Since no timestamps were provided in your source text, I have applied logical incremental timestamps to follow your requested format. [00:00] **Mayor Emerson:** so i think we're all in attendance so i would that i will call a meeting to order and ask the clerk to take the role [00:08] **City Clerk:** council members walsh [00:10] **Councilmember Walsh:** here [00:11] **City Clerk:** bean [00:12] **Councilmember Bean:** here [00:13] **City Clerk:** edberg [00:14] **Councilmember Edberg:** [present] [00:15] **City Clerk:** jones [00:16] **Councilmember Jones:** here [00:17] **City Clerk:** and angstrom [00:18] **Councilmember Angstrom:** here [00:20] **Mayor Emerson:** thank you we have a forum so moving on to approval of the minutes of the april 27th 2021 meeting are there any corrections to the minutes [00:30] **Councilmember Jones:** to approve madame [mayor] [00:32] **Councilmember Edberg:** second [00:34] **Mayor Emerson:** i have a motion on the second the clerk will call the roll [00:38] **City Clerk:** council members angstran [00:40] **Councilmember Angstrom:** hi [00:41] **City Clerk:** edberg [00:42] **Councilmember Edberg:** i [00:43] **City Clerk:** walsh [00:44] **Councilmember Walsh:** hi [00:45] **City Clerk:** johns and edberg i'm sorry thanks can't read my ratings right angstran nice perfect too many e's thank you i couldn't read my writing [00:55] **Mayor Emerson:** i'd like to receive my extra vote for a future opportunity moving on to approval of the agenda are there any additions or deletions to the agenda if not could i have a motion [01:05] **Councilmember Bean:** moved to approve [01:07] **Councilmember Jones:** second [01:08] **Mayor Emerson:** i have a motion and a second the clerk will please call the roll [01:12] **City Clerk:** council members edberg [01:14] **Councilmember Edberg:** i [01:15] **Mayor Emerson:** moving on to visitors and presentations i'm going to turn this over to phil from valamo right away and he can introduce the subject and i think it's going to be very interesting we have a couple of visitors here to give us some great information so phil take it away [01:30] **Phil Belfiori:** mayor emerson and council again my name is phil belfiori i'm the administrator here with valemo and i'm here uh with our uh east goose lake adaptive lake management team both don tanner and nick voss are here as well it's my honor to introduce uh joe bishop bischoff aquatic ecologist with bar engineering he's an expert in shallow lake management with over two decades of experience he'll be providing you tonight a very short overview of the science behind management of shallow lakes such as east goose lake specifically focusing on alum treatment and shallow lakes with high internal loading which is what east goose has this presentation is part of the ongoing east goose lake adaptive management partnership project that vlamo is working on closely with the city as you're aware and this is a follow-up from the discussion we had in october 2020. we hope to have joe back in two weeks at your meeting uh for a second in this series to talk about aquatic vegetation management in cello lakes i'll give the floor to joe bischoff thanks joe for coming [02:45] **Joe Bischoff:** great thanks can everyone hear me okay [02:47] **Mayor Emerson:** yes [02:48] **Joe Bischoff:** and you can see my slide great so here's what i'd like to talk about today i appreciate you having uh having me out to talk about lakes it's one of my favorite things to talk about so i just want to give a little background on shallow lakes and why they're different we'll talk about sediment phosphorus release so that internal cycling of phosphorus and then we'll talk about a tool that's commonly used to stop that internal release and that's alum or luke aluminum sulfate excuse me so we'll talk about what it is how does it work does it work is it cost effective does it last for long term and is it safe so when we think about shallow lakes shallow lakes are different in that they like to be in what we call alternative stable states meaning they either want to be in a clear water state that's plant dominated so this is where you have a lot of aquatic vegetation it doesn't have a lot of algae and it provides habitat for macro organisms that live in the water column zooplankton that graze on the algae the alternative to that state is a turbid water state this is dominated by algae has low plant productivity because there's not a lot of light penetration to the sediments and then there's not a lot of soil plankton opportunities so there's just nothing to graze down the algae and keep the water clear so it wants to be in one state or the other we have the clear state here that's plant dominated or the algae-dominated state now one problem that can arise when you're in the algae-dominated state is that you can get what we call harmful algal blooms or toxic algal blooms if it gets severe enough this is a lake i worked on in iowa this is actually a toxic algal bloom you could have toxicity to humans and pets and other issues so we really don't want to get to this state in terms of the conditions in the lake so if we think about this i want to just give you a little representation here this is a representation of the alternative stable states and lakes this is the clear lake state would be this cup here where this ball is the turbid water states here so as you increase nutrients and increase turbidity you select for the turbid water state and it wants to stay very stable in there be very difficult under those conditions to move it in a clear lake state as you get lower nutrients and lower turbidity it can be in either state but it's stable in one state or the other so the lower the nutrients the lower the turbidity the more stable it becomes in the plant-dominated state so a lot of times what we get asked to do as plant managers is to manage for the most clear water with the least amount of plants and when you do that what you're asking me to do is to manage for the lake in this condition here and as you can see that's the least stable place that the lake will be essentially what you're doing is you're asking me to balance the lake on top of this peak in terms of these conditions and prevent it from either going to a turbid water state or into a clear lake state in conditions like this it's going to stay in the clear lake state if it has high turbulent high nutrients it's clearly going to move to that so it's a very different difficult condition for for shallow lakes and we have to pretty much pick one or the other condition to be in luckily we do have some guidance from european um researchers on how to manage shallow lakes and it's just five step process here we have to figure out what's causing the turbine water state what's the nutrient balance and we'll talk about that today and then we'll do something called biomanipulation i know it's kind of a big word but all that is is changing the biological condition whether that be vegetation fisheries or whatever factors causing it to be interpreted water state we have to do a major project to push it into a clear lake state and then we want to establish those plants and then we want to manage those plants in that restorative system because they're an important part of that ecosystem so if we look at the nutrient balance we're going to focus on that because that's really what alum focuses on this is a typical uh representation of phosphorus balance for a lake it can come from the watershed flows into the lake or it can come from atmospheric deposition when it gets into the lake it tends to settle down into the sediments either through algal growth or just being part of the particulate matter that settles down but what happens is you build phosphorus in the sediment and you start to get re-suspension and release from those sediments so as you get over time as you get a lot of buildup of phosphorus that can drive your algal blooms even if you don't have runoff coming from the watershed and this is the case in east goose lake the study that was done previously showed that 88 of the phosphorus coming into the lake is actually coming from the sediments themselves and not the watershed so something needs to be done to control the internal sediment phosphorus release if you want to have clear water in east goose lake so how do we do that well alum is one way there's a number of agents out there but alum's the most commonly used in north america it's used in water treatment plants that's why we use it so it's widely available it's pretty inexpensive because it's a commodity basis and all it is it's aluminum sulfate comes as a liquid when you inject it into the water we use a rig that looks like this where you inject it with these dropper hoses it forms it hydrolyzes and it forms a white precipitate this is aluminum hydroxide aluminum hydroxide is a solid and this will settle down into the bottom of the lake this is an alum application we did in egan you can see the clouds of aluminum hydroxide and they're settling into the sediments once they get to the sediments they bind the phosphorus and that bond becomes very stable in the environment meaning low oxygen won't release it ph changes won't release it so once it's found on that aluminum hydroxide it's permanently unavailable for algal growth so even if that gets resuspended up into the water column because it's on aluminum hydroxide it can no longer grow algae so this is a way of just cutting back that nutrients in a permanent pool that will no longer drive those algal blooms that you see in the lake okay so does it work this is an example from the city of egan i've been working with egan for almost a decade on lake management and this is a box plot and i apologize it's a box plot but essentially this is the distribution of phosphorus anything above this line exceeds the state water quality standard and you can see they had almost two decades of exceeding that standard until we did an alum treatment we did this in 2015 and we've had four and this is actually continued out to five years of meeting the state water quality standard and not only is it below the standard it's really narrowed that band of phosphorus it keeps it much more stable that's in there so this lake has seen huge benefits to water quality following the alum treatment and this is the case over here we have a number of lakes that have been done in egan this is in the case of many other lakes so schwann's lake was done in 1997 it was underdosed meaning we didn't put enough in this was before my time and but we still saw a benefit there for blackhawk and lemay lake which are both shallow lakes similar to east goose lake we saw greater than 50 percent decreases in phosphorus concentrations in those lakes so it's very effective at binding up that phosphorus and reducing algal growth another lake that you're probably familiar with is coleman lake this is phosphorus concentrations in coleman lake and now this is zero phosphorus increasing down and what you see here is that it's the allen treatment was completed in 2010 and it's had almost 10 years of good phosphorus concentrations we have seen an increase in phosphorus concentrations in recent years but you'll notice that the algal growth is not responding in the same way and that's again that alternative stable states once it gets into that clear lake state it wants to stay there and the algae won't respond to changes in nutrients as much so it was pushed back into that state so will it last there's two factors we have to consider when we think about how long alan will last did we dose it correctly 20 years ago we just put enough in that we didn't cause toxicity issues now we go out and collect sediments we measure how much phosphorus is in the sediments we put the right amount in to mine that up we have much better technique so a study that was recently published showed that dosing is the number one factor that will make it last if you dose it correctly it can last for a long time the second primary factor is the watershed the lake area ratio and what do i mean by that it's just how big is the watershed compared to the lake a bigger watershed with a smaller lake is going to put more phosphorus into that lake and bury that alum treatment okay so it's just a proxy for that so east goose lake is a very small watershed so it's a type of lake that would last for a long time because it wouldn't bury um that alum treatment is it cost effective this is a comparison to other watershed practices that are typical of alum on a per pound or a dollar per pound removed of phosphorus so alum is by far the cheapest practice for removing phosphorus from the lake it was almost about five hundred per pound removal if you look at iron enhanced sand filters or basin expansion storm water ponds those are about twice as expensive if you get into large scale structural projects this is like underground storage or infiltration it tends to get even more expensive and then things like rain gardens are just not as efficient so alan was one of the most cost effective ways to reduce phosphorus especially in a lake that's driven mostly by internal loading and finally is it safe um there's a lot of questions about toxicity aluminum is the third most abundant element and the most abundant metal in the earth's crust so it occurs in all the soils and farm fields it occurs in lake sediments naturally and so it means that you're exposed to aluminum every day just in the food and water air and soil that you are exposed to all the time not to mention it is aluminum hydroxide is the main ingredient malox it is a medication so it's been deemed safe by the fda to be used as a medication and the world health organization has a daily intake safety so the chances of exposure in a lake are really low because it's all in the sediments if you are exposed the chances of exceeding the world health organization number is very low so it's very safe to be used as far as human safety and finally it is safe for organisms if the ph drops below six the aluminum changes species it changes its form and then that can cause problems for fish but that's easily controlled with buffered alum solutions so we know how to control and measure the ph we don't have to worry about that we know it doesn't bioaccumulate meaning it doesn't build up in fish tissue and then go up the food chain so that's not a problem and although you know you are shocking the system some when you do an alum treatment the long-term benefits outweigh that so they've seen some reduction in say macroinvertebrate um diversity but over time that rebounds very quickly because you've improved the habitat so much because you've made such an improvement in the lake so in conclusion alum's an effective tool for shallow lake restoration it's typically the most cost effective if it's dosed right it can last for a long time it's safe for humans and the environment and this is why it's a very common lake restoration tool this is lake riley and the riley purgatory bluff creek watershed we've got an aerial photo of that application so when we come back next week we'll talk about what to expect after the alum treatment in terms of water quality and plant management how do we balance recreational use and aquatic vegetation and i'm gonna let you know that you're not alone there's a lot of lakes and and um residents and and cities that are dealing with these same situations and how do we manage vegetation clear water and healthy state and lakes with that take questions [08:00] **Mayor Emerson:** thank you very much thank you uh council any questions [08:05] **Councilmember Edberg:** mr mayor [madam mayor] yes so thank you um maybe this is next week but the primary issue that we had with our local so i got two questions perhaps one for phil and one for for mr bischoff um has this presentation been shared with the um residents around east goose lake and the the broader community and has there been reaction uh to this information and the second piece perhaps more from mr bischoff is uh the issue in our last discussion that created uh uh heat and tension in the community was not the fact that we were using alum it was the uh prohibition on use of the lake uh afterward and um you mentioned that once it binds it binds uh it goes out of circulation re re uh lifting it back up into the presumably disturbance of some kind doesn't uh re-expose the phosphorus what what's that look like for uh for east coast like [09:00] **Phil Belfiori:** i can go first if that's okay um please mayor and uh councilmember eggberg to answer your first question we as you recall we had our neighborhood meeting in december first i think many of the council members and the mayor were there um they heard the uh introduction and information related to the science and the adaptive lake management program we then followed that up with a survey that 16 of the 30 did respond and provide us feedback on we had this meeting here to give you an initial in information related to the science and we have sent out a postcard to all 30 landowners letting them know that we are intending to have a a summer uh session with them uh face to face or or virtual um to give them information both on the findings of the public engagement process as well as to provide them information on the science of shallow lakes and alum and plant management as well so we intend to have a very similar discussion with them we have already sent them the postcard that that will be occurring in the summer of 2021. so they haven't seen this specific uh presentation or the the precursor that you're going to be recommending an alum treatment um again we're we're not we're not here to recommend an alum treatment we're here to provide you information information related to the science of shallow lake management um we intend to have a workshop with the council uh i understand in june where we would provide some additional information and have some more open dialogue with the council but again this is this is for an informational uh visitor session we're not here to recommend any management approach yet that's later in in the process and again we are planning to have before we would do that we would have a neighborhood meeting in summer so we will not have uh we would not get ahead of ourselves we will have a meeting with with the landowners later in the summer in 2021 and they'll hear a lot of the same things you heard tonight [10:40] **Joe Bischoff:** question as far as so i can address the resuspension question that you had it is it is once it's bound in the sediments it's not available for um phosphor for algal growth anymore so even if you have both disturbance and that washes up in the water column that's not going to cause an algal bloom because it's unavailable what it will do is you have to address that in your dosing profile so typically we look at how deep into the sediment profile we need to dose for right so if you're resuspending the top two centimeters we may need to do additional doses or have a plan to continue to drive that mobile phosphorus down in the top re-suspendable factors but as you get plants established you start to stabilize that sediment you start to change it and that need for that goes down over time so i it's part of a restoration program and you can't address that in the um in the dosing process and there's really no need for restrictions on voting during that process [11:35] **Councilmember Edberg:** okay thank you [11:36] **Mayor Emerson:** any of the other counsel [11:38] **Councilmember Jones:** yeah question madam mayor please councilman addressed uh mr bishop thank you by the way for your time and report so the question for me is if not but if not forward alum treatment what other treatments could reduce the phosphorus content i mean if if alum isn't a choice or an alum like uh product like spend lime if spent lying or to prove out test out whatever i mean what what are what other choices could do the job that an alum treatment can can do [12:10] **Joe Bischoff:** well there's a couple ways that you can address it one is the major release mechanism is anoxia when the dissolved oxygen gets really low that's what causes the phosphorus to release out of the sediment so you could look at aeration systems to try to maintain oxygenated conditions over the sediments that tends to be very expensive we did an alternative analysis in bald eagle lake to compare the cost of an aeration system versus an alum treatment and the aeration system was a lot more expensive you have to have electricity to it if it fails in the middle of the summer you can still have algal blooms so it just takes a lot of maintenance and difficulty where alan's much more passive so you can manage the oxygen in the system that's one way to do that but it's more difficult more engineering and more cost [13:00] **Councilmember Jones:** my understanding rough numbers 80 20 80 of the phosphorus that is produced or that it's in the lake is produced internally 20 again give or take is external load correct so we can't if if an alum treatment or an aeration treatment isn't done how do you stop the phosphorus internal growth or there's only two other ways if you don't do those you can if you clean up the watershed to a much better condition you can wait for all that phosphorus to flush out of your system that you're talking centuries for that [13:35] **Joe Bischoff:** okay most of the time [13:37] **Councilmember Jones:** and to correct that this was directed at uh director phil or staff is like okay what would be the cost to reduce take the 20 let's treat the external load just let's say we do everything we can do everything that we could do to treat the external load costs on that would be what and again that would only treat twenty percent [13:55] **Phil Belfiori:** mayor uh councilmember jones we did a feasibility study a couple years ago uh we had the recommended bar engineering did that study they recommended a bmp that cost in the neighborhood of around 780 and it uh provided less than half of that twenty percent reduced so um so it was a number of it was it's a whole level of magnitude uh higher cost per pound of phosphorus than alum 10 times roughly [14:25] **Councilmember Jones:** okay thank you thank you madam mayor [14:27] **Mayor Emerson:** thank you any of the other council miss heinecker you had something [14:31] **Ms. Heinecker:** um no i guess i was just going to maybe expand a little bit on the question that council member ed brigade had um in terms of uh you know where they're at and bomb was at with the recommendation and just reinforcing my understanding of this process and working with lamo and is that in working with the lakeshore owners the trade-off is of course i know joe you're going to be talking about this to council at the next meeting is um you know vegetation and vegetation management and so those are the kind of questions that council will need to balance as they go through this discussion and and give consideration to managing um goose lakes so i think just wanted to add that that piece to what phil had already provided [15:15] **Mayor Emerson:** and i would just add for anybody that is listening we are not making a decision tonight we are still gathering information we have a ways to go yet so please uh know that you will be part of the process and be involved in this but nothing is being decided tonight is anybody else from the council got a question okay i guess we'll see you gentlemen in two weeks thank you very much [15:40] **Phil Belfiori:** thank you very much for your partnership and your time this evening we appreciate your work [15:45] **Joe Bischoff:** thank you thank you [15:47] **Mayor Emerson:** okay we don't have any public hearing so i will move on to land use the consent [15:52] **Councilmember Jones:** move to approve madam mayor [15:54] **Councilmember Edberg:** seconds [15:56] **Mayor Emerson:** thank you i have a motion in a second will the clerk call the roll [16:00] **City Clerk:** council members bean [16:01] **Councilmember Bean:** i [16:02] **City Clerk:** jones [16:03] **Councilmember Jones:** hi [16:04] **City Clerk:** angstran [16:05] **Councilmember Angstrom:** hi [16:06] **City Clerk:** walsh [16:07] **Councilmember Walsh:** hi [16:09] **Mayor Emerson:** okay um that motion passes moving on to 6b1 consideration of a planning commission recommendation for denial of a request by brie llc for a variance at 4701 banning avenue ms kane [16:25] **Ms. Kane:** thank you madam mayor members of the council can you hear me all right and see my screen great thank you um see if i can get it to advance there we go this is the case for brie llc a variance from the 30 percent maximum office in the e5 central business district the property of 4701 banning avenue is located on the west side of banning avenue between second and third streets it is as i said zone b5 central business district the site contains a t-shaped one-story building with approximately 42 100 square feet of leaseable space property currently contains an office user and a pilates studio the pilates studio needed to downsize because of covid restrictions on use of the space so the new property owners gretchen and christian peterson allowed them to mid lease reduce to combine their space to just one of their tenant spaces um and signed a lease with a separate real estate firm to fill the vacant space unaware that the code limited the amount of office and anyone building in the b5 to no more than 30 percent of the gross floor area or the lineal frontage of the building therefore the applicants are here this evening requesting an increase a variance to increase the amount of ground floor area to 64.7