City Council - Special Meeting

welcome everybody to the lake walkom Cooperative Management program annual joint councils and commissions meeting Commissioners meeting this Wednesday March 27th 2024 uh I am chair of this meeting Bellingham city council president protm Holly Heathman uh in the absence of our president uh Dan Hamill and I call this meeting to order Jackie can you do roll call for the councils and Commissioners yes uh I'll start with the Bellingham City Council Members Hannah Stone here hly Huffman here Dan Hamill is excused skip Williams here Lisa Anderson here Michael liquis here Jace cotton here um and then we'll go to the wam County council members Kaye Galloway here Todd Donovan here Tyler bird don't see Tyler uh Mark stremler and Ben ellenos are not here excused Barry Barry beanan here and John scanland here and then the Lake watom Water and Sewer District Board of Commissioners we have David Holland Todd Citron I am here Bruce Ford here Jeff kackle here and John Carter John Carter is not here all right thank you and I'd like to remind everybody that you push uh the mic button to talk there's a there's a red button I'm not sure about those but um for the rest of us up here um all right and we will start this meeting with opening comments up first is watom County Executive sat Paul sadu can you please turn on your mic oh thank you let's start again good evening everybody uh I would like to uh welcome watcom County Council uh uh Belling city of Bellingham Council and the Commissioners for

Lake watcom Water and Sewer District uh to this uh uh Joint Commission meeting joint Lake watcom Joint Council and commission meeting of 2024 uh we come to you today uh to present the results of the work that was done in Watershed in 2023 last year's work represents a continuation of implementation activities that have been developed based on years of research monitoring planning collaboration and that's continually adapted to incorpor corate evolving information and Innovative Technologies to meet the challenges uh to for the health of our Lake the work you will hear about tonight includes actions conducted in 10 different program areas that represent a wide wide range of work however before you hear about all of that work I would like to focus on one area that I'm very particularly concerned about as I have mentioned in last several years being in this meeting I believe the biggest risk to Lake watcom Watershed is the risk of a catastrophic fire last year we had several fires including the one the blue Canyon fire that burned a significant area of forest but had the potential to be disastrous had this fire gotten out of control it would have caused a great health and safety risk to the Watershed residents and could have easily wiped out uh major recreational Resource as well as loss of significant amount of carbon storage and led to host of negative impacts to the water quality I'm pleased to to let you know that watom county is in the process of Contracting with a

consultant to develop a comprehensive Forest management plan as you know that we I I started in 20120 and that was my first thing and I said this in 2019 also but you all know about the covid and all that we couldn't put anything together but in 2023 uh I asked our parks department to start work on that we put an RFP out now we are ready to uh have a comprehensive Forest management uh plan for the Recon lands and we are in discussion with the city of Bellingham Public Works to partner on the scope and implementation because they are ad joining lands for for both of us this plan will form the basis of forest and Land Management activities in the Watershed into the future that will lead to develop a more resilient Forest on another uh related note I would like to let you know that county is in the process of acquiring a large block of forest land located on the top and on the east side of uh Stewart Mountain this acquisition will greatly expand an area of contiguous Forest land under public control once this acquisition is complete or when it is complete we will expand the forest management plan to include these lands as well you will hear more about this planning process and land acquisition as the year progresses again uh thank you all for attending this meeting and I look forward to hearing the presentation and all the good work done in 2023 thank you very much thank you executive sadu uh next up we have Billingham mayor Kim Lund on my spectacles here uh good evening and

welcome to the annual Lake Wacom joint council's meeting I'm delighted to see so many representatives from the city the county and Lake Wacom Water and Sewer District tonight I am new in my role as mayor but I have a deep understanding as a lifelong resident of this community about the importance of lake wcom lake wcom is more than just a Scenic Landmark it is the Cornerstone of our community and our lifeblood a healthy Lake Wacom ensures clean drinking water for residents Fosters healthy ecosystems and fuels our economic Prosperity the lake Waka Management program acts as a shield protecting this precious resource and the geographic location of the lake does not recognize jurisdictional lines and thus Demands a collaborative approach between our three entities no one of us can solve Lake watcom alone climate change increasing development pressure due to population growth and new invasive species pose even everpresent risks which only increase the importance of strong and Equitable Partnerships we must continuously strengthen the program to address these emerging issues the city continues to aggressively implement the lake Wakka Management program through the 2019 to 2024 management plan in tonight's presentation you will learn more about the 162 Acres purchased through the city's property acquisition program the temporary moratorium on multif family residential and our collaboration with the county on a on the development of a forestry management plan and for the first time

tonight we are showing the distinct progress made by each entity towards removing phosphorus by adding a more precise look at our supports and our progress versus looking in the aggregate I hope we can continue to accelerate our progress together through our Partnerships we can continue to Steward this invaluable resource and Safeguard Lake Wacom for generations to come now I'm happy to turn over to my colleague at the lake Wacom Water and Sewer District Justin Clary thank you good evening all um it's an honor to be before the policy making bodies of our three great organizations this evening it's been a few years I missed last year as I was off at a conference so it's great to be back in front of you um once again I'm happy to see so many familiar faces on the councils which helps ensure continuity of our progress forward as well as some new faces on the on the councils as well which I look forward to working with each of you as we uh continue to find progress in in the lake Wacom Watershed the district recognizes that the county and City are much larger both both organizationally and as well as having roles in meeting the compliance of the total maximum daily load requirements um however the district is also the sole agency that is wholly located within the lake wam Watershed we succinctly understand our our need to operate efficiently and effectively within the Watershed to protect this NE this critical Resource One this the water source for both the city of Bellingham as

well as the district's water customers um so with this res with this recognition the district commits to continued collaboration and partnership with the city and county in ensuring progress towards improving Lake water quality both through financially supporting programs such as the tributary monitoring program and the aquatic invasive species program as well as through Mindful and proactive maintenance of our facilities within the Watershed to ensure that further impacts don't occur thank you thank you for those opening comments and with that we will move to our public comment period uh for this public comment period it will be limited to a total of 15 minutes and each speaker will have two minutes we want to try to to get as many people in as possible first up we have Laura Laura Weiss and then we'll have Ramon falowski and Alexander Harris you can line up there's a microphone here and up here and then make sure when you turn it on it's green the button prepared my comments thinking I had three minutes so I'm going to talk fast hi my name is Laura Weiss and I live in the Sunny Land neighborhood I appreciate the opportunity to talk to you tonight I want to start by saying um it's great to see the city was able to purchase 16 properties last year since we know development and logging are the biggest threat to water quality having a robust land acquisition program offers us the best hope for the future of the Watershed while great things are happening with land acquisition

some maybe not so great things are happening related to development in 2023 the county permitted an additional 31 new homes homes um when compared to the number of developable units as of last year that's a 25% increase in the developed units in the county uh just in that one year as we know 96% of the land in the Watershed is in the County's jurisdiction yet when we look at the 2023 reporting metrics document it's concerning there are no metrics for how much phosphorus is being reduced through land use regulations in the county in fact it's my understanding the County's phosphorous neutral development rules um are 20 5% less stringent than the cities I think that's a policy Gap that needs attention now I'd like to switch gears just to talk about the AIS program for a moment staff are clearly doing an excellent job however there's a large gap in our approach to preventing contamination from invasive species the inspection program covers Peak Recreation periods from April to September but boers can access the lake in the offseason months without being inspected in fact data from the city's cameras indicate that 346 voters launch a boat of some type at blod Del Donovan October of 2023 after the on-site inspection program had closed it only takes one contaminated vessel to negate years of prevention efforts I urge you to seriously consider how we can ensure our AAS program is effective by keeping uninspected Boats off the lake between October and April gate controlled access as

one strategy in closing I want to say that staff are doing a great job but some of the challenges we Face require new policies and programs creating those policies is your responsibility as elected officials so I call on you to identify some of the key gaps in our systems and pass new rules to fill them thank you very much thank you Laura good job hello uh my name is ramen falowski I'm here speaking on Kelly Carrie burnside's behalf for the Silver Beach neighborhood association um so I wanted to thank you for the opportunity to address the Joint Committee as a member a number of important issues are facing the city and the county the recent hearing before the Planning Commission in the neighborhood plan Amendment and rezone to the multifam zones within the Silver Beach neighborhood has left us with many unanswered questions it appears that a higher level of development in the Watershed is being recommended to financially benefit developers the lake is showing signs of improvement will medium density development of the Old Mill Village without retrofitting all of the storm drains currently draining into the lake set back that progress the public needs to be aware that the private owners of the multifam parcels in the Watershed currently allowed to have storm drains dumping pollutants directly into the source of our drinking water we need to prevent development in zone 13 and pro uh protect the precious asset of the heavily wooded Lakefront with the adjoining freshwater Marsh

next to the heavily used blell Donovan Park but there was a low impact utilization of the land that would further protect the shoreline Marsh and Lake improve the water uh quality another question that P it pertains to the right of ways in Silver Beach neighborhood there are miles of these rways in the Watershed that could be developed by combining Parcels that seem to be directly at with protecting the Greenways forest soil slopes and water quality the S spna is asking for a moratorium on vacating any rows in the Wake wcom Watershed until the impact can be determined thank you there should be a public review process and assessment for future considerations these RS should be considered for improved neighborhood connectivity thank you cre infilling of native um vegetation green belts one last thing on this is that uh the S spna is not part of this uh committee although um we would like to be considered for such and also I sent out a uh picture if you saw this coming around it's a couple Architects overlooking the high density development 1968 uh proposed for The Old Mill site and uh it hasn't changed in 50 years thank you everyone and after Alexander we will have Fred Miller um sorry I'm having a little hard time reading this next one aim in Swami and then Christina mcginness go good evening council members and Commissioners my name is Alexander Harris I'm the land and water policy manager at the nonprofit resources which was founded here in Bellingham 40 years ago how about

that rain event earlier it was kind of crazy right well those types of events are actually going to be more frequent in our neck of the woods and climate change is going to be bringing these events not just more frequently but the magnitude of these events is actually slated to increase these atmospheric River events in particular which we didn't just experience but we're going to see more of those we need to prepare for those impacts especially because those big events transport a lot of sediment which means a lot more phosphorus loading so the time to plan for climate change is not in one year it is not in 5 years it is right now we also need to think about Wildfire risks as well because we know High severity wildfires can transport a lot of sediment to Lake Wacom city of Bellingham has taken initial steps to move forward with a climate vulnerability assessment for the lake Wakka Management program and it's very encouraging that City's taking that leadership we need the county to be a co-partner full co-partner in this work to fund it to staff it and to make sure it's done thoroughly um if it is a job that is not comprehensive we're going to be planning around assumptions that are not actually based in in the best available science the county actually right now is leading what's known as the comprehensive let's see compound flood vulnerability assessment it's a multi-jurisdictional effort uh that the county has been pushing forward the last few years to plan for climate

change and flooding and Coastal risks and they're actually funded by the department of ecology so when you put together these coalitions when you're planning for climate change the state has resources to fund this work that's all I got thank you thank you Alexander hi Fred Miller here um longtime res in the lake um if I brought news of a big new development in the lake on a resort property that's was going to bring in 18,000 visitors a month would you approve it don't think so you already have though reconveyance creating the park properties out there um has brought us about 220,000 visitors in 2023 um that needs to be put in context for all the other comments were made tonight about fir fire risk we need to set some limits on Recreation on limits on uses in the Watershed there are the obvious problems of you know traffic and trash and you know crazy behaviors Etc but the real risk is the fact that 85 88% of wildfires are human caused 95% of those occur within a half mile of a road or Trail we have invited the public to enjoy the lake as we all do and I love hiking there but we also have created a quadrupling of our Risk by this usage it's a matter of setting limits of doing smart things to start to prevent that awful fire event that we've already been referred to tonight that fire event isn't just the loss of the forest resource it is a Surefire invitation for a massive debris torrent I sent you all a letter earlier today and has some pictures and some citations in that

letter so more times the visitors really and we're going to be growing in our population what are we going to do about it well to start with we can talk about limits you know the old saying if you build it they'll come maybe we should stop building it especially if what they're bringing with them to our ballpark is this increased risk of fire I presented these issues to the Forest I'm sorry the park commission a few months ago and they said you need to take this to a higher level so I'm here tonight and I'm glad to hear the comments being raised about fire but couple that with Recreation please I don't want to deny anybody the opportunity but I think we could do some things to start controlling things such as permit system like aquatic invasive species for boats would you have a permit that says I've been through the online training course thank you your time is can hike I can bike in the Watershed I think we need a fire drill which jurisdictions actually have control and response capabilities fores there okay sorry about that but I appreciate your chance to to talk with you and um yeah appreciate what you do keep going thanks a little T hi I'm Dr Susan TSH I'm representing uh action in sustainability a community- based um project in water education um I have 30 years experience in Forest hydrology and uh um a dual background in public health and I specialize in the connections between land use water quality and health I have particular interest in Lake Wacom drinking Supply

because of the many issues that are now at hand the conflicts between Housing and Development and how to protect the sensitive uh natural purific ation and filtration capability we have in Wetlands some of the confined aquifers uh that if if penetrated will lead right into our groundwater um we've talked a little bit about zoning and the zoning that has been proposed for what is now being considered as a mega development on that Watershed in the sensitive areas has really only looked at high medium and low there is a critical areas designation for zoning all so what that requires however is to understand fully the L the specific areas for these sensitive ecological zones we have internal and external zoning internally we still have not delineated those sensitive Wetlands we still do not know in particular what is going into that wated and we still have not had any sort of monitoring uh on the ground monitoring for any code violations or any any issues that are happening right now in that water supply we have external uh zoning which needs says that it needs to coincide with our comprehensive plan what this means is that we need an ecosystem management approach to dealing with our water supply for over 100,000 residents in this community that can't happen until we have the data that we need on the ground sampling test Wells before we allow permit [Music] professional capacity thank you council members Commissioners and staff for the time to provide public comments this evening

um I also want to say thank you for closing on 23 properties and protecting almost 300 acres in the past two years this is wonderful news for the land acquisition program and thank you for updating the website with the properties map and adding information on how to contact the city to sell your property um please keep on buying more property I've L to see the success of this program keep it going um I would ask that after 23 years this program needs policy makers to develop some active strategies for prioritizing properties for purchase there's a criteria but mainly it's willing Sellers and I think that we could policy makers could develop some active strategies rather than um passively waiting for Willing sellers um in terms of storm water over the past 14 years the homeowner Improvement program has shown a lot of Success With Many properties however I'm asking policy makers to consider the transition from incentive based programs only to adding regulatory changes that require meeting code updates to reduce phosphorus runoff at the time of sale of properties this is a necessary step to meet Lake wome tmdl requirements sooner and then in terms of the utilities and transportation part of the program my understanding is the last big sewer line upgrade to Su Valley were over 22 years ago since we're adding 20 to 30 homes per year um that are connected to sewer I'm concerned that the old system is going to be overc capacity soon and we will soon see more sewer overflows to Lake

making water unsafe for drinking at certain times also there are deed restrictions on Watershed Lots from 2002 that will end in 2027 and that means that in 3 years we could potentially have a thousand New Lots to develop I haven't heard policy makers discuss what whether there's a plan to mitigate this potential new growth and limit its impact on the existing sewer system I would be happy to talk with policy makers about my ideas for options when you have time and I would just say thank you for listening and for your leadership for our community I genuinely appreciate the collaborative work of staff and policy makers providing these updates and continuing this evolving work to improve the quality of our water supply and our Watershed as a whole thank you very much thank you Christina hello my name is Atul asmani I'm a uh County PUD commissioner and a planning commissioner but I'm not here in an official capacity I just wanted to talk about one parameter that I think it's important to think about and that's temperature um so we've all funded uh in our local government's uh analysis and modeling to look at the effects of climate change and uh we're seeing it of course and the lake Wacom gets warmer on average every year and uh there's also factors uh related to the amount of water coming in that are important less so for Lake Wacom but that we know that it's getting warmer and while you're thinking about all the parameters that you can control it's important to think about this

very significant parameter that you maybe cannot control and that has a coupling effect with uh phosphorus has a coupling effect with uh uh invasive species that um if we don't try to model it uh it may uh it may be a mistake um so I just wanted to offer that uh for your consideration uh to think about that and I don't really think there's a way for you to control temperature I'm not sure the diversion can do anything to help for example um so anyway I just want you to think about temperature thanks you to okay next we have um Carrie Burnside online Carrie you should be able to unmute and turn on your camera if you wish good evening thank you um I didn't realize Zoom would be an option so I really appreciate this I'll be very quick want to talk about invas of species particularly particularly at Old Mill Village because this is private property we're exempt from the invasive species and due to the proximity to blell we're an easy bypass to the boat check station and this is a significant um entry point that that the public is able to bypass the long line and then go into um the private property there and launch their boats bring their dogs from Padden um there's a you know significant risk of cross-contamination and and the U introduction of invasive species and because it's private property we need assistance um stopping that and then also the invasive spe that are really uh have taken over that Marsh that's on the private property and um thank you for your time thank you

Carrie that's all okay wow 15 minutes exactly nice work everybody thank you for adhering to that two minutes um okay next we are moving on to uh the lake walkom monitoring program annual report and here to present we have Dr Angela ster from The Institute for Watershed studies at Western Washington University hello everyone good to see you again thanks very much to the council members and Commissioners for the invitation and the opportunity to present an update to the lake waca monitoring program um so I'm going to start with a very quick introduction to the lake I'm going to um focus mostly on results with the kind of Baseline assumption that folks have looked at the report I know it's kind of long um so uh we'll get into results pretty quickly here so as a reminder this is a Google Earth image of the lake and most of the Watershed uh the lake is comprised of two small shallow basins those are Basin one and Basin 2 on the map the pins show roughly where our sampling locations are so in these shallow basins which are about 60 ft deep there's about 3% of the Lake's water so really a small fraction um and then Basin 3 is where the majority of the water in the lake resides so 97% is there um and that makes a lot of sense given how deep it is it's so over 300 feet uh deep and its deepest spot we sample at two locations in um Basin three we also sample at um all of the major tributaries that come into Lake Wacom um all of these for the most part come into Basin 3 I'll talk a

little bit later about the tributaries um but I'm going to mostly focus on the lake for today okay so think of this as a year in the life of Lake Waton and so we start in Winter uh at site one so I'll be showing um data from site one for the next few slides um and that's again um that Basin one the first first kind of shallow Western Basin and this is data from February of 2023 um and so the um the plots that I'm showing here on the horizontal axis is the value of either temperature in blue or oxygen in red and the depth is on the vertical axis so the zero is the surface of the lake and going down to 20 M depth and almost all of the rest of the plots are going to look like this so it's just a good um to get everyone on the same page so in Winter the lake is cold and mixed um so the temperatures and um uh other compounds like oxygen nutrients are pretty much evenly distributed from top to bottom and we see that with those pretty much straight lines so temperature about 6° C oxygen about 12 milligrams per liter which is relatively High because cold water holds more oxygen so we see that uniformity um in those values um and if I showed you a plot of almost every other thing that collect it would look pretty much the same so winter um then we transitioned in through spring and summer and things change quite a bit and so again blue is temperature red is oxygen and in the summer the lake becomes stratified and what this means it it breaks into layers and um this is driven by

physics essentially so the uh water at the surface gets warmer because of the influx of heat from the Sun and that warm water Rises and sits on the top whereas the cold water sinks it gets pushed down to the bottom and so that blue line is showing that at the top water temp temperatures are about 22° C and they decline through that middle layer and then at the bottom they're about 10° Celsius so significantly cooler in the bottom which we call the hypolimnion the top is called the epilimnion so Epi means surface and so we see that that distinctive pattern so warm and then a transition zone and then cold and it's because of the stratification that we have some of the issues with water quality to start with and that's because when those Lakes break into layers those layers don't mix together and so there's a lot of oxygen at the top um so those are the red dots now because of the atmospheric exchange so there's lots of oxygen that comes in from the atmosphere but as we go down we see that decline of oxygen so with without mixing the oxygen in the bottom layer gets um declines over time because of decomposition of bacteria so there's bacteria they're using up all the oxygen and because the layers can't mix together and they're isolated then they act um separately essentially they they go their own ways so if we now move to fall um this is data from November we see something that looks quite a bit more much more like what we saw in February and so um the lake cool because there's

less thermal inputs from the Sun days are shorter and as those density differences between the top and bottom break down the lake will start to mix and so we see that for the most part temperature is uniform around 12° um a little bit cooler at the bottom and oxygen is doing something similar so it's pretty high and then declines right at the bottom and this is likely because the mixing isn't quite complete so if we stamped maybe a week later the mixing would be complete one of the things that we often get calls about is that algal blooms often happen following these mixing events because all of the nutrients that get trapped in that bottom layer are then mixed and so they come back up to the top and then often we'll see a kind of a characteristic alal Bloom that happens in the fall okay so one of the things that we try to do is look at both what's happening in one year 2023 versus what's happening over the longer term period And so um if we look back we started collecting data in the late 1980s so what these plots are showing is that how does this year and those are the colored symbols compar to other years and so the light gray is showing the um values that are not observed very often so are most extremes that have been we've measured in the past whereas the dark ray is showing the values that are more frequently observed and so this is looking again at May um and site one and we see see that um in blue the temperature is pretty much right on par for historical conditions

um in the top 6 M or so and then it goes down I'm going to use the mous a little bit here so it kind of is below average um compared to historical Trends in that bottom part with oxygen we see that again it's pretty much on par with historical Trends in this upper location and then in the deeper depths it's a bit higher um than it has been in other years and so I'm going to show this now for the rest of the sites just to give some um broader context um and then I'll just highlight a few months I won't show every single month okay so this is now the same plots just with all the sites and I've got a map in the upper corner showing just as a reminder where those sites are and we see that for the most part May was pretty average um for the most part we see those Trends are kind of sticking over the the middle of those gray shaded areas so pretty average for May um July um there was a few things that are kind of worth pointing out we had above average uh water temperatures in site one which that's the circled area um and that was across all Sites as well slightly above um where we've seen in the past and interestingly um higher um oxygen in the bottom of site one that we've seen um in the in the past um that was not true in site two and site two I'm kind of circling up here site two had lower than average oxygen than there has been in the past we move now to September um again the values are starting to look a lot more um consistent with historical Trends pretty much right on the

average across all sites and so um looking through the year um this past year 2023 at the oxygen patterns um again showing depth um on the uh um the vertical and dissolved oxygen on the horizontal the colors are showing different months and it kind of just shows the progression of loss of oxygen over time and so if we look at first that blue line in May lot of oxygen but as we go progressively through June in green less oxygen July even less oxygen and then down to August um where there's about 2 to four milligrams per liter in that bottom layer which is there and then finally in September when we have pretty much no oxygen present in the bottom of the lake we also have these peaks in oxygen that we see very consistently over time um both in 2023 but in other years as well and that Lake W Lake Wacom is kind of unique in that a lot of the AL the algae that um happens in the lake doesn't it's not at the surface so we think of alal blooms we often think of them being right at the surface and in Lake Wacom a lot lot of the algae are actually deeper down and so they're usually right around this 8 to 10 MERS and we know that because when they photosynthesize they're producing oxygen and so we can catch those oxygen Peaks and then infer that there's a lot of algae that are um gathering at that area so how does 2023 compared to um previous years in terms of looking at Trends in oxygen um so this is going back to 1988 showing the summer values only so black is uh July pink is August

green is September they're all declining s significantly through time we have a nice long record so we have um a good feeling for the trend here going to highlight that the from you know below 2 milligrams per liter of oxygen is called anoxia or anoxic this is below the threshold of where um organisms can survive for the most part some organisms need more oxygen than that and this trend that I'm showing here at site one is consistent at you know essentially all of the depths um that are in the bottom layer at site one and so we see this trend of um hypolimnetic oxygen depletion but one of the things that um I would like to highlight is the the data point for 2023 is on the very far right I'm going to kind of use the mouse to highlight the here so right here is July here is August here is September at the very least for July and August these are quite High values compared to what we've seen in at least the last decade almost surprisingly High um given that it was a warm year when it's warmer we would expect to see less oxygen and so it's a little premature to say that there's a trend but you know it is promising to see kind of this bump bump up of oxygen over time and so that's something that will be keeping an eye on in the years to come so there's a um a host of water quality issues associated with low oxygen um for example I mentioned that aquatic organisms usually need at least 2 milligrams per liter fish are sensitive they need more they need more like four to six

milligrams per liter of oxygen the other um consequence of low oxygen is the release of compounds into um the water from the sediment and so these are things like metal um methylated Mercury and hydrogen sulfide hydrogen sulfide is the rotten egg smell that we sometimes get because there's um a release of that sulfide from into the bottom of usually sites one and two the other compound that gets released is phosphorus and so this is kind of why we're why we're here today right um and so lots of scientific evidence that when you have more phosphorus you're going to have more algae it is their number one most important nutrient that they need phosphorus [Music] down and that's a positive sign but when we look at the phosphorus that's in the bottom of the lake right so the phosphorus that's coming out from the sediment and being loaded um internally we have a slightly different story and so the um for the most part there's no changes over time but these concentrations are about double what we see in the surface so that tells us there's a significant amount of phosphorus that's coming out of the sediment um and that's been the trend um particularly in sites one and two that's the trend over over time so phosphorus tells us a part of the story but there are other parts that are worth looking at there's other indicators that we use to understand water quality um one is algae another is um other nutrients like nitrogen and while phosphorus is um number one nitrogen is usually number

two so those are the two nutrients that they need the most so I'll talk about what those um might mean so first looking at uh chlorophyll which is our measure of algae in the lake in the upper parts of the water and so these are all increasing um at all sites and so it's a positive increase over time but it has the trend has weakened and it does look to have plateaued in the last about 10 years or so so we see kind of a stabilization of algae um in all of these sites when we look at um dissolved inorganic nitrogen which is a fancy way of saying the nitrogen that um the critters need um um and if we focus on um the minimum value that we observe in the summer uh it tells us an important story it tells us how limiting nitrogen might become for algae and so it's not the average it's the lowest that it gets we're trying to understand how low it gets and so that's what these plots are showing is these minimum values and they're all declining over time um particularly in site one we see that it's been below our detection limit for quite a few years which those values below there or effectively just extremely low and so um this is complicated because on one hand it seems like well reducing nitrogen is a good thing right we're trying to reduce nutrients and this is an important nutrient um but one of the challenges um with algae is that they have a lot of strategies um cyanobacteria have been around for literally billions of years um they figured a few things out and so when there's a

lot of when there's enough nitrogen available in the environment we tend to have benign species this is um I think a snowella a type of cyano bacteria or blue green algae that we see quite commonly in the lake but when nitrogen gets really low what can happen is we can have a shift to organisms that can take atmospheric nitrogen which is there's a lot of and convert it into the usable form of nitrogen which is what we're measuring here so they can do that in times when the nitrogen is really low in the environment and so one of the challenges is that those are also the species that tend to produce toxins so the same species that are good at getting nitrogen in whatever way they can are also potentially toxin formers we don't see any evidence of changes in cyanobacteria or um increases in these types of species but it is worth putting out there and you know keeping an eye on that this is a trend that we could see in the future um so I want to spend just a little bit of time talking about the tributaries um and the reason why we sample the tributaries is because the Watershed really effectively controls what enters the lake the TMD is designed to reduce the phosphorus loading from The Watershed and so the goal is to really understand these external sources um with this sampling regime and so all of those red circles are showing where we sample um the tributaries um there's a lot of data that gets produced from the tributaries I could never show well it would take a while to

show it all so when instead what I'm going to do is focus on a small handful of streams um uid milhe Park place and Silver Beach and those are indicated with the Stars on the map they're all the most urbanized um Parts um of the Watershed and then I'm going to show you kind of like a pass fail right so is it passing water quality criteria as defined by um the state or does it not and so there's a lot of different variables that we measure and so I'll show just this um grid here and what we're looking for is kind of just overall Trends right and so if we look at uclid it's passing most of these um water quality parameters um mil wheeel Parkplace and Silver Beach it's kind of a mixed bag so they're failing more of these criteria if we look at um the bottom few rows highlighted in Orange are the phosphate which is the available form of phosphorus the total phosphorus and eoli so those are all again kind of a mixed bag where some sites are um Meeting those criteria and some sites are not okay so to wrap up um we know that the hypolimnetic oxygen levels are still low but um are slowly seeming to improve um and we think further Improvement is likely if the amount of algae in the lake can be further reduced chlorophyll is um relatively high in the lake but seems to have stabilized in the past decade and will also continue to improve with reduced phosphorus coming into the lake storm runoff is an important mechanism um that brings nutrients into the lake so sediment and phosphorus um

and you can look at the pictures from Storm events the chocolate milk water that's a lot of sediment coming in um with those events um and the the T tmdl will ultimately help reduce the amount of algae in the lake related to these pulses of of nutrients and um the we have data on our website we talk more about the program we have reports um there's links up there and I'm um very happy to stand up here on behalf of a large group of people um we work very um heavily with undergraduate and graduate students that do the bulk of our work and I'm very proud of the work that they do and to be able to present it to you today thanks thank you very much Dr stuckler and uh stuer excuse me uh I believe we'll Reserve questions for after the next presentation um um next up we have Lake Wacom Management program annual report and presenting to us is Gary sta from the natural resources program is the natural resources program manager for the county public works department good evening uh Gary sta again uh natural resources manager for Wacom County Public Works um and I'll be presenting uh the results of the uh annual review for 2023 along with Renee lroy with the city before I get going on the results I just wanted to take a few minutes to talk about um where we are and where this all fits in the context of the program um the lake Waka Management program was established in 1992 through a joint resolution between the city the county in the lake Wacom Water and Sewer District with these four

overarching goals uh ensuring clean Safe Drinking Water protect preserve and enhance water quality prioritize protection over treatment and ensure opportunities for public comment and participation over the last several years we have implemented the program um through five-year work plans um our current work plan that we're working under is the 2020 to 2024 work plan and so the work in 23 represents the fourth year of that work plan um and as you can tell we're now in 2024 so that's the fifth year of the current work plan and as we um move throughout the year and and Renee will talk about in a bit one of our tasks for this year is to develop the next five-year work plan um most of you know this maybe some of you don't the lake Waka Management program program is divided into the these 10 program areas which are all uh described in the annual report the the work that was done in the last year um also in the last couple of years we have added a section at the end of the report um that where we describe and summarize the work we've done to address climate action um and we anticipate that this uh this climate action will become an 11th program area with the new work plan we're not going to talk about each the the activities in each one of these uh program areas tonight we're going to focus on these five areas land preservation storm water land use aquatic invasive species and education and engagement and just to make things interesting we're not going to go through them in order

either we're going to kind of jump around a little bit um before we get to the um the actual accomplishments I wanted to take a few minutes to talk about um where we are with the lake Wacom total maximum daily load tmdl that we often talk about that has uh limits for phosphorus and Fugal cfor bacteria um here is a brief timeline of the tmdl process um most of you may remember that the tmdl was approved by the EPA in April 2016 um and so that led to the development of implementation tasks um for each uh jurisdiction the county and the city and those became appended to each of our npdes permits and by by being appended they became enforceable actions um and then later as we developed these fiveyear work plans a lot of the elements in those work plans became part of the activities that went into those went into appendix 2 and became part of tmdl implementation um one of the tasks that was uh given to us um in the tmdl shortly after adoption was to take a look at the modeling um results and to rerun the model um to see um uh make use of new data and to make use of more more uh more modern models the tmdl as written right now is based on a very L limited amount of data basically a year of data and so um we wanted to embark on an effort to uh update that um the modeling effort is actually two models um there's the um Lake loading model which is a model known as hfam um the city took the initiative on that modeling effort and uh used that model in 17 additional years worth of

monitoring data um to calculate how much phosphorus is entering the lake via storm water runoff um then the results of that model um would be put into uh the lake response model which is called the C qual model um the county took the lead in that effort um to uh do that modeling effort and that model will will tell us okay all that phosphorus that's entering the lake from the other model um what's it doing in the lake um itself and how does that affect dissolved oxygen um so the county began that effort in 2020 uh the modeling results were the model was kind of finished uh running around fall of 2022 uh winter 2023 um and then the last year or so the consultant has been refining the model and writing the modeling report um we are very near completion of the modeling report um we anticipate it'll be completed in a couple of months um and we plan to submit that to ecology uh in June of 2024 um and then Al also it'll be released publicly for the public to have um once that's given to ecology um they will review the model and the indications are that that could take up to a year for them to review and then ecology will make the decisions on the next steps with the tmdl um the next steps could be um a change to the tmdl if that W was warranted or could be a change to the phosphorus or bacteria goals um I'll just tell you that current indications you know the models it's not the report's not complete but current indications are there there's not going to be huge changes in any of

those uh uh phosphorus or bacteria goals um so I wanted to now talk to you a little bit about the tmdl progress so far to date by each jurisdiction the county and the city um and a couple of things that I want to go over um first off is we are showing these results the progress results in terms of effective developed Acres um an effective developed acre is the amount of is the amount of is the Acres that if retrofitted to treat water would release the same amount of phosphorus as a forested area would would re would uh release so if you had an acre of land that was completely developed but you were able to retrofit that acre of land so that the phosphorus coming off of it would be the same as it would be coming off of a native Forest that would represent one effective developed acre removed um so that's what all these results are given in before I get to the results though I wanted to take a couple seconds to um look at this map to the right here um this is a map of the lake wam Watershed and you can see there there's a couple of uh different colors there the green areas are areas that are zoned commercial forest and those are areas that are exempt from compliance with the tmdl um the the phosphorus coming off of those lands is considered to be natural loading to the lake um and then you can see some of these orange areas here um more to the North End of the lake one is a darker Orange um one is a lighter orange those are uh the areas that are covered under the the npdes

permits so those are the areas where the tmdl um requirements have been added as a permit condition the dark orange areas are the city city's area and the lighter orange areas are the County's area so these are areas where we're required to meet these tmdl requirements um all these areas are by and large urban areas with um with a with a significant U amount of storm water infrastructure so the uh installation of treatment treatment facilities is a lot easier to do there because you have um the water being directed in certain areas and there's a lot of uh potential for reducing phosphorus in those areas um so to show you the results here on the graph to the to the left you can see there that um what that is showing is the number of effective developed acres in these orange areas so far in a trend line based on those um according so these numbers are all based on the current uh tmdl so the modeling results may change these goals but currently in those orange areas the county is required to um have a 1300 acre reduction in effect effective developed Acres um and you can see based on that trend line that that if we cons continue on this trend the county would meet that goal somewhere around 2040 a little bit after 2040 um however if you can see look on the map there you'll see that there's these yellow areas as well um the yellow areas represent areas that are in unincorporated County but they are outside of the uh npds permit and and outside of uh commercial Forest so these are

areas where the permit does not require the red ction of phosphorus um and where these areas are largely rural um lots of forest land and have very little storm water infrastructure so the opportunities to remove phosphorus are less in those areas however the county did make enter into an agreement with the Department of ecology that even though it's not a permit condition um the county would still apply many of the measures that we're applying in the orange areas so basically our development regulations the the low phosphorus development regulations still apply there um we also Implement bmps in these areas such as such as street sweeping and also where there is storm water infrastructure we maintain that in the same manner as we do in the orange areas so if we look at the phosphorous um progress to date and we add that oops wrong button uh we add that there that yellow area on top of the orange you can see that the tmdl would call for about 2700 effective developed Acres being reduced um I should just remind folks you know it doesn't show it meeting that line on this graph but you know these are the old modeling results the new modeling results may change this and this whole process is rather iterative so as new technologies come online we get new um new storm water treatment um we learn more about the lake we learn more about the effect of the phosphorus on dissolved oxygen and we learn more about where that phosphorus is coming from so uh I think that's all I wanted to

say about that so that shows us where we are here um the next area I'm going to focus on is that dark orange area there in that square and this is the area in the city's jurisdiction so the entire area in the city's jurisdiction um is included in their um npds permit that represents about 500 Acres of developed land about 400 of which contain 400 Acres of which contain contains actual development buildings Lawns sidewalks um that sort of thing so if you look at the city's progress in this area the the tmdl would call for them reducing the amount of effective develop acers by 373 Acres there so the Blue Line shows the progress to date and that orange line is is the limit and you can see that trend line shows that the city should be able to meet their limit within that portion of the such as the homeowner incentive programs but also through the development regulations as um properties are redeveloped and remodeled um the more stringent phosphorus standards apply to those properties and some of those properties will be in those areas so recognizing um that they can't necessarily get to all those areas or very quickly kind of offsetting that a little bit is that you can see those green areas kind of extend outside of the city limits so this some of the city facilities are actually treating runoff that's coming from outside of the city limits which is um you know beyond what they need to control within City Limits and also that dark green area there you can see is actually a

forested area um which would would would not have development related phosphorus but nonetheless some of that water goes through the treatment system and therefore they're getting additional additional um uh treatment on that on that runoff as well um the city uh believes that with these measures and enhanced measures and Redevelopment that the most that they could probably squeeze out of this relatively small area would be about 500 Acres of effective develop Acres reduced um and then anything beyond that would have to come from other portions of the Watershed namely the unincorporated areas okay so now I'm going to finally get to the the 2003 annual report highlights um again it's just Renee and I presenting these but um this represents the work of many many many people on the staff of the city the county and the district so we're we're just The Messengers also um I want to say that um the way we've organized it just for efficiency I might be talking like I just did about City projects and she might be talking a little bit about County projects um I also want to say that um you know we believe that the work that's been done over the last few years all the work for you know we are actually making a difference in the lake we are reducing phosphorus and Dr ster presentation shows that we think that we are a we're actually making a difference in Lake water quality I think we all know that this this was going to take a long time to do um but we may be seeing slowly that big ship

turning around first uh program area I want to discuss is storm water and I'm going to talk about two projects s the first one is a county project um the Geneva Swale project um the Geneva Swale project was a project that was initially um installed in the Geneva neighborhood in 2008 and this last year we got a grant from the Department of ecology to retrofit this system with a new uh media called a high performance bior retention soil media it's a catchy acronym hm um well I'll get to that in a minute the city has a much catchier acronym but it's a it's a media that's much like the City's post media that was developed a couple of years ago um but this media uh can work in areas that may not be appropriate for the Post media um you can see there that um we're doing this in partnership with King County King County has actually developed the media um and uh they are testing it in their lab in King County we are putting it in our project and testing it in our project over the next couple years to see if how effective it is at removing phosphorus and FAL coliform bacteria um and it's also being tested at Western Washington University's lab um which um also was the same lab that uh the post media was tested in also um the county did get an additional Grant from of a different program to actually test this media for its effectiveness at removing other contaminants um so we have another uh Grant that'll help us see if they can remove some of these other contaminants that are coming

into the lake here next one is the the Ci's project here um you know the city has built many as I talked about 45 facilities in the lake Wacom Watershed all these facilities have a design life of about 25 to 30 years um and however the operations and maintenance of that makes a big difference in how long those facilities last and it also makes a big difference in how effective they are in removing phosphorus the the city is uh has started a project called the phosphorus and bacteria optimized operation and maintenance project you can see their acronym is much better peab boom um and the goals of this project are like I said to look at how operations and maintenance activities can increase both the lifespan of the facilities and the effectiveness at removing phosphorus um and they will be also looking at the development of best uh practices best management practices for Land Management in particular RightWay in parks to see if that could have an impact on the effectiveness of removing phosphorus um the main goal um the outcomes of this project is an enhanced maintenance plan um hopefully it'll show that it has additional phosphorus and bacterial uh removal the city will take any Lessons Learned From This and share them not only with the county but anybody else um in in the state or or whoever may need it um may make use of it to uh more optimize the more optimize the operations maintenance of their facilities and this is the last area I'm going to talk about um is the program

area of land use and in particular I'm going to highlight a couple things that I heard tonight in the comments is the um Silver Beach uh moratorium that's in place um several years ago um the city was working on um a second here um was working on adopting policies is to um change the densities in multif family zones to encourage additional development capacity um in approximately July 2022 the city recognized that that that might be in conflict with the comp plan um in particular in these particular areas here 9 8 and 13 um the comp plan um in particular the requirements to Improvement of Lake water quality as well as providing housing in areas that are reibly accessible to Transportation Alternatives utilities and protection of environmental sensitive areas so the city recognizing that implemented a building moratorium just for these um multif Family zones you can see here that shown in Orange it's a relatively small part of the Silver Beach neighborhood but many of these um areas zoned that way are currently right on are on the lake Shoreline so they could have an outsized impact um city um Extended the moratorium in November 2023 so the current moratorium um uh runs through July 2024 um there the city's been working on it there was a Planning Commission hearing hearing last uh just last week Actually March 21st and right now what what is being proposed is to change those areas from a high density designation to a medium density designation and also to apply the stor same

storm water management regulations um to that are used in the single family uh zoning to these multifam units for both new development and and significant Redevelopment um there is a um a work session um coming up April 11th between the city council and the um Planning Commission where they'll discuss these amendments and I think the goal is to get these changes in place and address this issue before the uh current a atorium expires on July 10th 2024 and with that I will go ahead and turn the next sections over to Renee lroy hi I'm Renee lroy I'm assistant Public Works director with the city of Bellingham um and I'm gonna I I always get the fun part of these presentations I get to talk about more progress that we're making and we we are making progress and it is exciting to be up here um and sharing everything that we were able to accomplish in 2023 some of the stories that we have to tell don't fit neatly in a one-year plan or even a 5-year plan um some of the things that we're working on are going to take generations to implement uh we going to talk about three major areas that fit in that category the first is land preservation and this map shows all the land that has been preserved to date so this shows the reconveyance lands that the county Acquired and also shows the city's Watershed acquisition program um in total 12,500 96 Acres protected uh to date and and when I say protected I mean protected in the sense that they're going to help Steward water quality in

perpetuity um the actions that we have uh on the land that address that are tree planting invasive species management riparian restoration Forest Road decommissioning um we do Wildfire preparedness um which I'm going to talk more about which includes Forest th in and um his programs and then we also do structure removal and successional growth uh of our forests um in 2023 we did have a banner year so we uh acquired 162 properties which included 4 44 development units that were removed from the Watershed and that was a total of 16 transactions uh we managed 1180s for in 118 Acres for invasive species um and all of those almost all of those are records um for what we have been able to accomplish in one year and then there's a new category that we haven't talked about in the past and that's what we remove from watersheds after remove from the properties um after we purchase them um and in this instance where that star is uh corresponds to the SE crust property which is up north in agot Bay and we removed over a million pounds of concrete from a property by taking down existing structures you you can see from the map that that property AB buts a stream that takes drains directly into the agot Bay Area um so sometimes our actions in the lands that we preserve look like this um with a little tree and sometimes they look like this with a lot of trees and I like this picture because it shows a little bit of the scale of um what we maintain and you can see in amongst the trees there's

workers out there there's one there there's one there there's one over here and there's one there and just the amount of time it takes to plant all that land and hundreds of thousands of trees that we plant and to mow and maintain that so those trees can grow it's a it's a big uh big undertaking um we also you know I mentioned this earlier we also do a wildfire fuels Reduction Program so the city has a contract where we partner with the watom Conservation District and we work with property owners um adjacent to city-owned lands so in this picture you can see there's a house back here um and so in these in these instances where we're partnering with them uh the homeowner will do things on their property to prevent forest fires from Catching if their property were to catch on fire and we as a city do actions on our property to prevent uh fire from Catching onto their property and burning their house down if a fire was to occur on our property and so in this photo you can see that we're taking down these these three big trees um this property is actually up in the Geneva neighborhood it was uh before the city purchased it it was a commercial property it was overstocked over overplanted and so the plant the trees that are there um tend to be on the spindly side and a lot of the trees that are there are either starting to get root rot or start have already died and so they have what we refer to as ladder fuels so that there was a fire on the ground those um dead and dying branches

and The Roots would then facilitate the fire going up into the crown which would be blown by wind and it's harder harder to control so our goal here is to remove ladder fuels uh within 150 ft of that structure on both private and public property um switching programs another another program that is many many years in the making and will hopefully continue for many many years is our aquatic invasive species in our boat inspection program we uh have four launches between Lake watom and Lake samish uh and we inspect both motorized and non-motorized vessels uh in 20 sorry since 2013 we've inspected over 115,000 vessels um we've had 16,000 plus people participate in the online AIS awareness course and uh in 2023 we received $150,000 in permit res revenues the major point of this program is a risk Reduction Program is a boat that we I think it was this boat um which was from Minnesota this is a muscle an invasive muscle that we do not currently have in Lake wam that was found on this boat and this is a pen a ballpoint pen for scale and the naked eye this looks like a grain of sand uh and so our inspectors were able to find it and then they decontaminated the boat so that's what this lower picture is is one of our um our program assistant Kyle Lang who's decontaminating this boat using 140° water um so just to summarize we have 20 inspectors at four different launches in 2023 we inspected 14,230 boats we found of those boats 1,324 boats that carried standing water which is uh

something that we look for because standing water can contain those aquatic invasive species that can be microscopic to the eye so that's where the slogan comes from clean clean drain and dryer boat we also had 133 boats that had to have a IC plants removed things like mil foil and things like that um 12 Boats were fully decontaminated in 2023 which is about half of we what we decontaminated in 2022 uh which I think is is good we had no new invasive species introductions um and there's one piece of major news that you might already be aware of um there were quago muscles detected in Idaho not too long ago and the the Idaho it's it was around Twin Falls which is on the Snake River Snake River flows into the Columbia so now for the first time we have these species right in our backyard this was the last major river system in the United States that did not have these and so that changes the game a little bit for us what Idaho did when this occurred is they were able to act really quickly to contain it and treat it they were able to do that because they had a rapid response plan in place that had been um pre-approved and pre-agreed to by all the entities that needed to be involved and I don't think they would have had the success that they had in terms of containment and treatment if they had not had that um the estimates I saw this in the in a paper the potential risk for the Pacific Northwest is that it would cost us if we were to get those species you know all along the

Columbia River into Bellingham um that is going to cost us a 100 million a year a year to keep that Power and Water infrastructure running because the damage those species can do um and so what that leads us to do is that in 2024 for our AIS program the first thing we're going to be doing is developing that rapid response plan and we're working with um obviously the other entities under the lake wam Management program but we're also working with Department efficient wild life to make sure our efforts are dovetailed with their efforts um we also converted two 9month seasonal positions are lead inspectors we converted those to full-time positions and that allows us to have more coverage in the winter months so in the winter months we don't actively staff the launches but we do monitor those launches via cameras and we record all the boats that launched in the off hours you heard one of the public comments earlier address that um and so of the boats that go through there is a follow-up action we check to see if that boat has already been Perman and many many of the boats have been permitted if not we assess the risk and we follow up with those individual owners as needed we get that information from the um boat identification number and also using driver's license or dri license place um so this year our season is going to open April 27th and we have again the four check stations at blell South Bay sou Valley and lake samish and then we also do off-site inspections if if

somebody has um you know their their boat is always on the lake it never comes off they don't have a means to transport it we'll go to their house if we have um clubs that want a whole bunch of boats inspected all at once so we'll go meet with them that also is something that we actively try to do during the winter months so that that frees up our inspectors in the summer months to move more boats through at a faster rate the graphic on the left shows where those boats come from and so the darker the color blue the more boats we get from those water bodies um and it's interesting to me that Minnesota Michigan and Arizona are all in that at in Idaho um those are you know places that are far away not Idaho but the other ones are far away and yet we still get a lot of boat track traffic from that because our state does not have a robust AIS prevention program we get a lot of boats that didn't get caught at other points along their Journey um one of the other program areas that takes you know it takes years and generations uh to be effective is our education and engagement and we have we're very fortunate and we have excellent staff who um specialize in this um and they do a variety of things to raise awareness about Lake watom and its Watershed and to promote stor ship not just so that it's not just the the three entities of the city the counter and the county and the district that are trying to get that message across but that we have um people in the community that also

understand it and can then participate in stewardship be uh messengers of the program for us so we use different techniques we um put a lot of information both on the city and the County's website and we also have a dedicated Lake walkom management program website we also have a stewards of the lake guide book and a new homeowner packet that gets sent to all new homeowners so that they understand the resource um that they're impacting by living in the Watershed um and then we also have a Lowdown newsletter that is a regular publication that goes out to a small subset folks and then we also do a resident survey every 5 years to major impacts the last one we did was 2018 so we just spent the last year doing another survey and following up comparing the differences between the 2018 responses and the 20 uh 23 responses so this survey we sent to 5,400 households um which comprises about 18,000 residents we got we had a a goal of getting 5% responses and we got 5.1% which I'm told is really good um and that survey includes 1 stor ship activities and 26 unique metrics to track and we did you know this the survey results were really interesting to me um we had things that we do really well with and things that we need to improve on so the things we did really well with um 96% of people reported that they bagged and carried dog waste which is up from 2018 we had 11% fewer residents uh leaving on clippings uh on the lawn where it could decompose and add phosphorus into the runoff and

then we have areas where we can improve prove um only 67% are concerned about Wildfire sorry 67% are concerned about Wildfire justifiably so For What from what we've all heard and what we all saw happen last year but only 45% have heard about our programs in Wildfire risk reduction practices and so we I think we have some room to do improve there 52% of respondents uh know about seasonal restrictions on construction which actually really surprised me because that's something we've had around for years so we need to get the message out about that more um 77% of respondents are concerned about climate change and that doesn't surprise me as I'm sure it doesn't surprise you it's something I'm very concerned about uh 36% report Visible Changes in the Watershed over the last five years due to climate change the top concerns reported were Wildfire for water quality water supply degraded habitat and extreme heat so this is really helpful information for us to have so that we can understand better where the disc connect is between what we think we're putting out and what people are actually absorbing and picking up and acting on so we use this information to guide our future program development speaking of future program development this year we're spending a lot of time developing the next work plan for the 25 through 29 years uh we have uh in 2024 we've already had a couple planning sessions with our leadership discussions in April we have a bonus uh Lake Loom joint policy group

where we're going to go over the draft outline um and get information input from the policy makers and we'll have some staff reports in 2024 we'll take a draft out for public comment and coordinate with Department of ecology on what that looks like making sure those actions in the plan correspond and lead to compliance with our um npds permit appendex 2 and then in September we'll have a joint policy uh group meeting again to go over the final draft and and recap what we heard from public comments and then in 2024 winter 2024 we'll bring it to the council's for final adoption in that work plan these are the pro proposed activities um we're going to continue the watershed management activities across the 10 existing program areas we're going to add climate action as we've said um as sa Paul said earlier the um there's a forest management plan in development that the county ran the RFQ process on and the city and the county are in conversations about partnering on that because it makes sense on so many levels to be able to do that and manage the Watershed um as one and then the pom the favorite acronym of uh the geeky science staff that we are uh we're going to move forward on that we've got conversations about what the next generation of hip and the native Landscaping plan look like making sure that we're adapting to the clientele that is out there uh and then we're going to be looking at our gaps in our research uh and making sure we have those filled so that we have the

latest information going into our modeling efforts for the tmdl we're also going to have a climate vulnerability study specifically for Lake wcom um I have one staff member that I'm hoping to hire in the next few months and that person will lead that effort and then we've talked about the lake wam AIS rapid response plan for the um zebra and qua muscles and then anything else that comes up through the planning process that we're embarking on in this next year then I'm going to ask Steve Hood [Music] Steve sailing off into the sunset on a rope swing in Lake watom you want to take uh you know I didn't really prepare a speech or anything um but I did think when I was listening to the presentation how proud I am to be you know able to work with you um when I started this project there was a lot of people who really were reluctant to admit that that there was a problem and over the course of time really courageous people were able to change their mind and realize that we we needed to address this and um you know I was put into the job after the lake was already listed but there was a lot of arguments about whether we actually had a problem that needed fixing at all and so I'm really proud of well some of you are still here I think Bruce you were you were there 1998 and um but there's a number of people and and I think Todd was probably around 1998 as well but a lot of lot a lot of new people have come on and and I think that those people that have have been through that process

really are the ones that should be commended to to go from thinking we don't have a problem to really aggressively working on fixing it thanks and with that we're happy to take any questions right thank you Renee um we will now open it up to the councils and Commissioners for discussion um let me switch our be able to see our virtual folks too here there we go okay start with council member Donan oh thank you Holly and um Steve thanks for everything yeah you you've done all these all the efforts here um so it's a question and a um maybe a statement so F first thanks to Renee and Gary and and all the people working and even the people that Renee have the slides like planting the trees and doing all this work um I I I think a question I have for we see trajectories going up one way in terms of some indicators and down other ways and I keep asking this like are where we going to be in terms of meeting our 50-year um goals with the tmdl and we're almost 40 years I mean we're 10 years into that so that's I guess that's a question maybe for a broader discussion and then the other the other question is so we want us as as council members and policy makers engaging in what the fiveyear work plan is going to be and I've sent some some ideas about that um but I I think one of the frustrations about these sort of meetings is it's it's it's a lot of Staff present so how do we engage um the policy makers into into getting um what what we want in that work plan um so I'm hoping so so

that's two questions like how do how do we get Beyond just there is this five-year work plan that now we're hearing the goals are already there and we haven't got input from policy makers about about what those goals are going to be and and where where's the window to do that and in all this discussion we're going about trajectory where where are we are we making progress to meet the goals of the tmdl so but but mostly all just just thanks everybody for for all the work you're doing it because it does sound like we're making progress Council Anderson thank you um thank you very much for the presentation and to everybody doing very good work and yes I haven't been here 36 years um but I well I've been in the county that long but paying attention for about 20 um and just to just real quick um what council member Donovan I think was getting to is like we have 15 minutes for questions and I know last year we asked for more time so we as legislators could have discussions about things and we really haven't had that opportunity so I'm I'm kind of hoping at some point maybe we have another meeting that we have a round table and we can just bring our own like these are things things we want to talk about about policy and see if we have alignment and then where we can do the resources so that's a little pitch there because I we don't have this opportunity often so I'd like to be able to take a bigger bite of the apple and have the discussion with my colleagues on what they're thinking

um and then go from there but I did have a question I have a lot of questions but obviously not enough time to hit them all so I had to prioritize um I'm going to look at what I hope is a you know as a colleague would say a loow hanging fruit and that's education um we kind of know what we're doing well but how do we measure what or how do we look at what perhaps we're not doing well and I'm thinking of um we have a rule for in Lake wakam of using non-phosphorus fertilizer and I'm wondering how do we get that information out to all the homeowners and then also I think we're missing an opportunity going around at the garden stores and the the retail there's no education there that if you live in Lake walk and Watershed do not use phosphorus um and I know some places are commercial they may not want us gearing people towards or away products but some might do a buyin um with that communication Outreach and I think sometimes it's at that shelf is the moment that perhaps is our only opportunity really to do that educational moment moment so I'm hoping we're looking at some creative ways um especially in areas that are so highly developed it's those green Lawns and people who might like a green lawn come summer and they're using fertilizer it appropriately and maybe they don't know they can't have fosterers or maybe when they're making that decision right there in front at a hardware store they make the right decision based on that littleit little educational piece about this is

your drinking water um so so perhaps um just a friendly suggestion on that council member beanan yeah thank thank you uh Holly uh again great presentations really appreciate all the work that's going on in the lake wer management plan my question is regarding uh the Wildfire issue Gary M you might know the answer to this we we've recently engaged with the firewise program uh wam County house does that do any of that preventive work in the Watershed and if so how do property owners in the Watershed become aware of those programs um I'm certainly not the expert on the on the this uh issue but I my understanding is that the the firewise program applies to anybody in the county who wants to engage them yeah there's no specific Outreach to the lake wam mershed but but and there have been recent discussions at Council recently um about ways to en enhance that program to something more like what the city is doing too yeah I think it's just super valuable for property owners to be able to get that kind of inspection and that look at their property to help them you know alleviate hazards for Wildfire issues so sure thanks car absolutely council member list thank you I want to Echo everyone's appreciation for the continuing hard work and Steve for your work um like everyone I I I'm I'm at risk of overinterpreting one or two data points and looking for Hope I've been guilty of that for a number of years running looking for a little bit of a a silver lining um I'm now of a different

opinion um these lines are flat really we have to we have to confront that um the word that was used and no offense intended is stabilized well you could also call it flat you could also call it no improvement you could also not getting better um I think we're not yet making progress because this is a big Complex Lake because it has internal loaning a lot of things um but I've wanted to sound a positive note and I think I usually have sounded a positive note um I'm going to stop sounding a positive note for a while and say that we're we're we're we're holding steady um and that's not bad but that's not good um I I do want to try to create some kind of policy input right we hear we listen we we nod we're more informed but what value does this meeting add um to the process so I'm going to try to add a little bit of of value I want us to ask the question where are the biggest gains to be made in reducing phosphorus in the lake what are the things we're really not doing for a long time I've thought it's the properties closest to the lake that are the ones where you can't treat them before they run to the lake on the lake is that where we can make significant progress or the numbers there really small I want us to find out what we're not doing where the gains are the city apparently is nearing its goal in removing uh the equivalent of removing development right we're near our Target does that mean we should stop or is there actually significant gain so we could quote unquote go

below our Target is that an easier place to make gains than having the county reach its targets I want to know where we can improve and this is not meant as a criticism for what we're already doing it's good um but as I said we're we're holding steady and I would like us to find ways of making progress yeah thank you um it's been U my honor to serve on the lake walking policy group for the last couple years and I know a lot of these questions um continue and so I appreciate my colleagues here expressing their thoughts and questions as well um I had a list of questions as well and I'll try to narrow it to two maybe um Gary you can help uh get you back into the hot SE here for a second but um the first was with regards to the data and Metric um reporting sheet that we got seemed like there were just a lot of data points that said City only data and I was wondering um if there's any effort to ensure the County's data is is matching the city's data um so that was the first one the second um I know I've brought this up in policy group meetings but as a around the climate vulnerability assessment I know this is a city driven um Endeavor but I'm wondering if there's anything we can do to in improve support at the County Council level for the county to get more involved be IT staff or funding um ensuring that that climate vulnerability assessment is comprehensive in nature and also um synerg synergistic with the other climate vulnerability assessments that we're doing in the county

thank you sure so I'm not sure which sheet you which sheet are you referring to on the okay um I don't have it in front of me but I do know a couple of things are um uh in terms of like fous from Redevelopment um my understanding is that that a lot of that was just a software issue in terms of our our our planning and permitting software that we just hadn't uh we didn't have a way to track that information before I don't know if the new software will allow that um so so that's something that that's been disc discussed I'm not sure what else is on the sheet CU I don't have it in front of me so but I can talk to you later about about that um and what was your second question was around the climate vulnerability assessment um well I I might defer to to Renee a little bit um we I've we've talked about this a lot and I think that you know the the city is looking at doing a lake Wacom Watershed wide vulnerability assessment and so they will be working with us but my understanding is that there were no addition at least financial resources needed at least identified at this time um and that if there were that you would you would let it the city would let us know so um I think it's going to be a pretty integrated uh uh uh vulnerability assessment and I think that if there's any resources needed um the city will let us know I'm saying all the things for you the city and the county uh partner back and forth on things and so models for example the city did the hbam model this county is

doing the seal model this is something that you know county is doing the um Forest management plan and the city is contributing hopefully funding and developing that scope of work so that it meets everybody's needs and I don't anticipate that the climate vulnerability assessment will be any different it is excellent to know there's additional resources of money Avail council member scanland turn this on first time caller longtime listener um but I've got questions I'll follow up by email and I'll highlight a few today I definitely agree if the county um does have interest I'd be interested in seeing if we can join in um with the climate vulnerability assessment add in some of our resources and knowledge on that one um I also appreciate that the executive mentioned Wildfire risk and I know I've been in um contact with a few folks today I think Gary you were in some of my emails today about um we had a presentation from a County Council a few weeks ago from the Conservation District about some of the Wildfire um risk reduction programs and the the person who presented to us pointed out that we're one of the few counties that doesn't have a community Wildfire Protection Program which is something a lot of other counties in the state have all of our neighboring counties to there DNR grants out there for this and this is the kind of thing that if we go out and do this it can help bring in federal grants it can help bring in state grants for some of the things we want to do so I

understand a bunch of different staff across different entities have gone to some training on that so I hope that um we're able to to join in and do that as well um I just had a question actually related to what council member Galloway was pointing out the data that um was that was held up there is from this website okay and I was looking at it as well and I thought I said okay we have a lot of great data but what I don't know is how does that align with our goals so there's so much great data out there but what's our annual goals what are the goals in our 5year plan what are those goals in our 50-year plan that we have here and I think that's something if we're not setting those goals I'd like to see us do that in that next fiveyear plan and and this is that data that kind of leads into the big picture number around phosphorus um so I'd be interested in in seeing how it is that we can get to those annual and five-year goals um and track that and I think having more data just helps us to learn and see where we can make investments um I'm also interested in knowing you know when it looks at um I'm definitely interested in more property acquisition and I'd be curious to hear like what's the big picture number how much do we think is left what would that cost and it's okay if it's a big number that's up to us to figure that out and put that investment in and I definitely think the county needs to do more and we see in the data we see it in the numbers there and I think it makes

sense for us in the long run given we know things about the wells in Ferndale that went dry this past summer we're going to see that again at some point Lake WKA need to be used as a resource for other parts of the county and I think it makes sense for the county to make those investments in the future but I'd be interested in that data question sure so we actually have uh the lake wer Management program we have a data team that meets monthly um and so we're constantly looking at um data needs and and refining those those so um as we get new contracts for both uh Institute for Watershed studies and we also have a private contractor that does a lot of the tributary monitoring um we're constantly reexamining those um so so we are asking those questions and are adding data um when when when it's when it's needed if you know if you have other dat data need data ideas on data needs um you know during this 5-year uh work plan velopment would be a good time to bring those up and we can look at those as well council member Stone thank you council member hman um so my question I guess is Forward Thinking to our special follow-up meeting for the policy group in April um and looking at as council member list was hitting on you know as policy makers when we're looking at filling those gaps and part of my question is related to the other um part of our job related to budget and I know that we're not looking at those particular Pages tonight but within the report there were suggestions

about um within each area of focus what the sort of resources required would be in order to meet certain goals and then there were identified um funding sources for the county and the city and um perhaps even in the district looking at but there wasn't any specification about whether right how much funding was available and whether that funding had specifically been budgeted within each um sort of entities you know budget to to try and address whatever those targets were and so if we can dig in a little deeper to um specifically you know what's been budgeted and committed um and where we're at with respect to those um targets I think that would be helpful with respect to the April conversation all right any last comments we are at time okay with that thanks to the presenters the commenters and for those of you that came to listen we are adjourned