you Commission meeting first item of the evening is to adopt the agenda commissioner staff do you have any changes or additions nope being man can I get a motion to move thank you all those in favor all right all those opposed okay the next item on the agenda is to approve the minutes from May 20th 2019 any changes or additions commissioners staff nothing from staff commissioners nope okay then let's move on to citizens comments and is there any citizens who would like to comment tonight the men will go to our first presentation and our first presentation is a review of the Burnsville stormwater pollution prevention program and the 2018 annual report and we'll have Emily Odell from s th incorporated present test two this night or program specifically here tonight to talk about the 2018 annual report a quick review of what we are going to talk about this evening a brief overview of the NPDES program which is kind of the background of why Bernthal as an MS our city will specifically talk about Burtonsville ms4 permit the status of compliance for the 2018 reporting year touch on a couple of counter year 2018 highlights and a brief look forward into the future of the ms4 permit so the National pollutant discharge elimination system are NPDES is a federal program that was established with the Clean Water Act this federal program passes the administration down to the state level so here in the state of Minnesota we report to the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency or the MPCA city of Burnsville is a Phase two small ms4 and what that means is that they have a gem ms4 permit it's the same permit that several the neighboring communities have a phase one is for would be a larger city like Minneapolis or st. Paul and they have an individual permit coverage under the general permit began in 2003 and it has been reissued twice since then in 2006 and 2013 currently the ms4 permit is expired legally communities can operate under an expired permit until the MPCA reissues new one that's expected in fall of this year so there will be a new permit up ahead so the ms4 permit again I don't know if I mentioned this but ms4 stands for municipal separate storm sewer system and that means that the city owns and operates a storm sewer that's not combined with sanitary and they're responsible for keeping it in working order and clean as part of an ms4 permit the city has what we call a swept and it's a stormwater pollution prevention plan and within that slip there are six minimum control measures and which within those minimum control measures there are best management practices which we commonly call BMPs and measurable goals there are several acronyms with this program so please please you know stop me if I start rattling off and no one's following hmm so the minimum control measures as I mentioned there are six of them and they are public education and outreach public participation and involvement illicit discharge detection and elimination construction site runoff control post construction runoff control pollution prevention or Good Housekeeping for municipal activities and then addition of those minimum control measures there's a couple other components kind of depending on where the city is located and here in the city of Burtonsville they are part of a TMDL which is a total maximum daily load so they have another component to their swip which is basically a spreadsheet tracking system for that all these minimum control measures are it's kind of really the meat of the ms4 permit it's where you're gonna find a a lot of the associated information so there is a reporting process that the city is required to do which is why we're here today to talk about the annual report which will cover activities in the 2018 countr year from January 1st to December 31st the report is a summary of what was done in 2018 excuse me it must be submitted online by June 30th of this year the draft is completed and it's posted on the city's website I know it's a little tough to see on the slide but that is a link to where you can find this information so as part of the annual report process the city does a self-assessment and that's kind of gathering the information in preparation for the annual report the city met the requirements for the 2018 reporting year data this for the last couple years but it's good to add that the city was audited in February of 2016 they were found to be in compliance with the audit with the MVC a that's great news the MPCA audits they say it's like it's an audit cycle I've heard about once every seven years there's definitely no guarantee on that timeframe though it could happen sooner or later so now we're gonna transition to the 2018 highlights by minimum control measure so the first one is public education and outreach here we have a summary of all the different educational materials the city of Burnsville is used to reach out to the public and then an estimation of the total circulation of those items the city focused on helping residents understand the connection between storm drains the storm sewer and local water resources through these materials and additionally they added budget this year for the development of a school education program related to water quality I also there's there's quite a few words here on the slide not necessarily the intent to read them all but just to show that and this wasn't even all of them that the city has participated in quite a few water quality events so in addition to the educational materials they're also doing that outreach through educational events through the agencies in the area lake associations other type of things so they're doing a great job at getting out to the public minimum control measure to public protesters participation and involvement the main purpose of this minimum control measure is that the city is required to solicit input on their swipe or their storm on a program to the public any comments that are received on the swip or about the swim the city is required to consider and respond to you can see here the past few years there haven't been a ton of comments and during the annual meetings that's not totally unusual you know it's just kind of is what it is but you know that's at the particularity meeting it's not to say people don't call throughout the year and have other types of questions minimum control measure three is illicit discharge detection and elimination the purpose of this minimum control measure is that city staff are trained to recognize and respond to illicit discharges illicit discharges are defined as really anything other than storm water that's under aiming ms4 it's a it's a big component of the ms4 program and to keep track in addition to just those visual inspections you do during your day-to-day operations staff also annually inspect out Falls in priority areas to really look for any type of illicit discharge that they could prevent it to the system so in 2018 there were four illicit discharges reported three were reported by public and one was reported by a city staff member staff followed up on all those illicit discharges and there were three verbal warnings issued and that took care of the issue there were no further action following those verbal warnings minimum measure four is construction site stormwater runoff controls so this is making sure that all those active construction sites in the city of Burnsville are meeting the require to protect the MS 4 so the state of Minnesota is really only concerned with construction sites that are greater than one acre obviously there are several sites that happen that are less than an acre and the city of Burnsville themselves has requirements for those but it's just not reported to the state so when you see here that there are eight projects reviewed those were really only eight projects greater than an acre I'm sure there were several that were under of those eight projects that were reviewed there were 11 active construction sites greater than an acre and of those 11 there were 127 inspections so I have an inspection summary you can see that there was 59 notice of violations given out it seems like a little bit of a big number but you can see there are no stop work orders no forfeit of bond money basically those those notice of violations are proactive things the city staff are seeing they're reminding you know contractors hey you need to clean up a little bit of dirt here or there and then the issue kind of stops there so it's a good thing that they're being proactive and staying on the contractors to do their best minimum control measure 5 post-construction stormwater management for a new and redevelopment so this is this minimum control measure really focus focuses on what happens after the construction project is done and there is a new pond or infiltration area what we like to call BMP best management practice on-site so the city continued to implement and enforce their program to address those post construction needs and the big one here is you know when we redevelop a site then we add new impervious services that were protecting the sensitive areas the lake lakes wetlands and the black dog Preserve and we're doing that through treatment ponds grass whales and filtration practices and it's really important that the city has been focusing on entering in long-term maintenance agreements just to make sure that not only abused things being put in the ground but they're functioning Burnsville the city of Burnsville requires that pre development runoff rates are matched and what that means is someone who's doing new development is not allowed to increase they're storm waters rate so if you think of a large area that was grasped but is not a parking lot water is able to move much faster and when water moves faster it has the potential to impact some downstream things so they have to capture that water and slow it down also minimum minimal impact design standards or mids another ackerman acronym this is the volume control so they are required to treat so much volume of their new impervious services on-site minimum control measures six is pollution prevention and good housekeeping for municipal operations I like to call this the practice what you preach minimum control measure and there's a lot of responsibility in this minimum control measure for the city to also keep up with their stormwater infrastructure and inspect everything and make sure it's in good working order so as you can see the city owns 108 structural stormwater BMPs which would be anything constructed to treat stormwater excluding a pond because it has its own category here 1277 al falls and al fall is a point source where water leaves the city's ms4 and either enters or receiving water or leaves their jurisdiction and 472 stormwater ponds so of those 100 percent of the structural stormwater BMPs were inspected which is a requirement and outfalls have five percent inspected and pond saw 14 in the past those numbers have and goes up al falls and patent spent closer to 20 percent um however since we were in the last year of the permit cycle I think they were just trying to do whatever hadn't been done before because the requirement for those two is excuse me pause and outfalls that you inspect 100 percent in the permit term and we were in the last year the permit term so they took care of they had to and now in this year 2019 we start over again so I'm gonna make a transition to some 2018 project highlights so here we have the wood Pond alum treatment and this project was done in October of 2018 it was the final product of several outlined in the 2008 lake management plan to improve the water quality of wood pond and the Allen treatment is expected to provide benefits to for 10 to 12 years so we have a photo of the actual process happening and then a photo of some very clear water you can see a large I think catfish through the water there so successful project another project to highlight is the slope stabilization study this study was completed by WSB in 2018 it had three phases a desktop analysis a field verification and a risk estimation there were four categories of risk management those were management required further study monitoring or no further action required and there are slope repair projects that are planned or proposed for for 2019 with a budgeted cost of half a million dollars and you can see there's a photo there that shows a steeper slope or you have a little bit of scour happening that could potentially undermine this that's all there there are three sites here I have site one slope stabilization study area site two and site three so we'll kind of jump ahead here looking for it as I mentioned that the permit will be reissued this fall so what that means is there's a future reauthorization application that's going to come sometime in the fall and that's going to be a process for the city to figure out what they need to do to meet the intent of the new ms4 permit when they complete that and send in that application coverage will be did some time in winter 2020 maybe even a little later there is a public comment period in between there for the MPCA and the citizens of Burnsville to comment on their application for reauthorization and following that issuance of permit coverage there will be program updates that will be initiated it's looking like at this time there's new draft language out but the city will have about 12 months to complete those once that coverage is extended so the next steps for tonight if there are any comments on the Atmos 4 program again we'll will consider that input excuse me and any changes any changes that come from those comments will be documented within the 2019 annual report as well as the city swip I'm here for questions or comments tonight if you may have any otherwise I will direct you to Jen her information is on the last slide here and she's available following this meeting and during a regular work day for those who are watching this presentation commissioners any questions have a combo okay so I'm page on agenda item 4 I think it's portion where we talk about the total circulation and audience and table format mm-hmm so I noticed that really you're just looking at circulation and audience but it's not really open rates or anything like that or click-through rates is there a reason why it's just audience and circulation and not actually how many people are consuming those different types of media that would be that's an interesting question I don't know a particular answer of that that is how the MPCA has been soliciting this information I think that that's something that they probably would consider however you know mmm I think it could be very difficult to track in those instances but you know it's maybe something they'll further develop in the future with the requirement but at this time they're really only looking for the potential circulation sure so on that same topic under the description of activity specifically for the clean water workshops mm-hmm you have 68 residents that participated I'm guessing those 68 were at sessions that Caleb helped lead here on site we have several other residents that are participating in other communities and I believe the Soil and Water Conservation District would have access to whether or not those are Burnsville residents that are attending workshops in Lakeville or an Eagan or Apple Valley and that feels like important information because that would probably be the more an applicable number for whether or not we're helping out our stormwater system because those are open for kind of the neighboring County is too so it might be interesting to see what that number comes out to be to figure out my guess is it might actually be larger than 68 hopefully that's clear I'm looking at Caleb if he is trucking okay so I'll just repeat what Caleb said since that probably it wasn't completely picked up in the lake so the 68 is the number of residents that participated in any of the workshops just not the number of residents that participated here on site yes okay perfect so now mine you can scratch that come in still mate sorry I'm just gonna keep going down somebody else grabs me so on question 27 there it looks like there was for elicit discharges detected if there's only three warnings so help me with the other one that wasn't still good there it is quite possible that an illicit discharge was reported that maybe didn't exist the city does have a hotline set up where residents can report an illicit discharge it's a responsibility of the city to investigate and follow up on those and its it's possible they just beamed no further action necessary when they got there maybe it was you know I was misunderstanding okay so on MCM for so the runoff control so I noticed that at the bottom we have the largest on question 44 the largest number of kind of actions that we took fall under the other category in terms of correction notice can you explain a little bit more about what that correction notice means sure how you mean that I in other it it says in there it does it follow with um the written or verbal warning a so it says what types of enforcement actions do you have available to compel a compliance with your regulatory mechanism and then it says other describe correction notice number that were a huge ninety sure so the the MPCA sets up these forms and they have detailed what they call the different types of enforcement so they may have written warning on their correction notice I believe is just the term the city of Burnsville uses and it doesn't fall into their kind of automated system to check so that was we added the other and so the verbage was the same essentially so what correction notice is just like a version of a verbal warning or is it I believe the correction notices are written yes they are written notices that are handed out and again it's it just is called something slightly different than the MPCA is templates okay thank you for that clarification yeah thank you for the questions anyone else good question so what's the different mobile and written I I understand it from from language perspective but what is that impact on it so no matter what the correspondence is it means to be documented I believe that a verbal warning is slightly less like a pre step to the written warning you know maybe you're giving someone the chance like hey I'm out on site and I see something that needs to be fixed so I'm verbally telling you while I'm here hey can we please take care of this and I follow up you know in the 24 hour window and it's still not taken care of then I met initiate that written warning it just it kind of depends on how the inspector is handling that particular you know day that inspection those kind of things thank you curious about the slope stabilization didn't seem like there were a lot of projects and I'm assuming that you know the there was first kind of a it's not like you went through a desk analysis then field checking how many total projects were identified and how many were how many began to do remediation I think Jen's gonna handle this question okay so WSB did a preliminary analysis they had looked at 131 slopes and then put them into those risky categories these three that we are doing rose to the top but there are 11 sites total that needs some correction and they're just pop we have budget and prepared every other year to start handling these areas that's not bad for the amount of slope that's in Burnsville so thanks any other questions thank you yes thank you all for the question and now we will be doing the open public input yeah if anyone's around that wants to comment otherwise there is an email I guess that they can comment on oh it's up there there we go so if you have any comments you can go ahead and email this e-mail number thank you and now we'll move on to the next presentation and we're gonna talk about the state of the lakes and we can relate quality kale up from our natural resource specialist I'll be presenting for that all right thank you for having me commissioners and as I mentioned I'm here to give the state of the lakes presentation that's an annual update on kind of what's going on water quality wise and some of our major water bodies here in town and again my name is Caleb Aisling I'm a natural resources specialist for the city of Burnsville just a quick review on where the water in Burnsville is headed we're a part of three major drainage areas here in Burnsville in Southwest Burnsville it's part of the Credit River drainage area that's marked in green on this map in east-central Burnsville there's a portion of the city that drains to the Vermillion River that's marked in orange on this map and surrounds lay kalemegdan and then the majority of Burnsville drains to the Minnesota River through Black Dog Lake or directly to the river through the Minnesota River or Black Dog watershed and that starts that's the tan area on this map so that's the majority of the drainage area in town and the water flows through a series of lakes and ponds and storm pipes to get through the system the water starts down at Lackland in southeast Burnsville Lac LaVon doesn't out very often but if it does it drains to Keller Lake Keller Lake drains to Crystal Lake Crystal Lake drains to twin where it's joined by water from wood pond twin lake drains too early lake overdue sunset pond down to Kramer Nature Preserve through the wetlands there and then on to the Minnesota River so that's how water is flowing through through our lakes and through a lot of this watershed that drains to the Minnesota River well then just like to highlight that water is moving primarily between these different water bodies through our storm sewer system so we have 6500 storm drains here in Burnsville and that connects to 185 miles of storm sewers so there's an extensive network of pipes that connect all these water bodies and then in addition to the lakes that we have here in town we have a lot of ponds so between the the ponds and lakes we have nearly 300 water bodies and many of those ponds are also a part of the storm sewer system and helping with flood control and nutrient reduction so when we look at the state of our water bodies here in town we're looking at it in a couple of different ways the first way is through the state's water quality standards so the state has standards for a number of different pollutants are the ones that we'll be focusing on and that we focus on for our program are phosphorus which feeds a lot of algae growth and other water quality issues chlorophyll a which is primarily an indicator of algae growth as well and then water clarity which also relates to algae as well as sediment suspension in the water column and then the state has a standard for shallow lakes shallow lakes are expected to be a little more nutrient rich more issues with sedimentary suspension so they're expected to have a little higher phosphorous and lower clarity so the standards are a little less stringent for a shallow lake and their standards for a deeper lake and we have lakes that fall under both categories the state considers a water body to be impaired if it fails to meet those water quality standards two times over a ten year period we're in good shape in Burnsville most of our lakes are meeting the state standards we do have two impaired water bodies currently those are alum magnet Lake and Keller Lake and then I mentioned this last year when I was here but I'd like to highlight it again Crystal Lake was removed from the impairs waters list in 2018 which we're still excited about and that's not that common that a water body is able to come off the impaired waters list there's a lot of them on there especially in the metro area but they don't come off very often so we're excited about that then another way that we look at our water quality here in Burnsville is through the city's water resources master plan clarity goals so in addition to the state standards the city has set its own clarity goals for our major water bodies and our clarity goals are all more stringent than the state standard then just oh and these the data that we're using to look at this are collected through a volunteer program called the Citizen Action monitoring program so we have volunteers out at all these different links who are going out April through September or early October collecting a water quality samples the clarity is done by a sucky disc reading which is on the right hand of this slide here it's a black-and-white disc that's lowered into the water column and when you lose sight of it that's your clarity reading for that that time out and then the samples are tested in a lab for chlorophyll a and phosphorous so just highlighting some of our water bodies that we are still working on Alameda and Keller Lake these are our impaired waters and you can see that our three-year clarity averages are below the goals that we're hoping to get for get to you for these water bodies so we still have some work to go in those areas lack LaVon Lake is our lake with the best water clarity that was actually recently listed on the Metropolitan Council of the organization that runs the the volunteer monitoring program as one of the top 10 lakes in the metro area for water quality so that Lakes doing really good and then our other lakes just in general a crystal early sunset twin those are all meeting or exceeding the city's goals would pond is slightly below but close to the city's goal for for that water body and then it's going to run through each of those water bodies and give you a quick overview on some of the conditions so Lake alum magnet it's a shallow water body averages five or six feet deep it's fairly large at 104 acres we've been doing a lot of work in the watershed in the the last five or six years so we did an alum treatment on the two major storm ponds in Burnsville last two years ago as well as adding an iron enhanced infiltration trench on one of those storm ponds those projects should reduce nutrient inflow into element ala magnet lake and then the city of Apple Valley also has projects planned because a lot of the watershed is also within the city of Apple Valley so they have watershed improvement projects or BMPs on their side of the watershed as well that should hopefully continue to improve conditions on al magnet also as you can see in the data here we're not meeting the state standards yet and but we hope that through some of the work that we've been doing over next five or six years well we'll see some of those trends start to change one thing we're looking at in lake alle magnet this year is a sedimentary suspension study we haven't seen with some of the the projects that we've installed in the past on alum magnet we haven't necessarily seen the changes in the water quality data that we'd expect and we're trying to figure out why that is one thing that we're wondering about is that because it's a very shallow lake and it's a fairly long Lake there could be sedimentary suspension either from wind activity or boat activity that's stirring up the water column stirring up sediments at the bottom of the lake and causing a lot of mixing that reintroduces a lot of phosphorus into the water column that could drive algae blooms so we have a consultant who's doing a set of every suspension study the summer and hopefully that will give us some information on more about what's going on and like elegant all right on to Lac LaVon Lake so this is a deeper water body at sixty acres and in general it's in great shape so water clarity is four point three meters so that's well above the state standards and our goal is basically to keep things going like they're going on Lac LaVon Lac Laval Hahn is an old gravel pit and it does not have any storm sewers running into it so the drainage for Lac LaVon is very small primarily from the adjacent homes and parkland in that area so that helps improve the water quality in the lake Keller Lake is another water body that's on our impaired waters list so we're still working to meet state standards at that lake we've done a lot of work in this watershed as well so in 2014 there was a large storm pond added adjacent to the lake to remove phosphorus two years ago there was a large underground infiltration basin it's near Crystal Beach but it actually prevents drainage or phosphorus from getting to Keller Lake so that was predicted to remove up to 70 pounds of phosphorus and we also have an alum treatment plan which will likely happen I believe this Thursday so we have a number of we've had projects and we have an upcoming project that should reduce a lot of phosphorous and we hope over the next few years that we'll see that show and the water quality data that we have for the lake we have seen some changes already in some of the parameters so our chlorophyll a which is a good indicator for algae grow throughout the season those readings on average and the two lowest values in the last 10 years for that lake so that hopefully it will be an early indicator of some good trends and changing water conditions out there and I mentioned that we have that alum treatment planned for this week and along with that there will be a second alum dosing in 2021 to continue reducing in lake nutrient flow that killer then on to Crystal Lake as I mentioned conditions have improving have an improving trend on Crystal Lake enough that it was able to be removed from the impaired waters list in 2018 so things are looking good out of Crystal Lake and the clarity reading that we had this last year of 2.6 meters was the best clarity reading that we have on record for the lake and we have good data back through 1980 in some intermittent or intermittent data back through 1970 so through all that time period this is the best clarity reading that we've had so that's a great sign twin Lake is a small water body there's actually a north twin and a south twin Lake that are along South Cross Drive on the east side of Highway 35 that's a small water body but it actually has good water clarity conditions and water quality conditions it has a nice robust native plant community there and lots of lily pads and good native plant diversity that help compete with the algae and keep the water clear wood pond as was mentioned in a previous the previous presentation wood pond had an alum treatment done in fall of 2018 hopefully that will help us improve some of the water clarity conditions out there now overall we've had pretty good phosphorous readings on the lake and pretty decent chlorophyll readings as well water clarity is a little lower than we'd like to see but hopefully that alum treatment which finds phosphorus removes it from the water column and doesn't allow algae to to uptake it hopefully that will help improve clarity conditions out there in the future this is some pictures of the alum treatment on too early Lake the early lake is a fairly small and shallow water body 27 acres and it has a pretty large watershed it also includes drainage from the Burtonsville mall area and some fairly developed areas the conditions have been good out there this lake was actually removed from the impaired waters list in I believe 2012 or 2013 so it has improving trends out there as well we do have some asterisks on the the data here that's due to some sampling issues with the protocol that we had out there there was some sediment that was getting into the samples and that was skewing the results for for our phosphorous data and the chlorophyll from last year we have done some retraining and I think we have everything set but the that we have for those parameters where the asterisks are shown wasn't representative of the conditions on the lake so that's why those are there but overall clarity was great last year at 2 metres that's through the bottom down to the bottom and most of the lake there and our friends of early lake group have reported the last couple of years that algae conditions have been very good that's good then on to sunset pond so sunset pond is a shallow water body a fairly large 58 acres and sunset pond has been meeting state standards on average that has for a shallow water body a pretty good phosphorous levels and great clarity the clarity Sunset pond may partially be due to the robust native plant community out there also we have a good native plant diversity and abundance throughout the lake that helps provide a lot of competition for algae growth and help keep the water clear one issue we've had at Sunset pond our seasonal allergy issues so in past years we've had some spring blooms that have been problematic for for a few weeks prior to that it was more likely to be August blooms out there and we're working on plans and how best to deal with those algae blooms all right so that was kind of a quick run-through of where things are at as shown by our most recent water quality data and I'd be happy to take any questions that you have commissioner has any questions I noticed a couple of emails looking for volunteers for the wetland project yes yeah we have a program called the wetland health evaluation program it's run by Dakota County I believe but we we host them and ask them to monitor for wetlands a year in town and we had a good turnout the exact number I think it was 15 to 20 so we ended up with a lot of people willing to help I have a question about the Lake El Alamein it when you do that sediment resuspension testing if it does look like that's the issue is there anything you can do with with the sediment it there may not be oh we can work with residents to try to reduce boating under certain time periods on a resident willingness basis if that if boating seems to be causing issues we're not changing any ordinances to restrict anything out there so that would be a possibility and then it also could impact the future of projects like an alum treatment where you don't want a lot of resuspension of sediments on an ongoing basis actually thanks Dana for bringing up the sediment suspension I see wind fetch is gonna be gonna be an impact potential boating fish they you know I don't I don't know the assemblages that are in the lake but if you have a bunch of ones that are mucking about in the bottom yeah but there are some native and non-native fish and I'm assuming that I've seen the suspension a lot of plumes as they move through during breeding times so there may be peaks and valleys too in their activity so I'm wondering is that is that something they're gonna look at yeah and we do what we've had fish surveys done about every other year the last seven or eight years so we have a decent feel for the fish community in the lake there's not a lot of carp for example which could potentially resuspend sediment there used to be more large bull heads which could also resuspend sediment the city has done some fish stocking both for catfish and then largemouth bass to try to establish predator fish that can maintain the bullhead population another thing that we've seen is stunted sunfish or you know smaller sunfish out there and from information we've received that sometimes when there's an overpopulation of sunfish and not enough food for them to eat they can also dig into the sediments and cause some sediment resuspension so the largemouth bass we've been Saki in there we hope will help to control some of those sunfish as well so we're working on that aspect of it from the fish side of things was it was it work was the original bottom where you know we realized there's been a lot of sedimentation since folks started doing more intensive activity the affirming or now houses do you was it originally a sand bottom system you know I don't know the history of the lake well enough and I'm wondering if that's something to that there might be potential sediment removal as an option we know that that's costly to do hydraulic or mechanical dredging but as anybody is have those come up for any of the lakes yeah so I'm like a magnet the the bottom is primarily a muck bottom I know the western side of the lake used to be in some years more of a shallow Marsh so before it was before the city was developed before there's a lot of roadways and parking lots there used to be a lot less water in lake element and many of our lakes but as part of the the set up of our storm water system and to help mitigate flooding and find places for our water as we added storm sewer pipes to the lake that that rose the water level quite a bit so we know that there's some fairly nutrient-rich wetland soils on the western arm of the lake and the other the other section of the lake was probably fairly shallow as well with some mucky soils so we haven't looked into sediment removal but we do know that there's some natural phosphorus rich soils and like a magnet and then on our other water bodies we haven't looked at a systematic large-scale sediment removal we do have a sediment removal program that's focused on outfall areas so those areas where we have a storm pipe coming into a water body whether it's a pond or a lake we often get a focused amount of sediment buildup there and those are more accessible for us to get equipment in there to dredge those areas and remove that sediment so we do that on an ongoing yearly basis and we prioritize based on where the worst sediment issues are it doesn't strike me that that's a so that's a reasonable solution to include them from for Ella magnet because it's originally a shallow high nutrient rich and setting so originally so thanks probably yeah we hope we hope that the city has done a lot of water quality improvement projects in the watershed and there's more projects to come on the Apple Valley side of the watershed and hopefully if we could reduce nutrient inflow that can help improve some of those conditions out there so I noticed that wood Lake is also looking like it's maybe on the border at what point would that like have to be added to the impaired water list I maybe I caught I missed the the criteria earlier enough to to compare the current kind of readings backwards so yeah if so if I fail to meet one of the standards over for two years over a 10-year period it would have to go on the impaired waters list and so far I think I'm not sure offhand over that ten year period I think we missed one of the levels like the clarity reading for one year but overall our conditions have been pretty good on wood pond clarity wise I think we have a goal of 1.3 meters on wood pond and that's the city's goal but not the state goal so our clarity goals are a little more stringent so we have a little more work to get to the city's goals which are set in our water resources master plan but we've been meeting the state standards helpful thank you so you said you did some fish studies for various water bodies do you ever publish those in terms of what kind of fish and the quantity of them in the various lakes and ponds we haven't made those available online we certainly are willing to share with anyone who wants that information to share the reports that we have and then in addition to the work that the city is done the DNR is also doing fish surveys and numerous water bodies and you can find that information on the DNR as lake finder website any other questions I just have a comment I just want to commend the city and the mayor and everyone who's worked really hard to get our Lakes back where they need to be thank you next item on the agenda is we're gonna review the 2008 2019 18:19 deer report and proposed strategies for 2019 and 2020 Keller will be presenting again all right so my next presentation is on the deer management program this is our annual update so just a little bit of background information on the program history so the city developed natural resources master plan in 1999 of that plan recommended the development of a deer management program the deer management plan was adopted by City Council in 2001 and among other things it set the population density goal for the city for for the deer population the program is intended to address a few different things a one is deer-vehicle collisions so when we have a higher deer population in a developed area like Burnsville we have more collisions over the vehicles that's also intended to reduce the negative impacts of deer browsing on our natural areas so a high deer population can severely impact native plants and native tree regeneration and natural areas it also is intended to address the landscape depredation by deer on residential properties and then try to reduce the risk of disease in the deer population so what I'll be reporting on is our 2018 and 2019 program year that ran from April 1st of 2018 to March 31st of 2019 then I'll be making some recommendations for our upcoming program year 2018 2020 and so our program has four components and we'll kind of go over those each individually a1 is an education component one is the feeding ban and they're monitoring components and then population control so for education we maintain our the section on the city website with educational information related to Deer links to our deer management plan and annual reports and updates on our deer management activities we also try to periodically put information in the city newsletter related to deer and then do some social media outreach related to deer on Facebook or Twitter or other other methods at the city and this is a screen shot of or a snapshot of the article that was put in last year city bulletin a lot of the information that we do is just reminding residents of some of the issues related to deer feeding and why we we request people do not feed deer then the city does have a deer feeding ban so it is against city ordinance to feed deer if you'd like to feed birds in Burnsville your feeder should be at least five feet off the ground or otherwise protected to prevent deer from accessing them also we give periodic reports from residents that are seeing violations of city code related to deer feeding we had to feeding violations in 2018 this is a picture of what we typically see some type of ground feeder that deer can access and when we see a violation we do a site visit now if we can confirm the violation we we send a letter and then we'll reinstall the issues that I've been involved with that process has been enough we send a letter a lot of people are unaware of the ordinance and they'll they'll fix their feeder set up and everything will be fine from there so we recommend just continuing monitoring and these action letters as needed for feeding issues then - on to the monitor monitoring component of the program so we have a few different ways we monitor one is through an ariel count another is through our online monitoring forms which are available to residents we also track card deep deer collisions and then we do deer exclosure plant survey at terrace Oaks Park every year so when we're talking about monitoring or population control we look at the city in the in terms of our six different management zones so we have a northeast east central southeast Northwest west central and Southwest zone as shown on the map here so that's how we'll frame some of the information going forward so for our aerial count we conduct an aerial count every year if conditions allow it's primarily based on snow depth so we need good snow depth in order to be able to accurately count the deer the survey was conducted on this year on March 15th and it was conducted by the Three Rivers Park District so the Three Rivers Park District conducts deer surveys throughout the metro area both in their park reserves like Murphy Hanrahan Park or like Rebecca Park but also they work with cities to conduct aerial surveys when cities requested so this is a map showing where the the deer were observed this map is also in the annual report in the little circles there you can see the number of deer that were observed at that spot so for our aerial survey our total count in 2019 was 135 the largest area or concentration of deer was in Northeast Burnsville so we had 34 Deer County that area that's the area of the Wildlife Refuge Minnesota Wildlife Refuge so that tends to be an area of high deer concentration so there's lots of habitat down there then second highest was in Southwest Burnsville so similarily southwest Burnsville has a large amount of wooded Lots large properties and in addition it has Kelleher Park and the adjacent Murphy Hanahan Park which provides a lot of deer habitat then we also had a fairly high deer population in east-central Burnsville around Terre silks Civic Center Park and Wolf Park and in southeast Birdsville and L magnet park so this table here just shows our 2019 data compared to other past years of survey data we've had some variations and the results over the past several years for our survey data we've gone there's always some burial variables year-to-year one in some of our larger contiguous natural habitat areas like the Wildlife Refuge or Murphy Hanrahan Park Reserve area the deer don't follow our city boundaries they they move about quite a bit from one one state one city to the next so we certainly can miss some deer that way then also we have been changing over from a city conducting the survey over to the Three Rivers Park District that may have had some some impact on the survey results that we've gotten over the past few years but we hoped so there's a little more variation than we'd like to see in this but just like to emphasize that this is a minimum count of the deer observed and it provides us a baseline for making management decisions so this this gives us the information we need to make some management decisions on how to proceed with our potential population control and then for the citizen monitoring report we had to submitted reports your online monitoring system certainly I'm sure there's more dear issues out there just not everyone knows about our monitoring report forms but we had one landscape issue reported in east-central Burnsville or there was a herd of nine deer and some fairly developed areas then also one report that was of a deer carcass from a vehicle collision along a roadway in east-central Burnsville then for our deer vehicle collisions we track this annually as well we use two main sources of information how we use our Burnsville police records so when someone reports to Burnsville police that there is a deer vehicle collision we can pull that information and track the location and the date then we also cross-reference that with our animal control contractor who works for the city they have information on the dates where they pick up a deer carcass and the location and we cross-reference that information remove any duplicates and that gives us a minimum total of the vehicle collisions in the city so this last program year we had 54 total car crashes minimum from the information that we have southwest Burnsville is the area where we had the most collisions that there were 14 down there most of those were along County five where there's some significant deer crossing areas then we also had 11 in east-central Burnsville or Terrace Oaks Park area especially and then 12 in the southeast portion in various areas down there so this is a little bit higher than we've seen in some past years we've typically seen this more between 25 and 35 they're made winter conditions over this last program here where we've had some heavy snow conditions may push the deer a little bit more into developed areas looking for potential free-hand outdoor or something like that and when the deer are pushed into developed areas and were more likely to get vehicle collisions then we do a monitoring we do a plant survey at Terrace Oaks Park every year we've been doing this since 2001 we have six study plots there three of those study plots are fenced three of them are unfenced so the fence plots the deer can't get in the unfenced pots are accessible to the deer and we do this to monitor the impact of deer browse look give us a little bit of an idea of how the deer might be impacting vegetation also one of the things that we've seen out there is that the fence pots have more average cover of native plants so wild flowers shrubs that type of thing they're more dense and there's more cover in our fence plots compared to our unfenced pots so 94% average coverage and the fence plots versus 64% and the unfenced plots and we've also seen that so there are some specific species that seem to be more impacted than others gooseberry for one example is one that we found in higher abundance in our fence plots compared to the unfenced plots so potentially may be a preferred food source for the deer and for our monitoring program we recommend continuing these annual monitoring methods that we've been doing right onto population control also based on our aerial survey we sometimes conduct population control for the deer herd we have several strategies for that we use archery hunting and sharp shooting by the Burnsville Police Department so for our archery program we do encourage archery hunting on private property where it's possible according to city ordinance the majority of areas where it's possible is in West Burnsville or people have larger Lots and then in some areas along the River Valley there's some businesses that have quite a bit of acres down there that also do some archery hunting then we operate archery hunts on public land where possible so the one location where we have currently been operating it in archery hunt is at Kelleher Park in southwest Burnsville well we operate this hunt with another organization called the Metro bow hunters resource base this is a nonprofit organization that helps cities and other agencies conduct a population control hunts and some of these smaller more developed parks so there are 10 deer harvested through the city's archery hunt this past fall which is right around our average for that hunt and then the 3 Rivers Park District also operates Metro bow hunters resource based hunt at Murphy Hanrahan Park about 10 percent of that Park is in Burnsville so we count about 10% of our their harvest towards our population control efforts and they harvested 41 deer this past fall they more typically been 15 to 25 deer in that harvest they've modified their method to operate their hunt over two different weekends and that seemed to be increasing the harvest and it may help control the deer population in that area also when warranted we do conduct sharp shooting with our Burnsville Police Department sharp shooting is done at sites that are selected by the police department for their safety so areas that have a good backdrop and meet all safety criteria we conducted sharp shooting in Northeast Burnsville east central Burnsville and South the southeast unit this past winter there were five sharp shooting nights and there twenty-nine deer harvested in those nights so we were fairly successful with our program over the the nights that we were out there and then from those 29 deer we do utilize the the meat so the meat is processed and it's donated to local food shelves so there's two different food shelves in Burnsville that received the venison from this program and it totaled just under seventeen hundred pounds of venison so the harvest for this past program er broken down by the different management units the Northwest unit we don't have any accessible city land in that area so we don't conduct any management in that part of town in the west central unit we didn't conduct any sharp shooting in that area we had fairly high goals in the other parts of town and the goals in the west central unit were fairly low so we decided to focus on other areas in the southwest section of Burnsville there were 14 deer harvested those were through the two archery hunts the murphy Hanrahan hunt and the kelly hare hunt in northeast Burnsville there were 17 deer harvested at Black Dog Park Tennessee Park and Clifton Park in east-central Burnsville there was four deer harvested at Terrace oaks and then in southeast Burnsville eight deer were harvested at a low magnetic for a total of 43 deer through our sharpshooting program and through archery so this table compares the the removal goals to the actual removals so I'll just look at a couple of these we had a fairly high deer count in the past program year which meant that the removal goals were high as well so it's not always feasible for us to meet those goals with the limited number of sharp shooting sites that we have available to us and in time to conduct sharp shooting so we weren't able to meet the goals at our sites but hopefully through doing some population control we can keep the deer population lower and reduce some of the vehicle issues other issues that residents can have now moving on to the recommended harvest for the 2019 2020 program year so this table here shows the population goal for the different management units so the population goal is the amount of deer that we'd like to see in those areas and then the middle column here is the projected fall of 2019 population so we take our aerial survey from this past March we use a calculation similar to the DNR where we're calculating for winter and summer mortality calculating for Fond birth and that gives us a projected fall population and from that we base our removal goals so in northwest Burnsville we don't have access there so we're not planning any management west-central Burnsville we're not planning any management there Southwest Burnsville recommending up to harvest harvest goal of up to 19 deer 16 deer in the Northeast unit and 21 year in the east central 22 in the southeast Union for a potential total of 78 deer again we can't always meet those goals but we work towards those goals to try to keep the deer population at a healthy level so we're recommending sharpshooting in the northeast east central and southeast units and then the specific sharpshooting locations will be determined later this season based on deer activity within those units and then we're also recommending continuing with the archery hunt at Kelliher Park and we'd ask the commissioners to review and recommend these dates for approval for City Council so we have for hunt periods that Kelliher Park which has been our annual protocol September 19th through the 21st October 7 through the 19th October 31st through November 2nd and November 14th through the 16th so those are our four proposed hunt dates for this upcoming fall at Killa hare Park The Three Rivers Park District also plans on conducting archery hunts within Murphy Hanrahan Park a portion of which is within burnsville so we'd also I recommend approval by City Council of these hunt dates those dates on October 11th through the 13th and November 22nd through the 24th and with that I'll take any questions that you have commissioners any questions I just know one question on item number six where you are talking about the deer population 18 there were three hundred thirteen and nineteen there 135 huge difference yes yeah so as I mentioned there's some year-to-year variations that can happen from a variety of factors one is some migration of deer in and out of the city especially in some of those larger natural areas snow depth the amount of snow depth we have during a survey can affect the potential quality of the count and potentially missing some of the deer and then again as I mentioned we have been transitioning to a new survey system utilizing the Three Rivers Park District and we've had some different staff over that time period conducting the surveys and that can also result in some different results so that's more variation than we'd like to see but we hope as we move into this new system that we'll be able to stabilize that and not see as much variation in future years thank you okay so it looks like for our actions first they're wondering if we want to recommend any changes to the City Council regarding the deer management strategies so when you're using the metro metro area bowhunters resource base for conducting some of the archer are you are any of those youth mentored or they capable partners or they you know or is it is a relatively broad base of potential participants it's a relatively broad base of participants so it's just members of that organization and they they sign up for different hunts they rate them on preference and then they get selected for our hunt or it could be a hunt in a different area but the base protocol is they have to be a member of the Metra bowhunters resource base unrelated idea so when when the sharp shooting is occurring I'm assuming that it's means they're doing shotgun slugs ah they use right oh they use right okay so then the talk the toxic shot issue doesn't really come up with if they were using if they were using lead shotgun slugs then you know I guess if there was any shotgun slug hunts or they were utilizing them on some of those sharp shooting situations would be interesting too they have a discussion about non-toxic shot but since they're using rosettes they're using rifles it sounds like you know it sounds like they are yes yeah they are using rifles we do use lead ammunition for the rifles okay due to less paths pass through potential we use the officers I use head shots so there's a minimal impact on potential and in the in the meat so that's that's good to be able to do that I guess I guess I'd still be interested in seeing if there was an option for using non-toxic shot in these settings because I think that's going to be a way forward as a good example to kind of help lead towards you know towards the better adoption of non-toxic shot because a lot of people yeah yeah but that's certainly something we've discussed and continue to discuss with with our program as well Thanks any other questions sorry when you're doing sharpshooting are you doing any type of selection in terms of dough Bock that type of thing or is it just whatever you're able to find yeah the goal is to harvest dough's because that is primarily what's driving the population so that's the primary goal but sometimes if there's bucks there as well and they're on their own those will be harvested they they do get hit by vehicles as well but if we really want to have a population impact the best way to do that is by targeting the dough's thank you I mean I don't think any other questions is there any recommendations to changing the deer management strategies for a City Council okay they're doing a good job yes keep up the work okay in the L so I guess we want to make a recommendation on the actual hunt dates and patients correct all those in favor aye all those opposed okay thank you a lot of information tonight thanks for having me yep and the next item on the agenda is miscellaneous commissioners I do have a couple of items for you tonight I would like to remind you that this Thursday June 6 from 11:00 a.m. to 9:00 is party on the plaza at Nicollet Commons Park there will be food trucks there will be entertainment there will be crafters and vendors please stop down if you have a chance and it's an open invitation to everybody in the community to come join us also on Saturday June 15th is the back to the 80s event and food truck festival out at Burnsville Center parking lot so again another fun event for the family to come out and spend some time together that is from 10:00 a.m. until 3:00 p.m. and then one of the things that maybe Caleb should be sharing with the group is the return of his return of his favorite animals please go Caleb sure yeah I can update the commissioners that we are continuing with our prescribed grazing pilot project this year and we are anticipating the goats will be arriving this week potentially tomorrow so they will be out here at Civic Center Park they should be here this week and we expect them to stay about two weeks and the goal of this program is to reduce buckthorn on-site and also promote the growth of a healthy native plant community so they don't eat the native plants they just eat the back thing they prefer a woody brow so that's their preference but they do eat other things as well but through our strategy we're trying to reuse some buckthorn that's one of the primary things that's there and then when they eat through the buckthorn that gives all the understory plants a chance to flourish same spot as last year by the hockey arena yep yeah it's by the outdoor ice rink or hockey arena right here at Civic Center Park we invite all the commissioners and anyone watching to stop out and check out the goats work their point of following that's why I felt that it wasn't necessary but that's up and our next meeting is scheduled for July 1st ok can I get a motion to adjourn it's a quick question all of these dates that you are giving judging is there a place I'd on a website or anything else where people can go and look at it yes there is Thank You Commissioner roof on the city's website there is a calendar of events and all this information for party on the plaza food truck festivals any other big events that might be happening in the city or the cities involved with will be listed on that website and on the cow thank you okay motion to adjourn some work second all those in favor okay all those opposed good night and thanks for watching the parks and natural resource Commission meeting you you