 Okay, I'll let you guys take it away. Cool, let's see. Can I, could you enable screen sharing? I can share slides with you. Yes, I'm gonna make you a co-host because I'm not sure how to otherwise do it. Yep, that always works. Okay. Okay, are you seeing the intro slide with the picture of Puppers Pond? Yes. Great, okay. Well, thanks, Erin, for having us. My name is Dan Shaw. I'm a landscape architect here at GZA and I'll let my teammates introduce themselves. I'll be serving as project manager on this project. You guys wanna go around and say your names? Sure, I'm Anya Duffy. I'm also a landscape architect, been working professionally with GZA for 15 years. And I'm also a alum of UMass and know this area very well. Hi, I'm Steve Leco. I'm a principal in charge for the project. I'm associate principal of GZA. I'm a planner and an ecologist and I've been with GZA for 15 years as well. I'm Nat Aray. I'm a professional engineer. Been with GZA for 15 years as well. And before that with Bay State Environmental Consultants which was the East Long Meadow, became the East Long Meadow office at GZA. I work in water resources and dredging dam safety and stormwater management. So I'm excited to talk about this project. Thanks guys. So it's a project we're all excited about. It's a site many of us know well. I'm a UMass alum as well as Anya and Nat and all of us have spent a lot of time here over the years and the project encompasses the areas of expertise that our team has. So it's one that we're excited about. I'll let Steve give an introduction to GZA and what our firm is all about. Okay. We've been in Western Mass for 50 years or so but you probably know of GZA. Just give you a quick overview. We were established in 1964, headquartered in Norwood, Massachusetts. We have about 700 employees and our company is 100% employee owned, which I think is significant because everybody has a stake in the game at GZA. I believe 90% of the people in our Springfield office are shareholders. So we have a vested interest in the outcome of projects and serving our clients. We have five core service areas and those are depicted in the upper right hand corner there. Geotechnical, environmental, ecological, water and construction management. So the environmental, ecological and water service groups are the ones that would primarily service this project. As I mentioned, we have 30 offices, three in Massachusetts including the one in Springfield and this project would be serviced entirely by our folks in Springfield office. So with that, we'll move on. I know we don't have much time, so let's keep rolling. Thanks, Steve. So this is a quick graphic we put together showing our understanding of what the project area is likely to be, Poffers Pond in North Amherst and the surrounding town owned parcels that form the conservation and recreation area that the town runs. And it's a valued conservation and recreation area and those two elements can sometimes be at odds which is a common thing. And every so often to keep a place like this the way it is, the way that everybody loves it some intervention is necessary because of the wear and tear that happens over time. So at Poffers Pond, we're seeing sedimentation from Cushman Brook Delta and the adjacent South Beach swimming area two sources of sand and material that are sedimenting into the pond over time. As sediment builds up, storm events and water flows move that material into the water body making it shallower over time. And if nothing's done, you don't have a deep swimming pond anymore, you have kind of more of a shallow wetland kind of environment. So there's issues with the upkeep of infrastructure and access to beaches, ADA accessibility. Could there be improvements made to have accessibility all the way to the water? In some ways Poffers Pond is a victim of its own success where wear and tear on the trails which are so popular cause compaction, cause widening of trail footprint areas, erosion right near the water's edge. Some of the edging in an example like this deteriorates over time, public safety issues, swimmers and visitors, trying to keep them off of the cliffs and the dam which can be tempting but represent a public safety hazard as well as stormwater issues and water quality issues. So there's all of these things that are happening simultaneously at Poffers Pond that need to be put together in a master plan where we can sort out what's the picture right now? What needs to be done? What's the vision plan? And then what are the steps that get us there? And that's gonna be the basis for forming the vision plan for Poffers Pond. So I can walk you through the scope of work that we proposed in our proposal that we sent to you. We would start with site investigation tasks and project initiation. We'd have a kickoff meeting with the town. We would discuss your goals for the project, your vision for Poffers Pond. And at that meeting, we would also talk about potential stakeholders to engage in our next task where we would want to have a stakeholder meeting where we've identified knowledgeable members of the community entities who are connected to Poffers Pond in various ways. It could be different agencies of the town or other stakeholders to get that expertise together in a meeting. It could be held on site. There could be a lot of value in that or it could be done virtually if that offers more flexibility to get more people to come. And then in our team, we would put together a base plan. We would gather together existing mapping that's been done of the area. We would take statewide GIS data, LIDAR contours, aerial imagery, materials from any reports that might exist to make a base plan upon which we can record our site assessment findings. And it'll also be the base for the proposed master plan that we'll create. We'll review previous studies. There was work the town did around 2010. We would review that. We would review previous bathymetry studies that have been done in previous decades to get an understanding of what's happening in the pond and any other reports and plans that are out there we would review. And then our team, once we have that background would begin our site investigation. We would go out to the site, record our observations of elements like sedimentation, beach erosion, slopes, topography, ADA compliance, abutting properties, all kinds of natural features on the site, public safety concerns, record all that on the base plan and get a good understanding of what's happening. We would also conduct a desktop review of wetland areas that are mapped already on GIS to get an initial understanding of where there's likely to be permitting considerations and identify those early. And then all the findings from that stage are recorded by us on our existing conditions plan. And then optionally, you could have us do the alternate tasks that we outlined in our proposal in the site investigation stage which I'll let Nat talk about now. Thanks, Dan. So we identified three alternatives based on some of the information provided in Aaron's initial RF requests for proposals and then a subsequent conversation I had with her which is because dredging the pond appears to be a major priority for the town and that the dam, the pond was dredged back in the 1990 period. So there's basically hard bottom, the symmetry, if you will, of the dam, of the pond bottom from that period. So we proposed as an alternate not knowing what the town's budgetary constraints may be to do a bathymetric survey as part of the vision plan explorations. The survey would be conducted in accordance with a core of engineer standards for a bathymetric surveys. We do not use hydrographic, electronic hydrographic survey equipment for ponds like this because of potential interference with vegetation, quiet vegetation. So we do it physically with us using a mushroom anchor and making soundings and measuring the depth that way. And then we would put that together with the hard bottom information from 1990 and generate surfaces and cross sections from which we can do a quantity estimate on the sediment that currently is in the pond. That would later be used for design of a pond dredging program. We also proposed sediment sampling as part of that exploration to get a sense of what kind of contaminants are in the pond. We know that there has been some sampling done before and there are some metals and hydrocarbons in the pond which is very common. And so we would collect, I believe we said three samples and have them sent to the lab for analysis. And those would be done in accordance with the state water quality regulations 314 CMR-9 which were promulgated after the last dredging of puffers ponds. So these specific requirements are for dredging projects in Massachusetts. So all the sampling, the sample analyses would be done meeting all the analytes on their list and to their detection limits. This could then be used for future design and permitting if that is advanced within three years of sampling. So it has value. There will be more sampling required in the future dredge design and permitting program significantly more, but if those samples are included within the three year period, there's three less samples you have to collect and submit. And then the last, and just about the sampling that also informs the disposal options for sediment. It's disposal or what DEP likes to call sediment reused. So those two items can really help you get a better picture of what you're looking at for a dredging program which we would then sort of summarize in the vision plan. So that then you could move forward with the vision plan and say, we've got this data, we know we have this kind of work to do ahead of us. And then the final alternate was the South Beach area and survey and wetland delineation. And we felt like this is the focal point of puffers pond. Everybody knows puffers pond beach who knows puffers pond and it's the most used and quote unquote abused if you will site within the conservation area. And we felt like if you really wanted to get an advance on your design, we could really conceptualize things really knowing what the topography is, where all the trees are, identify the tree species, all the hardscapes and really be able to map that out and apply some concepts to real firm knowledge of what's on the ground. So we think that has value, that the delineation would then be used for future permitting of a project there to renovate the beach area. Thanks, Nat. So there's a range of how extensive we could do the site investigation piece based on your interest in pursuing those task alternates. We think it's a good idea to do them. We would set you up for moving forward in a really well-prepared way. And then regardless of which options you picked, we would then move forward into creating the vision plan. So we would start off drafting a schematic rendered plan of the pond and surrounding area showing our initial ideas for proposed improvements. We would call those out. And the design process for that draft design development plan, we would be looking at focal points in the conservation area, like South Beach and others, looking at issues that exist there and quickly working internally, coming up with sketches, loose ideas of different ways you could treat those areas. This is an example of how Ania and I work as landscape architects, sketching quickly to help visualize possible design options and then compare them, talk about the pros and cons and arrive at a preferred solution. So we would share a rendered plan of the whole area with you in draft form, have a check-in meeting where we go over the design development plan, get your input, and then begin to make revisions according to that. And we would move into creating the final design. Our deliverable for final design would be a rendered full-scale plan of the pond and the surrounding area with enough detail to show general dimensions, materials, conceptual level grading, and be detailed enough to generate a cost estimate. We would also include two photorealistic perspective renderings of views from the ground showing proposed improvements and we would select which areas to depict with you. These are examples of some photo realistic renderings Ania and I have worked on for dam related projects and that would be part of the final design package. So then the next task is to take that design that we've all come up with together and break it down into its constituent parts and identify an implementation plan. What are the tasks along the way? What are the mini design or engineering or construction projects that form that master plan? We would identify those and write a narrative describing those steps kind of phasing, prioritizing the steps along the way. And this would take, we would also write about permit slightly required as well as a list of possible funding mechanisms. So this would be a concise written report. We would develop a cost estimate giving an order of magnitude cost that enables you to pursue grant funding towards implementation. And then we would compile everything that we've done into a vision plan report document. This would include a write up of our site assessment work and our findings from that, a description of the vision plan, the implementation plan that I just described broken down into its constituent parts and priority items, a cost estimate. And then the graphics we produced would be in there too, the final plan and those renderings. We would have a meeting with you to review everything, go over the plan, go over the report, answer any final questions and enable you to take ownership of it and move forward with this plan. So you could kind of neatly present it when applying for funding or pursuing follow up projects to make this vision a reality. So showing our price proposal here, we gave you a lump sum fee in our proposal that we submitted a few weeks ago. This is a peek behind the curtain just at how we came up with that lump sum. You can see most of the individual tasks that we think would be required, we can do pretty quickly and effectively and there'd be a deeper dive into a few of the tasks like site investigation, design development, final design, those take more hours for more staff. But this is work that we all do day to day in water resources, landscape architecture, engineering, ecological permitting and this project combines what we know how to do effectively and efficiently. So we feel confident that we could get this done in with the level of effort kind of outlined here. And then the task alternates are itemized down there at the bottom of the table. We recommend including those if it's possible it would just make the most of that vision plan and really give you a jumpstart towards implementing it and getting into dredging and addressing some of those issues. The schedule, we updated this since the proposal that we submitted to you just to reflect where we are in the year right now we would want to just make sure any site investigation we're doing is done before the site freezes over if we're talking about bathymetry and wetland delineation, we would want to get going as early as we could and do a lot of that this fall. And then a lot of the designing and the work back at our office we could do over the winter and have the project complete by the spring. Just to clarify, Dan, excuse me, that if the alternates are not selected at this time we could do all of the site investigation work. It's just any in pond work could be eliminated by icing of the pond. So that's the effect of shifting from what we had proposed as the September start to more likely a November start. Yeah, but Nat, it's the case we could conduct those things if we just started it promptly, right? Assuming this, we don't have an early hard winter. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, but an inch or so of ice on the pond will eliminate any possibility of getting out there and boat, we don't have an iceberg boat. Yeah, well, that concludes our formal presentation. Again, it's a site that we all know and love. It's a project that combines our areas of expertise I think really neatly with the visioning, the master planning that we do in landscape architecture, the water resources, the ecological aspects of all of this. It's a project that we know we could do a great job on and we'd love to help you create a vision plan for Puffer's Pond. So with that, if you have any questions, I think we still have a little bit of time. Thank you guys so much for preparing this and your very synced presentation. We appreciate it. A couple of questions I have. The first is that in the presentation there was sort of a more of a detailed price breakdown in like a tabular form. Would it be possible for you guys to email that to me just so that we have that in hand when we discuss decision making? And also if we as staff in review of this sort of wanna do line item by line item and eliminate certain things that we think staff could do internally like visioning and stuff, things like that, would that still be okay for us to say, well, we'd like to eliminate this line item in favor of something else so that we can kind of balance the budget and meet our needs a little more directly if we need to? I think the short answer is basically yes. We developed this sort of our best guess at how we would complete the scope based on our understanding of what you were asking for. But yeah, I forgot to mention when I showed that price breakdown that there's flexibility there if you wanted to adjust the scope. I think we would just want to discuss it with you to make sure that if there's, there may be certain tasks where it is ultimately more effective if we're following up on work we've already done in-house just for the sake of continuity and our own resources and understanding. But there may be other, there may be certain elements that do make sense for the town to do in-house and then it would make our work a little bit leaner and it might make the project more efficient overall. So yeah, I think that's something we could discuss. Aaron, we actually, we did, we did anticipate you maybe needing to do that and wrote that in our price proposal section and that adjustments can be discussed. So that's certainly not a problem. Before we run out of time, no, I just wanted to thank you all for pulling this together. It's been a while since I looked at images and it's always pictures worth a thousand words and looking at the beach, looking at the perimeter trail. It just, it really kind of hits you front and center how overloved Puffer's Bond is. And I remember years ago using a very similar phrase and describing Puffer's Bond and the media picked up on that. And I remember seeing that, that I think I said Puffer's Bond is being loved to death. And I think I still stand behind that statement. So it's nice to finally focus a little bit. No, I appreciate everything you've pulled together. I guess one follow-up to Aaron's question, would it be possible as we hear from other firms and we talk internally, would it be possible for you to share your PowerPoint that you use all the slides that we're not going to share them with anyone else, but for us to go through as we consider our decision? I think so. Yeah. And then in terms of the alts, I was just thinking, you know, there was probably a little frost on the pond this morning and I hear you on the bathymetry work and another work related to, you know, the upcoming, you know, winter is coming fast. Could, would that work have to be done this fall? Or if we ran out of season, could that work be done in the spring? Oh, absolutely, David. Yes. We just, in the interest of being able to work over the winter on the rest of the, on the whole vision plan, we've just sort of thinking. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Ideally, yeah. Yeah, ideally, it'd be great to get it done. Yeah, I just thought I didn't want that to be like a fatal flaw. Like if we don't, you know, if we, if we move forward with, with you all, that didn't seem like a fatal flaw, the bathymetry piece of it, because other work still can, can move forward. No, absolutely not, David. We can certainly just, it just, you know, postpones the end, the, the finality of the project, but that's certainly, or, you know, that could be a standalone item that doesn't go in the vision plan. It's, it's really this, there's a lot of flexibility here. So yeah, yeah. No, this is good. I don't know if, is Angela still on the call? She is. I don't know if Angela had any questions before we wrap. It's a compelling presentation, so thank you. And I look forward to someday seeing the renderings of the reimagined recreational spaces. So thank you. I will say one thing that, you know, that I struggle with, although not as much as other people, but I can't tell you how many people through the years have said when I bring this up, you know, the, the, the fact that we need to address some of these longstanding issues at Puffers, if I had a dollar for every time someone said, but please don't change Puffers. We love it just the way it is. And so. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I like to tell people in those situations is the do nothing option is also a form of change. If you don't intervene and do some construction and some upgrades, continue to erosion, wear and tear, cause the site to change over the years. And you have a big mess. You have, you know, roots jutting out into trails because the trails haven't been stabilized and reconstructed. You have areas of washout. The trail becomes harder to hike. It becomes less aesthetically attractive. It's all sorts of reasons why change is inevitable and designed intentional change is ultimately the way you have to go. Yeah, no, couldn't agree more. And we're staring at this lovely picture of the pond, but depending on your lens and all of us have different lenses. But if you look at this with a landscape architect lens or an engineering lens or an environmental planning lens, you see the erosion staring you straight at the beach. And then you have that lovely Delta that is that is growing and growing and and going to go right across the pond all the way to the to the West. So it's going to fill in that whole that whole section of the pond. It is a wonderful place to fly fish from the end of that Delta. But but anyway, so yeah, couldn't agree more and really appreciate your time putting this together and giving us a lot to think about. So thank you. We we appreciate it. And we're we're committed to getting something done here up over see Aaron raised a zoom hand. Yeah, we we have to adjourn, unfortunately, but I really wanted to just express our gratitude for your time and all of your work putting this together. And I will be in touch with you soon once we've sort of determined a final decision on the firm that will be selecting to to help us. So thank you so much. Great. Thank you. Thanks for your time, everybody. Thanks for having us. We will be back in touch. Right. Take care. By now. Hi. All right. That was a great way to kick it off. Yeah. All right. And I've got our three folks waiting, so I'm going to admit them now. Good morning, everyone. Thank you so much. I'm going to turn it over to you. I just wanted to make sure you guys were aware that we're recording. So hopefully that's OK with you. But yeah, thank you so much for coming back to present to us again. And please take it away. Great. Sarah, do you want to go and share our response? I'm going to make Sarah, I'll make you a co-host so you can present. OK. Fantastic. Thank you. So while while Sarah is getting those out, I'll just start with introductions. My name is Julie Boussa. I am the lead for our water and natural resources practice here in the Springfield Office. I'm an ecologist by training and I also co-lead our Massachusetts MVP program. So I do a lot of projects in the Pioneer Valley and elsewhere throughout the state that are sort of bringing together climate resilience and watershed planning, green infrastructure, dam removals, stream and wetland restoration. Those are kind of my specialties. Eric. Hi, everyone. I'm Eric Moss, also with Boston O'Neill over Springfield Office. I'm a water resources engineer and my background is in stormwater, watershed management, water quality. And I also work with closely with Julie on our MVP practice on projects throughout the state. I live right here in Belcher Town. I'm very familiar with Amherst and two daughters at UMass and Puffers Pond is a very familiar place to us. So good to be here with you. Hi, everyone. I'm Sarah Morrison. Thank you for having us back. We're thrilled to be here to talk a little bit more about this fantastic opportunity for Puffers Pond and for Amherst. I am a business line manager at Boston O'Neill with a focus on climate adaptation by training. I'm a landscape architect and my work now focuses on bringing that sort of analysis at the site and watershed scale to climate adaptation projects of varying types and scales all over New England, really. But I do a lot of work with Julie and Eric here in Massachusetts. Thanks. So I'm going to give a little bit of an overview for what we're hoping to cover and share with you this morning. You know, Eric mentioned that she is a resident of Belcher Town. I live in East Hampton. I'm also very familiar with Puffers Pond and, you know, numerous times have driven past in the summer and you see just all of the cars lined up, all of the people wandering around in their bathing suits. So I'm very familiar with the appeal and the sort of beloved nature of this site. So I think we're excited to be having an opportunity to talk about this project. And as we started talking about it and have initial conversations back in the summer with Erin and David, you know, I think we really got an immediate sense that there's a compelling story here. And it ties in with climate change. It ties in with environmental justice. And those are key funding priorities for a lot of agencies right now. And so there's there's really we think there's a very good probability of moving your needs and your vision forward and being able to fund that and really make a difference at Puffers Pond. But what the town needs is a cohesive vision to do that. And so, you know, having a plan and clear steps and knowing how they all fit together to address the very needs of the site. And then also knowing how to kind of match up funding site funding sources and stack those together to actually get things moving forward. So I'm going to turn it over to Sarah in a moment. She's going to go over sort of more of our understanding of the project background and the town's objectives. What we propose as a planning process to develop this vision and then what those outcomes and an actionable plan would actually look like. Great. Thank you, Julie. So I thought we would start here with talking a little bit about some of the goals that we've heard along the way, both initially before we got in contact with you this summer and then during our conversation with Aaron and David, some of the sort of refinements to those goals that we've heard from you. What we've heard is, as Julie touched on, a sort of a wide range of desires to address a lot of different things going on, right? There are some key issues, clearly the dam improvements and water quality, looking at the pond and the conservation area around it and the health of those habitats and ecosystems would be top priority, safety and sort of management of the dam long-term. But there's all these other things as well that we heard about, improvements at the beach. We talked a little bit about the sediment and sand that's brought in and the process involved in that and how important that is to maintain that beach for the community. Balancing conservation goals and site use is a really tricky thing to do in a place that I think I quoted you, David, when we met last of that, you know, we're loving Puffer's Pond to death. And that is a real thing that can happen in spaces like this where the community embraces a natural resource as wholeheartedly as has been done here at Puffer's Pond. So that's something that we would definitely want to be responding to and sensitive to. Retaining the character of Puffer's Pond was a big part of our conversation last we spoke as well. And, you know, there are some elements of Puffer's Pond that feels a little bit like it's stopped time in a fantastic way, in a way that you want when you go to a place like Puffer's Pond. And we would want to make sure that any improvements made to the pond itself, to the surrounding sort of more recreational spaces remain true to that sort of historic use and feeling of Puffer's Pond and help it move into the future without making it feel like a different place. And then there's also increased accessibility. We talked about ADA. We talked about safety on the street, the bridges, the trail improvements. And we talked about some of the challenges around signage and wayfinding. And all of those things, again, bring us back to this sort of overarching question as well of what will happen to this pond moving forward in the face of climate change and what there are sort of two parts of that. There's how will the pond itself and those ecosystems evolve through the changing climate? But also how can this place be a refuge for the communities that surround it through an increasingly hotter climate that we are encountering? So those are some of the goals that we've heard through the process and some of the things that we've taken to heart as we craft this sort of process that we'll run through. But based on everything that we heard from you and also reviewing the materials that Erin, you shared with us, we started to really kind of pull together some bigger picture objectives, which I've got listed here towards the bottom of the screen that we thought were necessary or needed in order to get where it seems like you want to be going. And so based on that specific feedback that we got from you, we've developed a sort of short list here of the big picture needs that we think will begin to shape what we're calling a roadmap to get you where you wanna go for all of these various goals. So in terms of laying out this roadmap for how to address the specific goals identified as well as the big picture needs, we've laid out a potential sort of four step process which would set you up with both a comprehensive vision for the site as well as an actionable plan leading to implementation. And that sort of combination of planning scales and actionable planning is a thing that we try to include in all of our planning processes at Fuss and O'Neill. It's very important to us as a firm that we not produce planning documents that are just plans that sit on a shelf but rather they're the beginning steps of a actionable dynamic path forward for you. So I'll go through the four steps at a high level here and then we'll sort of dive a little bit deeper into what all four of those steps would entail and what would be the outcome of those steps as well. But essentially it's this sort of four pronged approach where we start with what we call investigate and engage where we sort of start digging into the site, we start digging into the needs and desires of the stakeholders involved. Then we move on to initiate and explore where that's really kind of the real meat of the planning where we take what we've heard in the first step and we really start to dig deeper into what has been done, what needs to be done, what does that look like spatially at the site scale, the watershed scale. I'll talk more about that in a minute. We then move on to what we call implement and estimate. This is a critical step and this is where the plan really becomes actionable. So this is where we start to develop that real roadmap based on the vision that we create and initiate and explore. And so we would be developing short and long-term phasing plans, looking at costing, as well as potential funding mechanisms so that when we deliver this to you, you're set up to hit the ground running to pursue those next steps. And we conclude with issue and educate, which will be sort of a graphic report and presentation to all of you summarizing all of the efforts and as well a mechanism for sharing that message out to all of the stakeholders in the community at large. Oops, went the wrong way. Okay, so I'm gonna dig in a little bit deeper to the first two steps first. So investigate and engage really focuses around all of us kind of as a team, really digging into all of the past studies that have been done all of the past work that's been done at Puffer's Pond. There's been a significant amount of work and it's very important to us that we build upon that rather than duplicating any efforts that have already been pursued by Amherst. So that's where we begin always. And we would also plan to do what we call a walk shop with a project stakeholder group where we meet on site and we walk and workshop together. You have an opportunity to point out certain key things to us. We have an opportunity to really ask questions and dig into some of the potential solutions there on the site. We find this is a very productive manner to involve community, certain key community stakeholders or the larger, broader community depending on the project we do it both ways. Very productive way to have a sort of working workshop with the stakeholders. We would be studying existing opportunities and constraints really, really looking at the limitations of the way that some of the recreational spaces have been shaped over time, opportunities for how to incorporate some of those things into the larger picture we'd be looking at ecological cues on site. We'd be looking at digging a little bit deeper into those reports and understanding the sedimentation and contamination, et cetera. So we'd be really looking at both what's happening there and how are those things currently working as challenges that we can turn into opportunities moving forward. We'd also include a design team workshop. So what we do generally often is we'll have a walk shop for several hours with the project stakeholders on site and then sometimes that same day the design team will stay on site and continue to sort of do an internal design workshop on site for hours at a time because we find that it's a really expeditious way to document our thoughts, to document what's on the site to get those ideas from the stakeholders down on paper and really think through the area while in the area. We find that to be very productive before going back to the drawing board in the office. And all of that would lead to compiling a base map that we would be working off of. And that would sort of kick off the next phase was just this initiate and explore. So we would really be taking all of the ideas, thoughts, concerns, goals, data that we've gathered in that first step and digging deeper into exploring those things. And when I say exploring those things, I've sort of listed a list in the bottom left-hand corner here on the slide of what those things are, right? And it's certainly not limited to the things on this list, but I wanted to show you some of the real aspects of data that we would be looking at, everything from climate risks and impacts to stormwater management both at the site, but beyond at the watershed scale, programmatic use, programmatic problems, like what's working and what isn't in terms of how the site's being used, both from a human perspective, but also how that use is affecting the health and the quality of the pond as well as surrounding habitat. Adaptive management needs, certainly the necessary dam improvements, all of those things would be digging deeper into all of those things at the same time as setting what we call the guiding principles for the improvements. So we would together with you be developing some real sort of touchstones that we would use throughout the analysis to make sure that those initial goals that are shared are carried through all of the recommendations throughout the plan. The result of this phase would be a colored rendered vision plan for the entire proper pond, areas beyond where necessary to sort of connect the larger watershed scales, and also some photo realistic renderings, which will really help in terms of getting the community to understand the efforts being made by Amherst. And the following step is what we call implement an estimate. And I wanted to talk a little bit about this because to us, this is sort of where the rubber hits the road and coming up with a vision plan for seeing how all of these sort of disparate pieces and parts come up and make a real sort of holistic vision is one thing. But then coming up with this real sort of actionable plan, that's what we want to get to. And this is where that happens. So we develop an implementation strategy. And by that, usually we start by doing prioritization criteria and we'll work on developing that together with you. Some of those things can be what I've listed here. We'll develop that based on what works for you in Amherst. And we'll look at things like cost effectiveness, but measured by relative costs and estimated benefits. So not just, what's the cheapest project to get done? What are the projects that give you the most bang for your buck and how can we prioritize those? And some of those will be very cost effective and some of those will be bigger investments and we'll help you work through what gets you the most benefit in the end. We will look at permitting and regulatory feasibility as well and sort of prioritize projects based on what we can get through pretty easily and what might be a larger effort and take more time. We'll look at just overall sort of complexity and time frames in terms of making some of these implementation decisions and priorities. And we'll also look at benefits to the broader Amherst community. And like Julie mentioned, some of these larger community goals are really coming to the forefront in terms of making grant applications competitive. And some of these bigger grant programs are really leaning on the community benefits in ways that are fantastic, but also make it really critical to centralize the community in any work that's being done right now. We would be setting up a roadmap essentially for short and long-term phasing. So both things that you can start knocking off the list in the near term and also things that need to be packaged together with a longer-term approach. We would sort of set that up for you in a way that is attainable for where you are now. We would include order of magnitude cost estimates based on sort of, it can either be based on phases that you sort of intend to implement or by project. And we would definitely be including potential opportunities for revenue streams, looking at sort of having a conversations around how can you introduce other ways of creating some revenue here for the purpose pond. We talked a little bit about that last we met, as well as identifying possible other funding mechanisms. So, and that's something we work on a lot and have a great track record in terms of helping communities get that funding that is so abundant right now. The final step then is issue and educate. And really this is about bringing all of it together into a presentation for you. But also, I think we include in our scope the idea of sort of preparing, packaging all of this as a GIS story map website so that you have, which is easily linked to your own website and or can stand alone, so that you really have a way to communicate out to the community without each, even when not having community meetings, what's going on with this easily updateable in terms of tracking progress and having it be a living document. So that would be where we would hope to leave that part of it with you. And to conclude, I'm gonna hand it over to Eric to sort of talk about, we've done some brainstorming internally about what some of these potential improvements and possible funding mechanisms could be and how that could look on the other end. Clearly, these are things we would work through together with you, but we did wanna kind of leave you with a sense of some of our thoughts as they stand now. Great, thanks, Sarah. So yeah, I'll talk a little bit about some of our ideas and thoughts about specific improvements that we've seen recommended in some of the various, previous planning studies and work that's been done on Puffer's Pond. And then talk about how we might align some of these funding mechanisms to really augment the town's own funding sources for some of this work to kind of leverage what the town has using some other state funding that we've been successful with. So in terms of the water quality improvements, we kind of see this as a two-pronged approach, both in pond strategies and then looking at the watershed itself. We know that there is a fair amount of accumulated sediment, both on the east and northern sections of the pond where the where Krishmanbrook comes in at the delta that's formed there. And then sediment that's kind of gotten over and exceed in the capacity of that trap or forebay area that was constructed in the pond. So the dredging feasibility work that UMass folks did a few years ago is a good starting point. And I think it does a good job on kind of establishing a baseline of sediment volumes, the quantity of sediment and sort of the areas of the pond for focus in terms of sediment removal. They also did a decent job in looking at a few of specific contaminants in the sediment, I think pointing to the high potential for there being legacy contamination here just given the industrial uses of the river upstream of the pond and this sort of being the sink for a lot of those legacy pollutants. So we know that there's gonna be some expense associated with sediment disposal. And what we need to do is to better characterize the sediment quality fully for to get a better handle on what is the feasibility for dredging the quantities of sediment that we believe are needed to restore some of the depths for recreation throughout the pond. We also are thinking about issues in terms of nutrient sources. And we know that this pond, like all ponds is gradually transitioning, it wants to transition back to a wetland and marsh environment. And not only the sediment but nutrients can have impacts and cause things like nuisance aquatic vegetation to grow, algal blooms, those kinds of issues. So those are also things we look at in terms of potential nutrient impacts and is there a large nutrient source of phosphorus, particularly in the sediment that could also be remediated to kind of prolong the longevity of any dredging operation there. In terms of the watershed itself, we know obviously there are sources of sediment still continuing to enter the pond. And so we look at stormwater as a source and what are some of the stormwater manager measures that are ongoing in the watershed? Are there opportunities to implement green infrastructure stormwater practices that would be appealing to funding sources that would also kind of shut off some of the ongoing sediment sources to the pond. We're also looking at options for beach repairs. And how does the town manage that process of replenishing the beach sand without impacting the pond? Looking at areas of shoreline stabilization, riparian buffers, ways to kind of trap and hold sediment so that you're having this ongoing source coming into the pond, prolong the life of the dredging operation. And then other strategies to address sources of sediment. I mean, is the stream itself, in terms of the geomorphology of the stream, is there erosion of the stream bank and is that an ongoing source of sediment giving sort of the high gradient nature of this stream historically being used to power mills in the past? So those kinds of questions I think could be answered with a little bit more focus on the watershed itself. We did review the, the recent, or fairly recent dam safety inspection report. I know there are a number of immediate repairs to maintain overall safety and functionality of the dam itself. We also noted that there is a separate dyke that was, I think was not quite evaluated during the recent inspection report. And, but that report essentially recommended both some short range tasks and then some longer term tasks. And the longer term tasks require some additional work, things like evaluating the structural integrity of the overall dam. I know that the last inspection the consultant was unable to look at the upstream face or the downstream face of the dam. And so a dive inspection would probably be in order. So there is some work to be done to fully evaluate the overall fixes and what makes more sense to address some of the dam safety issues there. And then the last set of issues here that I think both Sarah and Julie alluded to was this idea of climate resilience and adapting the pond itself in terms of the water quality conditions and the habitat conditions to a changing climate but also ensuring that this recreational resource can continue to serve as a key cooling center and a place for people to go to escape some of the kinds of summers we just had where we're getting these hotter, drier spells and it's really impacting certain populations climate vulnerable populations, EJA communities and folks that we know are relying on puck response and other similar recreational areas to stay cool in the summer. So I think that is an opportunity but it also is a way to leverage some of the grant funding right now that is really focusing heavily on both heat and water quality or flooding issues. So as we mentioned in terms of possible funding sources our firm has had a ton of success with the mass MVP program. We've worked on I think somewhere between 30 and 40 action grant projects to date and we've been working on a large number of them over the past few years helping towns throughout the state address a full range of climate resilience issues. Right now we're working on another water quality project on a pond on the Cape looking at powerful algal blooms in ways to better manage stormwater inputs to that pond and other kind of nutrient sediment sources to reduce some of the nutrient loads and the sediment loads that are contributing to those algal blooms. So we know that MVP can be used for water quality projects focused on sometimes particularly when we kind of combine that with the key aspects of using the pond as a key resource for the community for heat adaptation. I think there's a lot of potential there to kind of incorporate a number of these holistic issues and centered around climate adaptation and be successful with the MVP program. There are a number of other programs. Obviously the DCR Office of Dam Safety, the Dam and Seawall Grant Program is the most logical choice to address some of the dam repairs that need to be made. One of the other programs that we've had success with recently is this Massachusetts Community Compact Best Practices Grant Funding Program which funds communities for a range of projects that look at implementing best practices surrounding infrastructure, surrounding water resources and other types of issues. And so recently we helped the help gardener actually get about $40,000 in community compact funding to do a vulnerability assessment of one of the dams. And so they're looking at potential ways to address some dam safety issues. And so we believe that there's additional money left over for this. And this could be a good funding source to help you maybe do some of the additional assessment and engineering on your dam to make it more competitive for the Dam and Seawall Program which tends to, likes to see some work already done in terms of planning an assessment to support a competitive application under Dam and Seawall. So that could be a good source to tap into some remaining funds there. It could be on the order of $50,000 or so. That's what we've been seeing for awards potentially. And that could really set you out nicely for a competitive Dam and Seawall grant. There's also other sources, Community Preservation Act as a potential source tapped into some funds there. And then there is also a park and open space recreation related grant program, this Parkland Acquisition Renovation for Communities or Park Grant. And we've seen a number of communities including East Hampton recently get money to fund some other kind of open space recreation park improvements that I know you're also looking as kind of a secondary consideration here but could round out the funding package pretty nicely. So those are the main programs that we see. There are a few others that are out there depending on some of the water quality issues, MSTEP, the 319 program can be used to fund your stormwater improvements. That program is a little bit tricky in that it is looking prioritized in paired water bodies. And we know that the pond itself has not been assessed by the state, even though downstream Mill River has been assessed and we know that E. coli and bacteria are issues there. So there may be a way to tap into some MSTEP 319, 6.04B funding, but really we see MVP, Dam and Seawall, the Community Compact, maybe a few other sources that really meant what you're looking at for your own town funding. So I'm gonna turn it back over I guess to Julie to wrap up. Yeah, I think really at this point we wanted to open it to discussion and see if there are questions that you have, things that you wanna hear more about or dig into more deeply. Thank you guys so much for coming back again to present. We really appreciate it in the context of us kind of doing an RFP and getting some other firms to get some proposals together so that we have, we're sort of, we're doing this the right way. And so I really appreciate your time and all of your efforts here. And I just wanted to applaud your presentation that seems very well thought out and holistic and hits the mark in terms of a lot of the issues that we are trying to address out there. Yeah, no, I would just echo that. Thank you so much. In particular, I was reminded in your presentation about the elements of climate change and also working with environmental justice populations that Puffers is, it is this focal point in the summer, not only of Amherst, but of the region. And it has been, as long as we've owned the pond, it has been free and open to the public, dawn to dusk 365 days a year. And in particular during those summer months, in fact, Angela just and I interacted this morning and some gentlemen had called and said, is it safe to swim in Puffers pond? And I looked at the calendar and said, it's October 19th, people are still swimming in Puffers pond on October 19th. And he wanted to make sure that we took down the signs that we did have some Mekolai spikes late in the year. And I am quite confident those are probably fine now, but if he wants to swim at his own risk on the 19th of October, then so be it. But reminded that it is a resource for many people of all races, all generations, all income levels and the region. So we wanna make sure that the planning we do takes that into account for future generations. And yeah, also reminded that we are loving Puffers to death and it is not gonna get better on its own. The beaches, the sedimentation, the dams, the dike. Yeah, so I will just add that we did, since you brought up the dike, we have had some legal work done on the dike and our legal team in Boston is kind of looking at that. It has some pretty extensive title work done on the dike and whether that is our responsibility or the responsibility of the property owner, still a little bit in question, but either way, we're gonna have to move forward with some repairs to that dike. So thank you, thank you for your time this morning and pulling this all together. I don't know if Angela has anything she wants to chime in on. No, it's pretty comprehensive. I especially appreciate the funding, the listing of the funding sources, but I just wanted everyone to know the gentleman is going to wear a wetsuit. So he also has a swimming buddy, safety first. That's great, a wetsuit and a swimming buddy. Safety first. That might raise even more questions, but I'm glad that they'll be safe. Yeah. Yeah, well, thank you all. I mean, I think, David, to your point, we really also see Puffer's Pond as a regional asset and we called this a catalytic study because it does feel like this sort of coming up with a comprehensive action plan for moving these things forward incrementally feels like it would include and should be catalytic for not just the pond, but everyone who comes to it. And so really in that way, it's a regional scale project. So thank you for having us again. And we would, if you don't mind, we will not share them, but we would love to have, I know I believe we taped this session, but I would love to have, we would love to have your slides as we think about the firms that are presenting to us. That would be very helpful for us to go through in the days ahead. Happy to share. So great. Well, thank you all. Have a great rest of the day. Thank you. Thank you. You as well. Thank you, everyone.