Environmental Advisory Board - Regular Meeting

Alright.

Today's meeting of the Environmental Advisory Board is called to order on July 16. Welcome everyone. The members of the Environmental Advisory Board were appointed by City Council and we serve voluntarily. The board's objective is to provide citizen insight to the City Council and staff on environmental activities within and affecting the City Of Clearwater. Agendas of today's meeting are on the wall to the entrance of the City Council Chambers. Please remember to turn off your cell phones and any other electronic devices. To ensure a complete record of the board's actions, we ask that you clearly state your name and spell it for the clerk. Thank you. And will members of the board and staff please introduce yourselves to my left. Glenna Wentworth. Jared Leone.

Kelly Dobbin.

Michael Rubino.

Cassie Cordova.

Thank you very much. All right, our first order of business is approval of our last meeting's minutes. Thank you very much Danielle for putting those together as always. I am looking for any changes or corrections? They looked good to me. Does anyone have any changes? Otherwise, I'm looking for a motion.

I'm listed as present. I was present in spirit only. I was not physically here.

Okay, okay, thank you for noting that. Okay, with that change, otherwise content was good in our minutes? All right. Looking for a motion to All move. Approve the minutes. Okay. Thank you, Glenna. A second?

I'll second.

All right. All in favor? Aye. Okay. None opposed. Motions are approved or minutes are approved. Let's move on to sentence to be heard on items not on the agenda. You have three minutes. Please come forward if you have anything to speak about that is not on our agenda today. Please come forward.

Mr. Chairman, members of the Board, I'm Bill Johnson, 2694 Redford Court West in Clearwater. And I wanted to start up by saying that I was expecting an update at this meeting on the implementation of last September's citywide vulnerability assessment. As indicated on the city's 09/13/2024 website. The vulnerability assessment was completed last September at a cost of $197,848 I have looked at the proposed draft budget for twenty five-twenty six and see proposed expenditures on North Beach for pump stations of 49,000,000 that's on page two ninety two, but only a million dollars for Alligator Creek, where we had the largest water rescue in Pinellas County ever at the Standard Apartments.

Plus, we had an estimated $4,800,000 damage to the city owned BayCare Stadium, also located on Alligator Creek Basin. So what vulnerability assessment projects are proposed for Alligator Creek in the 'twenty five-'twenty six budget? I couldn't see any other than a million dollars in the budget. And I'm wondering if the vulnerability assessment was not considered in the development of the proposed budget for next year. And that's my main question.

A further question is the $49,000,000 budget for North Beach Pumps. A is it a maintenance expense of an existing storm water infrastructure? Or is it the creation of new infrastructure that should have been installed with the Neighbor's hoods initial development. Clearly some use city storm water fees would be expected for modifying existing infrastructure. But a whole new system.

It is reasonable. Is it reasonable to commit $49,000,000 budget for North Beach pumps? When we don't know the needs of the rest of the city. That would come out of the vulnerability assessment. And the CRS update. Thank you for considering these comments.

Thank you very much, Bill. And I think you're asking those questions in the right forum. There's the right people here that could answer those questions. I will defer a lot of the vulnerability assessment to Cassie, and as far as the North Beach questions and pump stations, Marcus is here, he's going to give us a presentation, which I'm not sure will address those questions. Can you just will you be able to will those will your presentation address those questions and concerns that Bill brought up?

They will provide information.

Okay. All right. And then at that time, if we still have some more questions, can discuss at that time. Thank you very much. Anyone else, please come forward and, state your name, and, you'll have three minutes.

Hi, everyone. I'm Brian Beckman. I live in Clearwater. First, I wanted to thank Cassie again, the quarterly newsletter we sent out, a lot of great information in it, including things related to all the different savings for energy efficiency and solar. And that leads me into the email that I sent earlier today that you might not had a chance to read, but pulled q two numbers for solar for the city.

And there was a significant jump in the number of permits in the number of kilowatts associated with all those permits. Some notable ones were the gas the gas building. I saw two permits for those. That was interesting to see. And then, actually, nearby there is another commercial pit permit for the extra storage space, and so that's a sizable array as well that just got permitted.

So all of that now comes to well over 2,100 permits with around an estimated 24,000 kilowatts of nameplate capacity. The other thing that I wanted to highlight is that our SunCo Sierra group has been working on this summer with the help of our summer intern to produce a geo map of all the different solar across the county in our Ready for 100 cities. That includes Clearwater, of course. And so we'll be providing that information. We've shown some of it, I think, to Cassie in kind of a static form.

It'll be an interactive map for the different cities where you can zoom in. And one of the other next steps that we'll be taking with that is to zero in further on the low income areas of the city as defined by census tracks to help identify how that might correlate to one of the city's goals that they have for 2030 to have 1,000 residents with solar. So we should be able to better identify how that looks. And then finally, we'll also have on our Sierra Club website a dashboard for the county, again, for the Ready for 100 cities. So we're pretty much all the way there for Clearwater, Dunedin, and Largo.

We have more to do. We only maybe have half of it done for Saint Pete. Very manually intensive to pull that data and waiting waiting on them to provide the starting point for us on that, and then we have to do safety harbor. But it's already very indicative of the amount of solar capacity that there is in the county. And one of the ways that I would describe that is that the capacity across all of those solar installations in just those cities in the county equals about how much exists in one of the Duke solar energy fields.

So Duke routinely puts out a field that is a one square mile, about 74.9 megawatts, and that's what they get approved or don't actually have to get approval on it. So we now have that capacity in the county that correlates to a solar field. So imagine that. Imagine a big solar field, but it exists on roofs and parking lots here. Okay?

Thank you. Lovely.

Thank you very much, Brian, for keeping us on top of this. I think over the years, you know, as you've mentioned today that there was quite a surge from Q1 to Q2, I think from the time you started mapping to now is quite a sizable increase, like you said, to the point where it's now considered as the same size as a Duke Energy solar array, so that's that's great. Alright. Anyone else to speak about anything not on the agenda? Please come forward and state your name. You'll have three minutes. Thank you.

Good afternoon. Tim Hughes, Clearwater. And thank you all for serving. I know you volunteering your time and serving on a board is a lot of work, can be a lot of work. So thank you for your service.

And I wanna give kudos to Suncoast. I mean, the work they've done on solar and researching the solar has been terrific. I, for one, went solar at my home, eight kilowatts, and it's it really helps. It's reduced my electrical footprint and carbon footprint. And because of that, I think as a whole, all of this solar is reducing peak load at a critical time in each day.

So we're really helping Duke out. But why I really came to talk was to talk about Stephenson Creek. Stephenson Creek Watershed is a critical watershed. And I just happened to be on Pinellas County Trail, the bike the excuse me, the bridge over Stevenson Creek, and I got lucky. I got lucky by spotting a manatee right where the sign was.

If you see a manatee, tell us. So I took a video and I was like, wow, this is really good. So I contacted the Stephenson Creek Advisory Group and visited with them. And they were they liked it so much, they said, We're going to put this on our website. This is good stuff. So it is on the website, stephensoncreek.org, the manatee siding. And I would like to add that their request for boat control, speed control is a very reasonable request. And I know this is an old item. Did you happen to write a letter to the city council about that?

Yes. We have that. It's not on our agenda. It has to be added to our old business. Should be on our agenda. But we did draft a letter in support of an enhanced slow speed zone Fantastic. Are out there. So, yeah, we had a great presentation at our last meeting, and I have followed their Facebook page for a while, and they have a lot of photos of manatee I sightings out live nearby and am familiar with the area and I agree it's a very important ecosystem to protect. It is.

It's a valuable watershed and feeding the St. Joe's Sound. So anyway, thank you for your support on that. And I know they're concerned about the docks, the dock permit going forward. And having seen what I saw, I could see where the docks are very close to the swim path of the manatee. So I can see their concern. So I just wanted to share that.

I appreciate it. Thank you very much, Tim.

Thank you.

And I'm glad to hear that you were able to connect with that group and hopefully maybe can help with more spotting and more videos, so thanks. All right, anyone else to speak to any item not on the agenda? Please come forward. Anyone? All right. We'll move on to our next item then, new business 4.1, a presentation from public work staff on flooding on North Clearwater Beach. It's a very hot topic.

Good afternoon. I'm Sam Reilly, last name spelled r e I l l y, and I'm with the public works division. And today, I'm here to share observed flooding trends on Clearwater Beach, particularly from the buoy that's at the Clearwater Beach Station from NOAA. So where we've seen some frequent flooding and sometimes during rain, But oftentimes what I would like to present to you is that it is likely driven by tides overtopping the seawalls. So no one defines nuisance flooding as water in streets or yards at about 2.73 feet NAVD 88 or roughly a foot above your daily high tide.

So in January 2024 when I first started working at the City of Clearwater, I observed firsthand on Bruce Avenue standing water that had lasted for days and passing trucks that were going by that created a wake that was very noticeable in reaching private property and also splashed myself and the resident. We're here today to better understand the root causes of these flooding events. No policy is being presented, but we welcome your input based on the data. So now I just have to move through this presentation. Okay.

So on your screen, you'll see the top 10 highest water levels that I that this is from the NOAA site at the Clearwater Beach Station. So you're gonna see here, like, all these ones that are highlighted yellow, this is in the past nine years. We've seen tidal events that make the list. So three of which are since 2023. So, you know, obviously, have hurricane Helene, is 7.62, our highest.

And that would be, as we know, beyond the nuisance flood. So when they when NOAA has extreme water levels, there's like three tiers. So the first one is a foot above your daily high tides, so that is where they're going to say it's going to trigger. The type of nuisance flooding that I saw out there in January, It wasn't taking in the homes, it wasn't getting to the 1st Floor necessarily, but it did disrupt their way of life. Many of these residents couldn't leave their house for days.

One of the residents showed me that they had just purchased frame boots. That was how they were checking their mail and getting around until the tide receded. And so on here, so we have Adalia which we all know is pretty high, but there's this December East Coast storm that really stood out to me, 4.38. So this was the month before I started. So I had heard about this storm from the residents when I was out there in January, And this was in the winter.

You don't expect necessarily a king tide or a storm in the winter, but you do get them here mostly. But you're going to see here the data, the flood days per year. So this is from 1996 to 2025. So you see here in 2024, so they count the flood days where it's at one foot over, where you're going to begin that nuisance flooding and then obviously the other, the tiers above it. So you see from 2012, right, so we had there.

So the reason I'm bringing up 2012 is because that's the data that I pulled precipitation to. So I found precipitation data going back to 2012. We had a tropical storm called Debbie. We received quite a bit of rainfall. And so we've had incidents that look like that three times since 2012, just precipitation events. But we have a lot more going on at North Beach. It seems like it's flooding all the time. Well, what I think is the reason for that is that these are tidal floods. So we have tidal overtopping events over 40 times compared to the three precipitation events we've seen. So here we go.

So I broke it down by year going back to 2023. So in 2023, the flood days by the month, we see August, we have two December, we have two. And then so here are these tides that were here. So this was Hurricane Adalia. So August 29 and August 30, it overlapped and went into the ninth.

We recorded water levels of 3.22 feet and 4.81 feet. So 3.22 feet, remember now, exceeds that 2.78 that that we were discussing before. So that triggered triggered an event generated generated complaints. So then we go to December 2023, which is the incident that the December East Coast storm. There were there was media on this. There was Tampa Bay Times that did did some interviews out there on the beach. Excuse this. This was I actually incorrect. I meant to change that. The tornado actually didn't occur then. That was before. So here we go in 2024. So we have two days in January. That's when I started at Clearwater. We had one day in April.

We had two days August, two days September, two days November. Now this was a busy, busy year for for extreme flood levels. The busiest I think we've we've ever had according to the data. So let's go through that. So January, you see here now keep in mind, this is also from a gauge. It's not necessarily on the other side of the beach. So you're you're gonna get a little different tidal effects, you know, inside the harbor than you are out there on the Gulf Side. But you you can really see what's what's going on here. So you have this high tide at on the weekend I was out there on January 9. January 10, we had 3.2 feet and 2.9 feet.

On April 11, we recorded water levels of 3.7. So again, you know, we're seeing these. These are the overtopping events that are taking quite a bit a bit to drain out because we rely on the gravity system. So we can't drain the island until it's down all the way or down past the inlet. To get around this, you would need to install a pump station to help you reduce the amount of time you're going to see those very low lying basins at the north part of the island, which was where I was at, which really sees it the worst.

So then we have August here, we have Tropical Storm Debbie again, we had another tropical storm called Debbie last year if you remember. So we had recorded of 3.11 and 3.41 and then we have Helene, now you can see Helene up there in that major flooding, but not beyond the

minor.

That minor flooding is the flooding that, you know, you you can't leave the house. The you you need someone, the fire department to come. You need an ambulance. They might have a hard time getting there unless they have a high water vehicle. And so November 2024, we did record one of 3.17. And then this was a video that I had attached to it that I got. Excuse me. Oh, wait. Oh, yeah. Maybe it wasn't a video. I had the screenshot. So I'm just trying to zoom in on this. Give me

a minute.

Shoot. Please. So all right. So the projected days of these flooding events are by 2015. So this is what was on the Tampa Bay Times article in response to these the East December storm January timeframe.

They had posted or they had presented that these were the high tide flood days predicted at that in 2050. So it was '75. Meanwhile, you're like looking at 2020, 2030. So I just thought that was interesting, the high tide flood days predicted. And so that's really the end of my presentation. I really just wanted to present some tie data and tie it to my experience since working at Clearwater and out there. I've seen a lot of rain events. The compliance and, you know, when we're all hands on deck responding and helping residents out was tied to these events that I

found unknown.

Do you have any questions?

Thank you very much for the presentation and thank you for working on this. I'll open up the questions to anyone on the board, if anyone has any questions. Or, I'm sorry. Yeah.

So you mentioned the so I'm curious about what the plan is. I don't know if you're going to speak to that. You talked about pumping stations.

Thank you. Go ahead.

Yeah, so you talked about pumping stations, installing pumping stations, and I understand that that is part of the, you know, that's a plan that's been submitted, I thought. I always thought pumping stations were for sewage, is it?

Well, that is how you would always use that. You usually typically need those all the time. For the pumping stations for storm water, they're not necessarily that common, but you're seeing them all throughout coastal communities. You're seeing these projects move forward, especially in South Florida. So actually the consultant that we brought on had previous experience getting ahead of this down in South Florida where their tides are a little bit different than ours.

If they had a five foot tide, they'd all be underwater. But we can handle a five foot tide in some areas of the city here, but certainly that is the elevation that we're proposing. We're not proposing but looking at in here as to what our existing code has for our seawall elevation. You can see this oops, excuse me. So right.

So when the tide comes up to our lowest inlet elevation, 1.54, you're going to start triggering that, Okay, I might have where is the tide going here? Are we going down or up? If we're going up, you're going to have a little bit of a harder time leaving the house if anyone were you living near that inlet. And so then you have the ten year. The ten year flood is that elevation is actually the precipitation event as we discussed before.

Remember, it's just rain, you're just getting this volume of water and you have to assume then that you'll just be able to release it. But remember that when the tide is up, we can't let it out so it becomes a bathtub. So we're just like retaining this water until the tide goes down. The only way to alleviate that is to add the pump. So and when we're talking about keeping the flood elevation down, it is not necessarily we're talking about that like nuisance flooding when streets are flooded.

Right? So whether homes are going to raise their first floor or not because that's where the problem comes. And you see elevation 5.12 on there, the seawall. And then typically sometimes you'll have a home that their finished floor is lower than that and your view is blocked when you're looking at the wall. So there are challenges on on this, but I think that really just getting an understanding of what is the root cause of the flooding. You know, many people probably think it's just rain. They see a big heavy rain day and they're like, well, that's why it's flooding. But a when you have an overtopping event, even the smallest rain event can look like an enormous storm. But it what it really is, it's just the water seeking its own level.

So and it's so these are mostly tidal events except for except for storms?

Yes. Yes. Those events I showed you were when the tide was high and it just, you know, started covering the island to that elevation.

And what are you calling are you calling that a nuisance event or that's primarily a nuisance event, I mean that's not flooding people's homes usually.

That particular thing, yes, would be a nuisance event. Okay. So you know when you have the hurricane and you know those items, I know when you saw it up a little higher, right, then you're going to start seeing that flooding reach the homes.

Right. And so, I mean, it's apparent that that's happening more frequently and it will continue to happen more frequently. Is that your projection? Well,

the projections show that it's, you know, going to happen more frequently. Like there's like a low projection, there's a high projection. But we are seeing it happen more frequently. I don't know if Marcus wanted to answer a question for you all.

Yeah. So I mean, I think we're probably interested in remediation, what's the plan, like I'm interested too in, you know, in the pumps, we talking about a whole new infrastructure?

Well, you know, yes, we are. And I would say that there's quite an opportunity here anyway. You're seeing the tides coming on, this is happening everywhere. But you have now an opportunity because we know more since when it was first, you know, designed and installed about water quality and things of that nature. So that's also a huge opportunity on this project is to install all of these different treatment trains and things like that and then also to applying for funding and learning about these mechanisms that we can deliver these projects.

And we are using this experience to copy paste if you will across the city, you know, with areas like in Bayshore Boulevard which also experiences flooding from high tide events, just high. But even without the rain, they're experiencing flooding. So we're really learning a ton on this. But this was just a key insight and that's what I thought would be the proper thing to show you.

Any other questions on the board?

If I can tie a couple of pieces with So some of the a lot of the data that Sam was just showing you, that's the tie to across the board. So that's not impacting just North Beach. That's items we have to consider. So she brought up Bayshore Drive and we talked vulnerability assessment. That's one of those first projects. It had the highest, what they referred to in the vulnerability assessment. Correct. It's not ROI. I always use that term. I forget the term that they referred to.

But it was

basically the best economic benefit. Mhmm. And they determined that off of trips impacted and other issues. So that was one of the highest. So we have put that one into our system. We're trying to do that. We're trying to actively go after a number of grants that are out there. So it's not just North Beach that we're paying attention to. North Beach was the most apparent because they had some of the the lower areas. But when those tides come up, it's impacting everything.

It's coming you know, into Stevenson Creek. It's coming. So all of that when you start raising that outfall, it slows how much all of our waterways can flow water. So, know, also from a budgetary standpoint, the other piece is you won't necessarily see all of what we're doing within specific projects. So we do ban areas per the different basins that are out there.

So we have coastal basins, we have Stephenson Creek, we have Alligator, we have Allen Creek. Within that you don't necessarily see all the projects that we're doing. So we are doing projects that are within the different basins. Sam and her team are doing a lot of that day to day activities out there. We've done stuff like we're buying some new innovative equipment.

So that purchase order just went out on the first piece and we're getting ready to put one out on some others that will help us get in, help clear vegetation, help do some of the dredge maintenance that we need to get in to do in some of these areas to restore capacity. So we're looking citywide. It's just how we're betting them. North Beach, is just ahead of some of the other efforts that are out there. We anticipate it will kind of balloon out as we're gaining knowledge and understanding from the North Beach.

And Sam could probably relay a little bit. They've done a lot with modeling. So I don't know if you want to touch to some of the challenges, low lying areas and what you've seen.

Yeah. And just briefly, this would be separate from the multiple pump station project that you're already working on that lift stations for the sanitary sewer, then this would be a separate project altogether that would need separate funding and

Correct. So the North Beach projects when they're referred to that, that's the storm water side. Public utilities is doing their own to elevate some of their lift stations that are out there, but the pump stations that we're putting in are part of the storm water system. We want to put those in because that provides that immediate relief. So we've installed tidal valves out there.

So that stops as those tides are coming up from back flowing into the pipes, so it holds the, the water back. Once it over tops the seawall, then, you know, it's it's flooding the whole area, but that's at least holding some of that back. But if it's holding it back, water from rain events can't flow out. So we need to be able to get that water out. So that's where those pumps come in. So putting those pumps in first allow us to provide some relief to the residents from all of the rain events when those tides are up. Because the tides are up now, that's more of where we're seeing that flooding.

Okay. And Sam, in some of your research you probably saw there's pump stations that people are putting solar on or other alternative energy to make sure that they're still functioning in these rain events or is that I thought I've seen that in some research I've done

on this. Yeah. Well, I haven't performed solar necessarily an analysis on that. I'm not sure on whether the pump can handle or if the solar can provide the power we need. But we do have a generator that is going to be put in there. And also, we're also looking at possibly having the gas.

Yeah. Guess just if it floods, it's going to flood the generator and the generator is not going

to work. Well, the generator is raised. Sorry. Should have disclosed that. Yeah. The generator will be raised. Okay. So it will have to.

Will the whole lift station be raised? Largo has got three lift stations that they're raising. They're in high vulnerable highly vulnerable areas and they're lifting theirs. They're rebuilding them and lifting them like three a quarter feet. And then they're also putting a 10 foot concrete wall around them and a top on them and solar panels. That

will So how large would these stations be then? Yeah. Tall and with good footprint of them.

The electrical components will be raised now. Believe it or not, like the actual pump station itself is underground. It's a submersible pump station. Oh, it's underground. Yeah. Yeah. It's the electrical components and generator that will be raised. And as we're working through those details now for these sites that I'm specifically speaking of, we're looking at an area that is 150 feet, 200 feet deep, but it's 60 foot wide right of way, so it'll be in that footprint. We're going to make it beautiful. And yeah, so And

I was also curious, and I'm sorry if I if these are if I'm cutting on anybody's questions or anything. Why are there so many more brain days? Did you were you or flooding days, were you able to figure that out from the modeling and looking at all of these? Because from the information you provided, there was one that corresponded to Hurricane Elena, makes sense. Last year makes sense, there's a bunch of storms that we had. But within there, it seemed like more and more recently there's more and more flooding out there. Is that a product of the not just the infrastructure, but, nature as well or what? Sea level rise. It's weather.

Yeah, it's just weather. I mean, try not to necessarily make too many inferences from the data, but I do see the data and I do know that certain areas in the beach are have lower access opportunities for water to get in than other ones, so it may take a little bit longer for certain areas to flood. So based on these are projections that NOAA has for the

intermediate Sea level rise, but if we also considered the island sinking and that some of it there's been that's been reported that throughout the East Coast that part of our coastal areas are not just experiencing sea level rise, but also the ground is lowering, especially in Miami and South Florida, there was a So,

we're actually really fortunate in Clearwater. We actually get a natural replenishment, coming into our beach. So we're like just the way that, the geography works. We get replenishment into our natural replenishment into our beaches. We haven't necessarily looked at whether things are dropping. We have elevations. Sam's been out, had the survey teams out there. They've, surveyed a lot of our walls. So we know what the elevations are currently, but we haven't gone back to see if it's actually dropping or not.

Okay. Just a thought, sorry.

I have a question because I'm not sure that I'm fully getting what you're saying, but if you go down to Clearwater Beach, a lot of the landscaping of the shoreline has changed. A lot of the dunes are gone. There's a lot of things that happened from the hurricanes. Do you think that has any impact on the number, like the effects that we're seeing, or is there something that we can do to help mitigate the damages that we're seeing? I was also wondering if there's any projects being discussed with homeowners of things that they can do to help maybe have their landscaping take in more water or do more to help?

That's definitely an interesting concept. And I will say that we're not there yet, but we do there are of course property private property is the lion's share of the square footage on North Beach. We have our roads and we have our access to the terminals or we have our pipes. So, yeah, there is we don't have anything specifically, but I don't I wouldn't say that that's not something we could think about.

Yeah, think you bring up a good point, Kelly.

Native plants would be great.

Yeah, the in dense stem and seagrass help.

The county is working on the renourishment, part of their challenges is working with the Army Corps, they have to get all of the individual homeowners to agree to it, has been very challenging, So I believe they did just approve

I think was $190,000,000

to be able to just go ahead and move forward.

But that's from Sand Key South? That's not gonna be part of Clearwater?

I haven't seen what their full location will be. Again, we get some natural renourishment. So I think within the county's perspective, if they really look at it, they're probably seeing we're a little bit more resilient. But we definitely want to engage them cause those dunes were critical during the storms. On the this is just an example of what a pump station and lift would look like out there. All of this portion is actually underground, so you wouldn't be seeing the pumps, the filtration tank and all of that. It's just the generator and the electrical that would elevated.

Interesting, is that, and that's one pump station that we're looking at there, that's the design So, of

and this is just a sample, because they hadn't been designed yet, that was just approved from council this last Thursday.

What is the timeline on the project, the whole project in North Beach?

Is there So it's several multi year, multi phase. I don't want to get too far in front of we're still in the process of briefing the council members on all that.

But you have another budget for $20.26, 42,000,000 for this

starts to be the overall project. We won't expend that in one year that seeds the project so that we can start with the pumps.

First off, thank you guys for all you do. Really appreciate that. Obviously, it's a big problem and it's only getting worse as you have shown the projections. If I may ask a couple of questions, just out of curiosity. So if this if the water goes above the seawall, these pumps are not preventing flooding in these homes. This is more of it might help the water recede faster, faster, but the damage will already be

done, right? Correct.

What's it seems like as the sea levels are rising, right, that we're just going to have more issues that not to say that this isn't going to be a beneficial project, but that's going to overwhelm the current codes and seawalls. How many of the homes actually have the are up to code on the seawall? That's the other thing. I saw it's a code, but that doesn't necessarily mean that everybody's up to code currently.

Correct.

You want to answer

that? So homes and seawalls have been built over time. So our code ordinance currently says 5.12. There's not much that's built to 5.12. Most of it's below.

It gets to be very complex and actually with the way the state laws are, we have to be careful that we don't go contrary to what the county is doing because the county will supersede our code ordinances. So Sam's actually heading that one too. We have released a work order where we were starting some of it. We've received a technical memo in kind of outlining some of the different legislative, issues, the challenges that are out there. But it gets very complex legally because if you raise one seawall, you can flood your adjacent properties.

So how it's done is got to be very careful so that we're not doing adverse impacts to other folks. Got it. We are looking at a couple of locations that we know that we've got low. Sam's probably got them all memorized at this point, but like Laurel is a fairly low spot. Somerset is a fairly low spot for us. So we're probably going to look to see if we can at least get them up another foot or something to help, but we have to monitor that against adjacent properties.

Yeah. And a foot is I mean, might sound like just one and it's not that much. It's very significant. When I was out there with one of my colleagues during a storm where the tide was up a little bit, but it was we were next to one wall that was a foot higher and we were standing on the lower one, but you could just totally see the difference. And the other property was all good. Had no issue the next day, but the next property was probably quite a little bit flooded. But the foot does make

a difference. Any other questions?

Yeah, I have

a couple of questions actually. In your sea level rise document there, mostly have about eight different potential models for lines. When you're designing this pump system No, they're actually the linear,

the graph. This one?

Yes. So this one, I saw a bunch of different potential sea level projections there. When you guys are designing your pump stations, at which we're seeing an increase of frequency, but also potentially, depending on projection, a much higher level of sea level rise. When we are designing these pump stations, at what level are you guys potentially predicting that? Because I'm looking at, you know, the NOAA high 2017, we're topping our five foot, current code at about twenty seventy five, which I mean, I'm I'm not expecting these pumps to fifty years. Hope to, but what are we projecting for?

So it's really irrelevant unless we get this this seawalls raised because if it over tops the the seawalls, it's not going to matter. Sam can speak to the modeling. She's been meeting with the engineers a lot more, but I think they're basically assuming we're at whatever height seawall that we can have and then it over tops, it's just a recovery effort. That point, things are going to flood.

And you sorry, go ahead.

Well, I do have something to add to that because, you know, it's a good question and it me to remind myself that this pump station project is really a near term solution to help us get through the next, you know, decade, two decades, right? And so then but in the meantime as we do this, we now entered a long term adaptation phase. We're now like that's where you put the policy framework in place. And those items that engage the private property owners that have that because when it comes to the seawalls, you're really only as strong as your weakest link in that basin. So your question as to the pump stations and over time, right, with the height of the seawalls, that's a good question.

So we have over time when the tide is rising, granted let's say our seawall is low right now, our pump is going to be moving the water from the bottom of that inlet or the bottom of that well up. So when you add two more feet to that, that requires bigger pump. So you'll see that over time, I would imagine. In the long term adaptation, you might see pump station more pump stations, not just on North Beach, throughout Clearwater.

Well, with Helene, I mean, was seven, eight feet. I know on Honeymoon Island, I understand they had nine foot storm surge. One of the rangers told me that. So, I mean, no matter how high a sea wall is going to be, it's going to be breached by or it has a possibility of being breached by a storm.

Of course.

I think they look for like more of a maintenance forces like an outlier event.

So Yeah. Hopefully At

some point, an outlier event is, you know, sometimes I think about it this way like insurance can be a construction project for an outlier event. Maybe that's why imagine that's why it's there. But, you know, for our purposes or at least how I see the purposes of this is getting through that nuisance flooding producing through the wet season and I believe a lot of this most of that flooding is calculated.

Well, you brought up adaptation and I'm curious, I was not familiar but the city was part of an adaptation study in 2017. I don't know if you guys are familiar with that. It was done by the Columbia Law School. And one of the things they said was to use FEMA money to purchase these flood prone properties. That was one of their solutions.

There's a whole list, it was a 60 page document. I can send it to you guys if you're not familiar with it, but it was a vulnerability assessment and adaptation study that was done 2016 and 2017, and some of what they said was, you know, you're building on a barrier island, you're not supposed to do that. So the best thing to do is to buy back those properties and use FEMA money after storms to do that. I'm curious how many total homes are we looking at on North Beach as part of this project? It's 400 I something homes or

think it's six twenty five if I remember

How many are the flood prone properties of the six twenty something? 30? 60? Oh, it's? 75?

Well, all depends on to what level you're talking. So the area is kind of a natural bowl out there. So you get it's probably two thirds of it, but it's all what height that comes up to starts to impact the areas that are out there.

But it's like 600 some homes and two thirds of that are flooded.

So Crown. I mean, you look at like Helene, it impacted all of them for the most part out there. So But

like the summer day flooding, you know, how many homes are we looking at when it's your high tide flooding time?

And it varies, I guess, I'm not trying to be vague, but it varies a lot based on what is coming and then how elevated are some of those homes out there. So every home is a little bit different. So that's part of the challenge when you get into the design is your roads really are a part of your storm water conveyance system. So you want to move water. Well, we actually have some homes that it slopes down to their home from the street.

So we're not able to put curbs in because if we do overheat is flood those homes. So there's a lot of just different challenges. So it varies by the home. It varies by the storm type that are out there. You probably got a third of them that are impacted a lot more frequently. That's part of that whole area. And then it just depends on from there, it kind of builds out.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah, thank you. I was just curious a little bit more about how many actual impacted properties were

I guess you could go by what buildings are a code. I mean, I don't know, code now requires, you know, an elevated structure of assets.

If they're rebuilding over 50%, so there's threshold Yeah,

I know that, yeah.

Right, that they have to trigger. So there's a bunch of homes that are being

Built now, yeah.

Built and elevated out there. I'd have to get with planning. I'm not sure what the total number of those are. But if you've been out to North Beach anytime recently, there's a lot of homes that are under construction or repair out there.

It sounds like a lot of the like if you had the ideal world here, a lot of your limitations are challenged by policy. Is that fair and accurate to state? This isn't like a city council issue where we write a letter and help out on that regard. It sounds more

So I mean different pieces. So from the vulnerability study to the earlier question, there's a number of projects that could be different people's viewpoints on what are some of those priorities. We're kind of looking across the city. We're starting to pay a lot more attention to the fact that we're having that understanding. Again, it's impact when the C level comes up it's impacting all over.

So what we have to do is we're having to look at update models, look at those low lying areas. There are some that we're interested in. Can we purchase the repetitive loss structures that are out there. So those are things that we're considering also. Just there's a number of challenges as we go through all of those pieces and how we fund them.

That's where we're trying to get after grants and I'll give a shout out to the team. They've been cranking through a lot of them. So hazard mitigation grant program has got a couple $100,000,000. It was coming from Helena and Milton. They've been actively pushing through a whole bunch in hopes that we can get some of that grant money to help out with a number of projects.

That's amazing.

A There's

a money part of it too, obviously.

Yes. I mean, there's a continuing it There's a continuing There's

The intensity and the durations do seem to be evolving, so we're getting more intense storms that are occurring, so that rapid infusion of all that storm water does create different challenges because we just don't have time to push it out or let it percolate into the ground quite as quickly.

And that's where the storm water upgrades actually provide massive benefit.

Correct. And the challenges we get through, there's so many different variables as you're going in there. Some of it, do you want to try to retain the water? Do you want to detain the water? Do you want to move the water through? Each situation may be just a little bit different. But systems that were built thirty, forty, fifty years ago were built with different considerations and we're seeing some of those systems getting impacted a lot more. And it just gets challenging with, okay, some of these may not be simple solutions.

Has the problem of infiltration, is that still a big issue or has that been identified where a lot of the problems have been?

It is. And some of the modeling that Sam and them have been right. So North Beach is really helpful for us because what we're doing, we're able to extrapolate a lot of this into, other areas. The standard modeling that you might go through for a ten or a twenty year storm, what we saw is we're getting hit with back to back stuff, not just the hurricanes, but we're getting hit with those back to back high intensity rains. Well, it's a different scenario when you run that the ground saturated, you can't get that infiltration. Now all of a sudden, that second storm, you've got a lot more water that's got to get collected and moved somewhere. Yeah.

Something on that is the flood stages for those two back to back, the ten years. On the ten year, you know, the one in ten chance, the one hundred year is the one percent chance this year of a storm of that occurring. But the flood stage, the back to back ten years, saturated ground is like the one hundred year flood stage. So it is very, very impactful that this type of modeling that we are doing on the beach. I want to add one more thing with the pump stations, that the pump stations are not just like this one off pump station. Are they're copy paste. We have two standard designs that that is our intent is to do have these two things so we can keep maintenance consistent, we know what we're looking at throughout the city. So just copy paste and plop them down and then, you know, do like site specific adjustments.

A last question about the price of a I'm sorry. Sorry. The cost of the pumping station that you're looking at the design right now, the underground one, is running what, 2,000,000, 1,500,000?

So because we don't have the final design figures, it's probably something in that once they finally refine it, once we get what the pump sizes are, what we get the full vault sizes, we'll be able to put a harder number on those, but they're probably in the 1,000,000 to $2,000,000 range.

Any other questions from the Board? Real quick, sorry.

Yeah. Boarding. Sounds like there's going to be you're looking to target nuisance flooding and also rainfall events. I know there's are there any issues with NPDES permitting with discharging storm water with the pump station? Because I know certain systems, like said, you need to retain it or detain it or because this is more tidally impacted, are we able to just put it right back out?

You want to No, talk to

we won't be putting it right back out. We're to be putting it back out cleaner than we found it, so.

So you'd mentioned water quality and quantity. Would this Swift Mud would be involved in this project or would there be money from them to

Well, the Army Corps is driving some of that. So, know, what Sam and them have been able to do to kind of help with the immediate relief is we have existing permits for outfalls with certain capacity. So we're looking to design the pump stations in a way that we're pushing water out according to those current permitted. USACE has got a tremendous backlog right now. So, we're that could likely take us two years to get the final but then have these size so that we can increase to the higher flows as we go and you know, some of the goal is we're learning this to be able to basically kind of copy and paste elsewhere.

Bayshore Drive, is another one that just is that those title elevations are coming up. We've recognized, we've got challenges out there. In the short term, we may have to drop a pump station out there until we can elevate the road just to provide some relief. So we're looking at some of these low lying areas.

Okay. Just had a couple other things before I open up to questions from the public. One of the things also that I that stuck with me from the adaption vulnerability stuff previously was they noted putting up signage of where flooding levels would be. I know when I used to travel through Hillsborough County, they had those signs in some areas. And I remember I had asked about this many, many, many, many years ago on EAB, but now that we're discussing this again, is that something that has been under consideration just saying when it floods, the water will come to this point and assign that has and says that and shows that level to show the kind of seriousness of flooding?

We've talked about some of those, how you do that different storms, what's it going to look like, as information comes in, you know, Sam had mentioned the NAFTA 88 data. Stuff will come in on different data. So you have to kind of translate how we display that. You know, is it an electronic capability? Is it a hard sign? So we started talking about them. Candidly, we're on our heels from the last two hurricanes. So some of these we would love to get to. We just haven't gotten that far.

But you're familiar with like the signs that I'm talking about, like Hillsborough, yeah, are kind of intense because you look up and you see where that's where the water will come. So it's well above where you're standing as a person. Anyway, also the other the other thing I was gonna ask and it's kind of, dovetailing on what you said, Mike. What can we do to support you? It sounds like sea level or sea wall overtopping is a problem. I don't know if there's anything that we can do or hear more about that as an issue moving forward or whatever there is that we can do, like you said about individual projects as those kind of are seated out.

Yeah, do we need to start contacting our representatives, you know, and state legislators or state representatives to, you know, try to move any needles here?

So, mean, part of it, need a little time so we can try to get that But, caught I think helping educate folks is probably the first key. The ordinance is very complex on that C level and what that elevation would be. So if the EAB wanted to provide counsel some thoughts on that, that's fine. We're going to be going through a process over the next couple of years. There will be a lot of conversations going on. So hearing your thoughts are one more you know, good resource for us to be considering as we're moving through that process.

Yeah, certainly I want to make sure that it's known that we if there's anything the board can do to support getting these projects accomplished and determining which projects to kind of elevate, I think And that's a

if there's ones from the vulnerability assessment that you all said, hey, these seem really important to us, you know, we'd definitely be interested to hear what some of those might be.

Certainly. Thank you very much, Marcus. Thank you very much, Sam. All right, I'm going to open this up. If there's any questions from anyone from the audience, please step forward and you may have to I may have to consult you guys some more. Thank you. Please come forward and state your name. Daniel.

I'm still Bill Jones, and I was

That's good.

Really pleased to see this presentation because it illustrated a lot of information and answered some questions. And I think that the staff is correct in that we need to get more information out to the public. The one thing that was shown was, I think it said 85 times a month is a flood advance. And I don't that seems like that's more than two high tides every day. So, that was a question that I had.

And then the other question just is, when will we have the list of the vulnerability study projects so we can kind of decide which is I understand doing North Beach first, but how many other projects are coming behind it? I know in 2014, a quarter a master plan was developed for Alligator Creek. I don't think all those recommended projects were implemented. It would be nice to know some of the status behind why they weren't implemented. So, thank you.

Thank you, Bill. You had asked Sam, can you answer the question that he had asked about? It was 85 times a month flooding,

is that what

That was based on data that we pulled and you know how statistics are, right? But that was when the tide was over the lowest inlets on the island. Not necessarily flooding, that's when flooding would trigger. And so sometimes, the tide isn't necessarily always like that predictable twice a day when you're in tidal locked events and but it's just related to the elevation at the inlet.

So

that would be the lowest point in the basin.

Blue sky flooding. Yeah. We had put tidal valves in to help deal with those issues. So that the tidal valves helped with a bunch of that blue sky flooding.

So it's not times

So our lowest inlet out there was at the 1.52, I think it was. So is those tides come above that 1.52? What you see is if we didn't have those tidal valves, you would see water starting to come out of that street inlet. So the the number of times they're saying is you would see that water flowing back into the street. The system can't drain at that point because it's the pipes are inundated. So the pipes are full and it's pushing it up through those low inlets.

Elevations from the data just on a very, very I guess minimal just very minimal like averaging and that I did that, that was the number that I came with. Because sometimes your tide, it comes up and then it goes down, but it's crossed that twice in that process, that elevation. So that's where that number came from. Actually based on the feedback from this meeting, I might remove that if it's confusing. So thank you.

Okay. Thank you, Sam. And then the list of vulnerability assessment projects, that's kind of in your court, Cassie?

Yeah. I'm going to talk about vulnerability assessment in my director's report. Okay. But I just want to clarify there we didn't necessarily have a list of projects from the vulnerability assessment as much as we did scenarios. So I just want to clarify that it's not the vulnerability assessment didn't equate to here's, you know, your top 50 projects. It was a digital twin that we could run scenarios. And those scenarios were picked based on staff input on what we thought, you know, we would be interested in, but they're not, the vulnerability assessment didn't give us a list of projects.

Okay. All right, very well.

Good afternoon. I'm Kathleen Beckman, resident of Clearwater. Just wanna take a minute and say thank you, Jared, for all your leadership and and collaboration on the environmental advisory board. I appreciate it. This board has made phenomenal impact in the city.

I had just a couple of questions. You had asked, you know, what could the EAV do to help the situation? And I would suggest and there are two tiny little things, but tiny little things can add up. I think if you focus on helping to develop an educational campaign for residents of the city about planting Florida native landscaping, I know especially on low lying areas, North Beach would be top of the line. The other thing is, you know, I I would ask that you request a presentation by a city attorney about the new preemption law about artificial turf.

And so now when I was sitting on the council, I was not in favor of allowing residential artificial turf. We need to have as much permeable surface as we can, and artificial turf not only is not as permeable as natural, but it increases the heat tremendously, which leads to all other kind of things. But get a maybe get a presentation because I'm not positive about all the nuance with that legislation, like, can a city not disallow it, but can we put up parameters? And so maybe it can only be in a backyard or only a certain percentage or whatever it is, but I'd like to know what freedom a city might have about that. And then you could educate residents too about keeping those storm drains clean, adopt a storm drain, whatever, educate on that.

And then the other thing that I had continuously asked about was any private lift stations that we have throughout the city. Where are those? Can we incentive we need to know where they are. Are they working? Can we incentivize people to get them working? And, you know, is is that even a good thing or not? I mean, it was just something that I wanted to know. The other thing we could look at is incentivizing people to plant native landscaping in low lying areas especially. So, you know, those are little things that maybe we could do. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Kathleen. And I think you bring up a really good point about the private lift stations, and I would also contend that private pawns that aren't properly maintained are also a problem, and knowing where those problematic pawns are would be important too. So I am curious, because you did bring up that, do we know where private lift stations are, Marcus? Is that something that you are familiar with? Where are those sorry, wearing out the

Well, sanitary Are you referring to the sanitary ones or the storm ones? Because there's could be two different scenarios.

Either ones.

So I think we've got a number of them recorded in our GIS whether we have all of them. You know, we would like to hope we do, but we do find sometimes things were built that we didn't necessarily know about.

Yeah. And then in terms of ensuring that those are functioning properly, is there a process that the city's

So Jeremy may know more on the public utilities side from a private for a storm water. It's not something we mean, it's their property, so we're not out actually inspecting theirs. So I know there were some issues at a location or two that, you know, in the last storms. That location, we know they've since fixed there. They replaced all their pumps and have it on an automated system. So I think they kind of learned from the the storms, but we don't check everybody's private one.

Okay. Just real quick. Yeah. Jeremy Brown, deputy city engineer. Yeah. Public utilities, they have a whole team of maintenance personnel, and that's what they do every day as they go out.

I think they have they have

probably 80 of them or something like that throughout, and so they're pulling the pumps, they're cleaning them, making sure they're spraying it all down.

Those are the public pumps.

So those are the sanitary sewer

ones. Yeah.

For And

then before I switched over to public works, we started a project to go look for all the private ones to make sure they knew where they were.

Okay. Oh, that's great. Thank you. And then in terms of private pawns and after these last storms, has there been any outreach to the owners of some of those to maintain them or how is that working?

So, Jeremy probably spends a good chunk of his day, so I can let you We fill are starting to, identify a number of doses we're finding them that we have concerns with. And he gets to draft a whole bunch of letters

as well.

Yes. So it's been fun. It's actually a lot more complicated than it thinks. A lot of times we find what's labeled as a private on our system. You really have to get into the plats that they prepared back in the as far back as the nineteen twenties. There's easements on there. You have to look at the dedication, whether it was dedicated to the public or not. And all of those things have a legal significance. And so we've been working with our assistant city attorney very closely. Just met with him yesterday actually, to talk about a a particular situation.

And so he's helped us draft up sort of a I'll call it a template, if you will. And it's funny. I was actually just typing one up back there while I was while I was listening to this. Because these these storm events, last couple of hurricanes, they really shone a light, obviously, on all of these. And so everybody's gotten, you know, rightfully so concerned about what's gonna happen, unfortunately. And so that's what we've been doing is trying to help identify which ones, you know, we can we can support with our city resources. And unfortunately, are some that we don't have a legal basis to enter that property to take care of, but we are working through those. Yes.

Okay. Speaking of attorneys and incentivizations, sorry, can't get my mind off this whole Seawall issue. Is there have you guys thought about potentiality or spoken to it to any of the attorneys about incentivizing people to get up to code regarding the Seawall? It just seems like if we don't address the Seawall issue, everything else is kind of a moot point.

So that will get very complex as we're going through. So we did get a briefing from the county, and the county attorneys were doing some reviews from from their standpoint. This is gonna be a complex challenge which is why we don't wanna get too far in front of the PCED. I think we are all seeing the same issue that we've got to figure out how to get after this. But it's it's not just us.

We have to make sure we're aligned with the county. And I guess as we get into a whole bunch of these topics, would throw that out too. So whether it's the private lakes, the private lift stations, we're Clearwater is not special from any of that standpoint. If you talk with any of the other counties, cities out there, They're all struggling with the same thing. I think. As we're seeing these more intense storms and higher. Title elevations everyone's now kind of grappling with the same challenges. So I talked to my counterparts and they're all working through the same things that we're working through, so.

I just want to say thank you as being from Morningside Meadows, you know, I don't know if you're cutting your teeth on you've been cutting your teeth on our two private ponds, storm water ponds, but appreciate the work on the infrastructure there and making that a priority. We had flooding for the first time ever and it was preventable. So, but now we've got these private residents that even as the HOA president that I am, we have limited abilities. I got to say though, the letters that you did send to the folks you did send them to, I think has helped. People are doing a little bit better about the vegetation that's growing out into their portions of the lake, but we need a letter like that for everybody on that lake, and I don't know if that's what you did.

We sent one to everybody that surrounds that lake.

Did you, all 44 homes?

It was

43, 44,

something Yeah, like yeah. Okay, perfect.

Any property that was touching the head any part of their parcel touching that lake, we sent the letter to.

Awesome, because that was a question of our lake committee. I know you've like spent countless hours dealing with us and I just want to thank you.

Yeah, thank you very much. And then the other item that Kathleen had brought up was about adopt a storm drain. Is that something that, yeah, Cassie or the volunteer department or someone, is that something that's being worked on?

Yep, it's in the director's report, but I can talk about

it now. That's lovely, we'll hear more about that later then. If anyone else to make any questions or have any other comments, please come come down in regard to this North Beach

Thank you. Clearwater.

Thank you.

Couple of takeaways from the presentation. It was a very valuable eye opening presentation, a real eye opener. And it's such an important topic. A couple of takeaways you brought up, Mr. Leon, was signage. I think it's a very good suggestion. And it's really an easy one to implement, right? Signage? Yeah. So I would think it's reasonable for you as a board to consider a letter to city council proposing signage for flooding.

Signage for adopt the storm drains, signage for adopt the storm water pond showing high levels of storm water ponds, things like that. And signage for roads where you've got frequent flooding. The other takeaway that I got is adaptation strategy. And that's long term, right? So when it comes to adaptation, you've got the most vulnerable properties.

And I think you said that twothree of the six thirty five homes are most vulnerable, estimate. Right? So I would propose or suggest a GIS map identifying all the homes that are most vulnerable to flooding. That's just another idea. So anyway, thank you so much for that presentation.

Thank you very much, Tim. Those are great suggestions. And I'll, you know, I don't know if that's something that is addressed in your vulnerability assessment, Cassie, the GIS mapping of some of those more flood prone properties and maybe that is included in more than just North Beach and or is that

Sam was

going talk Thank about you, Sam.

Hi. So we actually are doing modeling and we're investigating creek sensors and things like that to enhance this system or those that have a risk for a storm, a particular storm that's coming through. So we are looking at that. But while I'm up here, I hope I can take you guys up on your offer to assist in any way that you can. I actually do think there are quite a few ways you can assist.

Starting with, you know, just getting your support in the form of a letter can really help us apply for these mitigation grants. And you know, like getting access into the community, like their feedback, that would be really, really helpful for us. And then again, with helping us to communicate this information to and gain support because as we discussed earlier, many of these solutions do truly require complete unity within that basin. You know, like on North Beach as we saw, if you have one wall that's too low, well, you that is the weakest link for the system. So that could be something that I would really look forward to working with you on.

Certainly. Okay, great. Yeah, for sure.

Yeah, would support that. I mean, funding is critical to this. Mean, we're, like you said, everyone's, you know, dealing with this and everybody needs funding, but our storm water system was overwhelmed and, you know, and that's in North Beach, we're looking at huge project there. So, yeah, getting grant funding is really critical. Would be I a favor of writing a

guess we'd have to be we'd want to be more specific about what it is that we'd be writing in support of, I think, yeah.

Marcus Williams, pub board director. So that's something we could probably coordinate through Cassie Katz and her team is kind of organizing a lot of these grants. It's not just North Beach. We've got a whole bunch of projects that we're looking at. We could probably share some of that and see if EAB would be interested in writing a letter of support for some of those projects.

Certainly. Thank you very much, Marcus. All right. Is there anyone else from the audience to speak to this agenda item? All right, I think everybody here has spoken to it.

Can I I just want to think, you know, the adopt I really like the idea of adopt a storm drain?

Counsel is going to talk more about that at the director's report.

After what? At

the director's

report, she's gonna talk

more about Okay. Great. Great. Never mind.

Alright. Alright. We'll say it till then?

Yes.

Alright. Great. We'll move on to our next item we put on the agenda here. It's item 4.2, move our October 15 meeting. So city council is meeting October 15 and city council kinda has the, know, chamber. They're gonna need they're gonna need the chamber. So we have to figure out a different time to meet for our next meeting.

So I have a couple of dates here, and we can talk about it briefly. But if we want, I can also just send a doodle and you guys can pick it. Okay. But Monday I'll

do this.

October 27, Wednesday, October 29, or Thursday, October 30. Unless anybody has a hard no on any of those. I'll just send out a doodle. I'll just send out a doodle either way.

Doodle, get

that Because

I only need three people.

Yeah, you guys yeah, send out a doodle and you guys figure out which one works best so

you can look at your calendars. I'm

available for both. Look at your desk calendar at home.

I've sent you a doodle before.

Now we have to

do a doodle so that you can experience what a doodle

is. Yeah.

It's great. Alright.

And it is?

Basically, it's like a system where you get a bunch of dates and everybody picks the dates that they can do and then you kinda line it up and then everyone

So like a calendar request?

Kind of. But it

It's like a poll.

But you have a choice Yeah. For

for all of

these calendar dates.

Yeah. It's a calendar poll.

Right. Okay.

Alright. So look for that. Okay. You'll like it. We'll move on.

Before directors report, have just one item of old business. It was something that was brought up earlier and I sent it out to everyone. Hopefully, you guys were able to get the email printed out and have some assessments. I sent out the letter of support for Stephenson Creek and increasing the slow speed zone. I had looked at our, previous we had a previous ordinance that's that, set slow speed zones about 300 feet, there, it's east and west or north and south, depending on the part of the creek you're in, away from the bridges, that still leaves space between the bridges where you can kind of open up, and in the past jet skiers and smaller boats, it's pretty limited right now in terms of the water use there because of the bridge and the types of vessels that can get in and out, but in the past we've had presentations and we've seen videos of jet skiers going around, we've heard about manatees that are coming back into the water body there, And so I we had talked about at our last meeting and supported putting together a letter of support.

This was the letter, and I hope that everybody was able to look at it, and I'll just open up to any more discussion here on it. If it looked okay, then we can just move forward, support it and I can send that to the clerk and city council. If there's any changes, we can discuss those. Otherwise, just be looking for a motion to

I'll make a motion to accept your letter as presented.

All right. Second. Thank you. All in favor?

Aye. Aye.

Okay. None opposed. Then that's what we'll do. We'll submit the letter as presented. I'll send that into the Clark and City Council this week and move on to our next item then, our director's report.

All right. So I have a long list here, so I'm going to talk really fast. As of today, our transfer station solar project is online. So that's the third out of the four projects that we've been talking about for a while now. The first two being Morningside Wreck, of course, you know, and then general services.

So the last one is gas complex that the construction should be complete next week. And then the interconnection from Duke, they're estimating about six weeks. So hopefully by September we'll have those four projects completed. The vulnerability assessment, can't remember if I said this last meeting, but as was mentioned, it was completed September. However, that it's through a grant through the state of Florida.

And there's been a lot of back and forth with the state on some changes that they've wanted. So we've had even though it was technically complete, there was a lot of revisions. But we were able to get everything finalized and we actually received that reimbursement for that $196,000 So it is officially the grant is officially complete. It has been a lot of cumbersome paperwork. So I've said before that, you know, it's been hard for us to really dive into the results kind of the project because we've been overwhelmed with the modifications from the state.

So this was at the forefront of our workload right now, was to really dive into the vulnerability assessment to make it digestible for our community. So we're working right now with our public communications team on like a three to four pager. I don't know if you saw Largo put one out. So we've got their example. But something that's not just an executive summary, we want it you know, I don't want it to just be a couple paragraphs, but I also don't want it to be 30 pages.

I want it to be something that, you know, for the people that are really interested that they can read it and kind of get the results. So it's quite hard. It's a 169 page document that's incredibly technical. And so we're working on that now. So I hope to have that definitely before our next meeting and then get it designed so that it can look all pretty and we can bring it out to events.

Can I ask you you mentioned grant and I'm the grant?

So the vulnerability assessment is a state mandated project through the state of Florida that's paid for by the resilient Florida grant. Okay. By FDP. Okay. Next up is our EECBG grant. So that was the one we purchased the four vehicles with. We have received the third vehicle, that was the Ford Lightning. So that one, our environmental inspector is now driving. So everyone's pretty impressed and happy with that one. We are still waiting on the last Mach E.

So hopefully that'll be in as well. Any day now, we're hoping. Elective pay, so I know I've reported a while ago that we did receive the money back for the projects that were put in place in 2023 from 2024. We've also gone ahead and applied for projects for 2024. But unfortunately, it appears that the elective pay will be sunsetted earlier than the ten years that it was supposed to be.

But we are there's been some conflicting information that I've seen out there. But the most recent thing that I saw was that projects that are in place by I saw two conflicting things. Things that said in place by December 31 I'm sorry, not in place. Construction began for solar is what I'm focusing on. Start construction by December 31 this year or by 07/04/2026 since the bill passed 07/04/2025.

And I've got some clarification. I believe that that December 31 deadline is for residential and the July 4 is for commercial, which is good news for us because if we do move forward with these new solar projects based on the other federal congressional directed spending award that we're still anticipating, that would then allow us to get that 30% back for all of those projects because I can't guarantee that they would be began by December 31, but I would feel pretty confident that they would be began, you know, they would be started before July 4 of next year.

So We're talking about the we're not talking about the four projects that are going on

No. Those ones are safe.

They're done.

Those ones will be applying next year, well, for 2025. Those are fine.

Okay.

But I'm talking about that other congressional directed spending award that we've been talking about for two years. Right. That we're still hopeful, I'm still hopeful that we're going to get those funds. And then we would start new projects in the next few months up till next year. So then that would be applying in 2027 for things that were in place for 2026 or unless we got some of them started this year, then we'd be applying for that as well. And that would be for

the next what, four projects?

Next three or four depending on how it all shakes out. Yeah. But, yeah, so hopefully that 30% back will be for all of our projects if everything goes according to plan. I did want to mention our municipal energy savings program, synergistic. I'd put an update in the newsletter on that.

But we have we're working with Ruth Eckert Hall now for the sound that's going to be added into the program. It wasn't part of the audits that our energy specialist was doing. So we've connected with them because it is a city building, but obviously they're in control of it. But they're on board, they're interested in participating. So we're hoping to see some energy savings for them.

Adopt a Train. So I think I mentioned this at the last meeting, Glenna, but you might not have seen it in the minutes. But we are moving forward with an Adopt Train program. So that will be through adoptotrain.org which is a non profit out of a university in Minnesota, I believe. And so they'll be it's kind of a plug and play.

They do all the background for us and put it right into our website and they kind of run it for us. And the cost is actually quite reasonable and we are currently applying for two grants to cover that cost. So that should be up and running hopefully very soon. Well, soon as in by the end of the year, I'll say. Because the one grant actually doesn't close until September 10 and then I think they award in December. And that we'll wait for that grant before we start the program.

Cassie, do you have any parameters on like what it would look like or?

So the adopt a drain, so it would be very similar. You know, we have a lot of adopt a programs already in the city where you would just sign up, you'd pick your storm drain And I should mention that we're partnering with our neighborhoods division because they have the mural program. Yeah, yeah. And so, the one grant that we're applying for is a dual purpose for both of those programs because they wanna they've seen a decline in the murals over the last couple of years. Like I think it had a peak in 2022 and then it's kinda gone downhill.

So they wanna revamp that mural program, get more interest and then so that's why we're gonna collaborate and do this adopt the drain. So you can have the option to adopt the drain and paint it or just paint it or just adopt it or do both. So we're hoping to really move forward as been mentioned several times in the meeting how important keeping those storm drains clear for all the flooding issues.

How does it work to adopt a drain? Just out of curiosity.

So if you go to adoptadrain.org, you can play around. But it's it's quite simple. You just put in your zip code and then so obviously right now you wouldn't find anything. But if you click, you can find other municipalities. You would just put in your zip code and then it would say what trains are available. And then there's like an interest form, you put in your contact information. There's, you know, what the commitment is which we can modify. And then when you adopt your drain, you commit to I think it's quarterly cleanups or monthly cleanups. We would then help with supplies. And then you fill in reports.

And what's the great thing about this is that that data that we would collect actually goes right into our MS4 reporting. So that's another reason why we like the adoptatrainee.org because they've kind of they've been doing this all over the country and it's really beneficial for the reporting to get that data. Because I've actually started many adaptive programs in my previous locality and no matter how many times you tell people to put reports, they don't. So hopefully this program will people will do the reporting.

Is it a monetary commitment or because you mentioned supplies. So that means like you're going out and you're taking

No, no. It would just be so people would just volunteer and then we would work with the volunteers if they would like supplies like grabbers or rakes or gloves.

Is that the same program they use in Largo? No.

So throughout the county there's a variety of different programs. We actually tried to get a regional approach to this because there's a adoptstrain.org provides a discount for multi city. It is actually gonna be pretty much the same price to do us Dunedin and Largo. But Dunedin and Largo, they tried, they couldn't get approval in time. They might join us next year or the following year. But Pinellas County does have their own and St. Pete Beach has one. But they there's a pretty small scale and they're relying on staff time. And we've weighed the pros and cons and like I said, the cost really is quite minimal. And this we don't have staff time.

So I'm generally like, Oh, can do it ourselves. It's cheaper. This is the one time that I think it's actually beneficial to pay somebody else to do it for us because they've got everything. They've got all the digital materials, the signs, the welcome I've done it before on my own and I know what it takes and it's a lot of work. And especially I think with this grant fund and showing that we're going to have all this data, I think that will make our grant application stronger and I think it'll be very beneficial.

Well, it's great to hear about the mural drain program too. I think some of the lack of interest the last couple of years were because there wasn't anybody running program, because I know in my neighborhood there was interest, but we were told that there wasn't anybody to really help us with it. So, it's great to hear that it's back up and there's more interest in pursuing that. I think there's a lot of people that like adding that splash of color, and then it also lets people recognize that this is an important aspect of our water system. So, that's good to hear.

I'm also hopeful that maybe the EAB can serve as a focus group for that boiled down vulnerability assessment, the three to four or maybe it's five to six pages, but maybe a presentation before it's widely sent out to the environmental advisory board and input from the board members might be able to help it or even audience. I think that what we found today, the presentation that we had was terrific. And Sam had indicated that some of what she heard from the feedback today was going to help her moving forward. So, I think, you know, we're a tremendous focus group and we can be useful in trying to determine what could work in promoting, you know, that kind of boil down vulnerable assessments. But we're

not meeting for three months, so I don't know how quickly they wanted to get that out. You know, I mean

We can bring it to the next meeting. Think that would be good timing.

Okay.

Because I'm not done, I have more. All right. So, thing I wanted to mention that was briefly mentioned by Marcus is the hazard mitigation grant funding that, you know, from the result of the hurricanes. So the city is moving forward several applications, public utilities, public works. So we've been working diligently the last few weeks on getting six applications just in public works alone.

And I don't want to go into too much detail because it's very preliminary or just, you know, we haven't even submitted the applications yet. I don't want to get anybody too excited. But I will say that several of the projects are as a direct were based on the scenarios from the vulnerability assessment. So, you know, that was mentioned several times today, you know, what's going on with the vulnerability assessment? Are we going to do anything with it?

And the answer is yes, we are. So I really am hopeful about several of these applications. And just going forward in general, I mean this is a tight this has been a tight timeline on these funds. But the more projects that we have in mind, even if we don't receive these funds, once you kind of have that project shovel ready, the next time a grant comes up, we'll be more prepared to go ahead and apply for it. Couple of other things is for our communications campaigns.

So we've wrapped up the climate friendly commuting. We were doing that for a while. So our current campaign that we're about to kick off is gonna call be called beat the heat. So we're gonna do like a heat awareness campaign. Obviously geared more towards what actions you can take to help reduce heat in the city of Clearwater with of course also, you know, encouraging everybody to stay safe as it will be summer.

So kind of a dual purpose campaign, but we'll be going out to several events throughout the summer. We've got some heat awareness coloring books for the kids, some pamphlets for the adults. We're gonna be making some visuals and then going out some swag items. So that'll be our summer campaign. And then we've already planned our fall campaign that we're going as was mentioned again about pollinators and planting of native plants to encourage pollinators.

If you did notice in the newsletter that the mayor did sign the mayor's monarch pledge. So we're going to be promoting that. He actually signed it a few months ago, but we decided we wanted to promote it more in the fall because that's when it's the best time to plant these pollinator friendly plants. So that'll be what we're doing in the fall, hence the pollinator dress aka the bug dress. But I thought it was appropriate.

Yes, it is. It

made my four year old son cry today. So cool. And then last thing I wanted to, I think, make sure I got it on, is I wanted to thank Jared for his service. So I've only been here two years, but I know you've been here a long time. And I think, you know, you've done a great job and the city has been very grateful to have you in this role. And so I just wanna make sure everybody agrees. We want to thank you for your service.

Thank you very much, Cassie. I appreciate that. I did have a couple of questions, so for you, Director's report. Had mentioned the vulnerability assessment, but you said something about projects and shovel ready projects. I'm sorry, must admit, I don't know if I missed something. You had said before the vulnerability assessment was just looking at areas.

So I was looking at what we called scenarios. Yeah. So how the vulnerability assessment worked was we of course input an insane amount of data, right, from all these different sources. But then we looked at scenarios. And what those scenarios were, were based on geographic areas and potential I'm blanking on the word, but scenarios, I guess is the word, of what could happen and then what the results of that would be.

So for example, one of them was we looked at the Tampa Bay coastline. And as we know, Bayshore, the flooding, right? So we looked at, you know, inundation of that and so then the scenario showed us the flooding. And the way the tool works is that it gives you like a cost benefit analysis basically. It says, if you were to put $50,000,000 into this scenario, this is the results that you would how many fewer disruptions you would have.

If you were to put a 100,000,000, then this is the, you know, so it's kind of a toggle that you can say, okay, we only have 20,000,000. So then it would show you what your best bang for your buck would be out of that 20,000,000. So that is an example where there is kind of a resulting project which is elevate Bayshore. But that's not necessarily the case for all of the scenarios. Right?

So some of the scenarios we just looked at, like heat around the city. So the scenario then basically was like, well, we could plant trees and where would be the best places to plant trees. But that wouldn't, you know, it's not necessarily a project. So, you know, so I say that the result of the vulnerability assessment wasn't here's the top 10 things you should do. It was we picked as staff, we had planning, we had public works, city manager.

Everybody said, what do we think our vulnerable areas are and what scenarios do we want to test? And then not only did you test the scenarios, but you also got to test which mitigation efforts you wanted to test in those scenarios. So when we looked at heat, mitigation that was the scenario, but the mitigation effort was planting the trees. When we looked at flooding, the mitigation was elevation. But there was, you know, a dozen probably different mitigation efforts and the geographic areas were geographic areas.

There was like the CRA. So it wasn't just geographic. There were other ways that you could look at the zones. So that's what I mean why I say like the it's just a tool. We happened to pick 10 scenarios because that was the requirement from the grant. But that's not those and I think we were we tried to be very clear when we presented that those 10 scenarios were not us saying these are the 10 projects we're gonna do. So now we just need to go back and look more at the data, look at the tool and see, you know, what projects as a result of the data, not necessarily the scenarios would be beneficial to pursue.

Okay, I got you.

Thank you. Just was a little curious because, yeah, I think that there's probably a lot of projects to come out of the vulnerability assessment. I think until we see the next iteration of it, it'll be a little bit more clear in terms of what that looks like. The other thing, and you mentioned it in your in what you just said, the beat the heat campaign, I was curious there might be heat islands or things like that, and it sounds like you may have been able to already map those at some point. That might be something in rolling that Beat the Heat promotion out to look at where those heat islands are, or maybe it is a time to promote where those are and say, hey, we'd love to plant trees, where can we do that in those areas, something like that, I don't know, but it was great to hear that at least there is a mapping done on kind of where those Is there

a mapping done or was it is it There is a map

for the ideal well, I shouldn't say ideal. There is a map showing where you potentially could plant trees, but that there's just like a heavy asterisk on that because that's just based on the data where the heat is. But, you know, we all know that you can't just put a tree anywhere, right? It's got to be right tree, right place. So, we would have to further refine that.

Is there an app or something that shows heat island areas in a city like Clearwater? I mean,

you know Not to my knowledge, there might be I

mean sounds like you came

up with a million dollar idea.

Well, actually it does exist and it's been I just saw an article on it. It's been developed and this group has done it. I think it's out with the most of the a lot of the major the largest cities in The United States. And I don't know I'll send it to you. I'll send you the article because I know, you know, we can't you can't assess heat map area, you know, heat intensity areas based on like impermeable surface, you know, how much concrete is there and I know there's like three I know because I talked to Largo about it, like how do they do it, you know, in population and then also like in density and like and also socioeconomic levels of that area.

Anyway, I just thought like an actual heat map actually know where those heat islands are.

So, yeah, I thought that was interesting to bring up in light of the Beat the Heat campaign, and you mentioned that that had been kind of part of a modeling aspect. And then you had mentioned the pollinators and the planting, the native plants. I don't know when it was, a couple of years back, the city had handed out these little cards that you could plant.

That's seeds on it. That

part of the campaign?

Yeah. Have some we actually had a lot of those left. But yeah, we'll look into I don't know if you saw in the newsletter, but the countryside library it countryside and the main library? No, east library have the seed library. And they've added specific Florida native seeds because it was primarily like vegetables and herbs and stuff that they were giving away. But I contacted them, so you can get the seeds through them. But yeah, we'll get some little dolphin shaped things that you can plant.

Yeah, were really cool. They were shaped like butterflies and you just plant them in the ground and whenever Flower flowers. Yeah. That was great. Anyway, sorry to interrupt the director's report. That was all.

No, that's all. That's I have.

Does anyone else have anything for Cassie for director support? Okay, great. We'll go on to board members to be heard.

Open this up. Anyone have anything? No, all right.

Have a couple of points. All right. The in June, city council voted to pull Clearwater out of the Clean Energy Connections Duke's Clean Energy Connections program, and that was that program was integral to our clean energy plans. Up to 59% of Clearwater's energy was anticipated to come from Duke solar fields. I think my suggestion is that the since we're not spending the money on that program anymore, that we should earmark that money, the city should be earmarking that money for solar projects, for incentive programs, for having to do with clean energy to take the place of that program as best we can.

And what I would see is like a green fund, we've talked about this before, or some or to put I know what you call it cost avoidance or savings, it is money that Citi is not spending now, and that money should be invested in further projects that will also save money. So, I don't know if that should go that should go into the sustainability division's budget, or that, you know, or should be a point to be brought up when we're looking for funding for future solar projects. That is money that's being saved, and a suggestion that it should be earmarked for, you know, further projects. And city council was looking really positive about that, not an actual fund, but and I'm not sure how we would calculate that, but we're saving money now. We're saving money now and it's on the, you know, in the newsletter.

We're saving money from the minute our solar goes online with the buildings that we have them on now, we're saving money, and we're saving money with synergistic. And so, these projects are like, you know, they're not only cost effective, but but what capital projects do you do that actually pays for themselves? I mean, these are projects that pay for themselves. So, I mean, I think that that should be, you know, that we should be rewarded, we should see some benefits of those savings with reinvestment. And I'm not quite sure how that would happen, but I think that it needs to be credited to future projects.

Then there's also a project that's got there is a program that's going to launch, I think, this summer, is it called Cassie, don't know if you know, it's called Solar for All or okay. And that's a program that where three organizations have been awarded over 150,000,000 in grants, that's Florida Solar United Neighbors, Step Step program, which is a funding program, and I have the third one, Nature Conservancy. Nature Conservancy. What they are when they launch this, they're going to be taking applications first come, first serve of households that have 80% or less of AMI, average medium income for their area, and they if their house you know, if their roof they'll have specifications for the roof and different things, but we're talking free solar for these lower income homes. And since we have as a green print goal is to put solar on a thousand low and moderate income homes, I think this program, you know, any way we can to promote it and get the word out to folks who might qualify for that would be critical.

Do we know how much AMI is?

Average medium income for the But

do we know the number

for Clearwater? It depends on the area, you know. Like what neighborhood you're in? Or What would be the AMI?

I think I saw something, it was like 75,000, I feel like I saw recently 70 on

five AMI would be 75,000 a

year. Okay.

But don't quote me.

I don't

if it would just be Florida or

Have you seen this recently? Because last I heard Solar For All was kind of on freeze.

On freeze?

Yeah, thought it was one of the ones that got indefinitely frozen.

Really?

At this far I as I mean, were going strong with it last year and then it kind of stopped and I hadn't heard anything, so. Okay. Hopefully.

I I mean, I just heard about wish Brian was here because Brian had brought it up as happening later this summer. Oh, well, great. I'll look into it.

All right. Kelly?

I just wanted to echo Cassie's comments to say thank you for your leadership and pushing forward and giving us guidance on making a difference for the city. I appreciate working with you and

Thank wish you much you. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Thank you.

You. Mike?

Yes. Thank you, Jared, for for your leadership. You know, I've been on been here almost a year now.

Learned a lot

from that.

First year went

quite quick, right?

Yeah. I know, it really does. So I appreciate it.

Thank you very much, Mike. I appreciate it. And thank you all. Before I launch into any of my final thoughts here, I just wanted to say, you know, thanks. I I I do wanna say that I noticed before, like I said, before I launch into anything, the city had promoted on Facebook that they got money for their for the shoreline, the living shoreline. Mhmm. And I wanted to make sure that everybody knew about that on our board. That was something that we had supported earlier this year. It was on the legislative priorities that the city council had put together and that was one of them that we had

I'm brief discussion sorry? Allocations.

Yeah, yeah. And so city had recently put out on social media that that was one of the allocations that they were able to secure from Tallahassee. So that was great. And then, one other thing I just have to say because it was on my mind. I got one of the newsletters from Solid Waste, and it included the five things to recycle, and one of them was glass. And unless something changed, I didn't know that we could throw glass out in our recycle bin. So I don't know if it it I just wanna make sure that

Glass is accepted throughout the county.

It's not recyclable though. It's just accepted and thrown out.

Well

That's my understanding.

I'm not gonna get into recycling.

But I

know what I know far too much about glass recycling, but it can be recycled.

But it isn't.

It can be used as alternative daily cover, which is probably what it's used for here. I don't I honestly But

it's still okay to throw in the recycle bin.

Yes. According to our communications and county Okay.

Yeah. Because I saw that and I was a little confused because I previously recently heard that glass wasn't accepted as a recycling item and I didn't wanna knowingly contaminate recycling because that is a big problem in recycling contamination.

As far as I know, in the city of Clearwater and unincorporated Pinellas, it is accepted.

That's great. Okay. Lovely. So, I'm glad that that was then on there. Make sure to recycle the proper items in the proper bin. Anyway, thank you, again. It's kinda hard to believe, and I guess we're really putting this to the last minutes here for my last meeting. It's hard to believe this day's come. This is my final environmental advisory board meeting. My term expires before our next meeting, which I guess is gonna be a Google Doodle poll, whenever that will be.

But I've served on this board since March 1736, and there's been a lot of changes over the nine years that I've been here. For one, we used to meet in the old City Hall Building, and after meeting here in City Council Chambers at the main library for the last year, last few years, the city is set to open a new LEED certified city hall building. Progress marches on and that's a really great movement from the antiquated building to our new place. I'm proud of the accomplishments this board's been able to make over the years and the impact we've had on the city. Over the course of the last several years, the environmental advisory board has been instrumental in advocating for policies that make Clearwater a more resilient and sustainable community.

The board's success came with unanimous support from the city council starting in 2018 with the ocean friendly resolution to reduce the use of single use plastics. This voluntary effort led to the city prohibiting single use plastics at its events and venues. The importance of that policy continues to resonate today. The BayCare Sound won an award for its sustainability strategies and not using single use plastics as part of their campaign. Next, the board resurrected the city's dormant green print plan, and that was at a time when many cities were signing on to Ready for 100 initiatives.

The Environmental Advisory Board advocated for the city to revisit green print, a wide ranging policy for sustainability and resiliency that was first adopted by the city in 2012, but never implemented. And it turned out one of the most important aspects of the living document was a sustainability coordinator to oversee it. And the board, then advocated for the city to fill this role, and city leaders agreed unanimously and created it. An assessment and redeployment of green print followed, and the city, updated to green print two point o in 2021, and, is currently working on its third iteration of, the living document. Ready for 100 strategies were later added to GreenPrint goals, and, city leaders and members of this board recently attended the solar celebration at Morningside Recreation Complex, which celebrated solar arrays coming online there, and, three other locations in the city by, the September, right, as Cassie had said earlier today.

For a couple years, the board added two additional field trip meetings, which included site visits to fence portions of Cooper's Bayou and Crest Lake Park prior to its reopening after considerable renovations. The board has heard numerous presentations from city staff and others over that time. In 2021, the board heard presentations about the expansive Imagine Clearwater project and from concerned citizens, including residents of the Lake Bellevue neighborhood. In response to, those residents' concerns about water quality and information that was provided to this board, we drafted a letter in support of the neighborhood group's efforts and asked the city to develop a water management plan for the 30 acre spring fed lake. I hope that this board will hear a presentation on that water management plan sometime in the future.

In 2022, we heard presentations about sanitary sewer overflows and lateral infiltration, the city's green fleet program and plans for a solar feasibility study, as well as getting quarterly sustainability reports. We heard about plans to update the city's comprehensive plan and the county's plans for a regional resource recovery facility that would reduce the amount of trash going to the landfill and to the waste to energy plant. After the influx of debris caused by back to back storms last year, it might be worth revisiting this or other projects, regarding solid waste infrastructure. I know we talk a lot about storm water and public works. In 2023, we heard presentations from Ruth Eckert Hall on its sustainability plan for the Sound And Coachmen Park, and an update on Greenprint and Clearwater 2045, our comprehensive plan.

Synergistic savings so far, the city solar implementation plan, a possible fee bait program, the progress and plan for Cooper's Point, and the use of pesticides on city parks and other property. And in 2024, the board heard presentations on the Beach Marina Master Plan, duck hunting in Cooper's Bayou, shark fishing on North Clearwater Beach, changes in the development code affecting solar installations, the city's community rating system score, we reviewed the final plans on the city hall project and had a lengthy presentation and discussion on the recently approved artificial turf ordinance. In fact, some of the board's recommendations were added to the final wording of that ordinance. Over the years, the Board has submitted numerous letters to city leaders, sometimes in support of a presentation or project and sometimes in opposition. Sometimes it is in response to topics brought by residents.

And sometimes, board members bring topics of note from the community. In 2020, with a few weeks before the plan to develop the Landings Golf Course into a light industrial complex went to voters, The Environmental Advisory Board got a chance to weigh in on the project. The board opposed it and so did voters. In 2021, we drafted a resolution urging city leaders to develop a formalized board review process that would include advisory board input on projects and initiatives deemed appropriate by staff, and I still hold out hope for this initiative. In 2022, we submitted letters ask asking city leaders to work to move the super boat races outside of sea turtle nesting season, as well as another letter addressing seagrass degradation in Clearwater Harbor in advance of increased expected boat traffic, when the redevelopment of Coachmen Park was completed.

A, seagrass study released in 2023 by the Southwest Florida Management District indicated healthy seagrass growth in Clearwater Harbor and Saint Joseph Sound. In 2023, after a presentation by the interim police chief, we wrote a letter of support to prohibit cigarette smoking at the beach and parks. The city council unanimously approved that ordinance. That year, the board's input was also asked for in shaping guidelines for a proposed city tree replanting ordinance. So we've done a lot in these years, and I couldn't have made it through, without the support of so many over the years.

I wanna thank former mayor George Kreditkas and the city council members who first appointed me to serve, and the subsequent mayors and city council members who extended my stay on this board over the years. I wanna thank the liaisons I've worked with, Ed Chesney, Sarah Kessler, Micah Maxwell, Cassie Cordova, and Sheridan Jemont, our first sustainability coordinator. And everyone that I've been privileged to share this dice with, Leanne DuPont, Lynn Summerson, Mike Engelman, Ashley Pimley, Candace Gardner, Sheila Sullivan, Mark Wright, John Thomas, Marita Lynch, and our current board, Glenna, Kelly, Jason, Mike, my hope is to my hope is the board continues on the path we've been on. The board's the board's objective is to provide citizen insight to the city council and staff on environmental activities within and affecting Clearwater. The Environmental Advisory Board is the city's only advisory board with a stated objective, and we hear resident concerns and serve as a conduit to city council and staff regarding them.

This is an active board that serves an extremely important and valuable role contributing to make Clearwater more bright and beautiful, And I thank you for the opportunity. It's been an honor and a privilege to serve. And with that, this meeting's adjourned. Thank you.