i am calling the monday may 2nd 2022 parks and natural resources commission meeting to order at 6 33 pm tonight's parks and natural resources commission meeting will be held in person and virtually by using zoom as chair i will be leading the parks and natural resources commission meeting and the public is welcome to participate when invited throughout the meeting members of the public may attend the meeting in person or join via zoom online if attendees experience audio problems we suggest you leave the meeting and then rejoin this usually fixes the issue additional instructions on how to participate are posted online at www.burnsvillemn.gov in the public meeting calendar as usual tonight's meeting is available for viewing on bctv and the city's website if you are unable to participate this evening and would like to submit public testimony i encourage you to email your comments to city staff or mail your comments directly to city hall now on to the agenda the first item on tonight's agenda is adoption of the agenda do any members of the commission have any changes all right staff do you have any changes to the agenda nothing from staff perfect may i have a motion for the adoption of the agenda we need to adopt the agenda second there is a motion to adopt and a second all in favor say aye aye anybody opposed perfect it passes i will approve the minutes um of the march 7th 2022 parks and natural resources commission meeting minutes um commissioners are there any changes to the minutes all right staff any changes to the minutes from staff perfect may have a motion to approve the minutes second we have a motion and a second all in favor all right anybody opposed perfect that carries are there any members of the public on zoom who wish to speak chairwoman i'm not seeing anybody perfect and so then we will move on to the lake marine greenway natural resources improvement plan chris clatt from dakota county if we welcome you to come speak thank you good evening commissioners and staff members my name is chris klatt i'm a natural resources specialist with dakota county parks and i wanted to come to you tonight to for an informational item about the natural resources opportunities that exist along the lake marion greenway we've been in close communication with caleb and uh and daryl and city to discuss the natural resource management plan that the update that the city has come up with so a lot of what you might be seeing here tonight might be familiar uh but that was intentional we really wanted to work lockstep with the city in terms of what the natural resource needs are in the parks and use this as an opportunity for the county greenway as a as a place where we can work in collaboration to do natural resource related activities and so tonight i'm going to start my talk with just a brief overview of the greenway corridor as it travels through the city of burnsville and other local communities and i'll talk a little bit about the cost share program that the counties established in order to enable uh and facilitate the the implementation of natural resource projects in the um along the greenway and then finally i'll just give an update we've been engaged um with this uh natural resource management planning activity for this greenway and another the and i'll give a quick update at the end of my talk to talk about where we are in that timeline and in opportunities that we have to work in collaboration for engagement of the public and during this public draft review period and then finally i'd love to hear of any comments and questions that you might have about this project so first the context of this greenway as it um as it stands in the in the city of burnsville this this trail uh largely occupies the western corridor of the city uh as it moves south and moves actually out of the county for a short period this is just an alignment as it currently stands it will eventually go through murphy henry hand park and then southward towards lakeville where it will the trail will move through other city parks in the city of lakeville and then along an existing trail along the south of lake marion which is has been known in the past as the juno trail eventually it will travel eastward towards farmington where it will turn the terminus will be in rambling river park where the uh the trail uh well the rambling river park is where the vermillion main stem and the north creek of the vermillion river meet and send and then what you see on the east side there there's another green line that indicates the north creek greenway which was our natural resource management plans we're working in tandem with this other plan i'm just going to speak a little bit more about the lake marion greenway on the western side tonight but just to give you a little bit more context of of this trail and its environs so the lake marion greenway in itself is encompasses either 20 miles of established trail or trail alignments that are not yet in place and it's adjacent to over 3500 acres of public lands and not all these lands are currently natural spaces some of them are often used for turf areas and recreation and so natural resource opportunities might not present themselves throughout those entire 3500 acres but what we were we had an eye for natural resource improvements that we could uh collaborate on within those lands and and we came up with a total of about 1.5 million potential projects that we identified and in particular in the city of burnsville the areas that we talked with the city staff to highlight our areas within rudy kramer nature preserve sunset sapon park and keller hurt park go into a little bit more detail on the alignment this is a an aerial photograph of the uh the northern part of the greenway in that western side of the city so where the trail flows currently through rudy kramer nature preserve there's been a lot of restoration activities that have occurred there over the past seven or eight years and the trail currently moves southward through the park and then switch backs up a steep slope where we identified areas that could be re-restored into a prairie landscape and so we're looking at existing opportunities there and then currently there aren't contiguous trail segments that connect rudy kramer to sunset pond but that is in the works moving southward to sunset pond again this is established trail that moves through the eastern side of the park uh and there are existing natural features in this park as there's been prairie restorations and invasive species management however as part of this uh greenway process and uh and i'll go into a little bit more detail detailing the cost share and ongoing management that the county is willing to take on we could assist in additional removement or movement or removing of invasive species such as buckthorn and honeysuckle and uh engage in economic prairie management such as burning and in management of invasive species in a targeted fashion we also identified areas along the shoreline that are that have been restored and could be enhanced or additional plantings could be brought back to their native shoreline habitat as there's a lot of hybrid cattail that's currently along the shoreline there and so there could be opportunities to reintroduce native species on that shoreline then moving southward along judicial road the trail that actually starts moving westward through kelleher park this trail segment was brought into the system just last year unfortunately the trail alignment did cut through an existing prairie but we are engaged in re-restoring segments of that trail or re-restoring prairie along those segments of the trail in addition to looking for other opportunities to do natural resource management projects so i mentioned you know one of the main reasons we're developing natural resource management plan is to develop implementation projects that that could be brought forth for grant uh grant applications and so while again this is in lock step with the existing uh natural resource management plan update that the city was engaged in there are other communities along this greenway corridor that don't have those planning processes and so taking a lens through the greenway corridor and following those same steps for natural resource management planning our hopes are to engage with the cities to do uh to to not only obtain grants but also to um to help pay for them i'll go into that a little more detail momentarily but what we identified in as consistent with the natural resource management plan from the city was that there are two project areas within kelleher park that could benefit from grant opportunities and that is this k1 region and the southern part where we ident caleb and staff identified the need for additional hydrological studies to determine if uh if this is a fen wetland and if so what kinds of resource management opportunities exist to enhance the native vegetation in this in this area and engage with additional hydrological needs and also this k2 region on the northern side of the park this k2 region has a high potential for becoming an oak savannah habitat the there are large mature white and burr oak trees in this part of the property and there are also it's heavily infested with old growth buckthorn and so a lot of canopy management and and invasive shrub removal would would be needed to bring this habitat back to its former quality so just to give an overview of what some of those activities would be and i mentioned limiting those exotic shrubs removing secondary trees and shrubs such as those that grew since that was in oak savanna and established native grasses as a ground cover which would then allow for the opportunity to use fire as a management tool this picture was incidentally taken from terrace oaks so this is what we hope that area to look like someday in places where oak trees are maybe a little more uh abundant in the canopy this would maybe be appropriate for a uh a grass habitat in the in the understory but perhaps in oak woodland would target still a largely forested plant community but still needing the opportunity to remove exotic shrubs thin some secondary trees such as box elder and and uh and also to establish native shrubs and enhance the ground community so in the plan there are sections that itemize exactly what could be done within these regions and this is just a short example of of a package of a project or activities that could be managed as a project that could then be put forth as a grant opportunity and so we're looking at projects that are typically around a hundred thousand dollars so this is uh an example of that um but what i wanted to go into detail a little bit more about is how the county and the city can work together to not only obtain those grant funds but also to how the county could assist in managing lands along the greenway and so the county's come up with a few definitions of a greenway corridor depending on if it's in a urban a suburban or rural context and so within the city of burnsville we would consider this to be a suburban context in which we the county has take would be willing to assist in a 200-foot wide corridor along the trail and managing those native plantings and so that's one way in which after restoration has occurred the county could help in maintaining the assisting with the costs and maintaining those areas the 30-foot easement is typically a uh owned by the county and it offers very limited opportunities for natural resource work in that we have a 10 foot wide trail often three feet of turf on either side of the trail and we're left with another four feet of of a strip of pollinator plantings and such so it really makes sense to take this in context of the larger swath of land that is owned by the city but that the county would be willing to to manage and then finally the lands outside the that corridor that are parkland owned by the city that is another category of parkland that we consider in this cost share matrix so i mentioned the 30 foot easement that's totally the responsibility of the county the greenway corridor is something that that while the county would be willing to maintain in the long term the initial restoration costs would uh be a 50 50 cost share between the city and the county for any grant match that would be needed for a project and then finally the natural lands beyond the corridor typically there are grant funds available to do that work as a whole so we wouldn't separate those corridors from a larger project but rather the cost share of formula that would would largely be determined by the grant or our county's land conservation plan so there might be an opportunity to have that same 50 50 cost share in those last lands outside the corridor or it could even be a 30 70 depending on the source of the funding um so to take go back to this example that i presented to you earlier of a roughly 100 000 project what that means from a city county contribution perspective is that if we were applying for a state grant of say 86 000 the county and the city could bring 10 of those funds for a total project budget of 103 that would cover the cost of doing this restoration so with that i wanted to just give you an update as to where we are in this process for our planning we've uh we hired stantec to do the the route natural resource inventory and determine what the priorities are along with city staff members to determine how we could work in collaboration to do these restoration projects so that scoping and stakeholder consultation has been completed last year we're now moving into a public review of the draft it's available on the website that's listed below here this qr code will take you there as well that after going to that site you'll be able to find the current draft plans that are available as well as a an interactive map in which the public is able to scroll and and make points of interest and comments in a geographic fashion to determine and provide feedback to us as to what they'd like to see along these trails and what kinds of natural features stand out to them at the at the end of this month may 27th we will be closing the review period and bring this back to the dakota county planning commission citizen advisory board and they will provide their recommendations to adopt this plan to the county board of commissions and hopefully by summer 2022 we're looking at a plan adoption and with that i'd be happy to hear any questions that you might have and uh maybe thank you for letting me speak to you tonight i just have a question um is there any long-term projection on when the greenway would be done or is there past the approval of the plan is there anything on the calendar as far as project deadlines i don't have a firm date set for when trail is established the remaining portions of the trail will be established and so that would be another portion of the county the planning department that would be able to speak to those dates in particular in the phasing that's involved in the actual trail installation however the natural areas that aren't affected by a trail installation could certainly be ident or have been reviewed in this process and certainly have been identified so the timing of these restoration projects are are largely up to opportunities that present themselves for grant funding and the willingness of the city partners and the county to start a project so it was deliberately not set as per a date timeline schedule for this restoration activities but rather when both parties are ready we can enter in the joint powers agreement and then we can begin a restoration sequence and so that's how it's written in the plan here is with a a five-year plan as the partners are ready to begin okay thank you i'm just wondering if you could talk a little bit more about the table for um land cover change in the corridor so this is within the plan itself yeah okay i don't have it in front of me but i believe that is a contemplation of what the existing land cover is and then what it could be as as after restoration activities yep okay so there are in particular for do you want me to talk specifically to some of the city parks in burnsville about the table four yes please specifications okay i'm working off of memory here but i believe in rudy kramer there were no significant suggestions for native community uh plant manipulations other than enhancements along the trail corridor there's an area that on the southern part of the trail before it starts to switch back up the hill there that could be established back to native prairie vegetation currently it's an altered grassland and in sunset ponds there were suggestions to do manipulations along the shoreline to establish native cover of the shoreline there and replacing the hybrid cattail and in kelleher park the the current land cover in the part of the park is an altered oak forest and some canopy manipulations and and buckthorn removal would re-establish that as a oakwood linden savannah there may be additional details in that table that i'm currently not in uh recollection of but i believe that's the bulk of what we're suggesting in this plan so largely again in box step with the natural resource management update sounds good i was looking at the area for decrease when it comes to the marsh and the swamp areas and the wetlands is what i'm particularly concerned about but it sounds like the only changes there would be just kind of refurbishing so to speak the shoreline to make sure that that's healthy and thriving yeah i think our goal in all these manipulations is to bring the vegetative quality to a higher level so anytime we're managing invasive species and hybrid cattail is it's a difficult species to manage and so it might not be a high priority item to do those manipulations but it's something that any any any opportunities we can have to reintroduce native emergent vegetation as is a goal perfect thank you anything else well thank you very much again thanks for allowing me to speak to all right um and now we move on to our 2021 deer management review report in consideration for our 2022 hunt dates and rules changes i'm caleb we invite you to come up and give us some updates all right thank you commissioners all right well thank you for having me tonight uh i'm here to present our annual deer management update um and my name is caleb ashling and i'm a natural resources specialist for the city and i think commissioners may be familiar with a little bit of this background but i'll say it anyways the net the natural resources master plan in 1999 recommended that the city develop a deer management program and that initiated the deer management plan being developed and adopted by city council in 2001 and this did a number of things but one of those major things was set a population density goal for the city and the program is intended to address a few different concerns related to the deer population one is the potential for high numbers of deer car deer vehicle collisions when the deer population is high another is negative impacts to natural areas when you have a lot of deer they can do a lot of damage to the native plants in our parks another is landscaping depredation by deer so causing damage to residential properties and then a disease risk in the deer population when you have higher deer deer densities you're more likely to get disease to spread in the population and so what i'll be doing tonight is reporting on our past program year and then making recommendations for our upcoming program year and so the way this program runs is that so for our upcoming program year for example we'll be talking from april 1st of this year till march 31st of 2023 so there's a few different details related to the program the education component a feeding ban component monitoring of the population and population control so we'll hit on each of those separately the first item is education so we always try to provide some education to residents on deer related issues especially related to the city's deer feeding ban we do try to put that information on our website and we also use our city newsletter to publish reminders about the deer feeding ban as well as using social media and other tools to get the word out and then on to the city's deer feeding ban so it is against ordnance to feed deer in burnsville and so some some of these issues are sometimes reported to city staff by the public and when that happens the city staff follow up on it there were three violations that were reported in 2021 and all those issues were rectified through action letters where we send a notification letter and get the issue to stop through through that means so we haven't issued any fines or anything like that so it's more of an educational tool to get the feeding to stop and we recommend just continuing with these monitoring and action letters as needed uh and then for monitoring there's two major components of our monitoring program the first is an aerial deer count and the second is tallying of deer vehicle collisions and for our monitoring program uh you'll you'll note that we i use six different management zones that will kind of assess the population differently uh the northeast northwest west central east central southwest and southeast zones so our most recent aerial count was conducted on january 31st of 2022 so this aerial count is conducted by helicopter the helicopter has flown over some of the priority natural areas in the in the city and deer are counted from the air and this survey is conducted for us by the three rivers park district so we have a great partnership with them they also fly surveys for uh the city of bloomington sometimes a wildlife refuge and then for their own purposes in murphy hannah park reserve so we're able to to use them to fly our survey as well which is a cost effective and so the aerial survey this map here shows circles where the deer were seen and the little number within that circle is how many deer were seen at that location and the total count was 190 deer which was down from the count in the past couple years of over 200 the areas where they saw the most deer during the survey was the southwest zone with 53 deer down there that's the area around kelleher park and murphy hannahan park followed by the northeast zone which is where the wildlife refuge is but also some considerable considerable populations in the east central zone and southeast as well and then for monitoring i also mentioned that we monitor deer vehicle related collisions and we consider this a minimum number of collisions in the city the way we track this information is we get a report from our police department on any police reports in their system related to deer then we also have an animal control contractor who picks up deer carcasses along the roadway we cross reference those reports to account for any collisions that would not be reported to the police and then we map it and that's where we get this map and total collision number and for this past year we had a minimum of 44 deer vehicle related collisions uh the largest number was in the southwest zone which kind of correlates with the area where we have had the highest population and then followed by the east central especially around tereselks and county road 11 that had a 13 there so this number is a fairly average number for us and lower than the pre-programmed numbers in the 60s and 70s and so we recommend continuing with these annual monitoring methods this upcoming program here and moving on to population control so our program allows for a couple different ways to control the deer population the first is through archery hunting and the second is through sharpshooting conducted by our police department and for our archery program we encourage archery hunting on private property where possible it's not possible in most of the smaller lots in burnsville but there are some areas especially in southwest burnsville where people have larger lots and ordinance would allow them to to do private property sharp shooting and then we operate archery hunts on public land where possible our our current public hunt is at kelleherr park so for our archery program last year there were six deer harvested in the city's archery hunt at kelleher park there also is a hunt at murphy hanahan park in southwest burnsville that's conducted by the three three rivers park district a portion of that park approximately 10 percent 10 percent is within burnsville so we consider approximately 10 of their harvest for our program count so about three deer considered to be removed from burnsville from their hunt as well then for our sharp shooting program we utilize burnsville police department sharpshooters and work at specific sharpshooting sites which are selected for their safety and we conducted sharpshooting in the northeast east central and southeast units this past winter and there were 30 deer harvested through that program over the course of five sharp shooting events and this table here looks at uh the goals for harvest for this past program year and then the actual harvest that was uh what conducted uh so in that northwest northwest zone we don't have any accessible land in that area to do any management so we didn't conduct or attempt any there in the west central zone we had a removal goal of zero so no management was conducted there in the southwest zone there were nine deer removed through archery and so there was quite a few more deer there to potentially remove but nine were what we were able to achieve through archery in the northeast zone we had pretty high removal goals and we were able to harvest 19 deer in that area so getting closer to those goals in the east central zone we removed two deer and then in the southeast we removed nine out of the maximum of 10 deer we could harvest in that area so for a total between archery and sharp shooting of 39 deer harvested and so that was looking back at our past program year now looking forward at the recommendations for our upcoming program year so this would be this upcoming fall and and winter so in this table here we have the population goal for each of our management units we have a projected fall population that's based on the aerial survey and then factoring in for fawn birth in the spring as well as some natural mortality to get an estimate of what that population would be this upcoming fall and then from that this gives a potential range to to harvest or reduce the population to get towards that desired population goal so in the west central or in the northwest again we there's no areas where we can can conduct management in that area west central there's a potential harvest of 11 to 14 in the southwest where we manage their archery 31-48 northeast 0-19 east central 21-29 and southeast 43-46 and for recommendations we recommend sharp shooting in the northeast east central and southeast units there is potential based on that table to do some management in the west central part of town as well but historically we haven't seen a lot of long-term deer related issues there and because we have a fair amount of potential deer to harvest in those other areas we think it'd be best to focus on those other zones and then the sharpshooting locations would be determined by deer activity within those zones and then for population control for archery we recommend continuing with the archery hunt at kelleher park this hunt is facilitated by the metro bow hunters resource base which i'll refer to as mbrb because it's a lot easier and they are a nonprofit group that helps organizations like cities conduct these population population control hunts in suburban or urban environments and we do have a proposed change that we'd like commissioners to to review related to the kelleher park archery hunt and so we are proposing to combine the kelleher park archery hunt with the murphy hannahan park archery hunt so for for many years the city has had our uh hunt that's facilitated by the mbrb group and the three rivers park district has had their own hunt uh that's facilitated by the mbrb group and in talking with the rivers park district we both thought there was opportunity to combine these hunts to get some efficiency and simplify things a little bit for for the the hunt so these hunts would still be facilitated or organized through the metro bow hunters resource base uh three rivers park district would take a lead role in coordinating although city staff like myself would still be involved with them as well and then part of this change would involve trying to align uh the park hunt rules between the organizations uh so uh to make it easier to facilitate the hunt so it's all the same across the hunt area the benefits that we see related to this change is better coordination between hunters so rather than having these two separate hunting groups out there with different hunt coordinators there would be the same hunt coordinators between the different areas and hunters could be set up and organized according more to what's the most effective way to hunt an area as opposed to what's where the property boundaries are it's also simpler for park users and adjacent properties because our hunt dates didn't always align between the two different hunts so if we joined the hunts and the hunts would be on the same days at the same time so if you live in that area you know the exact time when you wouldn't be able to use those park areas then it's also just an opportunity to strengthen inter interagency partnerships between the city and the three rivers park district and also reduce some redundant staff time in organizing the hunts and just to give you a little bit of a visual on kind of what that means and what the layout is of the area the red area here is the area that would be hunted within the city park and in the lower left corner you see the dark green that's the adjacent area of murphy hanahan that continues quite a bit which i'll show you in a minute and we used to also hunt in the upper right portion of keller here park as well but the regional trail now goes through that area so that's that line there and with the regional trail that area we decided to remove from the hunter bullet the huntable area which reduces the size of our killer hunt and makes it all adjacent to murphy hannah and park reserve and in areas where for the most part there's very little trails or regular use of the area by people and then so just to give you a little bit of a context on our city park related to the larger murphy hanahan park reserve and why this makes some sense for three rivers as well they have a really big park and they're coordinating their deer hunt not through the entire area but a good portion of their the larger green section of this map that's outlined in yellow that's all murphy hannah hand park reserve so they're hunting or organizing hunt for this pretty large area and for them it's relatively easy to add on this red hashed area in the upper right which is killer hair park but for us it does save some efficiencies as well to combine the two so i think it makes sense for both parties and then on to adjusting some of the hunt rules so they align with the way through rivers has run their hunts one the first rule change that we're proposing is adjusting the proficiency testing requirements and using the mbrb group standard proficiency instead of sharp shooting the vast majority of mbrb hunts already used the standard proficiency our hunt was always organized as requiring sharpshooter status which is something that most other hunts have gone away gone away from at this point because they haven't really seen a difference in potential wounding rates whether you're using standard proficiency or sharpshooter but we we have kept it up until this point but i think this is a good point to change and align with the majority of the other hunts that are out there and just to give you an idea of what that means so all hunters that participate in these hunts have to take a test to make sure that they're proficient with their bow um and uh for the sharpshooter status you have to put five out of five arrows in a this is a four inch circle here from 20 yards for the standard proficiency which is what we're proposing to change it to you have to put five out of five arrows in this seven inch larger circle but that seven inch circle is still very proficient and the size of the vital zones of a deer so you can still effectively harvest deer if you can make that shot so who oversees those tests uh it's usually a hunting range area so they have certified people at the the shooting ranges that certify that and then uh another rule that we propose to change is to adjust the antlerless requirement also most of the metro bow hunters resource bases don't require you to harvest don't have any restrictions on whether you harvest a buck or a dough for our hunts we have had a restriction in place where you have to harvest a dough first in the early periods of our hunt and then if you either harvest the dough or you put in enough time then in the later periods you can harvest a buck just in general to put some emphasis because harvesting does is the best way to control the population that that's why we have had that requirement in the past but what three rivers park district has found is that uh that in general uh the mbrb hunts have about a 75 antlerless harvest so the majority of deer that are being harvested are antlerless deer primarily does and that hunters in general are signing up for this because they know that these are population control hunts they're out there to harvest deer so it's not really necessary to put those antlerless requirements on the hunts and we we agree that that's an acceptable change for our hunter we're proposing that change then the last one is that field dressing entrails may be left in the woods as long as they're 25 yards from the trail so uh previously our hunt rules require hunters to uh when they harvest a deer they have to field dress and remove those entrails and then beg them and remove them from the park three rivers for their hunts for for many many years has allowed them to be left in the woods as long as they're not right near a trail and for our hunt because there aren't a lot of trails in that area we're harvesting six to seven deer as long as they're being left in the woods we feel that that would be acceptable three rivers has also said that they find that those entrail piles are generally cleaned up there's coyotes there's foxes they're not out there very long they get cleaned up pretty quickly so we feel like that would be an acceptable change for our hunt as well and then on to the hunt dates so we're proposing that then the merged killer hair and murphy hannah hand park hunts would be run october 14th through the 16th and november 11th through the 13th um and then before i move on to questions just one thing we'll be requesting commissioners is to consider and recommend approval of the hunt dates and also to consider and recommend approval of the hunt rule changes but with that i'd like to i'll be happy to answer any questions people have just a quick question on the 44 car accidents i do all those deer die and you include those in how many more harvests during that year period year period we so there's no way to know for sure whether all those deer die probably a large percentage of them do and we do not factor them into the population counts because we conduct an aerial survey after that so we have an updated count post the assessment of those collisions if that makes sense okay thanks all right any other questions all right so you are needing us to vote tonight so any one want to motion to recommend moving forward with the changes of the dates and the rules is there a second second all right and all in favor say aye aye anybody a post great and it passes thank you very much all right and we'll move on to the next item of our agenda which is state of the lakes presentation review annual water quality um and it's caleb still [Applause] all right well thank you commissioners and again so i'm here to present state of the lakes as well our annual update on water quality in the city again my name is caleb a natural resources specialist with the city and uh so just kind of a reminder for the how the watershed works in burnsville burnsville is part of three major watersheds the first is the credit river watershed so the kellehir park that we were talking about in southwest burnsville the area in green on the map that all drains towards the credit river uh the second is the vermilion river watershed so lake ala magnet and some area around lake la magnet in orange on this map drain towards the vermillion river and then the majority of burnsville is within the minnesota river drainage area so the area in tan all drains eventually to the minnesota river and in that watershed the way water moves through our major storm sewer pipes is it runs from lac lavon to keller lake keller to crystal on to twin lakes where it's joined by water from wood pond where it flows to early lake sunset pond through kramer nature preserve and then on to the minnesota river and then in the northeast part of town those areas drain through a number of different ponds and storm pipes towards black dog and nichols lake which drain into the minnesota river as well so burnsville has a large network of storm sewer pipes so 185 miles of storm sewers and 6 500 storm drains so this really big network helps us manage floods and rain events and also manage other water quality related issues these storms and pipes are all connected to our large networks of ponds lakes and wetlands so we have nearly 300 ponds and lakes that are connected to this system as well and i'll be talking about uh water quality in a couple different ways one is the state water quality standards so the state has standards that vary whether it's a shallow lake or a deep lake and some of the criteria that they're primarily looking at is phosphorus chlorophyll a which is a measure of algae and water clarity and if a lake fails to meet two or more of these standards over a 10-year period then you end up on the state's impaired waters list which triggers a whole process of assessing the watershed in the lake to determine how to reduce the population and get it to meet state standards uh the city has two lakes that are currently on that impaired waters list the first is ala magnet lake and the second is keller the city has previously had two waters on that impaired list that have since been removed one is crystal lake that was removed in 2018 because water quality had improved enough uh and an early lake was removed from that list in i believe it was 2012. so another way that we look at water quality is also through the city's water resources plan clarity goals so the city has clarity goals for each of our eight priority water bodies which are a little more strict than the state standards so trying to achieve even better water quality or clarity than the state requires and this chart here just lists each lake our three year average clarity along with the goal that our plan sets and just in general what we're seeing is we're either very close to or exceeding clarity goals in all of these lakes i'll highlight our impaired waters here so we have a three-year average of 1.2 meter clarity on l magnet lake and so we're just a little below that clarity goal of 1.3 and above the state standard for that lake which would be 1.0 so that's a positive improvement over past years and then keller lake as well the three year average there has been 1.3 which is above the the city and state goal which is the same for that one at 1.0 meters and then i'm gonna kind of quickly go through the water quality for the specific lakes and instead of clarity this time look at the phosphorus levels so this is a little bit of a busy chart here but this is a total phosphorus levels for the lake starting with lake ala magnet and it's total into the may through september average so phosphorus samples are taken throughout may through september and those samples are all averaged into one number for the season and so for this the orange line on here is the state standard uh and we want those green bars to be below that orange line that means that in that given year we met the state standard on the long term goals if you're an impaired list you need to average 10 years where you're below that state standard in order to get off that impaired waters list so lake ala magnet in general over the past 20 years has been trending towards lower and lower phosphorus and we're we're close to meeting that clarity goal which you saw on that last table and we're getting closer still a little ways to go on getting the phosphorus levels down to the state standard but the last couple years have been some of the better years over the last 10 and we believe part of that's due to recent water quality improvement projects within the watershed and then moving on to lac lavon so lac lavon is a deep lake so the state phosphorus standard is 40 parts per billion for this one and you can see lac lavon is really well meeting the state standard well below the state standards it's actually one of the best water quality lakes in the south metro area so lac lavon's in really good shape part of that is because it's an old gravel gravel pit that just doesn't have a large history of nutrient enrichment because it's a created lake and it also has a really small watershed then on to keller lake which is our other current impaired water keller lake is also trending towards a lower phosphorous and again meeting for the last couple years the the clarity goals as well and you can see the past three years starting in 2019 we've been below the state standard for phosphorus and so hopefully that trend continues and we'd be moving every year can vary so we don't want to get ahead of ourselves but that's the trend that we'd like to see going forward and part of that aligns well with water quality improvement projects both within the watershed and then recent alum treatments within the lake as well so just hitting on a couple of things related to keller that have happened recently so the second dose of alum was completed this past year alum is if you're not familiar aluminum sulfate which is a non-toxic product that can be added to the water it binds to phosphorus in the water column it also settles to the bottom and then remains there and if phosphorus is released from the sediment in the future it also can bind that phosphorus and basically a good tool to reduce all that phosphorus that's already in the lakes accumulated over many years and prevents that phosphorus release that can drive that in-lake algae bloom so that is a really good tool to use when you have the watershed inflows in good control so there's not as much phosphorus coming into the lake and then now you can focus a little more on the phosphorus that's already been in there and then for this upcoming year we plan on the second round of native plant reintroductions so we've been doing some work towards reintroducing a good desirable native plants into killer lake as well so moving on to crystal lake crystal lake has as i mentioned it came off the impaired waters list in 2018 and you can see from this graph here that it's been really improving through the years and getting less and less phosphorus as well as improving in clarity and it's in a really good place where it's well below state standards and as far as clarity goals clarity goes the last couple years have been some of the best years on record for crystal lake for clarity so crystal lake has uh definitely trending in the right direction and then for crystal we had a couple recent projects this past year one was replacing the outlet structure which will help reduce the occurrences or duration of high water events on the lake we also did a small native plant convert turf to native plant conversion within the parking lot island on crystal lake which you see in the photo on the lower left here we had an area with eroding soils and poor turf that we converted to native plants to provide habitat and reduce erosion and then one of the big projects from a natural resources perspective was a shoreline stabilization project so we worked with dakota county soil and water conservation district and received a grant to stabilize shoreline on about a thousand feet between the boat launch and the taiyaki park fishing pier and you can see that in the photos here acquire loggings coconut fiber logs where steak to the shoreline that helps buffer against wave action erosion and then native plants were planted within and behind that choir log along with the removal of buckthorn and those native plants with their deep root systems will help stabilize the shoreline as well then twin lake uh twin lake is a small lake uh that is just downstream of crystal lake and for a small relatively shallow lake you can see that it's doing really well for meeting state standards and in general is a downward trend in phosphorus as well twin lake also received a new outlet in 2021 that helps it deal with large rain events and reduce flooding within that lake and then related to some new development in the area there was an expansion of a storm pond on north twin lake that helps reduce some phosphorus and runoff from that area as well then wood pond another small relatively shallow water body that's well below state standards for water quality and in this graph you can really see in 2019 a major drop in the phosphorus levels and this is another water body that received a relatively recent alum treatment so 2019 there was an alum treatment that was conducted and you can really see the results of that alum treatment that have remained in the subsequent years following that treatment moving on to early lake uh early lake is another shallow water body that came off the impaired waters list in 2012 and it's a pretty large watershed so the nutrient levels phosphorus levels are a little bit higher but again still below those state standard levels of 60. and sunset pond the levels here in general have been trending slightly downward over the last 20 years but we have seen the phosphorus levels tick up a little bit above that state standard in a few years we're still averaging below the state standard for the course of the 10-year period but that's something we'll continue to monitor and assess whether there's any trends in the wrong direction there but so far the long term average is still trending downward so that's kind of my my typical usual presentation is talking about the lakes but we also on commissioner request wanted to add some information about the minnesota river into this program so i want to talk a little bit about pollution prevention related to the minnesota river so as commissioners know the minnesota river is a large drainage area covering all the way to the western part of the state up until where the minnesota river meets the mississippi river in the metro area so it's a really big river system it's a fairly polluted river as you can see in the aerial photo here so this is where the minnesota river meets the mississippi and you can see that brown milky color colored water just a lot of sediment in that water from agricultural areas on high nutrient levels as well compared to the mississippi and burnsville is a relatively small part of the overall picture of what's going on with the minnesota river and so there is a lot of great information on the minnesota pollution control agency about the larger watershed a lot of that is sort of out of the scope of city staff and what we're involved in but related to this the city uh when the city was update receiving its new stormwater permit in 2021 there was a review of the city's watershed related to the drainage area to the minnesota river and basically there there was a modeling system that the state developed for cities where they could assess their watershed based on standard modeling and then the ponds and the best management practices that are within your watershed to see if you meet the state's requirements for how much sediment they'd predict would be going into the minnesota river so it's a little less of a detailed assessment than you see with a lake like keller lake but because they're doing this with city so many different cities all throughout the minnesota river watershed it has to be a little less a little less specific and more of a modeling system but with that said that assessment showed that the city our current best management practices that are in place within our watershed meet state requirements for phosphorus and sediment loading into the minnesota river and then a couple other ways that the city does help reduce pollution running into the minnesota river so as i mentioned we have a lot of programs related to our lakes and reducing pollution in our lakes and because the majority of that system runs to the minnesota river if we're reducing pollution in our lakes that means we're putting cleaner water into the minnesota river as well and then we also maintain an extensive storm pond network uh we're doing regular assessments on that infrastructure doing sediment removal on those ponds to make sure that it's all functioning properly and removing sediment and nutrients all that helps protect the river as well any new developments in the watershed are subject to water quality standards so if you're adding new impervious surface with a new development you have to meet the city's water quality standards as well as local watershed standards so there's protections in place for any new developments that may be adding new impervious surface and requirements for adding rain gardens or storm ponds to rectify any new pollution and then we also have education like our landscaping for clean water workshops and grant programs that allow residents to install rain gardens or other best management practices that are going to help protect the minnesota river as well and then another fairly large study that was done a few years ago that focuses quite a bit on minnesota river drainage areas was the ravine stabilization study or slope stabilization study and a lot of the minnesota bluff areas are where we see some of the worst slope erosion so the city did a study on where some of those areas are that were most likely to have slope failure or major erosion events and through that study identified those areas and then now has been working through a series of years to repair those projects and that all reduces the amount of sediment that ends up in the minnesota river but there's been some major projects done at black dog park willow creek which is near kramer nature preserve this is a photo on this page of willow creek here that shows this open water creek and which was just kind of an open dirt area previously but the city recently added a rock rip-rap to help reduce erosion during high events and stabilize the area around it and there's also been projects at cedar bridge park and tennessee park and here's just another example of one of those projects that was conducted this is a site off hayes drive in tennessee park and this shows on the before picture a major area where there's a lot of erosion on this steep slope here and then the after project here just stabilized with rock grip wrap and cribs to reduce that erosion and that really protects all the downstream areas where that sediment and attached phosphorus goes to which in a lot of these cases including this one is the minnesota river and with that i'd be happy to take any questions or comments on our water quality update thanks i really always enjoy this presentation and see the progress we're making just a real a curious curiosity question you mentioned kelly you're going to add native plant restoration how do you go about doing that do you actually like put seeds in or do you actually plant individual plants what's the process there yeah so for keller lake and keller lake has a very little existing native plants a really low diversity so what we do is there for the aquatic plants unlike upland plants there really isn't anywhere where you can really go and buy native seeds so the best way to do it is to harvest uh the actual plants you know in a source lake nearby so we have a source lake um that the three rivers park district has allowed us to harvest plants from and we harvest them we bring them into keller lake and we have some fence plots that we fence off and plant them within and we did the first round of that i think it was two years ago and we found pretty good survival survival of that first round so we're going to do a second round this year to sort of bolster the population from that first round and it's kind of going hand in hand with some work that we're doing to control invasive plant species like curly pond weed and while we're removing those invasive plants we're trying to bring some other native plants that can take their place what are some examples of those native plants that you're bringing in yeah so fern leaf pond wheat is one large leaf pond weed flat stem pondweed [Music] and water star grass those were the four that we selected to bring in very fun did you take before and after pictures because i would love to see that uh yes yeah we have quite a few photos of the actual planting process and before and after photos which would be happy to share with commissioners that'd be amazing thank you any other questions well thank you very much caleb it was very informative thank you for having me all right and then we will move on to our seventh agenda item the crystal beach master plan um garrett back come and join us we'd love to hear what you have going on there we go all right good evening commissioners thank you for a little bit of your time this evening i'm going to be talking to you about our crystal beach master plan um a little bit about the agenda we'll do a quick overview of of crystal beach and and what we have going on in that park these days um talk about the purpose of the master plan and why we decided to do it on this particular location and then i'll actually walk you through what staff and our consultant isg have come up with as a proposal for the master plan for this part going forward so here's a quick uh overview from above of crystal beach this is one of our most popular destination parks that we have in our system from may through august there's not a time on a nice summer day on the weekend when you come down here in the parking lot isn't full we have picnic shelters that are rented out of our recreation office that are used for family events for graduations birthday parties all kinds of things the volleyball court is always heavily used with with people out there and then we have a playground in the trees here that you can't see very well a concession building that we used to run concessions out of for many years it is a restroom building as well and we are still trying to do those types of services sometimes we've partnered with community groups to do that other times we've hired staff it's just been a real challenge the last couple years whether it was covered or finding seasonal staff to come in and help sell concessions and do rentals out of that building and then of course the beach we stopped guarding this beach many years ago but this is pretty much the only uh public beach in our system at this time we used to have lac lavon and crystal both were guarded for a period of time but i wouldn't really say lac lavon is is a swim beach any longer at this point so because of those reasons that's why you see without the city of burnsville having a public pool for for burnsville residents this is really the place to go for getting access to water during the summertime so one of the purposes of the of this study and i wouldn't say it's the only one i think we've talked in the past about our park system was primarily built in the mid to late 80s so we're constantly taking a look at and again the people who made decisions back then did a phenomenal job we have a lot of great parks with a lot of diversity and amenities in it but we want to make sure as we're making decisions on renovations that we're creating spaces that are going to serve our community well for the next 20 to 30 years so um when we're doing something significant in a park and when it's one of our community parks it makes a lot of sense to to come in and take a look at what is in there what is still being used what what could we do differently if anything and then make decisions on how we do our renovations at that point so for this particular park the playground is one of the oldest in our park system it is in need of repair and it is planned to be done sometime this fall if all goes well because this is such a popular park there is a desire to improve and increase the capacity of this particular park so again that playground is well over 20 years and 20 years old and it simply for as many people that are in this space and using the park it really could use an upgrade from what is currently there so as we worked with isgr consultant it was kind of a fun process i i learned some things along the way but and one of those things was crystal lake actually way back in the 1880s and whatnot and into the 1900s people who lived in the minneapolis area used crystal lake to build cabins and that was their getaway for from from the city at that time and so they captured some old photos of of those cabins that were around the lake uh there was a store uh back in the 1970s called dolly's place uh and so as they were sharing that information and as there is such a there's a lot of natural area around this and i think just brenzo in general has taken approach to conserving and and enhan taking advantage of our natural areas that we really decided that that would be a theme for how we move forward we looked at a number of different themes and and just looking at this cabin theme and a natural type facility made a lot of sense on how that could kind of drive the master plan for crystal lake so when you start when they started putting together some images of what that could mean you know there's a lot of different types of play equipment these days there are they're built in in such a way that they look natural and yet they're still constructed so that they're durable and things like that so looking at kind of a nature based theme for the playground area you can see how if we ever did anything with a removal of the concession building how you could make it more of a pavilion type location that provided shelter from people from the sun that they could get away from and still have spaces to to to picnic and look out onto the lake and when not closer to the lake than where not to remove our current picnic shelters but just to provide a different type of experience in that area and then you kind of see how you could build out from something like that and and allow people to have access down to the lake area you know looking at possibly putting hammock groves or something like that and there's a lot of talk about a fishing pier in this area one of the things that we don't do right now is that we're not able to provide an accessible fishing pier in in any of our parks at this point and crystal lake is one of those places where we could be looking at that and you'll see in one of the overheads how that could be possible in this particular area so so here's a potential site plan again our goal was one of my priorities is i didn't want to look at replacing a playground and do it in such a way that could negatively impact a master plan into the future right so i wanted to work with our staff and the consultant to make sure that we were indeed still utilizing the right space and and to reimagine what someone coming after us may choose to do it with this space but from a sustainability area one of the things they recommended was reorienting the parking lot and putting some islands in there by descending right now the parking lot runs east west by having it run north south you could keep the cars further away from the lake and then have more active and passive spaces closer to the lake where people would want to be so that made a lot of sense as we were talking through that to take as much advantage of of the lake view and the breeze coming off the lake as possible so the volleyball courts and the picnic shelters and whatnot still have a lot of value those wouldn't change but you can see this long path right now one of our biggest challenges in our our community is just the removal of trash and recycling our staff will drive their vehicles around to the to the cans and whatnot but in order to keep up with it and to do it um they're often driving through grass and dirt and things like that and those trucks over time uh leave the ruts and and do damage to the turf so um you look at if we were to put in a paved path uh where right now our trucks are driving to pick up trash and then carried along uh out to a fishing pier we would not only solve the problem of having ruts and what not go in but then we'd be able to deal with the accessibility in providing that fishing space that we currently can't do so lots of good ideas lots of things that could be done differently and and just trying to to reimagine what that space may look like again at one of our most popular parks so with that i will pause to see if you have any questions or comments any thought about it might be a little nicer to leave this up on some of the things that consultant and staff have come up with and just look for any feedback you might have as we continue to move forward with this um yeah it's a cool design um is it somewhere in line that you could look at more detail yet is it on the website it's this is the first public presentation of it so the goal was to bring it here before the commission and ultimately we want to do some community engagement as well but getting feedback from the commission here first before we put it out there was was the reason why it's not currently okay so it's early in the process planning yeah got it got it my first question is has there been studies on who how often hammocks get used in a public setting there may be studies i i'm not aware of studies i i know that it a very common thing these days is to create hammock groves uh it helps protect trees and hammocking has become a more popular thing right so you put in polls and whatnot and then people bring their own and they set it up um but yeah i i don't know specifically like other than the fact that you hear it talked about a lot these days in college campuses and we get phone calls from folks in the community that are concerned about trees possibly being damaged by hammocks and whatnot so i don't know if i answered your question well or not but okay so it's not like you're gonna go there and there's gonna be a hammock there to be used it's people bring their own in correct okay yep thank you for clarifying and the next question is so i see that they're looking at or suggesting moving 30 to 35 trees and they're replacing those trees do they have ideas of what to replace those trees with you know i so a project like this is if folks coming after us decide to move forward this is 10 to 15 years down the road so this is really concept at this point and to try to provide that guide so as far as the specific details of what a building might look like what ultimately the parking lot layout would be what would go in the center islands any of those things but for this stage of creating the master plan it's that's just not that we don't get into that specific detail so so it's just kind of like something that's preparing down the road with global warming and climate change correct it's an understanding that when we do remove trees and whatnot there's going to be a need to replace them and make sure that we're aware of that yep perfect i'm just wondering in the concept um are we thinking of keeping it i guess making it wheelchair accessible or accessible for everyone in the community or is that kind of something further down yes a hundred percent um that is always one of our goals as we're going through things is that we improve the accessibility on our location so one of the things in a partnership with the lions club that we um were able to purchase and and jj is working on the details it's been a little harder than we thought but um there's a thing called a mobi mat or something along that lines where we're able if you look in the overhead here we actually have a cement pad that goes down to the to the beach which provides some accessibility but as far as going north and south it's a lot harder for whether it's a person in a wheelchair whether it's somebody with a walking challenge whether it's a mom or dad or grandparent with a small kid in a stroller it's you're kind of stuck once you get there and getting through the sand is challenging so we're actually acquiring mats that can be laid out on the beach and allows people to travel easier and they can be easily rolled up for when our staff go out there and drag the beach and take care of it and then they can be put back down so whether it's something like that or making sure that the playground has improved accessibility or if some work is done in the building down the road those are absolutely things that we are very passionate about and take a look at for sure thank you and you were discussing the lifeguards earlier i'm just wondering if there's any thoughts in bringing lifeguards back or you know there there is not and i'll just i'll i'll leave it at that you know when i i think you know both mr ryan and myself were here um when that change happened and and honestly we we wondered if we would get feedback from the community on the fact that we didn't have lifeguards down there and it just there was a little bit but it just it didn't happen and there are so many unguarded beaches around the country now that i think people are used to it and you know we just don't have the budget capacity to do that so okay all right didn't either yeah just curious what your next steps are in this like in the next two years or yeah so um next step number one if there's no significant concerns or whatever from this meeting is to like i said do some community engagement this summer out actually sooner than later out at the park and whatnot but it's really time for me to start connecting with our local playground vendors here in minnesota to come up with different options for the community to consider and then we need to start moving on that replacement process so that'll be number one as far as seeing some action there and then you know a i'm not going to call it a completely low-hanging fruit but again if our goal is to get an accessible fishing pier in there that is something that could become a project that wouldn't require completely redoing the parking lot the concession building where we're talking millions of dollars right so i think those are probably the two from where we're at right now of things that could be tackled sooner than later and then the rest of it would really be a longer term vision for the park when a greater renovation took place okay thank you all right any other questions all right thank you so much for your time thank you all right so our next meeting is june 6 2022 and we have our volunteer recognition event on may 4th from 5 to 7 at best what best western nickel it in commissioners uh if i may jump in there you should have received some information on that from either our city clerk or from another city staff person i'm not sure if it was an rsvp event or not but if you haven't i as i was walking out of city hall today with our city clerk she did say go ahead and let us know if you're coming so i know plans are plans change daily for most people so if you can make it please join tomorrow night or wednesday night i'm sorry perfect thank you all right at this time i would like to request a call for adjournment of the may 2nd 2022 parks and natural resources commission meeting my motion to adjourn a second all in favor say aye aye anybody post we are adjourned have a wonderful evening you