 What can we do because we know, I can assume, we're depending on successful vegetation establishment and that's really challenging in drought conditions and so we have three people on our channel that are going to come up and share some of their experiences, some things they tweaked over during their experiences during drought and we'll have hopefully have a good discussion about that. We will have mics going around so you guys can ask some questions, share some of your experience as well. So I'm going to be moderating in the drought. I'm Miranda Meehan. I'm the livestock environmental stewardship specialist at MDSU Extension as well as our disaster education coordinator. So let's test your my legless drought. And I have my master's in my undergrad in outreach science, packaging, natural resource management. But I have 30 years of experience doing western reclamation for that. I spent my first 28 years of my life on a dairy farm. So I pretty much been put in seed in the ground all my life. When I when I moved out west and and got hooked up in the reclamation business, we did a lot of different things to try and maximize what you can get out of your getting that seed in the ground and getting your production. 15 years, I worked for a reclamation company out of Laramie, Wyoming, and I traveled all the Rocky Mountain region doing seeding at almost sea level all the way up to 11,000 feet. And then from the Canadian border down to the Mexican border. So I've been through quite a variety of different ecological systems and figured kind of figured out a lot of things. And drought is one of the hardest things to to figure out and get a handle on. So hopefully I can share today some of our some of the things that I've done in the past. Hello, everyone. My name is George Hilvers. I work for MPLX. I am our environmental coordinator for the west. So we got eight states we operate in west of the Mississippi from North Dakota to Texas from Oklahoma to Utah. And we're all kind of in the same boat. It's been a drought for the past couple years for all those states. On the other hand, our eastern states have been a surplus precipitation, but we've been working through many of the same problems everyone else has, trying to figure out what to do when to do my background. I come from West Virginia, have a master's degree in civil engineering with a focus on hydrology, did master's research in reclamation, seed emulsion techniques, what's effects are vegetation growth, what limits are vegetation, how to improve our percentages and time frames. But yep, new new experiences. Feel free to ask tons of questions. And as Red said, my name's Ray Petrick. I was the late one giving my bio in. So just to give you a quick, the last four years working with being an ICO, we'll do the reclamation here in the state as their reclamation specialist and prior to that, it's been about six years doing some remediation work to West Virginia. As these guys said, as we went through the drought this last year, we're hoping to share a few experiences that we had. So I'll start with our first question. We have a few questions that just kind of get the conversation rolling and then we'll hand it over and open up for questions from everyone. So, you know, reclamation is difficult in our climate regardless. They're in a semi-arid climate, moisture is limiting. It's a challenge to start with. And when we're in the drought, that increases that challenge. Could you guys describe some of the drought-related challenges you've had on some of your reclamation projects? Yeah, I'll just start here a little pass it down the line. But you know, one of our big things when we're doing large-scale reclamation of, if I was just putting some numbers together, we're disturbing typically 400 acres a year and then reclaim 300 behind it is kind of what we're doing. So on a yearly basis, you know, erosion control is one of the first things that comes to mind with us because we're reclaimed a lot of native range sites. So we're pretty good topography through there. So we're trying not to have any loss of our soil resources throughout that. And then start getting vegetation established because where we operate our mine at is in a private land ownership. So trying to get land then turn back over to producers so they can start utilizing it. You know, couple of this last year, the year before we had a lot of moisture early on if everybody remembered from the previous fall was super wet. It was like one of the historic good probably wet is like the peppers in October's. So two meters ago, we kind of scraped by even though there was a drought, but then coming in this next year, we could see it already, what we're going to have to deal with. So a lot of the reclamation that we did, we do is have to build a plan for it. So a couple steps that we took was we've got a lot of stuff rated, ready to go, that it was prep for seed in that prior fall, decided let's not seed it, let's just stabilize it, whether it's using a mulch, a mulch, something like that. So we're mitigating our erosion control and also trying to then mitigate any more of that evaporative loss. When that spring came around, we just kept prepping soil rather than going in and actually doing it. We actually delayed reclamation basically kind of waiting for a more opportune time. There were some sites that we tried to put low cost inputs in, you know, we put in an old crop and there's something, even though we knew there was a final seeding of a native seed or something like that, but instead of burning our higher inputs on that, wouldn't it have less chance? Let's wait for rain. So we did a lot of delayed stuff. Also then trying to, we did some supplemental seedings on some other tracks then too, just to help hold us in establishment, but having seed beds prepped and then also just doing some sort of stabilizing agent was a big, big win for us last year actually. And as Helen indicated, we did get some moisture in July, so it worked out for us that we did some wider seedings. That's not applicable for producers, because as he said, we, I was a farmer and had 4,000 acres, I couldn't wait till July to see. In our case, dealing with starting over reclamation, that was something we could do. So I'll keep passing the mic down here like Paul talked a little bit too. Thank you. I got one word to say. Ditto. In reclamation, you know, you're trying to get natives established, so you're not working with production on crops, but I pretty much could say word for word, what he just said. But I will say this at NARM, we really watch the local events. So I'll just give you one quick example this last year started out really dry. I did my seeding. NARM is pretty much a spring seeding for best results. We can do some fall seeding, but we don't get the good results. We started out really, really slow in the spring, and I was pretty much given up on what I put in the ground. And by the middle of July, we ended up starting to turn the faucet on, and it came, and it came, and it came, and it came, and I was very, very fortunate to be able to have some good warm season species planted, and those warm season species really took off with that monsoonal rain that showed up. We had some blue grandma that just, I was amazed, we had seed heads that were this big, but I'm not going to say that happens all the time, every time. It's a big crap shoot, and what happens at NARM is not going to happen here in North Dakota. So what I try to do is really watch those local events, and in the springtime, if I see a snowstorm coming, and back to getting that tillage done early, get that tillage done, so when it's tied and put the seed in the ground, get that seed in the ground to utilize that moisture that Mother Nature gives us, because we don't always know when to get it. Thank you. Pretty much the same thing these guys both said, but in addition to that, we've been really focusing this past year with our contractor, their internal folks, and our inspectors at honing in our reclamation techniques and practices. We know the major factors that affect it, just like the last presentation management, you want to get that water down into the soil profile, and you don't want it running off into you. It's vital, we need to capture it, so we've been looking at, are we making sure that our sites aren't over compacted, if they are, are we going through and disking that, making that prepped and ready to do as much moisture as possible when we get it, and we do get it, making sure we try to keep it in there as long as possible, making sure we have a good mulch base over top, as the sun beats down the wind below, that it's not taking that moisture out away from us, instead of getting that vital initial root growth from the vegetation that's going to be there long-term sustain us. Last year was tricky, as we all know, we had some projects that we got really lucky, construction completed, we got it reclaimed, at the same time we got it reclaimed so you didn't mulch, we got rain, we got the initial covered crop established, and our perennials were starting to establish, but that was a rarity last year, that's only a handful of projects, most of our projects still look like we finished up last year, so you didn't mulch, but nothing's really possible. So anticipating that this spring, we're hoping to watch the weather very closely, try to time it with our contractors to get out there and re-seed right before or immediately after that we get that precipitation, we can get that initial growth and try to get some time to some type of establishment. In addition to getting that establishment started, we're really hoping that with making sure we're not over-compacted in the right ways, but that moisture is staying deeper down the profile, that way when the roots do establish and get deeper they'll start feeding off of the moisture lower in the profile, and hopefully supports them through the summer months and fall. With the goal of trying to meet our 70% vegetation cover, but as we all know it's been really tricky, and the reality is that we're spending a lot of money to get back out and re-seed, re-mulch, try to look at other techniques to use, and it is challenging. One of the products we've been looking at and using in other states, I'm not quite yet in North Dakota, is biotic soil medias, like biotechers and proganics. We've been noticing one of the big factors outside of moisture that's affecting your growth is organic matter, and we also know organic matter helps retain that moisture. If you don't have it, which is a case for a lot of disturbed sites, we're looking into what's the cost analysis of putting that product down and getting us outside of our permits, getting the vegetation enclosed in the project out. So far initially it's showing that using those products is helping us, and it's a lot more cost competitive than hauling in topsoil for sites that are barren, but that's another option we've been trying to use that helps keep the moisture there to get that sustained growth. You're right, we'll get the next one. One of the things that we do a lot when we're working with farmers and ranchers is we encourage them to have an a-drill plan with well-defined triggers and trigger dates for making decisions. Is that something that you guys have as part of your planning when in the reclamation process, and so could you talk about that a little? Currently that's not something in our plan right now, but we're working towards it. As I said, we're trying to reevaluate as a company our basic methods and working for as a company, we're reevaluating all those base items to see what we should start looking at and start doing for future projects. So our precip zone at Narm is a lot lower than it is here. On an average year we get about 10 inches, so we're we try to do everything that we can based on drought seeding. So if we end up with some good moisture years, it'll benefit us immensely that way. But as far as triggers go, we really don't have a big trigger mechanism. I look at El Nino and La Nino effects. I look at that and have been on site there in Narm 30 years, so I kind of know what happens when those two systems are working. So I kind of try to plan that way, but I really don't have a big trigger or a big light bulb that goes off to try and work with drought conditions. So maybe expanding a hair on it, you know, same thing, we pretty antidote of what we're doing for the seeding, but you know, we do work pretty hand-in-hand with landowners and tenants out there that utilizing these reclaimed lands. And again, a lot of it is hayland or a coordinated grassland for grazing. So we do have the producer's file of grazing plants with us, so that aligns some of that, and that has been helpful. But more than anything, what it's identified to us is we've done some supplemental, we've changed the way we did grazing rather in 168 or paddocks. This last year we increased our fencing dramatically to do smaller paddocks at a time so they could do more movement throughout. I think that helped actually some of the grass last longer for our tenants, so they're able to utilize some of that. The other point that we typically, when we do reclaim something, we usually keep producers out for at least minimum two years, more or likely three years. Try to stick to that pretty hard, even through this drought condition this last year and some of those tracks that we'd like to give them a little more free time away from cattle before we start bringing them in, but that's another thing we really evaluated this last year, so. You guys have all touched on this a little, but are there any specific tools or resources that you use to make drought-related management decisions? You know, some of it, like I said, is the moisture. I wouldn't say we have a definite tool there, you know, going off some pretty simple, but you think, I'll say, only young NRC has quite a bit for some of that, how we should be all applying some of that stuff, but also just with our proper water management then for helping out producers with where we can get water and where we can't and managed also with just more rotational, I think that's been a big uptick, so. Yeah, a lot of times I look at species that are in my permit that I can use as substitute species for a more droughty year. We have some shrub standards that we have to meet down there in the basin because of wildlife and sometimes that's indicative of how that works too. The shrubs don't like the cool season grasses, too much competition there for the minimal moisture, so sometimes we change things around a little bit and bump our shrub areas up to try and maximize what little moisture we get down there, so those are just a few management tools that we try to do. As I mentioned, a lot of times it depends on your project completes, sometimes we get fortunate right at the time we're getting moisture and other times we're in the dead of the summer and you plant, but then it fails. So I mentioned, you know, we're using products like protein and antibiotics by out of earth to kind of aid in top soil development on areas that are lacking, but hold that extra moisture, make sure we're breaking up that soil profile and not having over-compact soil, so the soil absorbs it. Outside of that we try to follow DOT and NRCS recommendations on seed types and recommendations and time frames. Some states we look into specific seed mixes that are a little more drought tolerant based on some recommendations from the NRCS, but here in North Dakota we've strictly been sticking what's been typically used, but mainly focusing on getting back down to the basic techniques that we know that we need to do during reclamation, prepping the soil, saving the top soil, putting it back in sequence. We did have a lot of fall projects that we ended up deciding to not seed and just put a cover crop down in addition to mulch just because we knew that time of the year we didn't have enough time to get stuff established. So then this brain just looking at trying to time it appropriately when we see some moisture coming along to put that permanent seed mix down and trying to put at an application rate that we see might fit a lot of projects last year. We used a variety of reclamation techniques anywhere from different seed spacings to different types of mulches and we're really hoping to see this year if any of those are going to help us to get us a longer sustainable vegetation growth, but we're kind of in the experimental stages everyone else through the drought just trying to figure out what's going to work or use some techniques that have been tried in other places. Yeah it sounds like a lot of you you're all using some of the climate data to direct your decisions and and try to go to the box of how we can use that information to to adjust your management and you guys have all touched on this but when we're in the middle of a drought we're gonna we're forced to go outside the box and can you expand on how you adapted your reclamation process practices and response to in the drought and and describe any adaptations that you guys made and which ones you found successful so far. So on the success side we're we're hoping to evaluate that this year based on what we tried this past year. Outside of what I've already mentioned we haven't done anything different than that. We're looking out to other options other products out there as we all know the industry is really changing there's a lot of different products available now. There's a few products on the market that we've been evaluating in some other states. It's basically a dry pellet that you would mix into your top soil that could potentially absorb extra moisture when you initially see and spray the hydrogen mulch down. It's possibly trying to use that long term to keep moisture longer in the soil profile. There's estimates that could stay in there and keep that moisture available to the root systems for an extra six to eight months. We haven't tried that up here yet where you kind of experimenting to see if that helps in some of the arid regions down south. So I guess I would start by saying we change some management practices from top soil lay down to tillage procedures and tillage equipment following that ground to try and let that moisture get in deeper into the soils leaving doing deep ripping and leaving it really undulated so that moisture can get into the to the sponge of the earth and let the earth be your best reservoir. So then after tillage I worked a little bit with changing seed mixes using more droughty species within our permitting available permitting species and then managing some grazing procedures too like and we've talked up here but those those things you have to kind of look at throughout your experiences and like I have said before it's it's a little bit different down where I'm at so there's there's years that we're in that five inches of precip a year including snow so that's pretty light for trying to get anything really much to grow the other thing that I've always listened to and practiced is with native reclamation the first year it sleeps the second year it creeps and the third year it leaps so what does that tell you that tells you you've got to have some patience now as a as a somebody that talking about native rangeland that's a little easier to say than somebody out there trying to produce some hay or some corn to get those crops you cannot have that kind of patience I'm pretty fortunate in that rangeland reclamation side I can I can have that patience as long as I can get things stabilized I like that point fall because I I'll say I I'm learning that I have to learn that because I'm a patient person but I am seeing that also um I'm not gonna do the reclamation things that I want to kind of bring up here of techniques that we've really been implementing by P&I the last couple of years maybe aren't perfectly related to the drought that we've been experiencing last year but more hate let's try to we know it's gonna come so let's do a few things and some of it was we were trying to introduce um cattle more cattle to our reclamation sites whether they're agricultural um you know try to fall grazing after uh after a cover crop seeding of a wheat crop or something like that or even just you know more rotational grazing on on historical native lands just looking to try to build our soil for a while so when we do have moisture we can retrain more of it um keeping vegetation on anything we can at all times of the year however long it is we we do a lot of a lot of fall seeding um with either a leech or um some of the brassica or something like that I think or if we think we're getting off of that we're gonna help retain some soil moisture in the long run even though it's using some of that point of time also since we've been trying to build that soil crop so we have more in reserve for when something happens because I don't think this trend of drought is probably going to go away um so trying to be pre pre-emptive on some of that you know that that is a looting system or longer term things or you know some of the disturbances that you're dealing with over there when your pipeline stuff that not quite applied but we're looking at a little bit lighter scale explanations here but I think some of those principles apply I'm trying to be proactive that it might be a few years so it's it's not a it's not a quick quick turn on these processes that you gotta build up to slowly through a few of those other adaptations thanks for sharing I'm gonna open up to questions and just raise your hand and we'll make sure to run on my ground so that everyone can hear you so I think indirectly you guys might have talked about this but can you talk specifically more towards wind and trying to minimize wind effects and maybe in that same vein how do you catch more snow too? I'm sure Paul has some things on this too but for wind our big thing is trying not to ever have just bare earth there uh well once we get to the point that we have all our tops a little down when we started doing some working on it we got to get it covered even if we weren't sitting right away we got to get covered with some sort of mulch like that to try to get that as for putting in wind breaks or catching catching snow something we haven't done I'll say that something we haven't even chased or evaluated at this point in time so so in our mind plan we're pretty fortunate that we have to put back the post mine topography to the original contour approximate original contour so we have a lot of rough breaks where our mine is so that means we can leave some pretty good topography we can set up some good snow drifting areas within our PMT we build wildlife habitat which basically amounts to rock piles for the for the bunny rabbits to live in but those rock piles are also great snow catchers snow fences works well the other thing too that you got to work with is not always can you have some good vegetative cover to help with with Brenda's question about wind and so once we strip topsoil off those pre-strip benches are pretty prone to drifting from wind and so what we do is we try to go in and use some 1930s management practices and we rip that ground up to slow that wind down to catch moisture to catch fugitive dust and I can also transfer some of that into my topsoil laydowns by doing the same thing rip it on the contour minimize what that wind does to that soil to try and and maximize keeping moisture in the ground so sometimes I can't speak to any snow captured on my product through this linear project 100 foot wide or compressor sites or something like that a few years but on management of the soil through the construction process and trying to figure out our wind disturbances and that kind of stuff we just try to make sure our projects are put back and reclaimed as fast as possible as most of us knows linear projects you can move pretty quick from the day topsoil wind grow and tops and then windrow yourself soil typically we either windrow them both on the same side of the right away or have the windrows on opposite sides to the right away we notice that the windrows themselves tend to not get too badly disturbed by the wind but our travel lanes that are getting beat to death dried up is what really picks up and want to blow away so by using our windrows really helps that soil from being blown away but then getting it put back as quick as possible so most of these problems we're trying to get everything open cut put back within a month's time frame generally so we don't have the same problems necessarily as bigger sites but we do try to consider it okay questions what do you use for I'll get okay what do you use for your soil test what lab do you go to or do you soil test um we typically follow our landowner agreements most times we're not getting soil tests done we're just preserving the top layers try to put them back we see vegetation issues generally in our contracts we put it on to our contract peers to follow up with vegetation failures if we have a failure after the first year a lot of times I'll send it to a soil lab but I'm not sure what lab they're sending it to I would pretty much mimic exactly what he said um we have to sample our subsoils our overburden soils to meet parameters but our top soils we don't sample and in native reclamation in Wyoming fertilizer is not your friend fertilizer makes all the weeds grow so that's competition for that intense moisture competition you know there there those weeds are way more aggressive than the native ground is so we're not really too concerned with soil nutrients and and makeup and composition but we're more concerned with if we have a failure area then we'll go test and see what maybe what our issues are um salinity salts things of that nature so and we started sampling a little bit more for nutrients um last couple years I'll say the lab we use ours it's a bike just here right here in the state but um yeah so we started doing a little bit more still we do not put on I'll say same level of fertilizer or nutrients is like what I was trying to grow a 50 bush a week drop or something like that but we do evaluate it nowadays I do work for NRCS and so this question is um kind of targeted for Greg you said um or at least I heard that you if there's an opportunity for seeding grass possibly outside of a grass seeding window because we have specific windows for our programs but if there's an opportunity to plant you take that opportunity yeah yeah we're um we really target like said like this last year I'll say I didn't put any seed in the ground till after July this last year that we just delayed it we put some crops in just start out with we make sure our sites were stabilized but we went away from that higher input of a native grass seed it's one of our highest inputs that we can't proceed until we didn't tell we got conditions work we're right based on what the climatic conditions were I have a question um in terms of some of the more more traditional reclamation processes that you might use I know everyone mentioned hydromole for example is there a point that during a drought that some of those practices maybe not aren't appropriate they do more harm than they do good you guys want to go I would say I know everybody's talked about cover crops here and and most things when I was probably early 2000s at Narm we sat down and talked about cover crops and we talked about the amount of moisture that was used by those cover crops now that's that's their whole purpose in life is to suck the moisture and nutrition out of the ground and make big seed you know that's a cover crop a grain you know it wants to make it wants to survive so it's going to take all that stuff out of the ground so what we did is through our permit we had to change a little bit of things in our permit and get it approved but we basically took away using a cover crop to not use that precious moisture out of the soil I'm not saying I I don't like the organic that cover crops give you in that soil so in our in a couple of those of my seed mixes one of them I use a real low rate of of barley cover crop for stabilization quick stabilization on on sloppier areas but instead of going in and planting 30 pounds or 60 pounds of of barley the year before and letting that you know suck that moisture up and try in and utilize and get some organics out of it we changed that process around I'm now using the brassicas we've mentioned here those give you a lot more below surface organics than they do above surface biomass so it basically is keeping when it's growing and using that moisture it's keeping that moisture below the surface and add a storage and it's also adding organics breaking soils up making it so you have better percolation and infiltration of the moisture that you do yet so you kind of adapt and change and and make things work to to help your process comparing hydromols to say typical straw mulch I can't say we've seen a difference in saying moisture content or something like that the bigger difference we notice is is how do you restore that soil surface is it smooth like your yard or are you leaving it furrowed and rough you know you want to leave it rough for the the reclamation site you want that water to absorb and you don't want to sheet off so we we've been working with our contractors to not make that a smooth surface leave the cleat marks up and down the slopes leave your furrow marks leave your drill seeding marks that way when we do get a little bit of moisture whether it's from rain snow or due in the morning that's going to have a little micro zones where that's going to help soak in it's really all I have on that front yeah they're quiet group this morning I can do a second question on the soil side of things some textures are going to be naturally drought these so how do you deal with different soil textures that might be enhanced under major climate drought and then maybe more for the linear situations how do you deal with that because you see so many different textures that should go across the landscape yeah that's a very good question it is difficult because in one length the project you could have dozens of different soil types our goal is to try to increase the orienting matter we know it's going to hold a little bit more moisture towards the root zone of that plant we get in the sites that are from clay bend night to nice flummy soils that kind of hold the moisture a little more to straight sand and the best thing we found throughout the different regions we operate in is getting that organic matter getting a good overriding as I mentioned before it's very expensive to haul in top soil um so that's why we look at the alternatives like the organics and bio earth to get that overriding started kind of hold the moisture there initially but ultimately it can only hold moisture so long if it stays per long drought it's going to evaporate out of that as well but that's what we've been doing maybe these guys can elaborate a little more my situation's quite a bit different than his a lot of times it deals with we deal with what the topsoil pile makeup is some of the structure within that topsoil pile if we're if we're using topsoil out of a storage pile some of the direct hauls that we do where we're stripping and then laying back down we've got a little better handle on some of those things and we can adjust what seed mixes we put in where we're basically given in our permit we're given areas that say what the postmine veg will be but within those regions other grassland or our shrub land we can change our mixes around a little bit and so then we can adapt what the mixes are to what the soils are to get the best result yeah just maybe Paul is kind of touching on me and then I'd say my biggest comment is we we've tried to start targeting our actually seeding a little bit more specific on the differences in soil types even when you're looking at larger blocks that there's some differences throughout there you know we have proof seed mixes that are perfect and we changed them throughout the years here and there but we have started looking at some and I'll say it's more on the back end we kind of have a generic still that we've been really looking forward to the first time out going down those next couple years now we've been saying okay this is an area that's forward we're going to do better and let's target seed right there and telling it somewhat based on what we're seeing as vegetation and then kind of correlating that to the soil type so I'm trying to hit a little bit broad but then I'll spend subsequent years doing more targeted based on stuff so so all your reclamation activities have a certain amount of regulation to them whether it's the coal mine reclamation or following the erosion settlement control permits can you give some examples where those regulations work at cross purposes with the goal of establishing that vegetation voting question carl um you know I'm going to say I don't know if Ryan's in the room yet but uh Ryan's going to touch on some stuff this afternoon one of the breakouts of uh a few things that were done at our mine and a couple other mines here I'm just looking at different ways to lay down first your overburden and then your subsoil and your topsoil I don't think the things that are done there are so outrageously different than what we're actually permitted for but I think there's maybe some potential changes that can come out of that so I'm not going to spoil that part of what Ryan's going to tell us about later so I'll let that be but I'll say that's maybe one of the the bigger bigger spots where I can see maybe some possible constraints it's just um we talked about rocking stuff off a little more a few times that some more regulations come more to kind of try to smooth stuff off so I'll stop there I will try not to insult um being a practitioner you know what you can do on the ground and you know what it takes to get that done sometimes you have to stick to that and prove your point and have a good argument for why you want change or have the facts to back up what you're trying to change within the regulatory that's all I'm going to say I think we'll probably just wrap up thank you all for oh we have one more question uh George on your uh organic material you're adding um how are you guys applying that and are you guys targeting just the surface or are you working it in at all very good question depends where we're at um what kind of uh lane class one and uh what regulatory restraints may or may not be or landowner restraints um most often just away from a high interceding machine applying in about a quarter inch thick and then obviously of course making our top soil layers back back to original um but we find if you have less than two percent organic matter your vegetation really suffers so that's what's been driving us to try to boost that um and then we all know with upcoming studies and information that your uh the bio life in that soil is very important and you know if you stack that soil for too long that life can be affected so we have projects in different states where we have to have our pipelines open for six to twelve months for say long while mining underneath or something on those we especially come back and put that by our media and um otherwise we find ourselves waiting twice as long we get that regrowth because everything in that top soil pile this is kind of suffocated out um we have had areas due to regulations and permitting that we need to close our permit out we're so close but we got patches that just are not vegetation um sun's beating down on it it's frowning it up there's not a lot of organic matter in it it's not holding a lot of moisture so we've actually went in back by hand and spread those products um and try to break that crusted material up work a little bit down into that soil profile trying to keep it from getting so compacted again especially sites that are pretty heavy in clay and then uh taking backpacks of water and trying to hydrate that because you don't have a big hybrus either um and getting those last few spots to close out for the permit that's been working very well for us um as touch-up methods which is a little different um and then we have some places where we're spraying it by helicopters um which has been working pretty effectively especially time-wise where you can't get equipment into some repertory um but uh so far it's helping us um it's closing our permits out sooner um as mentioned if you got a native mix you're waiting a little longer than normal um you just have to anticipate that but putting that product down we notice our cover crop stays healthier when it dies back off any nutrients that it took up is being put back in that soil breaking down starting that over rising um and kind of getting some of that uh bio-life back to processes so when that native seed is kicking up there's some stuff there to help the resistance and it was touched on earlier regarding uh usefulness of soil health analysis or sampling would would there be any resources that either the panel or anybody else would know on that that we could help or or provide uh just an outline of what would be kind of the critical analysis or parameters that that could be helpful if that um soil health analysis was NRCS is yeah NRCS yeah kind of these guys are whispering uh same thing I use is the NRCS there's a lot of good information out on their website um but through my experience and studies and projects um the biggest factors that we notice that affect is your pH on your organic matter um and then um sometimes your salt levels it depends where you're at and if that's in your soil outside of that we haven't noticed anything that's directly correlated affected the vegetation as severe um so we focus on those two primarily if you're storing topsoil in long terms say one or two years and longer is there a certain height to your piles that you try to minimize so you don't to avoid sterilization about 35 or 40 year old topsoil piles we have some of those um our permits as our piles can't be higher than 50 feet but you don't want to make a three foot or a four foot tall pile in our instance to have the same capacity that you would of a 50 foot tall pile that's a big footprint that you're covering with a three foot versus a 50 foot so I mentioned brassicas before and I'm a big proponent seeing what they've done in the last five years for us I'm a big proponent of using those species in those older decadent topsoil piles now the University of Wyoming has done a lot a lot of studies on older topsoil piles and newer topsoil piles they really kind of beat that horse but but in Wyoming we're finding that some of the results out of a 30 year old pile versus a two year old pile can be the same because we have good wind down there and the wind's going to pull all that micro organisms and fungi and all of that and it's going to blow in the wind and get that soil back alive after it's set for a long time those of that group at the University that's one of their main conclusions on that was if you've got good wind you're going to have native inoculation into that topsoil so um I know there was a big push at times to to have shorter less dense topsoil piles but I think we have pretty good success both ways Paul's probably a little more experienced on that one than me but I'll say one of the things we're not here before we end here is we started slowly some of our bigger historical piles slowly been trying to carve into them not trying to do the whole thing at once so we're taking some levels so then you're trying to get some extra then we go in and receive the disturbance that's left whatever we do go into a pile if you don't take the whole thing then we're going to see into it again we do have some bigger long term recreations coming up with some historical piles so that's another spot where we talk about more soil testing as somebody brought up those are the areas that we're going to be focused more on testing so