Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee - Regular Meeting

All right, everybody. Welcome. This is the sea level rise response collaborative meeting of the executive committee. Today is Friday, June 5. We're just a little bit afternoon right here. My name is Danny Madrone. I represent lot on the collaborative and I'm calling the meeting to order. I'm going to do a quick roll call of collaborative members. And in our voting members, we have Councilmember Paul Barrett from the city of Olympia. And we have Right. We have Commissioner Craig Unsold from the Port. And then for our ex-officio members, I see that we have Eric Christensen as a community member, Shana Thompson from DES, Babak Talebi from Ecology, and Rachel Grant from, Commissioner Rachel Grant from Thurston County. And Natalie, if you could run us through the staff who are present and other guests.

Yeah, hi, Natalie Weiss with the City of Olympia, Jesse Barham from Lawn Clean Water Alliance, Pamela Braff from the City of Olympia, Zach Palmer from the City of Olympia, Susan Clark, also from the City of Olympia, John Wolfe from the Port of Olympia, and Wendy Stephenson from Lawn Clean Water Alliance.

Okay, and I believe we got everybody who's here. And if we missed anybody, speak now or forever hold your peace. All right, first thing that we need is to approve the agenda for this meeting. So if I could get a motion from one of the voting members here.

I move to approve the agenda for the June meeting.

Okay, excellent. I will go ahead and second. All right, all in favor? Aye.

Aye. Okay.

And then we need to approve minutes from the March 6, 2026 meeting. So I'll entertain a motion to do so.

I've read those minutes and I would move to approve the minutes for the past meeting.

Excellent. I will go ahead and second. All in favor? Aye.

Aye.

All right, we've got an agenda. We've got minutes from the last meeting. I don't believe we had anybody sign in for public comments, and I do not see anybody in the attendees, so we can cruise past that section. We do have announcements up next. Natalie, I forgot to check in. Do we have any announcements ahead of the business part of the meeting?

We do not. Okay.

Well, then we'll go ahead and jump right into a briefing on the long-term sea level rise monitoring and metrics for adaptive management. Natalie, I'll go ahead and pass it on to you so you can introduce our guests who are going to walk us through this topic.

Yeah, thank you. So we've been working on this project for just under a year on creating a long-term sea level rise monitoring strategy for adaptive management. And we're joined here today with Justin Vandever from AECOM and Julia Grace Sanders, also from AECOM. just to present the outcomes of the work and what we've been working on. So I can pass it over to them to give their final presentation for you all.

Great. Thank you, Natalie. Hi, everyone. Justin Vandiver, Coastal Engineer and Project Manager with AECOM. I see some familiar names in the call today. It's good to see everyone and share some of the findings and recommendations from the work that we've been doing with the collaborative partners on a monitoring plan to help with the implementation of actions identified in the Olympia seal of rice response plan. So just to provide a little bit of an overview of what we're going to be covering today, we'll start with a little bit of context and background on how this work relates to the city's prior and ongoing efforts around sea level rise response, and then kind of talk through some of the items that were included under the umbrella of our work here, which included updating some of the vertical land motion estimates for downtown Olympia and the Port Peninsula, as well as updating and localizing sea level rise projections to inform future planning and some mapping updates that we did as well. And then I will turn it over to Julia Grace and she'll talk through the monitoring framework that we've established and collaborated with staff on and then provide a little bit of a look forward on what the next steps are. Okay. Okay. So building on Olympia's sea level rise response plan, as I'm sure you are all aware, Olympia's sea level rise response plan was adopted in 2018 and provides a set of near-term, mid-term, and long-term strategies to address sea level rise. anticipated impacts of future sea level rise. And since then the collaborative and its partners have been working to implement many of the near-term actions identified in that plan. So roughly over the last five years a lot of progress has been made around stormwater improvements and backflow prevention, looking at funding and financing options, better understanding groundwater, particularly in the butt inlet treatment plant area, installation of a local tide gauge, and then additional coordination on response to those winter king tide and flood events and outreach and emergency alerts and educating the public on some of these impacts and what the city is doing to address them. So this work that we're sharing today is really a... really builds upon some of the recommendations from the response plan to implement a monitoring program to kind of track and better understand how environmental and climate conditions are changing in Budd Inlet and along Olympia's shoreline. both in terms of like those environmental changes and then trying to track and quantify what some of those impacts are and what are the demands on staff resources and responding to these events so that Olympia can really understand these changing conditions and identify thresholds and tipping points for when planning and design, funding, permitting, and implementation of some of the more longer-term strategies, the mid-term strategies from the response plan need to be initiated so that they can be implemented in time to be able to address those hazards when they do occur. So as Olympia is kind of wrapping up and kind of checking off all of those near-term strategies, the focus is really looking towards some of those actions that are identified to address projected climate hazards for mid-century around 2050. The response plan identifies a number of actions that would address that. anticipated sea level rise up to approximately 24 inches of sea level rise. And these include a range of strategy types, including informational strategies that maybe address data gaps, for example, governance strategies that facilitate policies and coordination among agencies, operational strategies around responding to events, and of course, the physical infrastructure strategies to address flood risk. So with the completion of many of the near-term strategies, the monitoring plan is a way that Olympia can, as I mentioned, track these changing conditions and essentially confirm or see if any changes in that plan that was laid out in 2019, if any changes are required. For example, if sea level rise or impacts are accelerating at a more rapid pace than anticipated, maybe some of those strategies need to be initiated sooner. Or maybe if we're seeing sea level rise impacts progressing a little bit more slowly, that might mean that more time is available. But yeah, so really the outcome here is just to understand how those conditions are changing over time and really support the planning and implementation of these midterm strategies. So this approach differs a little bit from a traditional planning approach where you might lay out a plan and have very precise and specific time horizons at which different activities would be implemented. This monitoring framework really kind of falls under a little bit more adaptive approach, provides a little bit more flexibility, but more agility as well for Olympia to respond to these conditions. And make sure that you really understand how these climate and environmental conditions are changing over time. And then develop a mechanism so that when these specific thresholds or triggers are reached, have a clear idea of what exactly the types of actions are and the projects that would be initiated by those observations. And that flexible approach can allow Olympia to, as I mentioned, accelerate action as necessary. to address those conditions where maybe the risk and impacts are increasing more rapidly than anticipated. And this is really important because we know that the planning and design and permitting and construction of a lot of these projects, especially the scale of projects that are being contemplated for midterm resiliency will take many years to implement. And so part of this is really kind of trying to work backwards from when those strategies are needed and anticipate that some of those strategies could take 5, 10, 15 years to actually get built on the ground. So we want to make sure we understand when those points are where those projects need to start initiate planning. And in some cases, it may be that those projects really should start now in terms of the planning and lining up the funding and working through the initial steps of project implementation. So the whole purpose of the monitoring plan is to really help inform this process. So just to provide a little bit of an overview of some of the components that are kind of the umbrella of this work that AECOM has done for the collaborative, I mentioned this update and investigation into vertical land motion, which you may see abbreviated on these slides as VLM, as well as the sea level rise projections, the SLR projections. And so some of the initial tasks that we did as part of this work was to review the available data for estimating trends in vertical land motion. In general, in Olympia, when we're talking about vertical land motion, the reason we're concerned with that is that the primary direction of that motion is down. The land is generally experiencing subsidence in the downtown and port peninsula area. And so as you can imagine, as the land is going down and the sea level is going up, those compound on each other and contribute to the sea level rise projections that we have in Olympia. So we wanted to get a good handle on the estimates and data around vertical land motion and identify where the gaps are. And in fact, some of the findings from that assessment have directly informed some of the recommended monitoring activities that are included in the monitoring plan. We then use that information along with some of the more recent climate science and state and federal sea level rise projections to compare with the current projections that Olympia is using and make some refinements there, develop some new maps for Olympia that will be useful. for your planning efforts, as well as helping meet some state requirements. And then really kind of worked with the staff from the city, lot, and port to understand their current processes, what data is currently being collected, How do they respond to different types of events? How do you monitor upcoming storm events? How do you document that information? So there's really a good amount of stakeholder engagement to understand those current processes and then also work with the staff to identify the most appropriate monitoring activities, data collection, how to kind of collect and compile that information in a way that's going to work for everyone. And so that's the number two item here that sort of continued throughout the duration of our work. And all of that kind of culminated with what we're presenting today, which is the development of that monitoring plan, which really establishes a framework for conducting those monitoring efforts and some of the Some of the terms that we'll be using refer to these monitoring actions and then those are kind of compiled into these metrics and Julia Grace will kind of walk you through all of that. I just want to note that there are some kind of specific terms there and we'll try and talk through those and keep everyone on the same page there, but all of that is going to be documented in this monitoring plan document that we're wrapping up this month. Okay, so updating the sea level rise maps. I mentioned that in the kind of like 2017, 2018 timeframe when the response plan was being developed, the available sea level rise projections at that time were from a 2012 National Research Council publication. In the midst of developing the plan, the state of Washington also came out with state-specific guidance. They have projections available in Puget Sound. They presented the projections in a little bit different way, although on the whole, fairly consistent with what Olympia was already using. Since that time, there was a joint federal agency effort in 2022 to essentially update sea-level rise projections across the nation by NOAA and other federal agencies. Those include projections within Puget Sound as well. And we can anticipate, of course, that in another few years, there will likely be new best available science. And so this is something that's always changing, which really reinforces the reason for this kind of adaptable and flexible approach. And so what we did was we reviewed these available sources and we made the decision to adopt the new NOAA 2022 projections, which are published at the Seattle Tide Station, so a little bit different setting. And that was one of the reasons why it was so important to do this investigation into the local vertical land motion at Olympia so that we could make local adjustments to those regional projections and develop really specific and localized projections for Olympia to use moving forward. So how do we measure vertical land motion? Well, it's not easy. And there's a lot of uncertainty with the available data that we have to work with. There's a number of different sources that we reviewed as part of this work. There's a GPS monitoring station on City Hall, which provides a good high accuracy continuous record. However, it's only at one single point right at City Hall and it's not out on the Port Peninsula in these areas where we think that vertical land motion and subsidence might be the highest due to kind of the history of the fill and build out of the Port Peninsula. We also have LIDAR data, which is aerial collected data that has very good spatial coverage, so full coverage across all of the areas that we're interested in. However, the accuracy, the vertical accuracy of those measurements, there's some uncertainty with that. We're talking about measuring rates have changed on the order of millimeters per year. And so LiDAR also has some of its own constraints. While it has good spatial coverage, it doesn't quite have that level of accuracy that we need. And then the sort of intermediate option are benchmark surveys that are done using traditional land survey equipment. And the city surveyor has actually collected this information, primarily in the 2010s, using a technique called a level loop survey, where they start at a known benchmark, and work their way around to a series of benchmarks and can measure the elevation of those benchmarks at known locations at very high accuracy. It's been a number of years since the city has collected that information. And so one of the recommendations out of the monitoring plan is to reinitiate those surveys and continue to do them every few years to help build and improve this data set and really fine tune these estimates of vertical land motion. So considering all of these data sets together and recognizing that they're in the data that was compiled and evaluated here, we're estimating that the rates of vertical land motion in the downtown and Port Peninsula area range from approximately two to four millimeters per year. which is, of course, a very small amount each year, but cumulatively over decades, it can be a contributor to the sea level rise projections that we want to capture and make sure we have a good estimate for that. So to just summarize the findings here for the vertical land motion assessment, across all of those data sets that we looked at, we do see a fairly consistent trend of subsidence or sinking of the land across the different methods of observation and analysis. So that was very consistent. Of course, the estimated magnitude of that was variable and has uncertainty with it, but we did find that the rates of vertical land motion at Olympia are comparable to what's seen regionally around two millimeters per year, with the suggestion that there might be some localized areas that are experiencing higher rates of change on the order of three to four millimeters per year. The available data, well, like I mentioned, the LiDAR data has good spatial coverage. It doesn't have that super high accuracy that we need. And the high accuracy measurements that we have from GPS and surveys are only at a very small number of discrete locations. So hoping to fill that data gap in the coming years through some proposed monitoring activities. And despite this uncertainty, while the vertical land motion is a contributor and something that does enhance the rates of sea level rise in the future, it's not the primary driver of sea level rise. So we want to have a good estimate of it. But even with that uncertainty, we can still have good confidence in the projections that we have. So where did we land with these projections? I have two tables here. The one on the left shows the localized projections for Olympia that are based on that recent NOAA 2022 report. On the right are the sea level rise response plan projections that the city has been working with for a number of years now. In general, they're similar, especially with the projected upper range estimates towards the end of the century. Typically in Puget Sound and other areas on the West Coast, those upper range projections for end of century have been and continue to be similar. kind of on the order of, say, three to six feet by end of century. Some of the past projections, including the NRC projections, were identifying the potential for relatively high sea level rise in the midterm through 2050 of up to about two feet of sea level rise. And the very highest projections do still indicate that that's a possibility. However, some of the more recent science is kind of zeroing in on a little bit narrower range of projections around mid-century. And so the table on the left shows kind of two scenarios that are primarily used. for planning and design, what are referred to the intermediate and the intermediate high scenario. And you can see that at 2050, when accounting for the vertical land motion, that intermediate scenario is about a foot, a little bit higher than a foot with a higher VLM estimate up to in the 14 to 18 inch range. So still significant and necessary to plan for, maybe not quite as high as some of the older projections, but that doesn't mean that those higher numbers are not going to occur. They just might occur a little bit later in the century. But certainly once you get to the end of century projections, we're still looking at those fairly high range estimates that we're still going to need to plan and accommodate. OK. So these are some examples of the maps that were developed and updated as part of this effort. So we have three panels here. The one on the left shows the mid-century projection, 12 inches of sea level rise by 2050. Those blue flooding areas are primarily the flooding that results from a 100-year storm tide. So this is a rare flooding event, but still has fairly expansive flood impacts in the downtown and Port Peninsula area. There are, of course, some areas right along the shoreline that are susceptible today and in the future as well due to that king tide flooding that can happen every year. The two panels, the one in the middle and the one on the right, are those end of century projections for those two scenarios, the intermediate scenario and the intermediate high scenario. So with a 42-inch scenario, we kind of see a shift where the king tide projections really have pretty widespread impacts across the peninsula. That's that lighter blue color. with the 100-year as the darker shading underneath that. And then at the very high end, at the 60-inch scenario at 2100, you kind of have another tipping point where that really light kind of white shading would indicate that almost on a daily basis, that type of flooding would be occurring towards the end of century under that higher scenario. So these are maps that can be used to kind of understand the spatial extent and depth of flooding. So I kind of talked a little bit about some of the stakeholder engagement, and I won't go too much into detail here other than say that we kicked off this effort with a series of interviews with many of the city departments, lot, environmental and engineering staff, port staff, talked to some state folks about the Capitol Lake Dam operations, and really we were just trying to understand As I noted, some of the current monitoring practices, get an idea for how staff respond to events, what those demands are in their time, and also really try and understand how we want to make the monitoring plan as useful and practicable as possible to make sure that staff can implement the recommendations that come out of it. And so we were trying to sort of identify those activities that are already being conducted where maybe it's just a matter of formalizing documentation or adding a little bit additional data collection onto something that's already being done to sort of minimize the lift and not try and come up with something that's like completely new and out of bounds with what current activities are. So now I'll hand it over to Julia Grace, and she'll tell you about the monitoring framework and some of the example activities that are included in it.

Awesome. Thanks, Justin. I'm actually going to steal the screen here so that I can advance slides. All right. Share this guy. OK. You guys see that same slide back up again? Awesome. Thank you. Okay, moving into the monitoring framework work portion of our project. This graphic lays out the basic framework used in the monitoring plan. So I'm going to go through this high level summary and then we will deep dive into each of these steps with some examples. So the first and most foundational piece of the plan is a list of monitoring activities, which are the actions required of partners to gather and process the data required to inform the remainder of this framework. So all of these activities identified in the plan were identified through that stakeholder interview process that Justin mentioned. So they are things that staff are already doing or have highlighted as high priority additions. So here's a sampling of some of the monitoring activities in the plan. They fit into kind of three main categories of geospatial activities like benchmark surveys, hydrologic activities like tracking influence salinity at the treatment plant, Or operational activities like tracking operational downtime at facilities. And I'm going to dive into an example here. So activities can be routine, like pre-planned gathering of tide gauge data at specific intervals. So here's a little preview of the kind of information in the plan for each activity. There's gonna be an activity ID. For this one, it's HYD02, the types of hazards it focuses on, and a description of what should take place as a part of this activity. So for this activity, maintain and analyze tide gauge data, we've got the gauge at the port, which collects water level data in an interval of every 15 minutes. And that data will be managed, processed, and archived in a standardized procedure that ultimately allows us to track trends over time and compare those to regional NOAA stations like those in Seattle and Tacoma that have a long history and can serve as a model of what we're hoping to build. Activities can also be response-based, which is mainly done through the use of an after action report that will track things like flood conditions, impacts to infrastructure, impacts to operations and community assets. And so this one activity feeds into nine separate monitoring metrics. And this template for the after action report is attached to the monitoring plan as an appendix. So all of these activities feed directly into monitoring metrics, which are indicators that are used to evaluate changing environmental and climatic conditions. Metrics in the plan span environmental indicators like observed sea level rise, damage-related metrics like hours and dollars spent on flood response, operational metrics like the number of pump station exceedant events in a year, or social impacts like dollars and damage to waterfront businesses. So we're going to go back to our example here, continuing on with this tide gauge example from step one. The metric that would be tied to that activity is observed sea level rise. So the city with support from the port will lead the compilation of data into a standardized metric of average annual sea level rise. And this will be tracked over a multi-year average in order to create a picture of how conditions are changing over time. And the third step, the city will aggregate and compile metrics into a centralized tracking system and compare them to define what we're calling trigger points on a regular basis. So trigger points are going to be representing a value or an impact that is approaching the risk tolerance that was indicated by stakeholders throughout our interviews. So getting into this a little bit more. Going back to our example, the city would compile the observed sea level rise metric and compare it to the defined threshold in the purple box here in the upper right corner of this slide. So there's a couple different thresholds all fed by this same data. One would be a measure of one foot or less freeboard remaining between the stormwater rim and the five-year average king tide. So that's one trigger point. And another would be a half foot or greater increase in average sea level over a span of five years. So we want to take what we're calling a stoplight approach to these trigger points. We're not waiting to hit the trigger point before taking action. We actually need to consider the planning horizon required for taking action and thinking about taking action around these trigger points. So in our interviews with staff, we were able to identify average planning and implementation horizons across different departments and different project types. So these time horizons on the right side of this table here should be considered kind of in parallel with data on how quickly we are approaching those trigger points, which are all tied to separate metrics. All right, last step here. So in this final step of the framework, we would have regular review of the metrics and the trends that those metrics are indicating. The plan would be to publish a report on a regular cadence that reviews these trends and then present the results to this executive committee. And based on that compiled information, decisions can be made about investing in and implementing adaptation actions. So here is just a snippet of a crosswalk table that's in the plan. And this takes actions that have already been identified in the sea level rise response plan and demonstrates how the metrics and the trigger points in the monitoring plan can help clarify when to take those actions based on the planning horizons and the data that the plan is tracking. So that takes us through the framework that we've developed in the plan. And I'm going to kick it back to Justin here for next steps. But I can keep sharing this slide, Justin.

OK, thanks. Yeah, thanks for that review. So in terms of what happens next, our plan is to wrap up our work and prepare the final study documentation and report for the monitoring plan by the end of this month. then the collaborative partners can gather and start to implement some of the recommendations from that plan. For example, there are a number of metrics where you know, specific numerical values and exactly what say, you know, pump stations or whatever are getting monitored. There are some details that they will need to be sorted through to fill in some of the smaller details within that framework. So kind of validating and refining those metrics to move forward. Then, to the extent that we can based on our conversations with the project team and stakeholders, we've tried to ground and establish these trigger points based on our understanding of the risk tolerance or acceptable level of impacts before initiating action. But the city and other partners, I think, will want to do a little bit more vetting of some of those risk tolerance and trigger points with stakeholders and perhaps with the public. And those can, of course, be refined over time as well. And then as Julia Grace was explaining, this sort of ongoing and reviewing, ongoing compilation and sharing of the results of the monitoring will happen over the coming years as that data is collected and those trends start to emerge over time. So that concludes our presentation. Thank you. And happy to take any questions or turn it over to Natalie or whoever wants to take us from here.

Yeah, yeah, I gotcha. Great presentation. I really appreciate how you've laid everything out. And just for me personally, it kind of you know, we've had this plan for many years that we've been coming together on. We've gotten through the near-term actions. And for me, it's been a big question of like, well, what's next? And you've just like laid it out, like very clearly how we move forward with this work with changing conditions on the ground. So really appreciate it. I'm going to go ahead and open it up to everyone here for any questions that we have while we have Justin and Julia Grace here with us. And I am actually and if you want to go ahead and take down your slides, then we can see everybody better. Alright, so I am looking around for any hands raised. Do we have any questions where they just so thoroughly clear and reporting on their work that we have no questions. All right. Well, again, thank you so much for your work. Natalie, I don't know if you have anything that you want to share just like in closing around this. I don't think so.

There's going to be some follow-ups in our next item, but really appreciate all the work that Julia Grace and Justin have been up to. So yeah, thank you so much for the presentation.

Yeah. Thanks for the opportunity to share with you.

Thank you. It's our pleasure. Yeah, yeah. Thank you guys again. Like I said, it was so thorough that, you know, any kind of question I had, you kind of answered in the next slide. So really appreciate the work.

Of course. Thank you very much.

All right. Well, and that will lead us into our next business item, which is a briefing on next year's C-Level Rise Collaborative Work Plan, which I assume we're going to see this tie into some of what we just heard. So go ahead, Natalie. Okay. Great, thank you. Let's see.

There my screen. Okay, can everyone see that?

It's still loading on my end, there it is.

Okay, love it. Okay, so we're here today to talk about the 2027-2028 work plan. As you all know, we're working on a biennial work plan schedule. So we do two years of the work plan and then kind of like close out in 2028 and we'll create a new one in 2028. So this helps with our budgeting process. I will also add that we're going over the draft of the work plan today with the intent of adopting it in September. So if you have any comments or questions or things to add or modify, now is a great time to kind of start thinking about that and we can work with staff over the next few months to get those integrated and then adopted in September at our quarter three meeting. Okay, so we're all familiar with the Sea Level Rise Response Plan. Always like to start first with that, but I think we're aware, especially after the last presentation, what that holds and what we're working towards. And the Sea Level Rise Response Plan There's, you know, all of the partners have their own planning area. We have four main contexts or planning contexts. So each of these represents different midterm strategies that will together create a water tank barrier and allow for, you know, mitigated flood risk within downtown Olympia through each of these agencies collaboration and specific adaptation strategies. So As we were talking about, we've completed the near-term strategies of this phased implementation. We're moving now in 2025, 2026, and into this work plan of 2027, 2028, really at the beginning stages of these midterm strategies. We talked a lot in the monitoring plan presentation about how we're going to splice up this somewhat longer timeframe to kind of tackle these strategies and the work plan also reflects this kind of new transition that we're entering in as a collaborative and as part of this phased implementation. So the work plan includes a bunch of different items, which I can explain in a minute. And it also includes some formatting changes where at the bottom of the PDF, if you're looking at it, there's individual agency tasks, which reflect the midterm strategies that were outlined within each of those planning context areas. So this will be outside of the work of the collaborative, you know, big C collaborative that were gathered here today to talk about. And this is more agency-wide and like department-wide strategies that will be implemented with, you know, agency-specific budgets, not necessarily the collaborative budget that we'll be adopting in September. So the work plan tasks that are list here are the ones that will be shared across the voting members and what we'll be working towards in over the next two years. So I have a slide on each of these, so I'll just go over those as we talk. So the first one is this project that has been somewhat on pause or like slow to get started around incorporating sea level rise considerations into our capital planning process. So this is led by the city of Olympia. We have all of the partners and stakeholders there as part of this development process. But the end goal here really is to create guidelines that the partners can use to really integrate in a standardized fashion, sea level rise projections across the design and engineering of capital projects. So this has been on pause due to some like engineering staffing constraints that we've had at the city, but we're hoping to pick it up through the summer into the fall and will likely spill over into 2027, which is why it's on this work plan. The next one is the investigating long-term public financing mechanisms. Again, this has been kind of on pause for a bit, waiting for some work to kind of catch up. but we're really planning next year for this to be the main project that will be started up likely at the end of this year and then be focused on in 2027. So again, we already did a phase one of this, which ended in June, 2024, and we're really working next year to understand what the next phase of that work would be. So this is identifying different funding and financing levels that we will have to complete sea level rise adaptation strategies, assessing what those revenue levels are, conducting public outreach, convening a financial work group, which is really just members from this committee, and evaluating the feasibility of having sea level rise adaptation projects through different stormwater utility rates, which is also already ongoing a little bit through some rate studies that the utility is working on. And Susan Clark can... jump in if she wants to add more details around that or anything I just said was inaccurate. Okay, moving to the next developing flow reduction program for the combined sewer system. So we applied as a collaborative last year to an EPA stormwater strategic initiative lead grant, which is aimed at creating more resilient combined or more resilient stormwater systems in the Puget Sound. So we received grant funding to create a model that shows where the peak flows are happening in the combined sewer system in downtown Olympia. And through this modeling work, we'll be able to identify a holistic reduction strategy, both with green stormwater infrastructure and upgrades to the sewer system that will prioritize areas to separate the combined sewer in downtown. And the goal here really is to reduce the flows that get put into Bud and Lint treatment plant during these high flow events, which is a combination of either high tides and or, you know, excess rainfall. So this project took a little bit of time to get contracted, but it's now up and running and will be ongoing. through September or starting in September and then through to 2027. And really just adding this, this is not, we already have the grant funding for it, but just noting that this was a collaborative initiated project that will be continued interest for this group. The next item here is performing the monitoring activities that ACOM just presented on and By the end of 2028, we'll have published our first report that essentially reports on all of those activities and metrics and tabulation that you just learned a lot about. So I don't need to belabor that. And then lastly, as always, trying to be opportunistic about any state or federal funding that comes up as it arises. We're always looking for other grants and trying to support both design planning and implementation of the midterm adaptation projects as they become available. And I will add that in the work plan, there's another line item that's kind of like supporting emerging opportunities. And that's a way for us to be able to support some of these kind of opportunistic grants as they come up and any additional opportunities. funds or fees that might be needed to apply. That's everything from me and what's on the work plan. So I can pass it over to you, Chairman Drone, if you have any other comments.

Great, thank you. Sounds like we have, it's largely some holdovers from last year, the ongoing work of pursuing funding and the new work around the monitoring that we just heard about. So it all makes sense to me. I'm looking to all the folks on the call here to see if anybody has any questions. This work plan is just up for discussion right now to be voted on at our next quarterly meeting, I believe. That's right, Natalie? Yeah. Okay, great.

I would just say I've reviewed the work plan and I talked to Natalie a little bit about it earlier this week and I'm totally comfortable with the direction this is going, and I think we're on target. It looks like a lot of work, so thank you.

All right. Anybody else? Hey, well, we can expect another update and a vote on this at the next quarterly meeting. So thank you so much, Natalie. And not just you, Natalie. I know that there's staff at all of the jurisdictions that are coming together to see what's next that needs to be done to be responding to the challenges that we know are headed our way. And so just thanks to everybody on the call who are up working together to make sure that our work is moving forward. Okay. Well, those were our two business items for this meeting. Are there any reports from any of the jurisdictions here? Any reports or updates? And it's fine if the answer is no, because that means we just like end a little bit early, which I never mind doing, so.

Hey, I've got one. Yeah, jump in there. Last meeting, but just wanted to give folks a quick update that I think this is new news, even though it's old news for us, because we're moving so fast on the Deschutes Estuary Restoration Project, but the legislature did include funding for us to get to 100% design and permitting by the end of the biennium, this biennium. So we are actively now moving forward with the project to move from 60% design to 90% design and then accomplish those milestones by June 30 of 27. So really encouraging that the legislature was able to find the funds, especially during this really tough budget time and now we're working on developing the package for construction really closely with the OFM and the governor's office. So it's just a quick update from us on where the Deschutes project is at.

Excellent, Bobak. Love to hear it. Thank you so much.

Yeah. Kind of crazy. It's becoming more of a reality, which is.

I know, I know. I've been, you know, I was an advocate for this issue, you know, over a decade ago. And so to be watching this move forward is just absolutely incredible. So thank you so much for all your work on it.

Absolutely.

All right. Okay, well, if we don't have any more reports and updates, I will go ahead and we can carry on with the rest of our day. I hope everybody has a great weekend and we'll reconvene again in three months. Thanks all.

Thank you. Thank you.