Good afternoon, everybody.

We'll call into order the June 11th meeting for environmental matters.

For the record, we have old woman Taisha Conti present.

OC virtual.

So we can get um Alban Hotley on roll call.

All right.

So for roll call.

We have Alderman Conti.

Here.

Alderman Huntley.

I'm here.

Right, thank you.

And have approval of approval of the agenda.

Is there a motion?

Motion.

Is there a second?

Can I get a second to approve the agenda?

Second.

Thank you.

All those approved all those who approved, please say aye.

Aye.

Motion carries.

Thank you.

Next up, business miscellaneous approval of the minutes from May 14th.

Is there a motion to approve the minutes?

So moved.

Second.

Seconded.

All those in favor, please say aye.

Motion carries.

Thank you.

And then general discussion.

I'm gonna take privilege of the chair to reorganize this a little bit, because it did tell, I think I believe I told public works I'd get them out of here soon since they're doing us a favor and coming today.

So I want to start with ID 3426, state of Spa Creek.

So do we have somebody who's willing?

So the reason this came up, you can come on to the table or the if there's more than one of you can come up to the table.

So thank you for joining us today.

Um where this came from is that we have received over the past few months various um concerns that have been raised by the public and the committee and elsewhere about the quality of Spa Creek.

And so I wanted to just actually hear from those of you who are actually monitoring and seeing the watershed every day to see what the data shows, and to find out from you if there's any way we can assist you in those efforts.

And so with that, if you could just introduce yourselves.

So I have the presentation, uh, the PowerPoint that I use for the full presentation.

Oh, you make sure you can each take a mic.

Uh but I'm I'd like to shorten that a lot and just give the highlights, which I'm sure you're all you will all appreciate a lot also.

So we've been monitoring on Spa Creek, uh Spa Creek and Bat Creek for 10 years now.

And so the process or the program has expanded a lot over those years, and so when you look at this map, this map shows that the the goal is really to hit all parts of Spa Creek and Back Creek.

So we have uh a couple of sites, Cherry Grove and Children's Museum, CG and SEM that are up in the headwaters, uh non-title to barely title, and then through the rest of Spa Creek, we have several sites that are shore-based and several that are midstream all the way out to the mouth.

And then it's fewer years, but we still have now going on four-ish years on back creek with the same idea.

Really, we have some sites that are very close to shore and then a couple of midstream sites.

The concept being that um people get into the water at the shore, so we want an idea of what the shore is like, as well as the midstream area where you're gonna get more flushing and more dilution, more movement, everything.

So for the assessment of the water, one thing that we don't do, so when we think about the report every year for Spa Creek Conservancy uh or Spa Creek, I don't think about it as a letter grade, and I know the slide makes it look like we're showing lighter grades.

Uh the Mid-Atlantic tributary assessment coalition for a number of characteristics uh parameters have developed this grading system.

Um but depending on what water body you uh look at, everyone uses different parameters for the report card.

So we really think about it as a year, year over year comparison, looking for changes, not really trying to give one grade.

For example, even the Chesapeake Bay now, they're adding things like social um awareness and engagement, things that we don't include in our assessment on Spa Creek.

So uh the big point is, and there's a slide I took out of this, is that it's really it really is about the rain.

We don't have, I'm getting way ahead of myself probably, but in the last couple of slides, there's nothing usually that happens on Spa Creek that is extremely um unpredictable.

When those things pop up, then it really is a red flag that something's going on.

For example, when there was the oil blockage in the one pipe and the bacterial, and there was a backup sewage backup and the bacterial counts concentration was very high.

But usually things are relatively explainable.

When we have more rain, and when we have more rain that's close to when we do the monitoring, the values look poorer over time, as there's uh erosion or um and more, I should say impervious surface, we see that after rain, the um effects are worse, right?