out there. This is an alternative. This is what you should know so they can make proper decisions. I'll mention something about that.

Alright. I'll

just that was my question. I'm not gonna stop you. You do not have seven minutes or fourteen. You have, hopefully, close to a half hour. So your presentation is ready. I we all wanna hear what you have to say. Okay. Go ahead, Ralph.

Where's Mario? Do you have it up here? Yeah. This is gonna be actually two separate presentations dealing with the same thing. And isn't to your question, again, this is for education.

I think the people have a right to know when they're spending millions or tens of millions of dollars what the alternatives are and to be confident that the people that are making the decisions have all the information, have all the alternatives that we're not just with blinders going down a one way street. So that's the intent. And it's been hard to get here, if I can mention that. You're still stuck listening to me instead of the patent owner who is better able to talk about the deep science that you may have questions on. But I think I can speak to it fairly well, so at least you know what we're talking about.

So I'll get into that a little bit. We've been here. It was a question by the chairman of city council when he heard about the invasiveness and the expense of dredging to say, is there anything else to deal with this muck stuff? And so that piqued my interest because I'm from up north and they use beneficial bacteria to defeat this organic sediment, this muck in fresh water and it's used all over the place. And I also have experience with the Alaska debacle, the spill in 1989 where they didn't know what to do with the magnitude of it in such pristine waters.

And mother nature, lo and behold, came to the rescue with beneficial bacteria working in salt water that has a diet of hydrocarbons to eat this oil away at an enormous rate. So combining that together, plus also most of us have experienced a beneficial bacteria, something like forty percent of populations lactose intolerant. Those pills you take, beneficial bacteria that survive in stomach acid that eat lactose. So there is beneficial bacteria that do almost everything. So I went out and found this particular person has a patent for a distribution system for this and the bacteria that works in saltwater that would eat organic muck.

And that's what this BioHealth pod system is all about. So I'm going to kind of it won't take long. It's fairly simple. What it is is there's a small aeration device that hangs above the water with there's another one after this. But it really is this incubator, if you want to call it.

They call it a bio health pod and nanopods which are spaced out around it, which is a special material that when the microscopic bacteria goes out, they clam onto that and they live on that, and they multiply on that, and go out looking for something to eat. And that's really the main piece of that. This is the actual equipment. Now this is an aeration device, but it's not meant to give dissolved oxygen into the water and it's not meant to change the stratification of the water column. It's simply to give an environment for this bacteria to live and multiply.

In there, there is surface area of miles in that material to allow it to do that. And the bacteria goes out into the oxygen and starts looking for stuff to eat. And that's simply what it does. It's not like aeration where you have a whole system with giant compressors and diffuses on the ground. We'll see in the next one here.

Well, I got into, yeah, that one there. You can see it's quite simple. This is a small compressor, lives under a rock. It's 110 volt, which everybody has down by the dock areas, an airline to this diffuser that hangs on a weight above the ground. And you can see the nanopods hanging out around it.

Oops. Let me go back one. Now this is the people that they work for doing freshwater, muck eating bacteria around most of the country. Hundreds, I don't know how many clients they have total. There's probably about 300, four five hundred of those. But again, that's only proven in fresh water. But it works fantastically, as you'll see in a minute. It looks wrong way. Now this is one of their clients. You can see the before and after pictures.

Cleans it up. And again, there's a lot more detail. I won't go into the detail, but you can see a big part of reduction of average year, four inches at a time. And talking about a foot of muck, I don't know how much muck we actually have on average. I don't think anybody knows we have in our canals. I'm sure there's a lot of places that have none and a lot of places where it's piled up, particularly at the end of the dead end canals. But this is just to give an idea of how it works, eating up the muck and making it go away.

A quick question on that. Just out of curiosity, know It the looks like they sampled in four different places, but I'm curious how many units were in this pond?

This is actually units.

Okay. So they

were deployed.

Units into the pond.

Into this particular And we'll see another picture later on. You'll get a better idea of that. Alright. Other way. Oops. I'm sorry. Thank you. And again, just another idea of the extent that it seems to work. Obviously, it's pictures that are best case, I'm sure. But we don't know.

We haven't tested in saltwater, and that's what this is all about. Another example, and this tells you a little bit more about what you asked about the deployment of the units. Another example of how well it works and some statements from people, clients of how well it worked. To the right, you'll see where these units deployed. Now starting again to what was thought about let me just go back.

This was the original idea of an internal canal that's pretty much dead to test it out if there was interest in looking at this to pilot it. And you can see these roll units that are surrounding this particular place. And it was looked at $25,000 to pilot this whole thing. Total. Total. Total. Yeah. Just to go back, was thought that, well, to have a good pilot, we should get a different type of canal. And so here's another one that's longer. There's a inlet, a major inlet just to the upper left, just to the northwest.

And it curves. So it's thought that, well, maybe we should test that as well. So you can see where the locations are, these two places, if there was interest to pilot it.

Mhmm.

And, this describes the system cost. That 68,000 was to do both of them. I won't get into the details because you can follow-up if you'd like if there's interest in doing it. Just to show the cost to pilot the aeration pilot was $200,000 and they're willing to do this because they see the upside. If this actually works, this could be a game changer for the whole thing, especially when you compare it to price and the invasiveness of dredging.

And this will be the ongoing cost because you have to recharge those nanopods and the bacteria every now and then.

How often do would you expect?

Once a season.

Once a season.

Yeah. And, of course, a lot of that depends on when you inspect it. If it doesn't need it, well, then you won't do it. And that gets into the cost. And, of course, none of these things are cheap. AWT is not cheap. Dredging is not cheap. There's obviously a cost savings here, But the lack of invasiveness is another thing. Plus, it's an ongoing fix. And this gets into the details a little bit more.

But it's not anything more than what I haven't said. The big deal is that that's to show interest and say, hey, listen, this is worth piloting because it is a potential game changer. And again, it's education to say there is an alternative to dredging mixed in with it. I am not talking about maybe doing all two twenty canals, but there may be the right place, the right time to do this, something else for another canal. So that's I'll stop here for a second.

One thing I will mention is, once to speak to your point, once there's interest saying, yeah, we want to see how this works, this company takes on the challenge of getting these regulation approvals. Obviously, an upside is they do this in freshwater. The only difference is saltwater. But there's a lot of traps to go through. Those of us who have done it know how many man hours it takes to do that.

They do it.

They will do all of that. If it's a no, then it's a no. And that includes also homeowners giving it a thumbs up. If they say no, we don't want it, if there is any reason, well then we it doesn't get done. But again, I will leave it here with that. If you have questions

on it. Have more of

a cover If the

did go do this from a scientific methodology, we would need to go back and define virtually identical canals and have them be the quote unquote placebo where we don't do anything. Right? And then they'd have to go back, and I don't know if it's measure of muck depth, don't know if it's water quality or if it's a combination of things, but we would need to go back and to make sure that, okay, we did we did these three canals or two canals and this is what happened. Here are two very similar canals from a length curve, everything else, the muck density when we started, whatever it was, and over the same period of time, this is what happened in those canals. Right?

Because if we just do a couple stand alone and, hey, they look great, maybe they do, maybe they don't. I don't know how they did versus another canal. So, would want to make sure we put a placebo group in there as well.

Yes. I agree with you. And you remember a few meetings ago, I asked for $500 for testing equipment. That's part of what that was for to give us an idea of what's there to do that exactly.

I mean, I think this is it's got merit. It definitely needs to be explored. My questions would be, do we know it works in saltwater? Because I think you said, yes, it does, but I'm not sure. Does it work in saltwater?

That's what the I pilot is have no idea whether it works in saltwater. I can tell you that the vendor has done some work and says, I'm dubious as to what was done because that's what the pilot was for is to do that, exactly that because that's the paramount importance, it's got

to work.

So my questions are sort of in here and I haven't obviously seen it until now, but it looks like each unit, each pod is about $4,000 ish with a compressor and a pod. And it looks like in the canal you need to get most probably for what we're trying to do on a pilot about 50 ish percent of the homeowners to have one of these things on their dock?

Correct. Well, I would say we have unanimous consent to have it. And then when it's most practical is exactly where it goes, this would be the optimum. If a homeowner didn't want it, move to the next stock.

Yes. So my question would be, I think there's merit there, it definitely needs exploring. Where does the mark actually go?

Well, it gets actually actually, it's a good question, because I looked at that myself. It actually, if you go by other examples, like in Alaska, when it eats the oil, where does it go? Well, it gets changed just like the lactose in the stomach gets changed to an inert material. For us, when we eat something, food, it gets pooped out as something else. So it becomes an inert material is what comes out. It eats it. It excretes something else. And it's that same way with anything.

And then

In other words, it's no longer nutrients into your water column.

It just disappears. It's great.

So then

my other question would be, if we're going to get an ongoing cost with this because if this is successful, there'll be some repair of the compressor units and the modules and all that stuff. Maintenance. With maintenance. And then the biopods, whatever we want to call them, have to be replenished continually. Seasonally inspected So my question would be bang for the buck.

If you look at this and scale it to what the whole island needs, where does that number come in and then does that how does that number compare to what a dredging program would be? Because I mean 20 ks, we've tackled a couple of pilot and I'm not saying that we shouldn't do it. I mean this is if we can get agreement from homeowners, which we should do and we can get some funding to do it and it's allowable within Florida State and all that, it's definitely got some legs to look at. But I just worry about when we do that and then we scale it up across the whole island, what those numbers then look like.

It's a valid question. I've asked the same question, like go on with what would this look like. And again, we don't know the condition of the canals, maybe somebody else does. Maybe this would be valid for a quarter of them, 10%, who knows what? Would be

needed in every canal.

Well, exactly, it wouldn't And be

will you some homeowners that jump up and down to do this.

Right.

Exactly. Yes, to have the test right on their email, I can find them.

And it's a and it's a valid question even when you go with more invasive things like the dredging. Well, there's going I'm sure they're having discussions how many canals we're talking about because there's there's questions of scalability, if you are to do 20% versus 100, what is the cost per canal or whatever. There are plenty of ways. That's why they are trying to get us away from talking about money.

Of course, we have never talked about the effects of dredging on the seawalls. So it's another story that we are going to talk about someday.

Well, actually, part of the next one might touch on that a little bit.

Okay. Rick, I think he wanted to speak.

Quick questions, I think. In the freshwater ponds or locations that they have tested, were there any unintended consequences of introducing this bacterial process? I mean, did it cure the bacteria and the algae and the lily pads, but it killed all the fish. I mean, there is no fish. Yeah. Was there any unintended consequence that happened in

There is none that I found. There the only unintended consequence that I found was an aeration project that was going along with this. And somebody got antsy and cranked up the air on it. And it brought up muck from the bottom, and that killed all the fish, but it wasn't associated with this. Wasn't this system at all? No. It wasn't. But I haven't been able to find anything going behind the scenes that there was a detriment to doing this.

And I guess my second question is, if it worked, is it something that has to go on forever because we are constantly bringing algae in the system or at some point, if you got rid of the algae, could you just go, Hey, that was great, it worked, now you can turn it off and forget about it?

Yeah. The thought process in my mind was working it from both ends. We talked a lot about it today, AWT fertilizers from one end and getting rid of the muck on the other. So to the extent that you judge, we have got rid of this muck, we can stop it and then go with the preventive side of it alone. That's always a possibility. But one of the things was, well, we are not going to see anything because of the stuff, the muck that's already there. Some of the studies have said that. Well, you get rid of most of the muck, it would a judgment call. AWT or fertilizer or these other things would say, we got a handle of it now. We can stop this one or stop that one.

We got options.

Lot of moving parts.

This could

be a very valuable one if it should pan out to be the test to be positive.

Yes. It's another tool for the toolbox. Not here saying, well, this is going to be 100%, but it's got to be proven first. I mean, he has a good question. You know, it's the first question I would ask if it doesn't work in saltwater. I've seen other things work in saltwater. So do I doubt this? Well, yeah, was supposed to doubt it, but I'd like to see it work, but that's for the decision makers.

Exactly. You have another component here to bring up to us, backfill or encapsulation method. Did you want to go straight to that right now? Yes. Do you want to have more discussion on this because I do want to cover that adequately.

Yeah. I can go straight to that unless there's something well, the public may wanna have a question.

If the public wants to have an input, I guess, on this Do have three public speakers? We do. Wayne. Great. Wayne Thomas.

Yes. Hi. Good morning.

Hi. Good morning. I came here this morning to talk about some dock alignment issues I'm having. But after listening to the meeting, I feel obligated to come and make a quick comment, if I may, about what you fellows have been talking about today. I've in the seawall business for approximately thirty five years here in Marco, and all the things that you're just saying will definitely help the problems, whether it be the wastewater or the irrigation or the, excuse me, or the fertilizer.

But I think we're all overlooking one thing. Regardless of what we do to try to control these things, we still have a leaky dam. Leaky dam meaning the seawalls. There's not one seawall on Michael Island that was put into Florida building code then or now. All of the panels are six feet too short, and we're all talking about percolation and things going in and under. All these panels are too short. They're only a foot in the mud. They need to be six foot in the mud. And in conjunction with that, when you build seawalls, they have a hydro hydro a fabric that you put on the seams to join on both sides of these five foot panels. Again, they were designed the last thirty five years.

They've all outlived their engineered life. So everything that's going in the lawn and the water is going right out these seams just a foot, you know, like, six inches below the surface. Other The thing that we have on Marco Island that we don't have in other communities is we have these notorious weep holes. It's a Marco Island invention. It's not needed in Florida building code.

The seawalls don't need it. What it does, the reason they've done it is because the seawalls can't handle the load, so they put this two inch hole two foot below the the surface so the water has an easy way to get out. Again, we're letting all the pollutants go right out through the water. But the reason why I came here today is I wanna talk about the estate lots. The estate lots I'm describing is on South Heathwood and down on South Barfield. In our building code manual that they've

written is

I think you can turn that film on. There's nothing in in here that addresses the estate lots. Estate lots meaning they'd have a 50 foot end of the canal, and then typically up

the side,

there'd be a 100 feet. Mhmm. The interpretation has always been in the past that just like I've got it drawn, seven and a half on one side and 15 feet up the the long side. Well, in the rule book, there's nothing in there that specifically states this. And so we've got new people going through the system and permitting.