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.

Um, and then reconstructing the spillway of the dam itself.

Right now we have a uh static state spillway.

And so thinking about something that has uh manipulation capabilities so it can go up and down and drain the pond.

Um, Jonathan will talk a little bit more about that.

So I will pass it to Tom.

Thank you, Laura.

So she mentioned where we currently stand right now.

So this phase one that you can see right there, that is the same section that Laura just pointed to with the sandbags.

You can see here that now that is an embankment that has been adjusted for the resilience improvements.

It included raising the embankment to the required elevation and armoring the slopes to protect for those when generated waves that were causing the erosion.

One thing I want to point you to is the map on the top right.

The red outline is the area that was improved.

And the reason I point that is because now we look at what we're proposing today, and it's really just a completion of that phase one project.

The yellow there is the area that we're proposing to improve uh for the resilience improvements that will include armoring all those yellow areas and raising the embankments to the required elevations.

Uh associated with that is a tidal gate that will go just to the south of Braga Park.

And the purpose of that gate is because there is a drainage channel that surrounds Southeastern Pond and their coastal events.

The salt water works his way back up through the drainage channel and could potentially uh introduce salt water into North Eastern Pond.

The other uh indicator right there in the blue is the spillway that Laura mentioned that will be adjusted.

It's gonna be widened and it'll have that variable gate, which allows the city of Newport a lot of functionality with it.

And I'll get into that a little bit more in a couple slides.

And like we mentioned, reduce the overtopping risk and increase resilience with the main important part is the water quality.

This is what the typical section will look like.

And the most important thing to keep in mind is that it's exactly what we did during that 2014 solution.

And it works, it's it's vegetated, it looks nice.

So we're happy with that and we're proposing.

And this would support with the erosion protection, but it also provides support against slope stability failures.

And then the spill weight design that shows the gate there right now, like Laura mentioned.

We don't have the capacity to modify that the gate elevations, but in the future we will.

The purpose of that is if we're expecting an inland storm, we could prep for that.

We could lower the water level in the pond and account for that inland storm.

But during a coastal storm, we could close that gate fully and have protection against the salt water uh intrusion into the ponds.

And the sensors can adjust automatically in case there's for some reason we can't close it, it'll be a fail-safe.

And south pond.

Yeah, so the tidal gate near Bright Braga Park that will be in the moat that prevents or provides protection from salt water intrusion into North Pond, but then the tide or the gate at Southeastern Pond or salt water intrusion into South Pond.

So you have still the water coming up the moat multiple speech up to that point.

Yeah, yep, that's for the tide gate.

It could probably have that kind of intrusion wall over the next one.

Correct.

And and Laura could give you much more information about those elevations and the storms that would cause that.

Okay.

Yeah, probably.

And now we look at the cost.

So right now we are looking at an all-in cost of 45 million dollars.

That's what our current um projections show.

This is a large number, of course, but with the support of the city and Fuss and O'Neal, we are looking for a diversified funding strategy, and we're gonna definitely chase programs that would either fully encapsulate this cost or partially handle this cost.

One more thing to keep in mind is that we have a range there.

Purpose of that range is potential inflation or other unforeseen elements that could affect that cost.

And now I will turn it over to Andy to talk about the public access opportunities.

Thank you.

Thanks, John.

Hello, everybody.

Again, my name is Andy Bone.

I'm a landscape architect with uh Fuss and O'Neill.

Um, excited to talk to y'all uh tonight a little bit about some um potential access improvements um around the pond to the beach um and connecting the various parks um and looking at that as a as layering that into some of the improvements that we just learned about for the dam itself.

So understanding there's some opportunities then to add these access improvements uh into that.

So currently we have the the walkway from Braga Park um down to old uh old beach road, um, and then it kind of terminates at the end of the road and there's no connection.

Um so looking at opportunities to strengthen that connection, um looking at alternatives for uh potentially um improvements uh to the street from Braga Park uh down to this section, or looking at doing potentially a boardwalk at the moat.

These are all things that are potentially um areas that we can explore.

Um looking at the opportunities to um improve the intersection at Old Beach Road and Memorial Boulevard are significant.

That's a very challenging intersection to navigate.

Um its alignment is wonky.

Um we know that there's uh there's some improvements that could be done along Memorial Boulevard, but ultimately getting people across to the beach area um and then ultimately connecting people down the beach area through uh to Dunlap Wheeler Park and into Middletown as areas that we we want to explore as well.

As I had mentioned, you know, there's opportunities to create boardwalks.

Um right now we have the the walkway on top of the dam, but is there an opportunity to look at creating something along uh that moat area and doing some excuse me, ecological enhancements to that moat area?

We'll be looking at wetland mitigation in that area along the moat.

Um, we're not going to be able to stop the moat from flooding, but trying to do what we can to help mitigate the flooding there as much as possible.

Um as I mentioned, doing some streetscape improvements and to the pedestrian access along Old Beach Road.

Um, you know, is that a sidewalk?

Is it a sidewalk separated with a tree lawn so that there's a little bit more protection for pedestrians?

Um and then ultimately looking at the intersection um at Memorial Boulevard and Old Beach Road.

As I mentioned, the the alignment of Old Beach Road where it comes out is pretty wonky and challenging.

It creates a really long crosswalk condition.

Um so trying to minimize those lengths of crossing will be something that we really want to explore.

Um the opportunity to use the medium as like a safety spot um so that you don't have to kind of play frogger across a very large right-of-way and get you across these areas in a much safer way and ultimately over to uh to the beach side of uh Memorial Boulevard.

So everybody knows this condition.

This isn't foreign, but we just threw it up there to kind of show how wide and vast that that opening is um for people trying to kind of move through this area.

And then as it mentioned, looking at some of the work um that they're doing or that they're proposing to do at Dunlop Dunlap Wheeler Park and opportunities to make connections and increase the pedestrian connections um over to that park.

So what that looks like is that something that's done on Memorial Boulevard over the bridge, is it a separate crossing just for pedestrians or multimodal?

These are all things that we want to explore and get people's ideas or thoughts about.

This is a good look at that one.

So we're gonna break out into the breakout stations.

We just threw a ton of information at you, which we recognize.

We have a ton of really good documentation.

Um, one of the questions that came up before about elevations and specific materiality.

Um, so we'll have a station uh based on kind of the site history and the proposed embankment design, and then we'll have another one that's um more related to pedestrian enhancements um and some visual preference.

Um so Rob, do we want to do any QA at this point or do we want to break into the stations and we're gonna break out, but well, I said I wasn't gonna talk a lot, but I here we go.

I can't help myself.

I think I think I get that from Joe Joe Nicholson passed that off to me a little bit.

Uh one of the things before, and we're excited to do the stations and get feedback and have that uh interaction with everyone.

But one of the things that I just want to remind everyone or go back to is the fundamental purpose for everyone is uh protecting that drinking water supply.

And the the core engineering around it isn't really going to change much.

Um there's been some questions in the past.

I think Dean Dean was going back through presentations to the early 2000s of different ideas, including some that looked like a giant reinforced concrete bunker all the way around the pond.

Um so we've done a lot of that, but where we are now with any of these projects is we want to maximize those benefits where we can and and stay true to the to the core purpose.

And so uh as we you know break out, there's there's a ton of different areas to that, but uh two big points is whatever happens at the beach isn't gonna change what happens for the dams or what needs to happen for the for the dam.

That underlying engineering for either the inland storm or the coastal storm is gonna stick.

So there's there's not much uh change there.

Um and then as far as the materials and that, we we already have the engineering and then we've lived with the improvements on the one section, so we have a very good handle that it works, uh, how the maintenance is gonna go and how that'll perform.

And so those two anchors kind of uh the the outside engineering.

And then outside of that, we um are looking forward to trying to maximize the other benefits we we have.

So we'll uh step right out into the breakout sessions and look forward to talking to you.

We're gonna do questions after and step up.

If you want to do the question now, it's fine.

Oh, you mean that would have those stations kind of getting a question?

Have you ever been a study done on the amount of water that comes into the pond basically one of springs in that location?

There's a lot of spring water that comes up.

It's really evident by you know, see the ice melting continual holes in places.

Um you do moderate jump trees out of the water.

And there's a bit of a calculation of the amount of water that's actually coming to what hopefully uh based upon spring water.

No, there isn't.

Um, the calculation that we had from permitts ago was was how much we actually reduce water loss through some seepage in the dams and some old pipe networks.

That was pretty substantial, the amount of uh amount of loss that was making it uh lead to the mouth and through other areas.

Uh so abandonment of those uh pipelines and that cut down quite a bit on the water level fluctuation and dropping in the pond, but uh we haven't looked at the springs compared to the kind of is what it is.

Well, the elevation of the uh structure from the 13 inches as it was with the seven, two thousand nine.

There's gonna be two there'll be two different elevations.

So for primarily we're matching pond for where it is, and then second the north pond will be slightly different.

But there's there is a section there that there's a hydraulic break over where we have to let the pass through come through.

Uh not to get into the weeds, but like the existing spillways in that now, some of them had cheater boards that could be in, and so like South Pond's actually operating 11 inches down from what it could be.

Uh, you haven't been able to put any of the wood pipes or anything in for some kind of is there any kind of structure in place to uh prepare for incoming storms regarding more level of south pond?

It seems that when the 2007 issue occurred, the pond was very very high, and then we had the northeastern bit, which is the consequence of the emotion that occurred.

Is there some kind of a calculation overlooked that the water people has as far as um the level of the cell pond, how quickly you can make it down in the event of that's all gonna get modified with this design?

So this design has a lot more flexibility with that controlled gateway and that on how rapidly we can do it and what the low level outlets now would be.

And so that entire operations plan is going to be dramatically different with this new design than it than it would be now.

Uh the biggest problem now is the primary purpose of drinking water supply.

So if you're gonna use it around a flood flood mitigation pond, uh and then you don't have an event, you're you're up against it, and we don't have another service of 2.2 million gallons of treated water in it.

If somebody do a rough calculation as the relocation of this gate, which apparently is going to be adjacent to the vegetable part, consider that elevation is that that gates a passive gate, the controlled gate's activity just extend where the existence filled.

But if if if you want, we have more of the detailed plans and that for it so we can get in.

I'm just gonna make some consideration that any kind of game we'll put there because it can work both ways.

Obviously, it's gonna work in favor of not allowing the salt water to come towards more pond.

But the secondary nature, particularly as we see the normally occurred small, you're gonna have a considerable model more coming down, trapped in between pot all the way to the well school with more pond and then one at the top that you graduate more human bottom.

You have that you have that condition now, and what what you'd actually see with the elevations is that's that hydraulic jump over that torch in the middle that I was talking about.

So they act together.

We don't have mapped out what that's operational, but instead of it going that way through the moat, it'll actually cycle through South Pond through that new uh smart spillway.

I can only assume that the miscalculation is not a pond again, but we should be module doom and you know what water capacity that's gonna be able to handle and snow wind.

The modeling they did goes to the 2D, it was down so sensitive that you were picking up hundreds of a change in it.

And so all the permitting, whether it's through Army Corps or dam safety and that has that all then.

We can't negatively impact anything uh through those, so it has to be matched or improve it.

Um, but we're trying to stay out of that.

I mean again, we it's it's there, all those reports are gonna be there.

The actual uh operating procedure for what those are is not developed yet.

Um, but the the general intent is to be better than what we will be today.

And the secondary role is is there any calculation building modifications proposed next boat um more cell on the Western side of the pond?

Is there any calculations to the mold section bringing a little bit down through the speech?

Is there gonna be any changes?

They're gonna get wider.

We're not allowed, we're not allowed to change any of the elevations and that in there.

So part of that sensitivity for the model, and it's that if you can't have that commental impact.

And I mean any kind of uh we'll look to be able to have two increased back in the speed limit of the mode.

That was looked at in previous reports from the early 2000s, and there wasn't much hydraulic difference.

That doesn't really impact the revenue design and that would come over in the more of that flood we didn't get anything in the boat.

Um that's say no.

Um you said there was two dimensional mapping that was done.

Um said it was very accurate, it was big, probably something like that, trying to figure out what the actual capacity of the floodplain is there coming down into the boat.

Was that me before the calculations were done for filling the old sedimentation pond, or they made after if there was an awful lot of flood water residual capacity there, people want to have my neighborhood out of the screen?

But that is all technically a floodplain down there.

Um so we're just be carried up those calculations were wrong for like what you can hold in that little basin at the bottom of Busmine Road, bottom of the table bar, and in between the barm where the basketball court got the parking brought off bottlenecks.

If after filling that in, there's going to be worse flooding that we you know, inland flooding, not not tidal flooding, but inland flooding from inline reinvents that we're seeing right now.

Okay, we're we're straying from what the purpose of the meeting is, but so the that engineering level analysis and that we can talk more in the breakout session, and then it's not just the city that's continuing if you have the Army Corps and uh the damn city folks in DTM all looking at that.

And and to come back and simplify it, we're not gonna allow it to have a detrimental impact action.

So the supporting engineering engineering has to be done to show that yeah, it's reinforced that Rob said we have to demonstrate zero point zero zero feet increase.

You cannot decrease it in inland flight elevation, and we go through independent post.

Was there any um was there a uh environmental scientist or biologist or somebody present on your staff as part of the study should be ecological and that involves the leader, like astronomous fish populations, waterfowl, star reptiles, amphibians, all that kind of stuff that lives down there?

And actually, we hired themselves specialists to do it.

Okay, is any of that information present at this meeting?

No, okay.

It's gonna be ready for a permit.

Well, we'll put together for our permit, and then we'll have what we need to associate that.

Okay, yeah, but she's still working on it.

Thank you.

Yeah, and to engineering and sign actions, but that's all of the possibilities and the connection, what you said.