Thank you, everyone, for being here tonight.

Does anyone know of someone else that was supposed to come?

I don't mind waiting a little bit if you know one of your neighbors or someone was supposed to come.

I'm gonna be the boring first few minutes before I hand it off to the professionals anyway.

Um so Easton's Pond uh is critical to the drinking water system.

It's work that is been needed and progressing.

Uh it's been an active uh measure from the city or the predecessors to it for 130 years.

Um our goal is pretty simple, or our responsibility is pretty simple.

That uh the system relies on it, it's all interconnected.

We have a very complex and challenging system, but it's the responsibility to make sure that every single person that relies on it continues to have that safe, reliable drinking water for now and into the future.

Um the kind of goals tonight, high level, trying to get through the presentation just to set a foundation, and then we're gonna have um different stations where you can come up and ask detailed questions.

You can put stickers or draw or sketch or do what you want so we can really get that feedback and interaction um, you know, to help it.

So uh protect the drinking water supply is the number one, strengthen the dam.

Um there's usually the easy visual is the coastal storm, but we also have a significant challenge with the uh inland storm.

The long-term infrastructure risk, so the city's already spent a great deal of money at the treatment plants and other portions of the uh infrastructure, including uh repair work to the dam.

And the last piece is in addition to that core, is what are the additional access options that we can integrate or multi-benefits that we can integrate into the infrastructure project uh to make sure that we protect water quality and maximize those benefits uh going forward.

So uh I believe the exact date if we go into the dam registry is 1891 that they have that the dam was constructed.

So for more than 130 years, uh these dams have been providing safe drinking water to the island residents.

Uh if we think about that late 1800s uh construction, they used materials and labor that was on hand.

So you weren't getting special specs.

It was kind of those same conditions, that marsh, everything was there.

Now we're seeing what the previous repairs in that original construction from the late 1800s were doing uh and how they're aging, and then where we're going into the future is designing that for future conditions to make sure that we can continue to provide that safe drinking water for everyone.

Um they're fairly long dams, but they're not very deep.

Uh I affectionately usually refer to most of our drinking water supplies as mud puddles.

Um I'm happy we have them.

Uh the total supply from all nine is around three point something uh billion gallons.

But for the majority of Newport, that supply is gonna come out of Easton's Pond.

Easton's Pond basically functions as one reservoir, and they are an absolute critical portion of the supply.

So much that if you were just to look at the raw numbers on you know where we can get that stored material from, 17% of our storage is north and south pond.

But when you look at it even more, the amount of the water that actually goes through the treatment plant is predominantly Easton's pond, so north or south.

Uh and that comes out to on average over the past few years, about 2.2 million gallons a day, and that's enough for 22,000 to 28,000 people.

Um, so for a long time, there was kind of the perception that they weren't used or that they were backup supplies.

Uh they are not.

Uh North and in South Pond in particular, South Pond is the closest best water quality we have, and uh best water quality for us is dramatically different than than most utilities.

Um, but it makes a big difference in how and how everything functions.

And so that's kind of setting the stage, and now I'm gonna let the design team come up and walk through uh all the important parts.

All right, thank you, Rob, and thank you for everyone for sharing your evening with us.

Um, I'm gonna start the presentation by kind of talking through the engineering and the design and what we're doing to the dam itself.

And then we're going to be thinking about some of the recreational or the walkways and the connection that the dam has with the rest of the community, as well as the beach itself.

So to introduce our team, I'm Lara Sapp.

I'm a water resource engineer.

We have John Escobar, who is our geotechnical engineer and project manager.

Andy Bone, our public we've got him down as public access design, but a landscape architect.

We have Emily Wright, also landscape architect.

Rebecca Matson, uh geotechnical and water research engineer, and then Dino Adette, another water resource engineer and our senior technical advisor.

So to walk you through some of the risks that the dam is at, um, I wanted to kind of start with thinking about climate resiliency.

So we have increased storm surge, we have more coastal storm events that are coming with um with intensity inland flooding, inland precipitation has increased and is projected to increase throughout the next 50 to 100 years.

Um and then also here in this picture, you can see some a storm event that actually happened back in 2007 where erosive waves, the inland flooding was filling up the pond and erosive waves.

You can see this is the western um embankment of the south pond.

And actually, the Navy had to come during the storm event and place the sandbags that you see on the left hand side of the picture to make sure that that so that the dam wasn't overtopped and that we didn't experience a dam breach.

Um, so then thinking about the embankment itself and the stability of the embankment is very important as we think about our design.

Um, and then the coastal storm events thinking about saltwater intrusion and the fact that they could come into the public drinking water supply and how long that would take to dissipate if it was to in like have the south pond offline when that happens.

Um, so just a little visual here, thinking about the the uh salt water coming in.

We have a lower dam embankment as you can see.

Um the overtopping is possible in moderate storm events today.

Um coastal surge is is hitting the spillway, the spillway is rather low.

Um, and then just increased vulnerability as that as we project that into increased storm events in future conditions.

So, what happens in the future?

Thinking here about raising the embankment around the dam.

My colleague is going to talk about exactly where that will look like.