9.25.2023 South Watuppa Water Quality Improvements Public Information Meeting

great turnout tonight I want to thank everybody for uh for coming out you know I know this is something that's close to everybody's hop because you guys live on the pond most of you and uh have to have to deal with the pond every day um but first off um you know I want to say it's been a while since we've met since we've provided you information but our teams have been working hard we've had uh

UMass Dartmouth working very hard on sampling throughout the pond so this year we were able to get a third consecutive year year of water quality sampling on the pond and we've been able to move this project forward to multiple funding sources something that we'll go over tonight first I want to thank uh thank everybody for coming and if you want I'll turn it over to uh mayor Paul Coogan for just a couple of words

a couple of words this is Paul's last day here um because I didn't know I was going to speak I just can't put um I bug them enough about the uh the water quality in this pond in his office it's very important to all of the communities that are but the Southwest Upper whether it's Fall River Westport Tiverton um he and I discuss it a lot what can we do to get this to a point

where it's more usable obviously for the city of Fall River it's a big backup water supply but that has its own set of conditions I'm glad to see a great crowd like this here it shows the concern that goes on with this Pond and I think Paul and his whole water department are doing a great job working with UMass to make sure we keep on our eye on this and go forward with

whatever we need to do to make sure this Pond is usable for the next 200 years so thanks everybody for coming out tonight all right next I'll ask Senator Mike Rodricks if he wants to come up to say a couple words thank you Paul good afternoon everyone uh this is real exciting I have uh lived on or around the pond literally my whole life and we were just talking about what

the pond was like 50 years ago and 50 years ago I was giving water ski lessons uh on the pond and it was like pea soup uh from uh from the end of May through Labor Day so anecdotally the pond quality has certainly got better gotten better and I think those of us that have lived on the pond for a while will remember the great Carmel fire in 82 and

um and since then and since all the new rules and regulations and legislation involving septic system and title V there's been improvements but it still has a long way to go I'm getting the hook I'm getting the hook I've already spoken too much but I'm I am so excited uh partnering with representative Paul Schmid providing the resources necessary for Paul the contract with with the experts to just

to really on the long-term level improve the quality of this Pond for all of our benefits so I'm looking forward it's been a little over a year I think since uh since our last meeting and now that his team has three years worth of data it's beyond data collection and planning and we're going to begin thinking about implementing plans to improve the water quality so thank you all thank you

thank you very much and next I'll ask rep Smith I want to come up to say a couple words oh thank you Paul uh I just want to uh mention that Senator rodericks and I have of course been working with representative Sylvia from the south end of Fall River as well as our colleague from Rhode Island representative Jay Edwards so this really has been a uh effort of across borders uh and multi-town we will appreciate it

and by the way I would like to say that you've done a great job Paul reaching out and a big mailing list and so on but there's still people who probably haven't gotten the word of what we're trying to do here so I would ask everybody just to pass the word along to your neighbor they may not know and I'm sure that you would be happy to take people's names on your mailing list

yes so how do how do and I'm sure you have a website that people can find out how to yep yep with tupperreserve.com is uh is our website as well as water department email yeah so thanks for being here and thanks especially for passing the word when you have a chance thanks a lot excellent thank you very much I think it's very important to to note that most of the all the projects that we've done

so far uh haven't cost residents anything today you know uh the grant funding that we've been able to get earmox from the state as well as arpa funding and multiple things is because of those very people that just spoke are able to uh to provide that that type of funding for us so just a little bit about project Partners again UMass Dartmouth originally uh bay coach Bank did an initial investment uh to uh to get this

whole entire project started over three years ago West Fall River in tibetan we all came together to start to look at this water quality and the other communities have been involved throughout this project as well getting us information about their communities about their Watershed uh and what's what's coming down some of the new partners that we're able to bring on board Liberty Utilities this

year they provided us funding through a mitigation project they had to do the MVP program Municipal vulnerability for preparedness program is a grant program through the state uh that likes to uh encourage uh different types of uh you know making sure that vulnerabilities within the state don't become issues for us further down the road groundwork South Coast that's another local Grassroots

organization this year we use them for a lot of public Outreach into uh into disadvantaged communities to try to get the word out about the project about the pond and about the Watershed also Atlantis Charter School they've come on board this year we've spoken with them because we're looking to have a couple of large projects right next to their school and looking at pot earn with them

on future maintenance within those projects so just a little bit about what we're going to talk about tonight kind of what we've done already what we looked at we're going to talk about what we're currently doing so what we did this past year this past year was a very exciting year we got a lot of really good information this year and then we're going to talk about what we plan for the future

analysis of the home of the Watershed kind of figure out what the land use is within the Watershed and how it impacts the pond how that runoff coming from different land use areas come down into the pond we're able to identify uh different pollutant sources and what might what might impact upon a little bit more one over the other and again I said this year is an exciting year because that

really moved that forward for us to be able to tell uh you know what might impact uh the water quality more than another part of it we worked with UMass again to do a lot of in-pond studying so we're able to get our third year and you know I keep on saying the third year a lot of the permitting that we're going to need to do for implementation of fixes in the future requires uh at least

three years of water quality monitoring so that's one thing that was uh that was really good we looked at structural and non-structural sources and how to correct different types of pollutants coming in so structural would be building a catch-basing area to filter out any of the nutrients and phosphorus that are coming down into the pond a non-structural one would be a best practice management so not using

fertilizer on their lawns or possibly agricultural areas treating their storm runoff differently than they currently do um and then we came up with a lot of different uh future recommendations on how to manage different types of things so septic systems the Agricultural and then Stream flow some of the stream flows that come in whether it be from sucker Brook uh Stony Brook or one of

our uh interceptors that come from the city of Fall River and come down into the pond so right now I'm going to turn it over to Ed from UMass Dartmouth Hills Peak uh about some of the sampling and some of the results that they have from this year's uh this year's monitoring thank you very much thank you Paul um I'm Ed Eichner I'm an Adjunct professor at the coastal systems program at UMass Dartmouth School for Marine

Science and Technology and I'm I'm going to sort of run through where we sort of stand at least as far as we are looking at the data that we've been collecting um and I want to start really by looking at what we do when we think about developing upon management strategy uh we first really want to understand how the ecosystem works we measure what's in the water column

try to figure out why what we see in the med in the measurements is occurring there's a relative balance that occurs between what you see in the water column and the Watershed and what's coming off of the sediments so we're trying to put all of that information together and see how it varies through the season through a given year and from year to year and that's one of the reasons we

want to look at three years worth of data is to see how that variation occurs um once we have a relatively good understanding of looking at that that relative balance between the watersheds the sediments what's in the water column then we can start to move into the question of evaluating options how do you get to a healthy system how much is it going to cost to get to a healthy system

how effective are the relative kinds of management activities all of that gets into discussions about Community acceptance um and then if you move on to something and do a management technique usually you want to have follow-up monitoring to make sure that what you plan for actually succeeds and to monitor whether it's going to continue to succeed so we've gone through a number of different

monitoring activities we are in our third year as Paul was saying that's looking at the water column so we're measuring again what's in the water we're looking at dissolved oxygen which is important for figuring out what can live there what is happening in terms of what is living there and how temperature impacts what that overall strategy as well we're looking at Clarity Clarity is a measure a simple

measure but it's tied to how much phytoplankton there are in the pond how much microscopic plants there are in the water column and then we look at the chemistry the phosphorus the nitrogen we're going to look at chlorophyll a which is a measure of again that's a primary pigment for phytoplankton we're trying to get a handle on what's going on with the phytoplankton because obviously you've

seen all of the impacts of what happens with the phytoplankton sort of goes awry um we looked at the phytoplankton in 2021 got an idea what species there are to sort of understand how the system works and by looking at the phytoplankton we're going to get an idea of what are an important chemistry there as well there are a number of steps to be taken to to further understand this ecosystem

looking at the aquatic plants in the system looking at whether there are freshwater mussels and how extensive they are it's important for understanding how phytoplankton might get filtered updating the bathymetry to make sure that we've got the right bathymetry the right volume of water the Watershed delineation has been talked about getting a handle on where the various sources are what those sources are and

how they contribute to what we measure in the water column um so that's looking at the streams relatives of what might be coming in from groundwater and then we also look at how much is going out through the river all of that has to balance that's what a management plan is about trying to figure out what you see in the water column and how that balances with what's coming in from the Watershed how much is

going out and what might be coming off of the sediments so there's a couple of tech memos that have been done that review that data to date there will be another one that will probably be coming out in the spring of 2024 that will summarize what we've done this past year um and when then we sort of need to bring all that information together so the takeaways on the work that we've

done today water quality is definitely impaired it may not be as bad as the peak green soup you were talking about but it has the uh potential to get back to that on occasion um excessive phosphorus is causing the impairments um the pond has anoxic events that's where there is no oxygen in the bottom water and phosphorus is coming out of the sediments now at this point we don't have a good handle on

relative to the Watershed how much of a problem that is if the balance is let's say 70 30 70 coming out of the sediments 30 percent coming in from the Watershed that's a good sort of situation to treat the sediments if it's switched and you treat the sediments you're not going to get very long uh the benefits for that for very long because the Watershed is the big deal

so we sort of need to bring all of this information together to to figure all of that out when we looked at the the phytoplankton in this Pond and this was in 2021 blue greens or cyanobacteria um we're the primary phytoplankton in this pond that shouldn't be surprising it's an impaired Pond most impaired ponds cyanobacteria are the primary phytoplankton now why is that a big deal some of you probably heard about

cyanobacteria they're toxic they have poisons in them um if they get to be too prevalent if the population grows too much and that's dependent on the amount of phosphorus that's in in the water column then you get a big bloom when we did it in 2021 you didn't trip over those kinds of thresholds I know back when we met in the hot and sweaty room that was an issue that occurred at that point just before then

so part of looking at all of this information is coming together on sort of what the threshold or the target should be and if we look back at the phytoplankton information it looks like conditions probably in May of 2021 were pretty good so that might be a preliminary Target in terms of discussing what you want to shoot for in terms of the reductions to get to that point reductions in

phosphorus to get to acceptable water quality conditions so the next steps we're going to go through we're going to review the 2023 data that has been collected discussions about what's going on with the sediments um once all of that information is together we're going to synthesize it all together to to come up with a threshold a Target and list of options in terms of management to get the phosphorus reduced

and then we can talk about the costs associated with those options how easy they are to implement and come up with a management plan and ultimately that management plan of course is going to have to go through a public discussion about what folks find acceptable how that's going to translate into actual implementation so I think go on to Zach hi everybody uh nice to see many of you I was in that hot and sweaty room a

couple summers ago and and uh Zach Henderson from water and current I've been the Principal science uh uh the scientists on the project uh for the last several years and it's been a pleasure to work with uh uh Paul Ferlin in the city and the UMass Dartmouth team uh on this work uh one of the things one of the directives that we got very early on from the city of Fall River was while

we're doing the additional study and planning work can we also take some actions and so just this last year we were able to move forward with several projects which I'm going to fill you in on over the next couple of slides just to provide by way of update so when we last met we talked about some priorities storm water treatment areas so addressing some of those Source loads that are coming into the pond and we

were able to obtain a Massachusetts vulnerability preparedness Grant which Paul mentioned earlier this is a funding program that's unique to Massachusetts that helps communities identify and deal with vulnerable types of environmental issues and so this Pond being a backup water supply certainly met that criteria we were able to obtain a grant from the state to move several projects forward

for design of stormwater treatment and those projects are at the boat ramp I figured that would be a very good place very small treatment option but a good place for public education and engagement so with a little signage associated with the design and implementation of a stormwater control feature get some good bang for our buck on an educational programming side Cherry Lane which is a kind of an area

that's shared between Tiverton and Fall River we identified some storm Water Treatment Solutions there and did some design work and then in the Plymouth Boulevard area of Westport we identified opportunities for stormwater treatment there so we've Advanced those to 100 design next phases are obviously a little more expensive that's construction of these implementation of these it's very it can

be very expensive to go back to treat impervious area and stormwater runoff once you've kind of created those conditions but that's really where we're at in this Watershed for us to start to manage the inputs we need to manage the stormwater inputs the other uh kind of exciting component of that project was around sucker Brook uh Wetland we're calling it um It's The Old bleachery Pond area right near

Atlantis Charter School and where sucker Brook comes into South watapa that tributary is a very large tributary large tributary area and we identified it as one of the more significant potential inputs to to Ed's point we haven't done the monitoring to understand exactly what that load looks like but it's a fairly significant um stream channel and and so bringing presumably a good amount of the

phosphorus load in there's been some flooding problems in that area as well so some residents have had some issues with flooding so we're able to look at um and do a number of kind of evaluations using some modeling approaches to look at what would happen if we could remove a bunch of that phragmites from there open that area up gain some additional capacity and address a few impediments related to

Culvert sizing and and it looks like we have some good Solutions in that area for some flood abatement now there's always the bigger storm right we've seen that a lot this year so not everything will solve every problem for flooding but looks like there are some good Solutions there for both the amount of water that's being held back there and then also potentially some water quality

improvements as well so good results good results from from those studies and then Ed already talked about the third year of water quality sampling so that work is complete and we're just now looking for funding for you know for implementation some of the other uh Pursuits uh these various assessments necessary for restoration as Ed talked about we were able to get some sediment sampling completed this last summer so

we're able to grab some sediment samples from the bottom of the pond and we retain the services of a limnologist associate of ours that we've worked with for many years to help us think about that initial release and there's still a little work to be done as Ed said about Watershed load versus that internal load but it does look like management of internal sediments you know look like that would make a difference the

question is how long would it make a difference for the type of investment that you need to make and it's not a small pond and we'll talk a little bit uh Paul talk a little bit about potential costs in a little bit um we've also been looking at both that West Side Interceptor if you all recall from previous uh presentations there is a protection on North wattapa but that carries stormwater runoff into Southwest

up a pond so we've looked at flow monitoring options on the West Side Interceptor and also on sucker Brook and we have some good locations to monitor flow and and we think that would be a valuable relatively inexpensive installation to monitor flow rates coming into the pond and then we can grab some chemistry samples and now we really have an understanding of what's coming in on an annual basis so those monitoring

locations have been identified the city of Fall River continues to advance what's called an illicit discharge detection elimination program it's a fancy word for leaking sewer pipes that might be ending up in our drainage system so the city advances that under Clean Water Act requirements by the EPA and that program continues to pay dividends and it reduces other nutrient sources from from leaky sanitary sewer

lines and then you know continuing work on local land use code and ensuring that development and Redevelopment projects don't contribute to more of a problem right so through Redevelopment there are storm water policies in place to try to control runoff from Redevelopment projects so those are good policies to have they're expensive for developer folks but they're also important for water quality

so really the takeaways from the work completed to date so that's some of the updates on what we've been working on this last year the internal nutrient load is significant and may be manageable with inactivation approaches so there's some some well-established strategies for that Stafford Pond had a nutrient activation project done several years ago that's looking like it could be a part of the solution as we've

talked about this is a very complicated large Watershed multi-state multi-town there's lots of different things going on in in the Watershed and long-term stormwater controls and septic management best management so that's on you guys to help with that necessary to maximize the benefit of any investment in the sediments on the sediments in the pond and then these are all super critical

efforts to ensure the ability of South Tampa to be available as a future drinking water supply water quality needs to be a certain quality in order to be treatable and and taste good so that's important for us moving forward and then so if you of the future Pursuits Implement stormwater controls on the uh the locations that we've identified and these would be more demonstration types of projects uh but

could have some good educational kind of components and we'll treat some stormwater runoff additional uh additional efforts would include initiation of Sucker Brook Wetland restoration project and again this is these are uh these are pretty large uh phragmites marshes they're not easy to restore so it would take some work but the Atlantis Charter School we've met with them and talked a little

bit about it and it would really dovetail nicely with their educational programming there which would you know provide some multi benefits and also could open up some other doors for for funding for that type of a project um so we'd also explore and Implement additional stormwater controls in those areas develop the Wetland restoration strategy to improve water quality reduce flooding there's a little kind of flood

map there from some of our modeling our prediction of where flooding would be and then continue to collaborate with Atlantis Charter Schools as a new partner in this area and then consider continue to consider inlay can storm water treatment options right there's more work to be done here the Watershed nutrient load evaluation specifically targeting West Side Interceptor other targeted areas for

stormwater controls we really need to understand that loading and that's another exercise that would need to be undertaken and then do we start to think about nutrient and activation approaches um and what that does is it strips phosphorus out of the water column and binds phosphorus in the sediments phosphorus is released from sediments every summer just recycles so once they're there you don't really get rid

of that source of nutrients and what that what that uh the aluminum compound dosing does is it binds that so it can't be released and it's a very very successful technique again the question is how long will it last in a watershed like this and then continue to collaborate and cooperate with a variety of Partners and thanks to you all for being here and and kind of listening in on this

um I will point out one of the one of the most effective ways to address phosphorus and stormwater runoff is that bottom bullet there which is leaf litter on road waves becomes a pollutant leaves are good trees are good but leaves when they fall on pavement become a source of nutrients so any kind of sweeping programs are are now known to greatly reduce phosphorus related nutrient pollution

and storm water so it's a very simple way to do it there's a nice brochure outside that you should pick up that talks about don't put your leaves in the street you put your leaves in the street that stuff ends up washing right off right no grass clippings no leaves in the streets and the city's committed to continuing their street sweeping programs so they might turn this back over to you

Paul and then we'll answer questions at the end all right excellent thank you very much you know those guys these guys are the experts this is what they do for a living um they talk a very interesting language they brought it down so that we can try to understand it tonight but they you know they really understand this inside and out you know they work all over all over the region working on projects like

this so we're lucky to be able to have uh UMass Dartmouth right in our own backyard and they're building tonight with this gorgeous backdrop and then our other partners would current who've been on a consultant with us since the beginning of this project there's some of the other things that uh we've gotten funding from because that's one thing that I'm always looking at that that

which drives me on how we can move these projects for for what is where I'm going to get the funding from to be able to fund these projects they coach bank again initially started and made an investment uh that was very good uh the municipal vulnerability preparedness Grant which cotton wrote Our uh regional coordinator is here tonight and she worked through the project with us helped us understand the project and

they provided the funding we were able to get a match from Bristol County Opera funds to be able to match their Grant proceeds as we work through that project another funding source that came in came from the state so the rep in the senators were able to be able to provide us with the state emoc to be able to fund a lot of the studying for last summer so they were able to to do that

Liberty Utilities they came in this year and again through a mitigation project through the through their through their company they were able to provide us funding which provided a lot of the funding for the sediment sampling this year and we'll look at some of the stream flows coming in so that's a great thing some of the other ones that we're looking at private funds natural always

always nice to be able to get somebody to invest invest in a uh in a nice environmentally friendly project like this but sometimes those are tough tough to come by a snap program so the South Southeast New England program that's an environmental program which they provide grant funding for they gear it towards disadvantaged communities which Fall River is one to be able to get funding

so that's actually one of the sources that we're looking at right now to be able to get a a grant to get a the masculine water trust so that's one that I'm very familiar with with the water and sewer replacement but primarily those come in as loans so that would be something that you know the communities would have to pay back over time if we were able to get funding from them so then there's another a

number of other funding sources we're always out there looking uh you know between uh myself the Administration and their grant writer we've been very fortunate to be able to uh to get this funding again mentioned in the beginning this hasn't cost Fall River residents anything yet today hasn't cost Westport residents anything or Tibetan residence anything yet today for the investment

that we have the amount of knowledge that we have you think back three years ago we didn't have any of this knowledge to be able to have that and it not costing uh the residents anything I think is a is a great feat so we'll talk a little bit about the schedule so 2023 uh what we did this past year we continued the water quality monitoring they gave us some insight

into into the results what's some of the next steps are going to be suckerberg and West Side Interceptor we talked we talked about those being able to move those forward that's one of the next uh big steps Implement implement the MVP design so those projects that Zach just talked about being able to actually construct those so that they function and are able to help filter some of the storm water

runoff coming on then we need to continue out the water quality studying um in following years after that we'd be looking for implementation of in-lake treatment and on our initial look on that it could be done in one year a large chunk all potentially broken up into a couple years so you do a partial treatment one year you monitor it for a year see how it does and then if you

need to do additional treatment so that helps break up the funding sometimes too helps break up the actual cost itself so that's something we're going to be looking at uh this actually constructing the sucker book restoration identifying new storm water controls and ongoing water quality management so that's one thing that you're going to think about we can go out here we can treat in the pond and next year the pond

is beautiful but if you continue to have that runoff come in that's not treated properly before it comes into the pond then you're going to be right back there a lot quicker than if if you if you treat it so like I said there's there's a couple of different pronged approach you've got to look at the long-term vision and you got to look at the short-term fix so we'll go into a little

bit of the funding of what these things cost implementation of in-lake treatment potentially would be talking to one to two million dollars a year for a two-year span so that's a that's a pretty pretty good cost Watershed flow and load analysis the implementation station of the MVP design project so the one of the boat ramp Cherry Cherry Lane and Plymouth Ave roughly about a million dollars for

construction of all those projects so first year if we were to you know bite all that off for the first year we'd be looking like two and a half to three and a half million dollars depending on how things come in after that if we have to do another in Lake treatment you know in subsequent years potentially another million to two million dollars the full build out of the sucker Brook

uh you know we're estimating it right now two and a half to four million depending on uh how how much we go into being able to have Public Access into that area um you know if we if there's walkways and different types of interactive public areas throughout out that area then that would drive up the cost but this is just some of the really rough beginning costs that would that

we've that we've started to look at so it's not something where we can just turn around and say you know oh somebody you know Westport has ten thousand four if it has ten thousand you know these are pretty substantial costs that we're talking about to be able to move this stuff forward so a little bit about what everybody can do what everybody that lives around the pond lives in the Watershed what people can do

so one thing is reduce the amount that you cut your grass so rather than having the nice pristine flat lawn let it grow a little bit longer let it come up Let it use some of that phosphorus and nutrients less grass clippings less you know more filtering of the water more use of the water before it runs into the Pod grass clippings leaves I know Zach mentioned it falls coming up here you

don't want to take those leaves blown into the pond blow them into the stream on the side of your house or the Swale on the side of your house you want to take you want to pick those up either compost them in your yacht so composting on your yard away from the water is a good way to let that break down you could have good soil within a couple of

years that would take it to you know a Fall River Westport wherever you live take it to your recycling center or you know Fall River I know it's the incinerator take it there and they get disposed of properly so that it doesn't add additional loading into the pond I know it sounds like you know well I'm going to take my truckload how's that really going to help the pond but you

got to think every little bit that we're able to cut down of the amount of phosphorus and nutrients that feed into this Pond is what we need to do everybody needs to do their part to be able to help this out fertilization again back to the grass everybody likes the nice green plushes grass but try an all-natural fertilizer May cost a bit more but it doesn't have that you know you look at a at a

fertilizer and what's the base you know ingredients in the you're talking phosphorus nutrients so that you're spreading that stuff right on your lawn it's raining half of it's running down into the pond so reduction of that or use an all-natural is definitely a good thing fall cleanups you know one thing that the cities and towns do too so Zach mentioned about blowing the leaves into

the street the leaves go into the street they get ground up by the cause go into the storm water into the drains or the swales run off into the pond perfect food sauce for the blue green algae and the different stuff within the pod what you know I know Fall River we just got additional street sweepers uh and I know the DCM has programs to be able to run those through these areas to be able

to help pick up leaves Through The Fall season you know I know Westport and the other communities also do the same thing so that's something that helps us help the pond that the city is in towns are doing animal waste so if you have a dog your dog goes in the yacht out front there's a little fire hydrants dog poop bags grab one of those just pick it up throw it in the trash barrel dispose of

it properly that again is a perfect food sauce that it's going to get rained on and run right down into the pot and those geese those geese that definitely Troublesome I think everybody loves those geese around the pond we haven't gotten to the point with Quabbin Reservoir out in western Mass they actually have a whole team of guys that go out to scare the geese away from the pond

we're not there but if anybody can scare the geese away let me know how um septic systems is another thing everybody most of the people around the pond have septic systems Westport side pivot inside down the south end in Fall River make sure your septic system's working properly make sure that you get it pumped out as you're supposed to um just so that all that doesn't build up into the into the leaching system and

then leech out improperly those are just things that you know if half of the people around the pond do that do one or two of these little things think about how much that would reduce and it's not just the people that live right on the pond too you know I know most of you you walk out your front door you're lucky enough to be able to have the pond right there

but it's your neighbors behind you it's the neighbors all the way up to Stamford Road it's maybe it's in tibetan all the way up to Stafford Road it's all the people in fall river that are down off of County Street that their runoff goes into the intercepted drain and makes their way down to South what type of pond so it's not just the people that live on the pond all these things need

to be done by everybody else behind you as well so just a couple of little things that that everybody can do to help out that kind of brings us to the end where we are now I think right now we'll open it up to questions that anybody has all that draft management plan in one of the earlier file uh uh what what's the date for that you say that we 've developed a watershed based plan uh

we have the basis of that I think what Ed's referring to is really kind of the the combination of sediment and watershed management strategy right I think after this year I don't want to speak for you guys uh UMass but but I think after this third year sampling with some of the sediment work that we have done if we can get a little bit of modeling done for the Watershed loading

I think we'll be ready to start to contemplate a strategy for management in in the pond if it's if it looks like it's going to be a cost-effective way to invest next spring a lot depends on the information that we have in front of us uh I think we've got to sit down and go through it and make sure that we're all on the same page about what we've got

it could be this spring I don't know we're gonna have to talk to talk to the town and the other Consultants yeah again and a lot of it has to do with um you know again is the short-term approach the short-term fix to be able to go out there and do an inactivation or something like that and then there's a long-term fix where you need to look at all that voting that's coming in from

everything else and how that's going to affect the pond long term and continue not long term so again like the Pod it's it's a living breathing thing um you know I can tell you just from my observation of the Pod last year algae bloom came out early I'm sure most of you guys saw it this past summer it lasted almost you know we were pretty good most of the year until about August

or so I think that had a lot to do last year we had no rain in July or August this year we've had very short high intensity rainstorms but we've had a lot of rain this year last year we did in open the gates for movement of water out of the pond because you know we wanted to keep the Pod level high enough where everybody would be able to use it this

year you know Gates we were we were adjusting them you know weekly sometimes daily depending on the rain that was coming in and the amount so there was a lot of flushing through the pond this year as well yeah I'm from Westport and uh it seems that the focus is on sediment and storm water as opposed to Wastewater in the in the Watershed and since Westport is in the throes of doing a

plan for water and sewer along with six and then into the neighborhoods which would include this Northwestern Northeastern section of the pond what is the percentage that you think maybe you don't know yet that's coming from waste water with coming from storm water what's coming from sediment and just so we could prioritize ourselves what we're going to be doing with the water and sewer in Westport but overall

I mean I I would just like to understand why is such a focus on storm water versus Wastewater well so I'll take I'll take the low-hagen fruit there and then leave it to some of the smell guys that really know about this stuff but I can actually right now strong uh Wastewater definitely does does play a pot uh you know Fall River we've made great Investments uh Wastewater throughout our

community there are areas that are uh Westport right now is going through them making the investment to run it up Route Six they're planning for other neighborhoods as well so it is something that is there um you know one of the things that you asked about is what what's the percentage between it and I think that's one of the very things that we uh is still not understood exactly by us what

the storm water the loading coming in is what the Wastewater loading may impact and what the internal is exactly right I don't know if you guys have anything to comment on that hard part of getting to a management plan is understanding those relative percentages and I don't think we're there quite yet so that but that's in terms of developing strategies you want to know what the relative sources are

Ed is it fair to say that for septic and given the limitations the primary nutrient we're concerned with here phosphorus is not as much of a problem as it is typically for nitrogen which is much more of a soluble pollutant that transfers readily through soils or is that is that fair to say septic systems can be contributors of phosphorus it largely is the properties that are adjacent to the pond so very close good

folder right but it's certainly a part of the original management plan that we identified was was referenced as two septic as well yeah you know and again we we've talked a lot about the impod uh you know in deactivating the phosphorus in the storm water because those are things right now that probably we know have a high impact and those are things that we can treat now again inactivation in the pond it's

a short-term fix I look at that I look at that as a Band-Aid for everything that's going on within the Watershed that's gonna that's gonna make the pod look good but how long is that going to last just in activating that's what's there um so we go again you know we've got to look at the cost benefit of a short-term fix and then also we're going to look at the cost benefit of long-term fixes and

what those need to be and how long does it take communities like Westport Fall River and Tibetan how long does it take us to be able to afford those uh you know long-term hot infrastructure fixes the last one follow-up question um with the Westport River water Trends in that Watershed we are requiring new development to have denitrify septic systems should we be requiring phosphorus removal systems in this watershed

you know again that's I don't know if that's anything that we're at the point to say that it's enough of an impact or an improvement to be able to uh to be able to say that I don't think we're at that point with the balancing of the whole entire system to be able to say that the cost of making a resident install because they're significantly higher cost to install a system like

that with o m cost to the resident that's uh that's my opinion on it that I don't think we're at that point yet to require you know residents to make that investment yet at this point well Westport is doing that within the within the uh and they've been studying that River for probably 20 plus years you know again so they have a lot of this information of you know the Watershed and what's internals

singing in a town meeting I asked well does that reduce phosphorus too and the answer is no it's like okay so that's not going to hold the pawn don't necessarily I mean I guess if we're using laundry detergent that has a lot of phosphates and it goes into your leaching field and it gets in the water table and it gets back on yes okay but that's used of chemicals and that's word of mouth and in

educating people that's not going to a nitrogen system is not going to prevent that so I don't understand why Westport is requiring they are also doing the rain water collection on the property and you move those are required for the rainwater Diaries for runoff okay I think it has a comment on that so for Westport and the Westport River Estuary nitrogen is the key in terms of improving that system it's not

phosphorus it's nitrogen so there was a lot I we went through UMass Dartmouth School for Marine Science and Technology as part of the Massachusetts estuaries project we went through a whole study of the Watershed all of the land uses in the Watershed how the tides move the water in and out what what was going on with the ecosystem to be able to say this is an impaired ecosystem you need

to reduce the nitrogen that's the sort of the same activity that we're talking about for this Pond except for this Pond we're focused really on phosphorus and that's where we're trying to get to in terms of figuring out the relative balance between what's going on with the sediments what's going on with the Watershed maybe you get to the point where you want to have phosphorus reducing septic

systems but that's an information to come as we go through we develop the relative pie of how that phosphorus is carved up and what the sources are yeah are we spending money right now on The Watershed portion to make it cleaner and if so why are we doing that if you don't know that that's a major contributing of what's happening well again so you look at it as a whole there's going to be contributing factors

from it all we know that we know that leaf we know we know that runoff stormwater runoff is going to be an impact we know that you know based on you know the sediment samples we proved that the sediment this year essentially is an impact again a lot of it's going to be dependent on that balancing and how much you invest in one versus the other you know the design that we did on

the projects this year we know that the areas where it's you know it's I they're almost point source loadings of storm water running off into the pot so you know there's going to be a phosphorus discharge at those particular points um you know and it gets into that at that point how far out do you go and how small of things do you start to look at with those point source loadings you

know there's going to be a little there but it's trying to figure out you know with the balancing that still needs to be done how much do you invest in you know and how far do you need to go out into the Watershed 70 30 like what if it's 10 to 90. what if 90 is already in the lake and 10 is coming from the Watershed is it worth spending all that money on the 10

yeah you know and trust me I I I actually always thought it was a lot more the water you know before I got really involved into this to tell you the truth that you know I know a lot about water treatment and ponds and everything like that but I don't know how to fix an algae problem in a pond to this size a lot of the stuff that I've been learning over time you know I

always thought that it was the Watershed that was my initial thought that it was everybody's stuff coming down that was what was causing the problem um you know so this sediment you know and these guys told me that from the beginning I think you get a look at the settlement and they said ah you know but it's really surprising what was in the sediment to me because I looked at it

from the other side but you always know that there's going to be something coming from from The Watershed run off yeah yes yes you know one of the facts that I think it was Zach told me um when we were like one year in they were doing a study on another uh and he was saying that they found that the phosphorus loading was 60 from the leaves that fell in the fall 60 of

the loading that came into into the particular Pond that they were looking at was from that and I was I was just amazed that that type of loading could be caused from the runoff coming in but you know so you know that you're going to get the benefit especially in those in those points that we looked at and that's why we put our particular points the Cherry Lane you know that's a a

subdivision in tibetan that goes into a it goes down into a uh A detention pod and that detention fund it comes out of there into the pond so how do we interrupt some of that flow be able to filter out and use some of those phosphorus before it runs it off into the pot uh Plymouth app another one uh runoff comes as far as from Stamford Road running all the way down towards

the pond into a hot infrastructure Swale at the edge of the roadway runs down in between two houses right into the pot so you know that's a point where there's going to be a lot of loading that's why we took we looked at that point to be able to do a filter system in uh you know an infiltration system there again the boat ramp the boat ramp uh you know you have that little boat ramp over

there that's very visible area but that's a hard infrastructure that's all pavement so all that runoff everything that falls onto that runoff goes right into onto that pavement post right into the pond so that's why we looked at those particular pods you know when you get into the balancing you know and figuring out more or you know overall how much do you need to put into some of the smaller ones and how much do you

need to put into the pond or into logical ones well guilt of our site I think we've had a conversation probably around June and I had inquired about the pond level thank you on levels usually at a rate of 17 inches below full fun yeah we usually negative negative 17 negative 18 uh is is the high point uh down to negative 24.

that's the way is there a reason why it's never at Philippine so if I get up to uh if I get up to 12 inches below full pond I have lots of people calling me telling me the pond is too high if we get to full pod almost everybody's odds here uh will be underwater you know it's uh that's where historically the pond has been kept you want to go back six or seven years ago

when we were doing work on the quickest hand and downstream we drew the pond down to 30 34 below Pond um and you know a lot of people called and complained that there was too many rocks too too much and they weren't able to get to certain spots what we've done historically what we've found and this goes back to I don't know if anybody knows John fryer he was with the temple

water board for years and he was the administrator he was the director of the water department so that was kind of his his his kind of cue where he kept it Terry Sullivan and me when when John Lefty Managed IT and that's uh that's where we like to keep it we find um you know and again it's tough because I'll get a within two or three days of each other I'll get a call from one

person saying the phone's too high another person's saying the pot's too low so it it's definitely a balancing act you know we always want to keep a free board because you guys know what happens under these heavy rains you know especially this year we had we had those we had those heavy rains you could see the pond come up four six inches in a day you know so we need to be able to

have some free board where it's not going to impact residents goal is it going to get this as a water supply what would be the impact on the borders I mean wouldn't that have an effect on people of outboard motors on the lake you know again you know there are reservoirs where we're voting is allowed in different areas out thought process always was you know again it is listed as an emergency drink and water supply

on the city of fall River's water registration um you know you look at staff at pod staff at Pond is a reservoir and drink active drinking water supply they allow boating uh on that pond I thought was always potentially to be able to pre-treat it from here uh send it into Northwood Tupper and then be treated at our plant uh if we ever needed so any of that environmental uh impact from that

could be taken care of at that time well a couple of things first of all on the uh on the website will we be able to see a good mapping of the pond in all these areas we as residents can kind of look look at these with a little more detail than what you've provided us secondly we have one of the world's largest environmental companies working for the city I was a

former employee for that and I came to me that I worked for they spent an awful lot of money doing some water quality cleanups of ponds and small small little books by a school have we reached out to that business yeah no so I'm in constant contact with that business with violia water the manage and operate our wastewater treatment plant for the city of Fall River they provide us a labor for the treatment plant

um I actually have been in recent discussions with them uh and these this is one of the projects that uh that is on the table of discussion with them um so thank you for that uh if you go to the website you'll see our initial draft report so uh what type of uh reserve.com um you'll see at the initial report of once we get uh the other reports we'll

get those uh up up uh and online most of the presentations have been uh from the prior meetings have been uh put up there as well as far as mapping I think one of the things that was mentioned earlier by Ed was uh uh beta bathymetric study of the pond uh so Northwood tapu we were able to get years ago probably 15 years ago we were able to get that studied you

know my hope is to partner with a uh with with the local um they're actually owned by a a national company now but a company that does that they uh develop they develop underwater submarine technology for the military and other uses of my hope would be to talk to them to see whether we'd be able to partner with them to be able to get better bathymetric studies of the pond

I have a couple of comments and I know I've mentioned it before that these meetings I have a pump that pulls right out of the pond that'll use fertilizer and I use the wash in the pond as they're saying it's got a lot of nitro nutrients in a lot of nitrogen phosphorus to put it on my garden my flowers they're very healthy because of the of what's up in the pond

my grandchild would come over you know my beach is a little green I turn the hose on and it's amazing how that beach cleans up with them uh so they can go and walk uh you mentioned phosphorus and a lot of soaps out there the environmentally friendly uh it's gonna be a little more cost uh but I mean we if we want to be good stewards of our own Lake these are some of the ourselves

good thank you very much do you know if there's an improvement in water quality and staff at Constance they implemented that injection uh so so um there has been you know I know they they did their treatments last year and last year was kind of strict as well I know Zach mentioned what happens during this process strip that whole entire water column of everything pretty much for the first year how it's been

following up I know they're monitoring it and studying it I think they have had some return which is which is expected um how much and how how much they plan for it to return uh that way I'm not sure I haven't seen any of their results back I don't know whether you've spoken with anybody about that already but that is something that we're going to be looking at again you know the

aluminum treatments and those types of treatments isn't anything new so there is a lot of data and history on that again you know you guys saw what it costs for those for that type of investment we've got to figure out how long the benefits get going to be there for it's important to investment to be able

they don't want you to use because it leaves a cup of sludge so I don't know exactly ahead if you guys have any ideas on the pros or cons of

um Alum treatments have been used on lakes and pods for about 40 years now and if you go back beyond that it was a standard practice that was used on drinking water supplies from surface water sources so some people have actually traced it back as far back as the Romans that's what they used to do it was treating the water so what happens with alum is if you apply it properly it forms a solid

and then what's called flock goes down through the water column so that solid ends up on the bottom so your interaction with that is not you're not going to have any interaction with that unless you're walking around in the deeper portions of the pond you're wearing scuba gear or something like that so an allen treatment that is done typically is only going to be in the deepest portions of the pond

and just one more thing on that so just what a treatment he brought up uh Florida water treatment plant one of the chemicals is a polylum chloride a different chemical basis but still has that aluminum basis and it does the same thing within our drinking water creates that flock so that it can settle outside any organic so again if we get into that that's something that you know I'm

definitely concerned about to make sure that we're not going to do a treatment now that's going to hurt us 50 years down the road then we're going to find out who's going to cause issues because if we ever need this as a drinking water supply we want to make sure that it stays safe for us thank you is there any strategy on educating the whole you know again it's a great turnout I

think everybody for coming out tonight I know you guys are all uh you know you guys are concerned you guys want to see uh improvements in um that's why you came out you know word of mouth is always definitely a good thing uh one thing that I really want to try to do uh moving forward um you know and I got to figure out how to do this and where the funding would come from but

um you know I talked to you guys tonight about things that everybody can do to make the Watershed better for themselves and everybody else you know get a large mailing list together be able to hit everybody within the Watershed because that's one thing you know that's been in my mind how do I get that how do I get that done again so far it's kind of been many

um you know in my team at the city of Fall River uh have you been leading up this effort you know we're always in contact with Westport know what we're doing as well as dividend and stuff like that but it's been a kind of a limited uh resources uh from from our end to be able to move some of these things forward but that is one thing that I think is going to be crucial uh because

again even if we go out and we spend two million bucks treating it next year we need to be able to put those whether it's hot infrastructure or just getting the knowledge out to the people uh one thing I will you know working through this project one of the things that is always good is uh you know and I know rep Smith uh we talked about this being able to get aside to

put when uh on a brook or a stream or something that flows down to the pond to be able to say this is part of the south of watershed because a lot of people might not know a mile away that what they you know that they throw their leaves blow the leaves out to the street or something like that they don't know where that goes and where it ends up and

how it affects the pond so that is something that we that we're going to hope to do in the future try to do a lot of public Outreach and get that always looking for volunteers so yes make sure I get your name and number and definitely well for those people who couldn't make it tonight and who are interested in this or everybody can spread to their neighbors where can they watch this I noticed

they're taking this what channel and where could Westport or forward or Tiffany people watch this okay you put it on your website yeah so we'll make sure that uh the PowerPoint presentation goes on to our website but there was a lot of information that was given tonight by the Specialists that wasn't on the PowerPoint so again this is being recorded for government TV so if you go to Florida government TV odd demand

it'll send somebody to a YouTube link where they can watch this whole entire presentation tonight the presentations and the information and the stuff is all put onto uh the website that's managed by myself in my team uh with tupperreserve.com there's a lot of information about the buyer Reserve about trails and stuff out there I just want to get a little plug and anybody if it gets out to the buyer we serve out

there a great spot but a lot of different about that but then I'm also using that to be able to put all our information in on the work we're doing on the south of the top of a pond so forever government TV on demand they'll be able to uh be able to watch this uh we have a Facebook page with Dr palooza there's a lot of people uh that took place for the city with

I mean that's yes so I actually saw the noise was so sorry on the Facebook page yeah my wife didn't tell me that it was on the Facebook page so thank you for whoever posted that um that's I won the parades on the pond and yep I'd like to get the city more involved so we have some boats come in so everybody can enjoy it without a doubt you know they kick the Pod is an

actual is is a gem that's uh not seen by everybody um so uh definitely um you know I know we're tough my wife told me that it was that it was on uh on your site so again I'm not a social media guy these these guys keep on telling me that if we need to get more information out there but that is something that uh hopefully you know with with more Staffing or different things

possibly being able to partnership with either diamond or some other school to be able to assist us with some of that public charter school kids but they probably have a public Communications thing probably that's actually that's actually a good idea to talk to them about doing some public coverage information for us I'm curious about something that I've seen for a long long time I sometimes see these white

Stripes it's like a stripe it's like a pattern of it's like foam um and and it goes pretty far out they look like they're about two to three feet apart and it actually looks like a pattern I I can't tell you like what type of weather I see them but do you know what would cause that it's not just willy-nilly anyway it literally is in a straight line yeah I think I've seen very tiny tiny

bubbles though not not like a soap foam or anything like that almost a you know a tighty tiny bubble um is that is that what you're talking about it the odd part is is that it's in a pattern it's in a straight line one after another it's very strange it's what they refer to as wind rows and what it is is the as the as the breeze is blowing on the surface of the water it

generates the circulation in the upper part of the water column that are sort of counter rotating vortices and anything that floats on the surface gets pulled in the middle of these these roles imagine I don't know like a newspaper press that has you know counter rotating rules and so the water gathers um any floating debris if there's white caps and little Bubbles and surfactant

in the water which happens when you have you know phytoplankton blooms you you get these films and that film gathers to the middle and holds the bubbles longer and you end up seeing these windows and lines yeah yeah they line up with the Wind

yeah you know one thing about this kind of the Aquatic Life I've always noticed is is unbelievable you know and even though we have you know the blue green algae and stuff I think I think you know and that's one thing you know I don't mention that you study the muscles and stuff to see how much they can filter out how much they can affect uh some of this other thing

so you know further down the line as we look at different things those are the things that are going to have to be looked at and studied last year we had multiple dish pills yeah yeah last year not this yeah yeah

week spring early summer the water out of brownish tinge to it and I've never seen it like that before it wasn't an allergy or anything I was like a brownish color to it if you see the Northwest Temple looks nice and blue and driving on the highway it kind of looks the lounge oh I don't know what that was this year I've never seen that before yeah so I took I took

that this year as so we had a lot of we had a lot of winter in Spring storms rainstorms and stuff like that you if you go up to Copper cut Reservoir you get a brownish tinge out of the Cobra cup resource but there's always a brownish tins it's what they call tannins so it comes off the leaves and stuff like that it almost you know looks like a tea bag in in the

water that's what I understood it as my uneducated vision of it this spring but I did notice that as well thank you all right again I want to thank everybody for coming out I know it's been a long time since our last meeting but we've been working hard the whole entire team uh has been plugging away um you know we're always looking for new funding sources anything like that

um you know is is what have I made things so that it doesn't cost uh our residents any money uh that's one thing that I'm always trying to uh try to do but really I want to thank everybody for coming out this is a great turnout and uh thank you guys very much if you have any questions or anything feel free to call me City Hall uh Sewell Commission

office and uh I'll try to get you an answer thank you thank you