Waterways Advisory Committee - Regular Meeting

Everybody for some excellent material today. Ralph, a big round of thanks. And, you know, great job, everybody. At this time, this meeting is now adjourned. Thank you. Thirty

seconds early.

Thirty seconds.

It's fair

to eat my cupcake. Oh, the meeting, to order this morning of the Waterways Advisory Committee. I think, the first thing we need to do would be our roll call. Tara?

Member Lewandowski?

Here.

Member Rowena?

Here.

Member Winter? Here. Vice chair High?

Here.

Member Schneider?

Here.

Member Woodworth?

Here.

Chair Mascoupe?

Here. We're all here, and I wanna let you know that I appreciate that. Let us stand for the pledge. I pledge allegiance to the flag 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.

You're too tall. I can't see the flag. Okay.

Thank you. I'd like to get the approval of the agenda. There any discussion?

Yeah. Have a comment. Okay.

Just a question. Vice chair Hai.

We have two members of the Markawan police here to discuss under staff communications some items, the crowdsource bathymetric survey. And do we want to keep them here that long, or can we move them up to get them give them a

They're toward the end of the meeting, and they have they have they have a

lot of work to do in their own

We're saying if we can move them upfront to give their report and then let them That makes

sense to me.

Yes. It does. Yeah.

I don't wanna tie these guys up.

I think they're happy about it too.

We appreciate them being here, and I think that's an excellent suggestion. Is there any is there any other comment or discussion? The only other thing

I have is my white paper is is twelve minutes. I will try to make that as fast as possible. But if there's anything we can do to lighten the agenda for this meeting, I would appreciate it. Sorry it took this long to get the white paper.

It's okay. We're glad to have it. Okay. So why don't we make that change? And why don't we get the let's see here, what's the official, let's see, the official title of 2544.

Let's see. 277.

Yes. Move that up to Let's why don't we move that up to the first item then? Yep. Sounds good. If that's okay?

And we'll need to we'll need

to circle back when Justin if Justin's not

here when that's done, circle back to him for comments to see if he's got anything we

can Oh, Yeah. Yeah. That'll work. So, why don't we proceed? Yes. Step right up. You

would need an approval of the amended agenda.

Oh, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. We jumped the gun there. Apology. Let's get an approval of the minutes. Do we have any discussion in relation to that? Rick?

I raised it last meeting, and I'm gonna raise it again. I thought you were gonna give us a presentation on what you were going to send to city council about loosening up the grass ordinance?

It is on the agenda.

It is on this agenda? I

am the fertilizer. Okay. Florida Friendly Landscaping and Fertilizer.

It's b.

Alright. There. Thank you. Okay. We need a motion for the We have a motion for approval of the

For the agenda.

Of the agenda.

A motion to. Thank you. Thank you. You have it?

I'll second.

Second. In favor?

Aye.

Any opposed? We're good. Okay. Let's proceed.

Excuse me. What about the minute?

We gotta do the minutes. Okay. Let's approve of We need

to get that in first then. Okay. My apologies. I just wanna get Keep getting answers. Your presentation. Okay. So approval of the minutes. Do we have any comment or any, discussion in relation to the minutes of our last meeting?

I'll make the motion to approve.

Do we have a second? Second. All in favor?

Aye.

Aye. Opposed? Nope. Okay. The now the minutes are approved. Now my apologies. Let's proceed.

Oh, wait.

Oh, you're say you're sure? Sure.

My name is Josh Farrison with the Mark Waughman Police Department Marine Unit. Since the last meeting, I've been working on the bathymetric data that we decided to do. I don't know, first off, if there's any initial questions I can answer about that that might help lead that conversation.

Well, the context, I remember we talked about an island wide survey in a prior waterways committee meeting. And it was an island wide survey for a bargain price of I can't remember where the zero was, but it was a very palatable price in the big picture. But you guys stepped forward with an alternate idea at no or minimal cost. And I think that's what you're

Cool. Yeah. For sure. So we're aware of a nonprofit that does this type of data collection. And this is the Seakeeper Society, International Seakeeper Society. Their initiative to map the ocean floor by 2030 is to fund science, research, anything like that. And their project's called CBIG twenty thirty. I was familiar with them on another project that they were working with, and it just makes sense. So since then, we've installed their units. They come with a it's called a yacht device, the Voyager Voyager yacht tracker.

And it plugs into your Garmin. As long as you have an updated NEMA 2,000 system, it can start collecting the data points as you're traveling throughout whichever waterway you're in. As we're out there most of the time anyway, I thought it would be a pretty good idea just to throw it on our boats routinely. We cover all of the area that Marco Island has to offer within our jurisdiction that we're responsible for. Especially after big events like hurricanes and things like that, we do a survey of every square inch of our jurisdiction after those.

Currently we have those installed on both of our vessels. I've done about 75% of our waterways with our contender. We have had a few things that have prevented us from finishing, one of them being the government shutdown because all of this data initially goes through NOAA. It gets uploaded. I send it to international sea keepers.

They upload it to NOAA. We download it from NOAA and use the data to create maps. Luckily, The city also contracts with a GIS mapping service that's going to help us out with that as well so anytime you see a map on our city website that has. All the fire hydrants or lift stations or whatever it may be. We contracted a mapping service to do that for us.

So once we get our data out of NOAA, they're gonna do that for us and create you guys a pretty nice map to look at. So I plan on finishing that within the next two weeks, all of our jurisdiction. Only have to finish the South End, a few of the canals near Scott Drive, some of Barfield Bay and places like that. And currently as of last night, the NOAA website was still under maintenance. I know apparently, I think the government is back up and running, but their website is still under maintenance.

We're not able to get the data that we need from that but it'll be interesting to see I brought some of these and I'll pass them out because any one of you can go to the website the sea keeper's website and you can act as if you were going to extract data and you can see different maps and things like that as an example. So if you're interested, you can go on their website. Along with that, we've done presentations to try to help get this product out to the community. Although we're going to cover all of our waterways with our boats and I do plan on going back over that data routinely over the year. And I'll continue to upload.

So for example, when I come in and out of Factory Bay daily because I'm coming out of Rose Marina, every few weeks when I send that data off, it 'll give current sea depths. So if something's changed, the storm's blowing through or any sort of change to the bottom of our sea floor there in Factory Bay, we'll get live updates with that. And I'm sure that I haven't spoken to our mapping system yet because we haven't got the data. But hopefully we'll be able to present that in a pretty easy to read way. But where I was going with that is we've done presentations down at the Coast Guard Auxiliary Station.

I have a presentation coming up at the Mark Wyland Yacht Club. And we're doing our best to get this out to the community because the more of the community that gets it, anyone in this room, anyone that owns a boat can get one of these yacht trackers for free. As long as you have the support system on your boat to allow it to work and power it. The only cost to the owner is it takes you about two minutes to pull the chip out and put it into a drive and and send the data back to sea keepers. So that's really the only burden anyone has if they get this tracker.

And if you know anyone that wants it, you can certainly send them our way. I'd be happy to make that connection. But it's a very minimal burden for someone to help us out with this. Although we are going to get all the data it would be nice if we can get as many people as we can. I know that we've had many people interested I do not know if there's anyone from Mark Wyland that has signed up yet with them aside from us. But it's there it's available We would be happy to be the catalyst for that. Anyone can reach out to the chief or our department at any time and they can come down to us to help out. If there's any questions on anything, let me know.

For me to okay, Martin, I'll let you go first.

So I do have a couple of questions. One, great that you're doing it at virtually zero cost. My questions would be, how do we compare historical data with new data? Is that going to be done through the mapping service?

I would imagine historical data as to like years back or what we're getting now?

Years back.

Right. So I would imagine we just have to find accurate maps. I don't have a direct answer to that question, but I'm sure the mapping contractor could probably help us do that accurately.

So we do have a Justin maybe you can attest to this, but we do have data, but it's like 25 years old?

20 years old.

20 years old.

2005, yes.

Okay. So we do have the data. And to me the big value of this from a quality of waterways is where were we and where are we.

Right.

And where are we is great but we need reference point that.

Yeah I'm sure I don't see why like I said I don't have a direct answer because that's not my. Specific area but I'm sure that that won't be hard to do I can tell you and it's probably different in the canals I've been. On the marine unit now for approximately twelve years eleven years. And I've seen areas in our waterways that change. And go back to where they were and then change again routinely so.

Might be nice to collect as much data as we can because just because it was one way twenty five years ago it could have changed and then went reverted back. Depending on where we're at, I'm sure that's probably not true for the actual inner system of the canals. There's probably less change. For example, Kaxambas Bay, every part of that bay changes routinely. Our pass things over at Hideaway, as you all know, could be one way one year, another way the next and then back to the way it was the year after. So I think as long as we can collect as much data as we can, we can start we'll have it moving forward.

But to me there are two things that this provides value. One is obviously navigation because I do think that we're challenged certainly even the entrance to the island. I mean that shifted Oh, a For sure. So that's sort of like a number one priority and the second priority is what's actually happening to the inner canals.

Right.

Because my feeling is that they're sifting up and they have done that.

Yeah, that's what I've been focusing on. So I've been throughout this and you'll see when the debt when we're able to download the data. I'll go to the depth of each canal and turn around and come back out. So we'll literally go down every single canal done. From San Marco North, we've done every canal.

Wow.

And it'd be nice to have had this before hurricane Irma because we've done that three times over since then. Literally every inch of our jurisdiction and what our city is responsible for and beyond because I have to go around other areas where that is outside of our jurisdiction just to get back. But we'll have the data moving forward and we'll continue to

bench go. No,

I'll let you finish.

Okay. So, I did reach out to quite a lot of the charter captains about it and they're all like, yes, that's really great, but this is sort of kind of fishing data that we don't want other people to see. So there's a few that may take that up, but I think the bigger part of is most probably residents of the island that boat out through the canals to get to the Gulf on Are a frequent we planning on doing or do we have any budget to perhaps put some kind of advertisement out there to boat owners on the island because that's I think the biggest thing is getting the word out. Most people are like, for me, if I had a smaller boat, I would go, yes, sure, I'll just play it in the Garmin off we go, download it. There's not much time or effort.

Right.

But it's actually getting people to get them. So is there a

way to do

that? I mean, word-of-mouth is So

your first statement with the charter captains, they can remain anonymous on the site. I do understand that they're going places that no one knows and that track is going to be available, right? There's an option to remain completely anonymous including their track to the public website. But so so you can give them that as kind of an extra push. I can't speak to our our budgetary limitations but I can say that we have public forums, and I'd have to check with my chain of command to see how available that would be to post, for example, on our social media. Maybe the chief can speak to that.

Can you guys hear me? Chief Frisano, just wanted to touch base with you. Thank you for, giving us the opportunity to be here today and speak. We already have it on our website. We've had presentations done from Seakeeper.

And when they presented to you guys the last time, we took that clip put it on our cut it and put it on our website to talk about what the program actually is. You know, the benefit to this program is the crowd sourcing. So we are doing presentations to the Power Squadron, to the Yacht Club. I think we, besides Josh doing the presentations, do have Ryan Montgomery also doing presentations. So we're doing our best to get the word out there and spread it as best we can.

As far as advertising, we've been posting on our social media. We'll continue to kind of plug it that way. We could work with the local newspapers and see if they could help. We do, we come to meetings like this, so this is another opportunity to kind of spread the word. But we're more than happy to keep getting it out there because this program will only be successful if more and more people join it and it's the crowd sourcing part. That was the idea behind it and why the cost is so why there is no cost to it for us.

Appreciate that. Could I would it be possible to actually run it or let me take up the action. I'll reach out to Kelly at Coastal and see if we can run some kind of editorial type thing in there if we haven't already done that. Does that make sense?

Yes. Like I said, we are willing to help with anybody on presentations. We're working our way around. We're coming into season now. So it's we just kind of started it with a small group of people that are here all year round. And now with people coming into season, we want to get it out there because we'll have more boats out on the water.

And the folks from Seakeepers are willing to be a part of that as well. As you're talking to people, there's only an initial legwork of two documents assigned. That's an agreement to return the product if you're going to stop using it and your boat information that they need to upload the data with.

And one of the other things too is people that rent boats, so the rental places, that would be great if they allow us to just throw that on their rental equipment because people that rent are going to just keep going out and it at least gets again that crowd sourcing. That's our objective.

I'll pick up two action items from that and I'll go talk to Cory at Dolphin about it and I'll see if we can get something editorial published in the coastal breeze since people are coming back now.

I appreciate that, Martin. Thank you. I got three questions. I don't see anybody else on the speaker list. Number one, when is that presentation at the Yacht Club?

I'm waiting to get hear back from

That's who I don't know yet.

GM. Okay.

My next question is I've got a connection now to get, at no cost to us, the narrated drone presentation for our next meeting. I've got a gentleman who's working with, you know, one of our committee members here. And I'm wondering how is there any way that that could be of help to you? Because we've got I've already seen he's already done about maybe 10 or 12 canals and we and, you know, the video and working on the narration. And I'm just wondering, can that be of any use to what you're doing? Can that can we work together?

And is that just an aerial view of of the canal and that's current current

In their current state. And Right. Of course, that changes, as you've said, you know, on a constant But, that can be and he's not charging us anything. Right. So I'm wondering, can that be of any help?

I can't speak to the rest of the department including code and things like that. But to me personally

Mhmm.

No. There might be a specific situation that it would help me. But on a day to day, no, it wouldn't help me as a marine unit operator. It might help other areas of the department that I can't speak to.

But

everything that I'm collecting is working from the bottom down. You know, it it might work for a few other things. But

Okay. And I guess, are there any other ways?

This I'll I'll take it back. I'll certainly help during a hurricane.

Okay.

Post hurricane, yes. A 100%.

Great that we didn't have any this year. Yeah. But, I guess my last question is, are there any other things that this committee can do to aid in your efforts?

Like I said, just keeping the word out there. In years past, what I've seen is as long as we have an open line of communication and you guys can always come to us and we can always come to you, that's the biggest benefit that we have. That'll prevent losing information over the years when committees change and things like that.

Because a lot of us

are out there. Think just keeping the communication line open and knowing that you can have us come to any one of these meetings for anything.

Absolutely.

Anything else marine related as well.

Extremely valuable.

And we've helped out with other things too in the past. There's been members of the community. For example, people that volunteer for rookery and things like that. If they're having issues within our jurisdiction with marine mammals or birds and I'm out anyway, the Dolphin Explorer, whatever it may be, there's countless times that we've helped out with those types of situations as well. So, you know, we're here, and so the the communication's open. So whenever for anything that

you It's might need extraordinary valuable work. Yes.

I just gonna wanna add to that. You asked how how can you help direct people to our website. On the website, like I said, is the presentation. There's also the forms on how how they can get it for themselves. And if there's a a group that wants us to come and speak, Josh could go there. Also, people from Seakeeper are willing to come to the island to do individual presentations to groups also. So the way you could help us is by connecting us with various groups that are here on the island that are willing to work with us on this program because it again, it'll only be successful if we get more the more data that we can get in there, the the better.

Great to know that. Thank you. Been invaluable.

Yeah. Thank you very much.

Appreciate it.

Thank you for having us.

I have a few extra of these I'll leave over at the desk.

Okay. That'll be great. Okay. I think that was, that was an excellent suggestion to get them in also at the beginning. So that I don't get out of line again, I think we now, if this would be appropriate, we'll go to old business, would be techniques and alternatives to muck sediment remediation. We didn't really complete that last time, and I think you've got the rest of the story to inform us as to what we missed.

Sure. Martin, we bring it up. One thing that was surprising after the last discussion is really meant to educate the public and decision makers that of the alternatives to dredging that are out there. And notwithstanding a couple of residents that came up and said, these some of these things look, pretty good. We should pursue them.

I was actually surprised how many people called and said, hey, you know, we didn't see any motions made or anything to pursue it. So I I I think I'm gonna touch on a couple of things today and maybe discussion to move it forward in some fashion, maybe recommend something to pursue with city council, make a recommendation, see where it goes since the public wants to hear more about it. Just a quick review of the backfill encapsulation method discussion just so you kind of remember it. This is what's being proposed by Seahawk for their dredging. One of the problems with it is and it's this has been a problem where they've tried it when you try to dredge out a small part of the muck and leave the rest of it around it, surrounding it.

And this is a depiction looking up the canal from the opening to the closed end. And you can see, just depicting that it just flows back in. You have to spending all this money of, dredging out a section. You end up back to where you were, which is what the Florida Keys piloting showed and the main reason why they rejected this method, because you spent this money and they show that it's back to where it was within a year or two. This is just a picture of what the backfill encapsulation method is.

It's really bringing in high density material on top of the muck in place, to segregate it away from the water column, which is the main problem is interaction on the water column with nutrients. And you can see here that it's a one time done and you finished with it. And of course, this is exaggerated. It's down a foot or two of material on the bottom of the muck. There was a comment from staff at the end that said, well, this method is expensive because bringing this material by barge is expensive.

And the cause I got was it sounded more like we should discard it because it's expensive. So I just want to touch on that a little bit, give it context. One thing was when you measure the amount of material that is brought in for the foot or two to encapsulate that middle section of the canals compared to the amount of material for the Monk Islands. As we talked about, if you strip away the plants and the top that goes above the water, It is this encapsulation method. The method works.

There are some issues because the picture of these islands makes it look like it's a silo and it's really not. It looks like a volcano and some of our waters are 20 feet deep and maybe more. I don't even know what it is. We'll find out. But the angle of repose when you start putting material and encapsulate, it's more of a volcano.

It's not a silo. And so if you picture it 20 feet out, 25 feet up, wherever it goes, when you compare the material and do the math, the material to encapsulate with the dredging is significant and quite a few more one or two foot amounts in the middle of the canals. Then you have to get into the dredging proposal is actually bringing a lot of mobilized equipment. It's a significant operation, significant cost to move the muck several 100 yards wherever it is to where these islands are supposed to be. And you don't have that with this.

It's simply more grunt work to bring material in and encapsulate the foot or two. And so that cost is eliminated or mitigated in total. And then you talk about creating the Muck Islands with pilings, with commercial grade pile drivers, not the little things that put your dock pilings in the ground. The material and the operation that goes away, you don't have that cost with this encapsulation technique. And the submittal for the planting expense is significant for putting plants on top of the, Muck Islands.

And then you have the risk of, storm surges of putting these organic plantings back into the water that we spent millions of dollars getting out. And, of course, the root balls from the plantings can bring some of the encapsulation material out from where it is. And then you have to come back with more barges, more encapsulation material, sand, instead of being one and done like this method is. So this can also be done in stages a lot more than a dredging proposal. When you're not bringing in mobilization, once you go, you pretty much have to keep going until it's done because mobilization is a significant cost.

Here, you can say, since it's just barges bringing in material, you can't say, well, we'll do a number of one canals this year and another one next year. So it is more of a variability in staging. So in effect, I just want to put that in a context that even though barging fill is expensive no matter what you do, That's all you have with this backfill encapsulation method, whereas in the other way, there's more significant cost in the operation. So I wanted to throw that out there. And if there was any conversation, the word I got is that we should be having conversation on it to maybe lead to a proposal to City Council to compare this or do some more work, engineering work or review work to, I believe, December 8 review for the dredging proposal.

And so there was some communication from the public to me that why aren't we comparing these together or doing as much work. So I can stop there. If you want to have conversation, I can move on to the other part.

We do have, right now, a list of speakers who like to probably address what you've presented up to now. I think Martin is first.

So my concern is on the first picture you show, you show like they're going to dredge this out and there'll be like linear walls on the side. Well, that doesn't happen because what will happen is you'll dredge out the center of the canal and there will be some natural movement of the stuff that's under the dock that will float down into the middle of the canal. So you're going to dig a hole and you're going to fill it from the sides, basically. So this is sort of feels a little misrepresented because this volume of muck here is I mean, this should be a curve on the bottom and you will get some muck that flows in. My other concern with encapsulation is the people that have got canals, ends of canals that are sedimented up but at low tide, there is already muck there.

You're going to have to remove the muck before you encapsulate. Because to me, bringing in all that material and just saying, well, canals are flooded with this crap, we're going to encapsulate it and then we're just adding to the problem. I mean, think the encapsulation is great, if that's a solution to it not getting there again. But the real issue we've got, until we get the data back on where we were twenty years ago and where we are now, I think it's difficult to propose some of these other schemes because we don't know what it is. So if you have a canal, for example, where there's no mark, sure, encapsulate it.

That's great going forward. But you've got an end of canal where there is a lot of it, I don't think the people at the ends of those canals are going to be very happy when you dump a whole load more material into the end of the canal. Just my personal feeling.

Yeah. I hear you. Obviously, this is exaggerated, so you could see it. This muck is not eight feet tall. But this has been an issue everywhere, not just in the Florida Keys, which has tested this. And when they went and did the mitigation, the muck mitigation, they have not done this. They've done encapsulation method. And I think you missed what the point is when you talk about the muck at the end of the canals. Where you have the muck and encapsulates it, it's done. You've now segregated it from the water column.

So it's not a fact that it's going to still be there. It's sequestered in there, and that's the purpose of it. That's why it works wherever you can do that. The only place in the Keys where and and I hear you. But it's that is the purpose of that is it encapsulates it. It's done. You don't have the turbidity question when you start dredging, which will kill the canal, of course. But I guess that's all I can say about it.

Yes. Mean, I just again, my concern is that it's the sediment and mark on the bottom that's causing some of this mat to come up when the canals warm up, And some of that has got nutrient in it. So really, we're not taking the nutrient out, we're just encapsulating it. And I'm not sure, I'm not a scientist, so I don't know what that does long term, but it just concerns me.

I hear you. But that's the purpose of it.

To me, it's cut the cancer out. Yeah.

But that's the purpose of it. Rather than dragging it up and trying to move it where then you do disperse it, just puts the high density material right on top and you're done with it. It capsulates it and stays there. But that's the purpose of it. I have

some questions, but I'm going to let other committee members speak first. Chris, you're next.

Alright. So what what Martin was actually talking about is, you know, I spent a lot of time in these canals. There are a number of canals that if you get towards the end, you can't even put your boat lift down at low tide, because the bottom is already there. So, if you encapsulate over the top of that, there's no way you're getting a boat in another even at medium tide, not just low tide.

Right. And during the full presentation, I hear you now, I think I better maybe understand what you're talking about. In The Keys, the only time they dredge is exactly that situation, where it's not for the muck mitigation, it's to make room for the encapsulation and therefore us to do some dredging to give room for the encapsulation. But you're right, that's why I say not eliminate, but mitigate the dredging because that's exactly what happens. I guess I didn't understand exactly what it was.

But everywhere they've done this where they need room for the material is where they dredge it. And if there's two feet of muck, who said, they may take one foot to get the encapsulation. But that has nothing to do with the muck removal because removing one foot out of two feet of muck just exposes more muck.

So then if you so what you're saying is that we would have to dredge some of the canals first, remove that debris then bring in an encapsulation on top of it, correct?

Correct.

Okay.

That's what would happen.

Okay. So and I don't have a problem with that, but where I come into the issue is that, let's talk about the muck that's actually there already right now. So this is where I think we need to have some discussion here is that where is the muck coming from, okay. Like I don't agree that AWT is going to get rid of the muck, okay. I don't see how that's going to make a chance. I also think that the landscape debris that's going in the river and the canals is a huge factor to that because it's more material, right. I mean, I just saw it yesterday, I was walking by my house because I'm on the river and there was a tremendous amount of grass clippings and bushes and stuff like that, that the landscapers blew in somewhere. I don't know where they came from.

We'll be talking about that in a minute.

Yes. That's the bigger issue because that's what's holding it down. That's what's creating it or the palm fronds, stuff like that and garbage people put in there. So when you say dredge and then encapsulate, I don't have a problem with that because that makes some sense. Now the problem comes into, all we're going do is throw more muck on top of that. So we have to try to get rid of where that all that debris is coming from. To me, I think a lot of it is landscape debris. And you'll see in some canals, I mean, it's just atrocious, especially at the end.

And I don't disagree with any of that. I mean, personally, I think AWT is one of the ways. But as we've spoken many times, it should be rather than as an individual thing, it should be a broader discussion as you're getting to. That's And we stated all those other things.

What is that stuff on the bottom? Where do we come from? Because again, in the next ten, twenty years, we're going to create more. So even if we encapsulate it, next twenty years, we might have two feet on top of that again.

And that's true. I mean, the rest of that has to be done. And we've had many discussions. We had some white papers in regards to AWT landscaping materials and illegal outfalls. All these things need to be done. So when we roll it back with something like encapsulation, then you're not just putting us back on the same path we were. And that's what we're doing. We're getting off that path, addressing those sorts of things. But this of course is something that could be done. We've had a Harper report saying this is a primary area, not the only one as you mentioned, but something that should be in the decision making process When along with these other we

talk about transportation cost, if you're going to dredge and then fill, that's you can probably use the same truck to do both. So take the debris out, bring debris back, bring encapsulations, see what I'm saying. So they can muck it, take the muck out, suck it out, put it in the truck, take the truck to dump, dump that and then bring stuff back. So it's because they got to pay for both ways. See what I'm saying?

No. This encapsulation, other than making room for it, it's one and done. You just leave it there. You're not moving.

No. No. But I'm saying when you're driving the truck here, it's full of your encapsulation material.

In the interest of time, I think we do need to move along

a little bit.

Go ahead.

I've got a couple other speakers. Rick is next.

I was just going to comment on what both Martin and Chris said. I know a lot of the canals are shallow and you cannot just fill on what is already a shallow canal, but there is no point in belaboring the point. I think we all understand there is areas where you cannot just fill unless you excavate first. Right. It is a complicated process, deserves more study.

A quick question for Ralph from a just from a math perspective. They would not encapsulate underneath the docks, correct? It would be just the center of the canal? Correct. Okay. And the reason I bring that up is, you've got 20 to 25 feet on either side that are docked, then you got the canal in the middle, canals are 100 feet wide. So best case scenario, you're only going to encapsulate 50% of what's there. 50% is better than nothing, right, from that perspective, but you're still going to have 50% of each canal that the muck is still going to be exposed.

Correct. Under any method proposed would be the same. The difference is because you have it encapsulated in the middle, you don't have the muck either side flowing in. The middle is where the hump is and the muck

is still the

still the muck is causing

a problem. We're only going to be able to, best case scenario, can only take care of 50% of it by encapsulating it.

But one thing I'll add to that though, and I know you've done it in the keys, because they've experimented with methods beyond the middle. They've worked on beveling when they do the middle instead of leaving this on the side. They have experimented with beveling it, which slows it down. But also, the big thing here is you can, since dredging the middle out, trying to get it further towards the seawalls and docks, you're undercutting them, and there's an obvious danger for that. With this, there is and it has been done since you're adding material, you could get behind the docks in the seawall because you're actually making them stronger.

That's the method that has been done because now you're adding material. So conceivably in this decision making says, well, let's see if we can do that. For all I know, it might add years of life to these old seawalls. I don't know. That's why I'm not saying it. Thank you.

I know that you'd like I have a question or two in the interim here and then I'll get right back to you, Martin. I I have a lot of questions. First of all, I'd love to see the cost and the results of what they experienced in The Keys. I think that'd be interesting. Also like to know, are there any regulations that get in the way of this that you've explored? And my last question is, there's other stuff in the canals. Now, if you remember Hurricane Irma and all the water went out about half mile, a mile into the Gulf, everything was exposed. And we've seen pictures of stuff more than muck. We've seen tires. We've seen motorcycles.

It's parts of cars. We've seen drums of who knows what on the bottom of these canals. I wonder just how does that all interact with your proposal? I mean, there's a whole lot more than just muck. That's what I wanted to bring up. So and then we'll get to Martin.

Yes. And there's certain things. There's no perfect solution that answers everything. One of the big things is, are we so much smarter than everybody else? I mean, that comes out with AWT. Why does everybody else have it that we don't? And when I see our nearest clone for saltwater canals that they've rejected dredging in favor of mostly, the encapsulation method, we have to start saying, well, gee whiz, are we smarter to reject that? And I think what my proposal is is to educate and a lot of the public seem to think that why aren't we comparing that more officially, which I think is what you're getting at. I'd like You wanna see the data or whatever it is.

I'd like to see that.

And there is available. I've spoken about this before that the project managers and the keys, since the project is still going annually

that to us next time. Would that be possible?

If yeah. I mean I'd

I'd like I mean, if we're going to go down this road as a possibility, I think that would be very pertinent information.

Yeah. I mean, they have a website. I gave it to city council long ago when this issue first approached and and staff and all the contacts because they're the decision makers. So we can take it further. I don't want to belabor the whole thing. But I

think it'd be valuable for our discussion. Martin?

I was just going to say, I mean, to me, it's got merit to explore it further. But my concern is, to Jim's point, you're only going to address 50%, you encapsulate it, then all the stuff that's on the side flows back over the encapsulation. In twenty years' time, we're back in the same position. So to me, I'd rather go to the root cause, address that first and then encapsulate. The other thing I would say is, if you're going to remove stuff from under the docks and try and encapsulate that, that's going to be a real challenge because you're either going to be doing like a slurry machine to vacuum that stuff up and then try and pump material under the docks.

That's the only way you're going to improve the stability of the older seawalls. The reality of the older seawalls is they weren't deep enough, they weren't thick enough, they're all crumbling and unfortunately, the homeowner is going to pick up the tab on having to replace it, which is not an inexpensive operation. But trying to mediate old seawalls that are a few inches thick compared to the new standard, I think we're just not

sure you understand completely what this is. This is not sucking up any muck at all. That's the point. This is sequestering it. Everywhere you go. It's not about sucking anything, it's adding material everywhere. I

understand that, but clearly we've had a conversation about addressing some of the canals where there is stuff there that's got to be removed before you encapsulate.

Correct, yes.

So you have that same issue. And I do understand what you're pitching. But again, you've got 50% of it under the docks, you encapsulate the middle, all that stuff that's in the side to your same argument is going to flow down over the encapsulation.

But it it doesn't and it's been proven and tested. The encapsulation is in the middle. It stays on the side as being lower and you don't eliminate that part. But the difference between that and dredging is you have a thing in the middle where everything flows down. Is there

any type of video you could bring us for next time that would kinda you know, a picture's worth a thousand words. Anything because I think, you know, for us to see this might be very helpful. I don't know if there's anything you can get for us.

I don't know if there's any video that exists. I mean, you can sit we can sit or we can ask the project team for the keys to come over and discuss, but it is what it is. Okay.

It's Alright.

You know, it's kinda grunt work versus mobilizing a dredging operation, which is the main thing.

Okay. Is there any more that you want to present right now? In the interest

of Yes. I'll just go on to my next piece here.

Okay. And how long are you going to estimate that?

Oh, five minutes maybe. Just review. Depends on the conversation. This is about the Martin will bring it up, the muck eating bacteria. What a beneficial bacteria, I should say.

Here we go. Really just to review, this muck eating bacteria is ubiquitous in freshwater in handling the muck issue. And there are many clients all over the country. And we talked about before and after pictures a little bit. And also, I gave you my experience with saltwater use in eating hydrocarbons, muck eating bacteria.

And we had a good question on, well, could this be approved? And obviously, that would be the vendor when we talked about the opportunity to pilot this here at their financial loss mostly, the game changer potential of handling this with this beneficial bacteria is huge when we're talking about tens of millions of dollars in dredging, for example. This might eat into that cost quite a bit. And we talked about the potential to do that and getting it approved since they do it in fresh water all the time all over the country and it's used in salt water. I just should add with that is most of these spill response in saltwater have spill response plans all over the country in virtually every port.

I think even the gasoline station at Kaxombis has some kind of spill response. And because it needs to be so immediate in response, many of these things are preapproved, things like dispersants, beneficial bacteria use. So I don't see there being much of an issue in getting approved, but of course, that would be to be handled by the vendor if we were to move forward with some kind of piloting. And just as a review, we had various proposals to do two of our canals at a very cheap price to be able to ferret this thing out. So there was a call saying, hey, listen, The public says, why aren't we looking at this?

Why are we taking advantage of this piloting opportunity and actually see what it can do? You know, it took millions of dollars. So I'll leave it there to have discussion of whether you wanna recommend to city council a pilot or whatever.

Do we have any discussion on our committee? Anybody wanna speak? Martin, you're first.

So I I think this is great technology, and it's certainly worthy of investigation. My concern is in order to put that stuff in the canals, it has to be approved. If the City Council want to push a pilot program, I think that's great. But again, they've got that same issue that if they look at it and go, yes, let's approve a pilot. If the Department of Environment or those other regulatory bodies, Army Corps of Engineers, all those guys, they're all going to have to sign off on it.

So I think it's great and I'm not trying to like be the naysayer here at all. I'm just want to be sure that we don't spin this thing up into like this is going be the savior of all saviors and we do it and we should do a pilot, we should investigate it more. But at the end of the day, the authorities that need to approve it, need to approve it. Whether that's driven by the vendor or us chipping in to help with do that, it doesn't matter. It has to be approved. It's Yes. That

And then that's what I was talking about. It's the vendors issue to take care of it. If they don't approve it, well, they don't approve it. But the potential to do this, I mean, I can tell you that it's considering where this material is used, it's natural and it's preapproved in most every spill response toolbox and it's done in freshwater. Personally, I don't see the barrier, but that doesn't mean there isn't one I don't know about. But it's the vendor, if we were

to move forward,

if that's their problem, to get it approved.

My concern with this is that this goes like prime time around the island. People get hold of it, we'll be in the same situation as we are with AWT, that we've got a solution. People say, well, we want it, we want it, we want it. No one really knows what it's going to do. It could take a long time, it could take a short time, I don't know.

But that's just my concern. Hopefully, on AWT, we'll know in about another eight weeks, we'll get the report back from Black and Veatch, and we'll get the real numbers of what they think it's going to cost, ongoing cost and what they think the time line is to repair it. There is so much spin to these subjects. I went to the meeting about it. They had the guy from Tampa down and they're saying, oh, it will all change in three years.

Well, theirs changed in three years because they were dumping raw sewage into the bay, And we don't do that. So again, this is all spinning in people not having the true information. And so let's get the survey back from Black and Veatch. Hopefully, it will tell us all we need to know, and then the City Council can make a decision how much money they want to throw at it.

Chris is next, but I'll let you respond.

So exactly what Martin was talking about is what I have here is that know, DEP and Army Corps of Engineers and all the stuff. I think it's actually a great idea, okay, because I think that that's the issue. We have to figure out a way to reduce what's in there. But we also, like Martin said before again, and I tried to say before, we got to find the source of what's causing it to go what's causing it to get in the bottom of the canal. Like I was saying last month, to me AWT, that very small percentage of water that actually hits the canal isn't going to affect 99% of the canals that are out here because it's not getting there, it's not even close to that.

But what we have is in all these other canals, we have stuff that's sitting there and how is it getting there. So let's figure out that. If this works, I think we should do a pilot on one and pick a canal, do a pilot, see if it works. But I would like to see ahead of time before we say yes, is exactly what Martin is saying is, does DEP and everybody else agree that whatever we put in here isn't going to cause us major issues in ten years from now that we didn't know about.

Well, yeah, and I hear you. I'm not sure I get the concern with getting approval. They're the ones that run their traps, have the cause or whatever. But saying, well, we wanna hear them approve it first before and then come forward and say, well, now do you wanna do this? Asking them to go and run these traps and do whatever just ask us to say no, that's pretty much saying no. So if it's in their lap to get the approval with us making no effort or cost or whatever, but maybe I'm looking at it wrong.

I think what I'm trying to say is the liability. I don't want the liability to be on the city of Marco Island. I'd rather the liability be on somebody else. So say this buck eating bacteria comes in and twenty years from now causes cancer in everybody or whatever, I don't want the liability to

be to us. I want it to be to somebody else.

It was okay to do it. See what I'm saying?

Well, now you're getting into something that anything you do Yes.

Let's That's all I'm worried about.

That's one of the issues. Seven years we've been working on AWT and we get nowhere because our mindset is no, no, no.

So what So So I guess the bottom line, what is your proposal? Would you like to see us recommend to council a pilot for this at

this time? Or are you planning to

What would you like to do?

I would like to make a motion that we recommend the city council that we take advantage of the piloting, which is minimal cost for what we're getting. They proposed doing two canals at a certain cost that I talked about last year and work towards an agreement with them to go and pilot and then we review it and see, yes or no, do we wanna follow through with it.

Question. Oh, I'm sorry, Martin.

Well, I think we've got the same issue. I mean, I was out on city council and I was seeing this, I'd be asking the same question. As a City Councillor, do I want to approve something that the Corps of Engineers and all the other regulatory bodies are not going to go with. I mean, I I great. I I think the recommendation, if that's your recommendation, let's push it up to city council. Let city council have a discussion on it, how happy they feel about it. And then they can get legal advice from our city attorney as to what is the best possible.

Going back to the map that he presented, it's been used in the state of Florida, right? So somebody's done it and they've gotten approval for it. At least we

can Freshwater.

I don't know. I don't know. It just shows that it's in the state of Florida. So if somebody in the state of Florida had to sign off

on it. Right.

Freshwater only has It's done different.

I don't know that. You don't know that. I don't know that. But I'm

just Freshwater saying it's been done here in ponds are encapsulated. We're talking about putting this into the ocean effectively. Whatever we put in here can end up in the ocean. Again, I think it's great. I think it's got legs. It needs further investigation. I think if the recommendation is push it to City Council, let City Council decide how ready this is for prime time.

That could be their job. I mean, my problems are well, my questions, we don't know the cost. That would be their their issue. On top of that, we don't know the, you know, how to keep the problem from recurring. We know this might solve it, but we don't know that it won't just keep coming back. And and also, don't know what the attitude will be of the regal regulatory agencies.

And that's So that lot of questions. Right? I don't disagree, but that's the issue with everything, all the things. And that's why we sit around for seven years doing virtually nothing. I I think my proposal is is basically to ask city council to say

You wanna make a motion? I

make well, that's why I'm I'm kinda modifying a little bit to make

make the motion

Make the motion to ask city council to pursue a pilot and obtain a full

Okay.

Development plan. Alright. And and if they say, well, no, we're not interested in this at all, which is really what we're trying to do, well, then we'll just

We have a motion on the floor.

The motion hasn't been made yet.

No. Well, he's he's making He's he's

I have a a a comment

while Right ahead.

So this is a, like, a summary of what was presented last meeting. And to help understand the details a little better, I have several more questions about it that I would like to address in, say, like, the next meeting where we can dive into the details again and make do the motion at that time just because I I do have several questions about it. But, you know, in the interest of time, I I I don't wanna eat it up today.

One one thing that I have the reason why I'm presenting this is because there's barriers to having the head of this thing talk to us. That's why I'm doing it. I've tried everything to listen from the vendor. I know. That's So if what you're saying is maybe next meeting, have the vendor do talk to us, well, maybe that's a path forward. I I'd rather I mean, we've been waiting around to do this month after month, but

Why why don't we put that on the agenda for next meeting? I think

we tried before to your point.

I tried before and and and I don't know what the barriers to hearing from the guy and asking the questions much better than me, but

Let me ask a question, from Justin. Do we have to advertise this? If we're going to get a vendor here, do we do we have to put this out to the public? Or can we get a vendor, the vendor to come in?

If if it's a vendor that is proposing a product that the city could potentially purchase, then we have to open it up to all vendors that could potentially have that product.

That's what I thought.

So that would require an advertising in a request for

Could we get the vendor to come into city council?

Anybody can go into city council during public comments and use the two or four minutes whatever is allotted to make a comment.

Couldn't anybody

Get on the agenda is a different

I that's what I've been trying to do all these months.

Anybody could come into this meeting and use the public comment period to

After four minutes. Comment period. That's but not a presentation. It's not something that you would put on the agenda.

So let's not put it on the agenda and ask the gentleman to come in and use his, you know, public comment period of time Okay. To address his technology that then we would, on the next agenda.

And, of course, just to throw it as a technical issue, he's in Michigan, and he has a fly here to do that. I tried to get it on Zoom or whatever, which apparently is not acceptable either. There's so many barriers I tried to get in front of city council.

I would only thing I find like a little crazy in this day and age, if we've got someone that's got something important to say, then why not let them do that on Zoom? I mean, it's a well established principle. And I don't know what what the

He road might to visit to Marco in January. Well, yeah. But

he he's been here before. But in other words, we're asking somebody for four minute public comment and then shut up.

It's just

We don't communicate back and forth.

I really need to keep an eye on the time. We have a lot to cover. Do we wanna I

wanna make I'll I'll make the I'll continue with the motion. Okay.

Go ahead.

We want to recommend to city council that we pursue the pilot

Mister chair.

And develop

Before you take a vote, if you're gonna vote on something that's gonna be forwarded to city council, you should call for public comment. I know there's not.

Right. K. If you wanna make the motion, I I I will need to do exactly that.

Yeah. I'll I'll make that motion and then

And then I need to call.

We pursued a pilot and developed the pilot plan for presentation and then they can work on it. But then you can ask the public comment. So

I think to Dan's point, this is a big issue. Dan's clearly got questions. Why don't we hold this over? And I don't like doing it as much as you don't like doing it. But why don't we make a motion that we put it onto the next agenda, Dan can ask his questions. And as an outcome of that, we very clearly then take all of this and push it to city council.

It feels like we're in a rush, and I think we had a very good suggestion.

I don't think we're in a rush. We don't do anything

particularly I'm to that if there's a path to actually getting

It it it may well be.

I'm I'm very supportive of this going to city council.

Yep. And I am too. But I think we're not quite there.

And and that's fine. But do we have

a path to hear this guy talk? If I put it on the agenda, apparently, we can't do any more than four minutes on public comment.

At this point. Right. Dan, I think you had a good

Can public comment be remote?

That I tried that and No. Answered with no. It used to be

in COVID, you could do remote public comment.

Sorry to bring up topic.

So if if Ralph was able to find out from this gentleman by conversations with him, what would be the things we'd want him to find out? We want him to find out potentially what the cost is of doing the the test, number one. Number two is, what are the regulatory hurdles and what is his estimation of what he would be able to do to come back and how long would it take him to find out if if the state of Florida come back and do it? Number three is, are there any examples anywhere of any of this particular technology being used in solar brackish water?

Correct.

So I I I are there anything else other than those three items that we would want Ralph to go back and dive in with the guy that's in Michigan?

Most of what I've touched on, basically what he would talk about, obviously, is a piloting for use in saltwater.

Okay.

And in particular, it is brand new. It is cutting edge. And because the upside is so huge compared to millions and millions and millions of dollars, it's never been done. We'd be the first one to actually pilot, which is the purpose of

the Right.

But I'm just talking so it would be cost for the two areas we've talked about. What would be his estimate as to as as to what it would cost? And and I don't know how to phrase this, but the likelihood of being able to clear the regulatory hurdles with the state of Florida, how long would that take? Can he do some preliminary legwork on it to find out if it could get approved? Any of that stuff. Because to me, if we can answer those two questions then, that's a better package to take city council.

Exactly. And I and I agree with you. That's why I've been trying to get the horse's mouth in here.

So you've got some work. You gotta go talk to the horse, Ralph.

Yeah. I mean, I don't wanna be talking to him. You need because I'm just me. I'm just the No.

But what I mean, I think we have to put trust into you that you're gonna go talk to him. I mean, you've got no vested interest in in this technology being used other than you're concerned like the rest of us are that we do something for the for the the waterways. So,

Yeah. Think It's have something moving. I think we

have to trust in you that you're gonna go talk to this guy and in December, can come back and hopefully have some answers to those two questions.

If you can do that, I think that would be a path to move forward.

Yeah, I will try to get him in here, but if it ends up me just talking to you again, you have heard

I mean, you will have more information

for me. And Justin, I don't know if this would be okay, if it if it makes it more viable to anybody else that if there's somebody else on that phone call with this gentleman from Michigan or Ralph, I would volunteer to sit in on the call so we know that it it multiple members of the committee heard it. I don't know if that's okay.

Okay. So, I'm hearing a phone call. I'm hearing, member Rohena going back to, and and asking some questions.

Mhmm.

So what is it exactly that you're asking as far as a phone call here?

Well, he's trying to find a middle ground between the difficulty of having somebody come

Are we talking about a phone call during this meeting? No. No. No. No. No. Between the meetings? Okay. Alright. That's what I catch. So, is that acceptable?

I think that it is.

Well, technically, if you have two committee members talking about something that's coming before the committee, not in a public meeting, that is not a

I'm out.

Within the sunshine.

Well, part of sunshine law What he's saying is That's virtually a presentation. We trust

you, Ralph. You go have it. You go do it.

But it would be no in that case, if he's like presenting or talking to two or three people, it'll be similar to having him public comment to all of us.

Let me make a suggestion. We just like take the questions that we've got from Jim about the regulatory compliance, put those to him whether it's on a phone call and then just come back with the answers. Because he may say, I've looked at this compliance issue and I think it's a five year process. I've looked at it and I think I can get it done in a year. We have no idea what that is. So take those questions to him, come back with that data. It encapsulates it into a better package to give to City Council. But ultimately, that's where this I feel this is where this has got to go. I think this has got merit. I think it's a wonderful idea.

If we can put this stuff in there and they take care of it for us, it's great. But my concern is just we might be chasing rainbows, I really don't know.

Really, in the interest of time, and I mean that, Chris, Rick, and then we're going have to wrap it up.

I just Justin, I don't want him to like run down a rabbit hole here if this isn't going to work. Say he gets all the information next meeting, all is good to go, we want to put a motion back to City Council to look at this. The problem then becomes again, have to open up to the public to propose, we can't still just have him come. So we still have to open this up to the public for proposals.

Well, if we're talking about just the Member, Rohani, going back and getting answers to questions that have come before this committee in the time being and then that being presented by member Rohina to this committee for a vote to forward it to city council, then there is no, you know, putting it out to the public and, as you say, in the form of an RFP to get proposals

But for

city council to do it, they have to do that then. Right?

Well, yeah. Then we need to talk about how that goes to city council. Yes. You can vote, but then it should be presented in some sort of a a white paper or presentation from the committee chair to council at one of the quarterly updates that

Okay.

Okay. Rick, you get the last word and we move.

Quickly, I I I think it's a great idea to explore. I think it's way premature to bring it to council. Personally, we have a new chairman on city council. We've got a new interim city manager. I cannot believe that in my opinion, my opinion only, stupid rules that will not let a vendor come in and make a presentation.

We are not bidding it. We are not buying anything. Why we cannot have an informative presentation by a vendor makes absolutely no sense. And I think the first step is is to have Justin talk to the new city manager and the chairman of the council and see if really that is the way they interpret the rule that we cannot have an informative presentation that is not a bid or a proposal.

We can't have that. We just need to advertise it. We just need to have an RFP put out just like you did for AWT, just like you did for a couple of years ago for other methods

to,

address the water quality in the canals.

Alright.

So we'll do that.

Yeah. But that's what he's saying. He's saying the mechanism is so incredibly burdensome rather than just trying to get some information from these guys.

Burdensome to the committee. Staff will will, advertise it, and we collect the the submittals, and then those submittals will be presented to this committee.

That's a million burdens

Let's do that then. I mean, why not advertise it? Nobody else is gonna come in and bid on it.

I do not think they will.

And let us get them in here to make a presentation.

Hey, that may be the path we need to take.

Justin needs more to do.

Okay. Last word? No. I I

remediation of our muck has been going on for seven years. And the original purpose of my doing this was to throw out some alternatives. Everything is going on and on and on, including the dredging. It's going on and on and on. And we need to get off our butts and say, what do we need to do in it? And What is the best way to go forward with it? And we don't seem to be able to do that. We're talking about these one on one type things.

And what I'm gonna present right now, as we complete this, is you're looking into what to do about what's there, and I'm gonna be looking into how to prevent any more of it getting there. Mhmm. So if we can move along, I would appreciate that. Any is everybody okay with that?

Well, I've got to withdraw the motion, so I'll do that. Okay.

Alright. At this point. Yeah.

And, Ralph, don't forget to send me the presentation. Please.

Okay. Do you wanna ask if there's anyone who wants to make

Was anybody else wanting, Oh, was was there anybody wanting to make a comment, public comment?

Yes, we have Doctor. Trotter.

Okay. I apologize for not being aware of that.

Committee members, thanks for, listening to me. It's like, old home week here. I, I was on the council for quite a while and then, the waterways committee, and I see some some of some of the holdovers from my days also. It's nice to I've be been following this. I think the whole water quality issue is one of the most important things Marco Island has to deal with.

And I think the Waterways Committee plays a great role in really doing the research and doing the detailed analysis, particularly looking at alternatives. Because I think any time a governing body like the council considers something, they really need to know the alternatives and have a backup group like this with the expertise and the time to really do it. And also, think particularly when we're talking about a potential public partner, public private partnership, PPP here, from one of the vendors, the key to that is really community awareness and making sure that there needs, you know, there's a need in the community and the community buys into it. So I think there's a role for the Waterways Committee in providing that visibility and that transparency to the public so they really know what's going on. And it really is a multivariate type of problem, as all know, in terms of both looking at point source mitigation and also looking at remediation of the canals themselves.

So it's not a single point solution for anything. Know when I was on the council and had the septic tank replacement type of thing, is another water quality issue, the whole point was, well, this alone isn't going to fix the whole problem. No, but it's part of the problem the retention tanks under the water level. I think it's a it's it's you know, you can't have a standard of business going to fix the whole problem. Also, terms of the regulatory type things and the FDEP, The current proposal, I'm sure you you know I'd I'd presented this to the workshop of the council a couple months ago, is that the FDP has clearly said, and I had the email on that, that the creation of these muck islands was just not gonna be permitted.

That it was just, you know, to you know, it was state submerged state lands, and they said the muck has to go to upland, etcetera, etcetera, which is real the real cost of this whole thing is how do you minimize that cost and even find a place place to put it. So I think it's important to do in terms of some of the things that that Mr. Rowena has said to to really explore that and take our time so we know. You know how to how to approach this and I commend the the committee for keeping. Keeping going on it. I know it's it's arduous, and it it it it's and it's not a failure because you don't solve it right away. I think that's the problem. Always say, all these guys have been working on it for years. Yeah. We you know, it's it's just a complicated problem.

It's an expensive problem for us, but it's really our lifeblood. I kept saying, you know, what are you gonna do if you Marco Island would not have even maybe even exist if you couldn't use, you know, use our waterways or waterways weren't acceptable and clean. And that's another, I think, problems with the Muck Island is really the that I've kind of socialized this around the island in terms of these issues. And a lot of the feedback I'm getting is, you know, I never knew if a hurricane came and, you know, and the islands were destroyed, these muck islands were destroyed, we'd have navigation problems, we'd have all kinds of problems, particularly as the vegetation is growing and isn't protecting anything. So and the army corps of engineers also said the the whole navigation issue is a big big issue with them and the tidal flushing that goes along with that that could be affected by creating artificial islands in the waterways.

So I know it's complicated and I commend what you're doing and I'm trying to keep up with it. I appreciate it.

You. We appreciate your comment.

Thank you very much. Could I ask a question? Maybe of Justin. The December 8 review of the Seahawk proposal, Does that count as the second required public meeting, in which case then the public is kind of out of it? Or am I misinterpreting it?

No. No. Yeah. I think you're complaining the passing of an ordinance which requires two, two readings. No.

What the December 8 meeting agenda is for is to, review the evaluation by the city's engineer of the public private partnership proposal that was presented to the city. The proposer provided a proposal to the city, And at that meeting in May, city council authorized, staff to hire a engineer to review what was in that proposal. So the meeting on December 8 is to have that engineer present its findings, its evaluation of what was in that proposal.

So the requirement within a public partnership regulations that requires two public meetings, this would not be one of them?

I'm not familiar with the requirement of two public meetings for it because it but this would be a second meeting because they did have a meeting in May, which was a public meeting, and then this is another meeting. But it's it's not a a meeting for adoption. But, yes, this would be the second public meeting.

Alright. So after two public meetings, the requirement for having any more public meetings kinda goes away.

But I think that's only for an ordinance

that there's

Well, there's two different things. There's requirements within the public partnership regulations. But I'm not 100% sure, but maybe somebody knows more than me.

We have a possible explanation.

Yeah. I'm sorry. Yes. There there is a clear if you look at the public private partnership guidelines that I forget which agency sent them out, but it basically says there has to be two public meetings. Forget the report of the engineer or anything else. This clearly advertised broadly across the city and etcetera. And I know when I brought this up at a letter to counsel about the public public meetings and the fact that they had pictures of all these islands all over. There's 24 island, muck islands being created. And I said, can you blow those up for the public to look at? Because visual is a big part of people saying, oh, I didn't know what this was gonna look like.

Jesus, right now I had a wide water view, now I got a canal view at best type of thing. Maybe the plants and everything else are smelling and things like that. That it requires two broadly advertised meetings just on this sub my assumption is on this subject that the public is aware of it. And just putting it into a council agenda, to me, is not meeting the spirit of what they're trying to do here, which is really to clearly demonstrate and get support for the public benefit. So if that's the case, I think it would be very unfortunate because people would not be aware of. And also the alternatives.

Right.

They're not gonna talk about alternatives. This is gonna be, this is it. And they didn't even I haven't even heard any acknowledgment of the fact that, as I said, why is this going forward if the FDP says this proposal is not gonna be permitted? I mean

That was my concern is that

Pardon me?

After the second meeting, a public loses something, of participation. That was that was it.

Okay, Ralph. I think, we have covered this at this point. You'll be coming back to us on the agenda, for next time. We're going to move along right now. We are way, way behind. We'll see how the rest of this goes. We're gonna move along to Florida Friendly Landscaping and Fertilizer. This is my my item six b. Martin, if I can get you to put up, the proposed code change to Martin, to Marco Island fertilizer ordinance. Oh, it'll be done by Tara.

Thank you. This is pretty simplistic, and I'm gonna just introduce this really, really quickly and as briefly as I can. I have done a lot of research as a horticulturalist and a knowledge in the fertilizer and plant industries, turf grass, golf course. Basically, there should be two shoulder seasons of actual fertilizing if we are going to have lawns, if we are going to have condo lawns, if we are going to have golf courses, should really and I think the science is proving this now. I would I would say April 15 through May 31, you can fertilize properly with some nitrogen and potassium, never phosphorus ever, ever.

And October 1 through November 1 would be the other time to do that. And I'm just asking the question, why? Well, the summer blackout is due to heavy rains washing fertilizer applications into our waterways. That's obvious. We can't fertilize. Okay? I mean, that's just, you know, a fact. In the winter, as I've mentioned before, the turf is mostly dormant, and the lack of rain leaves about seven months of application sitting on the ground waiting for the summer rains to go ahead and wash it all into our canals. And that's just a fact. That's what it does.

Granular is worse, but the liquid application just I mean, some of it gets with the, the whole winter of the environment. It gets broken down to a degree, but it's still there, and it gets washed into our waterways. In my opinion, and I think, you know, I have a lot to back this up, blackout periods should allow blackout periods mean when you can't fertilize. The winter and the rainy season should allow for applications of some type of, not fertilization, but upkeep or maintenance for lawns and turf involving iron, micronutrients, trace nutrients. There's magnesium, there's boron, there's all kind of zinc.

I don't know. All kinds of stuff. I can give you the list if you want it. To maintain the health and color of turf, it won't adversely affect the water quality. So what I'm proposing, and this is pretty simple, is you only allow nitrogen and potassium as the main fertilizer components to be applied to Marco Island lawns in two shoulder seasons.

One is in the spring, one's in the fall. The reason for October October 1 is really critical because really when it needs it would be September, August, and we can't do it. October is the first day, the first month that you can actually apply the fertilizer. That's when the grass is still growing, it's still using it. We've just come out of the rainy season. You can still have a hurricane. That's possible. But with the allowance of what we can do, that's when it really matters. It gets the turf ready for the winter, and you don't really need to fertilize after that. And in the spring, give a light fertilization to get things underway.

April 15 through May 31, you have to stop on June 1. And my proposal is, if we could institute this, a lot of what's put out there in the winter would not be there to wash into our canals. So if I can get some discussion on this, if I can get a motion, if anybody's interested in pursuing this and wants us to go to our counsel to, perhaps make this into a new code, That would be my first of my two issues that I would like to present. Any discussion? So the two the current Oh, I'm sorry.

Rick's first. Is this what we've been waiting for? I I don't mean to be sarcastic but is this the sum total? I I thought you were gonna present to us a motion, we approved a motion for you to write a letter to counsel that presumably would be an amendment to our existing code that I thought was going to go way beyond some blackout seasons to This is just part one. To liberalize the ability to put things on the lawn or on the ground besides grass.

That is there. So that is next? That is next.

Yes. And I apologize, I am looking for phase two. Phase two is what we will get to after phase one. Chris.

So I like the idea, but I think it goes back to what we talked about earlier, we need a little more details on this. Like if I was going to push this to counsel, would say, I would actually list maybe some products or some more details of what you are talking about. But I think what you are saying here is no fertilization during the winter. Right. Like what we doing now. And instead do two different seasons.

That's not exactly true. You can do trace and iron and I mean that can be explored. That's, that does not affect the water quality. Those are, that's a whole different type. It's the nitrogen, the potassium, and the phosphorus. Those are the three major components that affect our water quality. Okay? And that's what we want to stop, in my opinion.

I guess I need to see the fertilizer ordinance as it is kinda redlined with with your proposed changes. You know, looking at it like this, I'm seeing the genius behind it, but I I do need to see it in context with the existing code in a strike through ad, you know, format. Okay. Because that's my my question is where are we currently with our current ordinance I don't have in front of

me. Okay.

I I I agree with that. What I thought we And one step further than that is it should go to other people who are knowledgeable about turf. So they have an opportunity because you're very specific. There may be other people who say, no. That's not right, and we should do these months or that month. I'd like to hear from them.

If we can invite someone that's not selling us a product, someone just like a horticulture is local, somebody to come in and just

There is a lady on the island that wrote a really good editorial in Coastal Breeze about when you should fertilize and when you shouldn't. Mhmm. I can't remember her name, but

Would it be Aileen Ward?

Could have been. Okay. I honestly can't remember.

We have we have people every have two guys on the island that are grass farmers for a living and they're both called golf course superintendents and it's what they do. Mhmm. If they don't do a good job, they get fired. Mhmm. So they know how to grow grass better than anybody else on the island. Mhmm. So those resources exist those resources exist on the island, and they're the ones that could come in and say, this is what we do. Every month of the year, this is what we do. Time it rains, this is what we do. This is, you know, and and the only thing they do is they've got a group of people look at them and say, I want the golf course to

look beautiful, but I don't want you

to spend a nickel more than you have to. Right? So they've got to go operate underneath that constraint as well. So that might be something we want to consider. From Okay. An expert

So bringing those two together, the local professionals and looking at the code with strike through changes

and discuss. Okay. So we'll leave it there and we can continue that onto the next agenda for next month. Okay. So we'll put that aside away for a moment. And let's go to our next item. That would be what member Woodworth has been wanting to explore for a while, and I do too. The rest of this is Florida Friendly Landscape. If you look at the table of contents here,

this is

this comes from the University of Florida. So I went there and I got a whole lot of information. If anybody would like to have me to share that with them, I've got a ton of material here. But Florida Friendly Yards, I'm not so sure that Marco Island would embrace this in totality, but the less the more of this kind of a proposal or direction that we go there are nine components, and this is very exact. The further we go with this and the less that we do that we've keep continue to do that we have done, the more we'll get in a direction as we have mentioned before, the landscapers with all that debris going into our canals, and we've all seen it, and we know it happens, and we know it happens on a continuous on a continuation you know, day after day, week after week, as we go.

This is a this can help to mitigate that. So what I'd really like to just mention here is let me go back to my notes. In my opinion, there's a lot of pros and cons. The pros and that's what we're looking at are you cut down on water because the plants don't need as much. You cut down on fertilizer because they grew here before fertilizer was ever applied.

Many plants can be lower maintenance than a lot of what we grow. There is less polluted runoff because we are not putting as much fertilizer out there. And it's just plain good for the waterways and the surrounding waters. Now, there are cons. Some of the cons can be, if you go to a lot of shrubbery and small trees, you've got a lot more trimming. I mean, they may have been in Florida from the very beginning, but the issue is that they're still gonna grow. This is Florida, plants do grow. And we from what I've checked, the code says you cannot have a jungle. So there's there's gonna be maintenance. Not everybody likes the look.

I don't say I'm not saying the council should mandate anything. But I would say that one of the directions I'd like to go is to have the council promote, and to have Marco Island promote this as a direction that we can go to mitigate the pollution and the runoff. Weeds can be more of a problem. You would have to do more of the process to mulch. You've got to be careful of mulch, because mulch can bring termites.

You've got to be very careful what you bring onto your property. I'm not suggesting an extreme. I'm not suggesting that we go, oh, there's no more lawns in Marco, or we have to go totally Florida friendly. But, I think my point is to encourage at least some Florida plants that need less water, less fertilizer, less upkeep, and every time we don't put out fertilizer, every time we don't use our water, because the plants are okay without it, or the ground cover is okay without it, we have mitigated the problem that we're putting into our surrounding waterways. So that's the little proposal.

I'll just go over this. You can read it, but I think it's really important that the right plant in the right place, water efficiently, fertilize appropriately when you have to, the item on mulch attracts wildlife, which is always good, manage your pest responsibly, recycle yard waste. That's an issue that I would love to pursue, and I'll mention that in a minute. Reduce the storm water runoff, as I mentioned, and protect the waterfront. When it comes to yard waste, I bag my cuttings.

I know it's not gonna be possible for the landscapers to do that, but the more people who do that and put it in the waste receptacle for the yard waste to come and pick up is less that's blowing into our waterways. I think that's something else to encourage. Every little bit we do matters. That's all I wanted to say. If there's any discussion, this is something I really, really believe that could help.

Rick? Well, I think earlier this month, sometime before this meeting, I asked Justin to circulate a proposed amendment to the storm water ordinance that was done several years ago when Sam Young was a city councilor. Frankly I was expecting your presentation to be similar in format, to draft up, if you will, a white paper on all the stuff that you have been saying, all the reasons why, give us a copy of the current ordinance, what the proposed amendment is to the ordinance and you go to counsel with a comprehensive position statement on why you think it makes sense, what the changes to the ordinance that you want to make, and then counsel can push it off on whoever else they want to look at it, some other committee or send it to the planning board. But you cannot go to counsel with the two things you showed this morning and I am not being personally correct.

I am not suggesting that. I wanted to just get this out there.

Yeah. But we've been waiting three months for you to write something to counsel saying, here's what we propose as an amendment to the ordinance.

This committee needs to forward that to counsel. I don't do that on my own.

Well, somebody's gotta write it. When when I was on the committee, we we wrote stuff comprehensive like a lawyer making an argument to win a case. That's what you gotta send to counsel if you expect them to do anything.

That would be after we discuss that on this committee.

Well, I don't know how long you want to keep discussing it. A year will be up before we write a motion that we made a year ago.

So my comment would be that I think most probably everybody on this bench here is in favor of doing something with Florida Friendly Landscaping. If it's going to reduce the amount of fertilization required, the amount of trimmings and all that stuff. So to me, to Rick's point, this has got to be a much more bullet point type document Okay. That says, this is what I think we should do for irrigation. This is what I think we should do for Florida landscapes and maybe when that is a point for a broader audience that should go to beautification for them to get sight of it.

I think it also needs to go to the planning department for them to get side of it. And I think one of the ways forward would be to look at particularly new builds of if we put together some kind of ordinance that says if you follow this when you're doing a new build, you will get potentially some kind of slight credit on your impact fee. You've got to have something that is going to motivate people to do it. So those would be my couple of bullet points. I think this is great information, but I think it's got to be condensed into sort of like a executive summary to say boom, boom, boom. These are the three, four things that we want to achieve.

Okay. Well put. Chris? So I guess you guys are looking a little bit different than I'm looking at this because I think we talked about this before. One of our tasks on this committee is education. So I think what you're trying to do here is start the education process. So what I thought that the next step would be on this would be is, we have this here, how about we now take it and modify that like table of contents, those nine items for Marco Island and then start the process to make a booklet for Marco Island that we can present as an education piece.

What I had wanted to do, I went to the planning board, but I was told that this committee had to do its work first before I could go to other committees or to the council. Mhmm. And that's why I threw it out here because I can't go. I mean, I know you want me to go and and do these things, I've been told, no. You've got to do this here. This work has to be done at this committee first before

That's we can take what it we have been waiting for. This is your idea. Right. Do it.

Well, I need direction from the committee as to what the committee wants done. I thought I will be more

than thought our direction, you could go back and look at the motion we approved, was to make an amendment to the current code of ordinances. And I thought the amendment was going to be to remove the restriction that requires turf grass on the island so that you could have the flexibility.

They have that now? No, there

is still I sent you a copy of the code. It says you have got to put grass down.

But you do not have to have there is, there are variances that you can But you've

got to apply for a variance. I'm saying you've got to get rid of the language in the ordinance.

To move it forward, I think you've got to do similar thing to the fertilizer thing. You've got to take the ordinance as is.

Okay.

And you've got to say, here's the bits that we want to amend. Section B-one 127,

Absolutely. We want to add in the third

That's what

you got to do.

That's right.

I think that's the path forward.

That's right.

I think everyone on the committee is in to best of my knowledge, we can do a show of hands. But everyone's in favor of Florida Friendly Landscaping and taking away the restrictions because it's going to be a part of our puzzle that we're trying to solve.

You. But it's got

to be done from an ordinance point of view. It's got to be done from an executive summary. That's why Because the City Council don't have time to go through all that and that's our job. Our job is to take this data, summarize it and go, boom, this is what we want. Here's the changes you need to make to the ordinance.

That's exactly what I wanted to get from our committee is what you've just told us.

I thought we said that three months ago.

Well The only thing I would suggest is it is important, and there are a lot of moving parts to it. Maybe it's too much for one person. Do you wanna delegate? He's talking about education piece, talking about the ordinance. Maybe you want every several people to take a piece of it, and then you put it together. I don't know.

That's fine too. I just wanted to get this the ball rolling.

Seeing that strike through format will be the way forward.

Alright.

Like your proposals, Rick's concerns, like in a strike through or what you might wanna add. Ask what you wanna add. In a strike in a You know something, This

is when I I know the staff doesn't have the time for this, but this is when a workshop would be really valuable.

But Well, the problem is with the workshop is that you're going to get a whole load of inputs from all different directions. Would say take the lead on it as chair. Take the ordinance as is, put in there the bullet points that you think are going be the most beneficial. Okay. Yes.

It's so much easier to react to something than it

is to a blank sheet of paper. I would appreciate that too because I'm not educated. If you do that and you're you know a lot more about than the rest of us. Yep.

Go crazy.

Yeah.

Go through and say, hey, in an ideal world, this

is what we'd have. And we'll let you I I promise you the people in this committee will let you

know they think.

Great. Oh, I know they will. Thank you. Thank you everybody. I think think time to I don't know if we have time. Let's try to get our whiteboard topics and strategic planning.

I'm gonna make a suggestion. Oh, go right ahead. I curtail my time to Dan because I'm really interested in seeing that. Great.

Yeah. Let's jump to Dan. Thank you, Martin.

I have a good turn.

I vote Dan.

Okay. I vote for Dan too. Well

Yep. You're on. More fucking than me.

We don't want you to wear your

sport and me at this point.

You didn't need the sport coat.

He's here to sell, baby.

Sport code is for the citizens, not for you guys.