 Good evening for the second River Road Restoration public meeting. Real quick, my name is Brian Mast and I'm with the San Antonio River Authority. At this time I'd like to introduce your county commissioner, Mr. Justin Rodriguez. He'd like to say a few words. I promise to be very, very brief because I know you have a long presentation ahead of you, but I hope everybody had a great Thanksgiving and I know it was hard as it was for me to get back to the regular business yesterday. We had commissioners for today's public meeting. But I wanted to simply come by and show my support. I think what we're doing here is supremely important work. We've talked about the ecosystem restoration that has been done on the south side of the river. I know Suzanne and her team at CERA have done a great job. I'm sorry, I'm Justin Rodriguez. I should have led with that. Justin Rodriguez, I'm county commissioner precinct two. Actually it will be a year next month that I've been your county commissioner. You all know Paula Lissondo for a long time represented precinct two. When he passed away I was appointed in January to replace him and try to fill his very big shoes. But I wanted just to come by and lend my support to CERA, the Army Corps. This is a very, very important process. The most important part of this process is public input to make sure that we are engaging in empowering our communities to give their ideas on the best practices and how we move forward. I will tell you from the county's perspective, CERA has been a great partner. We worked with the Army Corps on a number of flood control projects over the years. I simply wanted to come by and show my support and make sure the county was at the table because ultimately we all are on the same page and trying to make sure we do the right thing here. I wanted you all to know from my perspective that you have my support and we'll be here from the county and we've talked about actually doing some future partnering as well. We worked a lot on the creekways, the trailways. We were engaging in similar conversations on the west side and on the east side. This is equally important to make sure that we're giving those opportunities for this great neighborhood that I'm very, very fortunate to represent here at River Road. So thank you very much and I will pass it back on to the River Authority. Thank you. I guarantee the project manager on behalf of the San Antonio River Authority and thank you very much for coming out and providing your input and your thoughts tonight. A couple of housekeeping items. The presentation and meeting will be filmed in its entirety by nowcastSA and it will be available for your viewing and sharing on YouTube later on. Please do sign in at your table. There's a sign-in sheet. Please make sure that it is legibly written so that we know how to get a hold of you and send you with your feedback. So I would like to provide an overview of how our meeting will be conducted tonight before we get into the presentation. What we're going to start off with is a brief presentation that's going to provide an overview of the project to help refresh our memories from our last public meeting and then we're going to have our table sessions. At your session you'll notice that we have some very big maps. There will be a facilitator that will come to each table and will work through each of our three big project areas. Either roads, low-water crossings in stream restoration and then vegetation and recreation elements, our restoration protection elements. You'll rotate through. You get to stay, you'll have a facilitator that will rotate through. So we'll have three sessions at the table at 15 minutes each. After we're done with those, then we're going to reconvene in the big group and we'll have a report out where the facilitators will help share with the big group what the individual conversations were. And then after that we'll dive into a more informal Q&A sessions. In small groups or in large however that comes organically to address specific comments and questions that y'all might have. Do y'all have any questions about the format of our meeting tonight? Alright, then I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Danny Allen who is going to walk us through the project overview. Thank you. My name is Danny Allen. I'm a wildlife biologist. With the Army Corps we use a lot of great things. I specialize in ecosystem restoration. I apologize for not being at the last meeting. I had another project I had a commitment to. But I thought we'd just refresh everybody what's going on and what this project is all about. When the Corps of Engineers goes into doing ecosystem restoration study we always look at what the problem is. The underlying problem with this. And so for this project we've identified that the stream is not balanced with the streams naturally erode. They naturally have sediments deposited. But that could be out of balance. And that's what we're seeing on the River Road section of San Antonio River. There's excessive erosion. There's excessive deposition of sediments. And then with that disturbance caused by that imbalance in the stream it opens up the avenue for invasive species to come in and get a stronghold in the habitat. So that's the problem we're trying to address. And so in order to get a solution our objective is to restore that aquatic form and function of the river. We're doing that through restoring the aquatic function but we're looking at it as a system approach as well. So we're not only looking at the stream itself but we're looking at the riparian habitat. And when I say riparian what I mean is it's habitat that wouldn't otherwise be there if the stream wasn't there. So it requires the wetter soils for that vegetation to grow. So any of that vegetation that is influenced by that stream we refer to that as riparian vegetation, riparian habitat. Where you can think of it as river. When we look at these studies we also look for opportunities that we're actually not looking to solve within the study but there's things we can get from it doing that restoration. Things like recreation, ecotourism along those lines. So we try to identify what those opportunities may be as well. So I want to kind of go over the core problem. Can I ask you are these slides going to be available to us? Yes. The PowerPoint will be posted on the project website that's posted by the San Antonio River Learning Center. How do we find it? There's a whole lot of stuff there. There's 158 pages or how do we find it? This is a nice power point. So there is a project card. Caitlin would you shuffle? If you provide your email address on the sign-in sheet you will receive the presentation. We will email it out to everybody on the sign-in. The table sign-in sheet? Yes. Thank you. Wonderful. I'm sorry to interrupt. No, you're okay. So I want to kind of lay out what this core process is and where we're sitting in that process. And when the core of engineers looks to do any study be it flood risk management or ecotourism restoration there's typically three phases in that project live span. The first phase is what we're in right now. It's the feasibility study or feasibility phase. So we look at what the problems are. We look at what solutions we have. And then we identify is there a solution that's within the federal interest that's acceptable with the non-federal sponsor. Is there a plan to go forward that is filed? The second phase of that which will happen after the feasibility phase is the pre-engineering construction or the pre-engineering design and construction phase. And that's where we do the detailed design. So that will happen in a couple of years if we get funding to go forward through that phase. So right now we're only funded through the feasibility stage. If the core receives funding for those subsequent phases and River Authority wants to participate further then we'll go into those next stages. But right now we're just looking at the feasibility. And so the second phase is where we do that detail design of exactly what this breast ratio is going to look like with fine details of how we're going to do it. And then the third phase is the construction phase. We actually go and build it and implement the transformation measures that we've got. So right now as I mentioned we're in the feasibility stage. We're identified some preliminary alternatives and then we'll start putting those together in different combinations and do what's essentially a cost benefit analysis. I'll get you into that on the next slide. The construction design and construction process is typically a two to three year especially for a project this size. After that we turn it over to the non-federal sponsor or a group of responsible parties for that operation and maintenance. The core in combination with whoever that non-federal sponsor is participating in the construction phase of it. We develop an operations and maintenance plan that identifies exactly what to do if something isn't functioning like it should, how to go back and fix it and identifying what those triggers are. When do we actually go in and try to fix something? Do we let things try to restore natural air? What's the trigger that we have to go back and physically do something? All of that's lined out in the operation maintenance plan. The project becomes a federal project in perpetuity and so the core of engineers will come out and inspect things annually to make sure that the restoration is functioning like it was planned and designed to do. We do the same thing for mission reach. We'll go out annually and inspect mission reach and we'll have that discussion if this is working, is this not working, or is it still functioning. Just because the project's complete doesn't mean that the project just ends right there. It's actually maintained and operated as an ecosystem function. The feasibility phase is kind of a convoluted flow chart but it typically goes through as soon as the non-federal sponsor, Sarah, approaches us and say, we want to do this study. We would like to participate and have your involvement. The first thing we do is we meet with our resource agencies. We do it with Fish and Wildlife Service, Texas Parks and Wildlife, Texas Council on Environment Equality, Natural Resource Conservation Service. We try to bring in all the experts in the natural resource world to the table, identify, like I said, what's wrong with this system, what are some potential fixes or recommendations, and all that. We have to be able to calculate the habitat benefits that we'll receive in the future because we have to have some measure of how we will improve the habitat to go along with this cost-benefit analysis. So we have to know the benefits as well as the cost. So we meet with those resource agencies on how best to do that, how best characterize this, that. We have the public meeting, what we typically do, which was at the last meeting, we try to get public comments or input on the potential restoration measures that maybe the professionals are just overlooking. Maybe there's something locally that we just don't think about. So we get that input and we take all of that and we start putting together different combinations of things that we could do restoration-wise and try to build different alternatives or different plans that will address the restoration need. We're doing this second meeting because we've kind of come up with some strategies. I'll put they're not necessarily specific alternatives of how we're planning to do things but they're different strategies. And once we get additional comments from you guys we'll actually fine-tune those and develop that into more of a final array of alternatives that we can develop. Once we do that we have a milestone meeting with our leadership and so we present to them after we do the cost-benefit analysis and we kind of come up with this is going to be the plan that's in as a good expenditure of taxpayers' dollars for the benefits the ecosystem benefits that we get out of it. We present that plan to our leadership and they agree to whatever that recommended plan is and then we go forward with that and complete our draft report which will be set out for public comment and in concert with that we'll also have another public meeting and present what that final recommended alternative is that we have and again seek additional comments and recommendations and before the final document goes out sometime in the fall of 2020 we will incorporate or address those comments and try to within our authority within the restoration. So real quick just to make sure everyone's clear at that initial public meeting back in August we presented to you some general ideas and approaches for doing the restoration. We collected the the input and then tonight what you're seeing is the result of that input process and some further consideration by the four experts of some more defined strategies or alternatives to the project. We're hoping that you can help provide more input on these specific strategies and that it will guide the board as they go through that cost-benefit analysis and present a tentatively selected plan for their leadership's decision. So that's our purpose for tonight. But real quick we wanted to make sure to refresh everyone's memory with our first public meeting which was back in August to go over those general project approaches and we heard loud and clear from y'all that y'all had some very definite concerns and some definite once from the project. Overall there was 25 comments submitted. Over 40% of those were concerned with pedestrian access and the need to maintain pedestrian access through the park area. Other items of concern were addressing the invasives and how that would impact burning and other maintaining a natural stream and then also addressing the erosion and how it impacts the natural function of the river in this range. So that helped guide what you see tonight. Alright, so one of the comments that we've received so far is what are the funding limitations? Where's the funding coming from and how does that work? So for ecosystem restoration we're working under Section 206 of the Water Resources Development Act which authorizes the Corps of Engineers to address aquatic ecosystem restoration needs throughout the country. It's one of the operations we have for ecosystem restoration. Section 206 is what we call a Continuing Authorities Program and essentially that gives us a way to do relatively small projects within the core realm of thinking and do so in a relatively quick manner. And so it gives us a lot more leeway on being able to we don't have to seek congressional authority to get funding for the next phases of the project. We can actually do that at our major supportive command level. So the important thing for everyone to remember is that the federal funds were allocated for this project. Their funding is specific to aquatic ecosystem restoration. So that's what we're focused on tonight is restoration of the river because that's where the money came from. And because it's a continuing authority program there's some limitations to that. The first of which is there's a cap on the amount of money that we can spend for both the feasibility phase, the design phase which is which is capped at a $10 million federal share of that. And a lot of that money is usually cost-shared at $65, $55, or $35. Unless you want $55. $65, $35. So then there's some different cost shares depending on what phase you're in or what you're doing. But essentially that's what it is. And Aaron mentioned that it is an aquatic ecosystem restoration authority but within the realm of that authority we're allowed to do recreation features as a part of that. And so that's being taken into account for this. Alright, so just to refresh everybody's memory, our study area essentially is between Mulberry and 281 expanding either side of the river. And I mentioned that we're looking at specific strategies and we'll call them alternatives or plans for the sake of this presentation here. But there's three different things that we're looking at as far as the restoration project. The first is restoring the stream. The physical aquatic and riparian riverine habitats of the stream itself. And we're looking at doing that in a couple different ways. Modification of a lot of crossings or in-stream structures that help redirect some of the flow of the river. So those are more of the stream specific group of alternatives. And then we're looking at two different strategies or alternatives for the roads on either side avenue A and river road and looking to somehow modify those to increase primarily increase the riparian width of that corridor. And again we're looking at recreational opportunities but the selection of whatever ecosystem restoration plan that eventually comes out doesn't take into consider recreation activities. Those are kind of after looking at those including those as part of the project. So we're looking at specifically looking at ecosystem restoration and then coming back in and seeing how we can implement recreation features along with that. And then finally on this is we do that ecosystem restoration. We've got to protect that restored area. So there's going to be some control of the access to keep the river being overused or degraded because of some of the other impacts to it. So let's go into each one of those strategies a little bit. And so the first one is the modification and replacement of the lower crossings. As we mentioned before the authority uses the guidance to do aquatic restoration. And part of that restoration is restoring the stream as much as we can to the extent possible which includes modifying or removing some of the low water crossings because they're backing up water and impacting the natural stream bed. They're obstructing fish passage so we have to address some of the aquatic functions. So we're looking at both either the control or modification of those water crossings while still maintaining pedestrian access across those bridges. We don't want to take away that pedestrian impacts. I have a question about that. In the sense of the low crossing actually acts like a dam. So when we do this to improve the flow how low are we looking then at the water level? So right now we've covered a river there. I mean it's really because of some of the damning effects and then it goes over. When you take that away then what are we looking at? Are we doing something downstream to maintain a water level? Or are we going to just have a low prefix? It would be converting it back to the natural stream. So the river in that section what we're going to achieve is the natural form and function of it. So a re-establishment of what we refer to as a pool we're going on sequence. So that it does have pools. What you have at LeLon is a very, very large pool that's unnatural and has contributed to some of the degradation of the river over time. The loss of habitat, some of the erosion, the water level has increased unnaturally. In the river there's going to be pools like that but not to that extent. So there's going to be deeper sections, there's going to be shallower sections and in the design process we would be identifying different sections that would have those pools and have it slightly deeper and then sections where in order to convey the water safely and keep the banks from eroding it's going to be a little shallower. Dr. Reed. One of my confusions is the original stream went through the Gulf force in 1932 was channeled and the water the low water crossing that we have at LeLon was put in there to prevent the entire stream just stripping down through the channel. We're not talking about re-routing the streams through the Gulf force are we? No. What we're talking about is by modifying the low water crossings in sequence and then putting in additional in-stream structures to be able to restore that flow in a way that it protects the banks so it can safely flow through that section of the river. So we don't have those concerns about it stripping or eroding our banks. Yes, sir. The low water crossing functions more as a dam than just a cross. To maintain the water level all the way back up to the head or it is necessary that some dam is that done there to maintain a water level all the way back up through Bremen Ridge Park. And if you remove that with a pedestrian bridge or something like that you know saw as pumps water during dry times to keep that river flowing do you realize that they would have to increase the pumping of water during normal times in order to maintain a water level? So the requirement for saws to pump to maintain is to maintain a particular flow the magic number is 10 CFS or cubic feet per second. So that flow would go through and by having the natural flow through there it would be perfect it would be functioning appropriately and that maintaining the flow through there would not impact the natural and necessary level of river. There is an outlet on the side of the low water process slash dam removing that we have seen a decrease in water level all the way back up through Bremen Ridge Park of about 2 feet which exposes a lot more bank than we currently are having exposed. Yes, there will be some decreases in the water level and that would help restore those banks by allowing the vegetation to come in take root and help protect those banks and also help create a natural functioning form stream bed diversity that would provide the aquatic habitat for the species the native species that we're looking for while at the same time allowing to have the function of the stream bank and it have it protected from further erosion. Yes. So do you have any pictures of what you think happened to the sides of the river that wouldn't happen if we did anything? I mean is there some pictures that you have from the center of the river that would show what it is that's not right? I'm really glad you asked that question. I don't know if anyone was looking at the slideshow before we all got started and it had pictures that were taken from a kayak in the river and it showed some of those degraded banks that are from a result of the unnatural flow through there. There's some fairly sheer banks that have eroded. You can see a lot of the mature trees that have been lost over time because of that erosion and because of the unnatural function of the river at that point where it's just not functioning appropriately. Those? Yeah, just so we can because of the river. I broke it. Yes. So you're talking about the lower river level so is there a corresponding for they only 6 inches that it decreases? How much does the width increase? That is going to vary based on the design process and at this point it's so preliminary that I wouldn't be able to give you an accurate and specific answer. But in general the more the river level the less wide it is and that would be a good statement. Not necessarily because there could be shallow sections there quite wide because it goes through what we refer to as a ripple. If you think about how sometimes you have that iconic river sequence that kind of ripples over very pretty and you can see the lines of the water as it flows that's generally a ripple and those are generally shallower where you're going to have some sections that are going to be pools and they could be wider or narrower just depending on what's necessary to convey the flow of water and sediment. I want to repeat my question as a statement. The river was changed in 1932 which is why this low water crossing was put in to protect the river above that. Removing that returns into a natural state it never was. The hope of re-routing it through the golf course is not possible and consequently what you're trying to do is engineer something that never existed and we fear that the water level whoosh down and will be left with six inches of water running through the river. Can I ask why you're answering these questions? If the Army Corps of Engineers is the one doing the design and planning and so forth why do you start asking questions where you answering them and not the Army Corps? So as part of this project Sarah is a team member with the Corps of Engineers so they provide different services as an in-kind service. So the San Antonio River Authority is doing the the engineering part of the river itself and we're providing oversight on that so the River Authority. So if we're a collaborative team we work together quite closely and the answer because I'm a biologist and she's an engineer. She's in natural channel design and she's in restoration and so she's lending her expertise to the Corps of Engineers and working in this area understanding and habitat, the soil, the waste streams functions especially in an urban environment so she's written our natural channel design manual both versions of it. She's incredibly knowledgeable and so she's kind of helping to lend her expertise in that field. What you're seeing here is where you have the overhanging banks and you see the large tree where it's beginning to fall in. That's a result of the erosion and from having that unnatural depth of water where the stream is not functioning you can see some of the erosion starting back on the left where it's exacerbating, it's going to get worse you have no vegetation on this section so you have nothing protecting those banks and as that goes forward it begins to shear and you get those shear banks and it's just going to get worse as water starts hitting that section it's going to keep on eroding and you notice that you have those tree roots well you don't have any other roots that are to help hold that soil in place and as the water comes through with high events it's going to loosen that soil and it's going to contribute further so part of the part of the problems here is what you can see is that that vegetation that repairing buffer or string buffer has been narrowed over time because of the use off of the avenue A and it exacerbating the situation this here is a good photo of where you have a little bit of time but that tree is going to come eventually here is at the low water crossing where it's starting to undermine it's eroding out so the structure is starting to show some concerning behaviors and you can see how it's coming across over along the edge and coming underneath so it needs some TLC it needs some attention in some way shape or form and along that bank you can see that the previous ideas to address the erosion are they're past their time they're not functioning anymore so erosion actually will happen in everyday flows a channel will form itself and actually will have quite a bit of erosion in low flows or not necessarily low flows but smaller string flow events for instance the one year or two year events what you would assume that you have like one event a year for us that would be about an inch and a half to two inches and that's going to produce a good amount of erosion and those are going to happen every year and are going to contribute and add and stack on top of each other you are going to have some erosion that's significant with flood events but those are going to happen maybe once every five maybe ten years so take them it's the death 5,000 cuts concept you can have a little bit that happens very often and then one massive thing and you can lose just as much with that every year sort of event so those are quite steep banks down in the lower section near the golf course you can see where the there's very little vegetation most of it is just shallow rooted and it's it's starting to overhang and to fall in on itself yes sir my name is Jim Saunders and I'm going back to 1932 there was a point of mediation from the natural channel at which point was the river deviated because actually from that point on we're trying to engineer the channel that will hold that's a very good question the river was straightened from just below the wood line crossing straight through if you look at the aerial of the golf course you can kind of see some old remnant ponds and that generally follows what the river naturally was prior to the 1930s thank you but that was just a follow-up on that I have a map on that that shows exactly the river channel do you have an example of what we could see we can put something together for you we have a demonstration project where the river authority took a stream that was in quite that shape and did a stream restoration and that was about 7 years ago and it is fully restored and I would be happy to share that example it is a field trip so we can see what we could see before now absolutely, I would love to share with you that before and after I guess Erin, I need to comment that the low-water crossing along with others some of the rock mountains on the golf course were created by this would be the low-water crossing was created by the evil Southern Grants of the WPA so that I would thank along with that we can actually start their consideration I would like to introduce Christopher he is the archaeologist working for the course specifically to address specific needs like that in essence what I am giving is that instead of a river we will be having a stream that might be at the best little creek you will have a river at the low flow is not going to fall below 10 CFS which is a significant flow it is going to look slightly different than the large pool that you are used to but if you go just a little ways down past that pool and how it flows like that it is presumably going to look white compared to that which is it is a fairly natural river in certain sections there are numerous times in the summer where there is no flow and it is just a series of little shallow ponds so if you take away what is the weird low-water crossing it keeps that from completely disappearing it sounds like we are going to get just a few little dribbles along the way there and then when we get that 4-5 drain it is going to be destroyed with us out so the in-stream structures are going to help mitigate that concern of to address the erosion and there is going to be pools but there is going to be flow in between the pools the continuous flow from the reduced water that is put in upstream at Dragon Ridge Park is going to be pushing that flow through I think my name is Hillary Sonders this is my first meeting so I apologize if I'm going backwards but what I'm hearing is that what might be useful is a sort of cultural landscape story and I don't know whether you could do that but it could be very useful to have an overlay to be at any rate to say that in the 1920s it looked like this but I mean this happened in the 1930s I mean this became the basis of the story as it progresses and an interpretive document and so why did you mention that the Dragon Ridge Park Conservancy with assistance from the River Authority has put together a cultural landscape report for Dragon Ridge Park that actually includes this section and documents historic progression and then gives recommendations both from a historic point of view and an ecological point of view about the appropriate protective measures to protect that history protect the integrity of the river and actually one of the recommendations was a restoration pretty much what we're discussing tonight that would be a very good opening to a meeting tonight and the record Conservancy has not yet finished that report hopefully it will be available at the beginning of the year they're just finalizing it now and as soon as it's ready then obviously we will come back and report that out we just don't have that document yet these two things are sort of moving together in time but yes that's very exact that study is Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center helping consult with us on some of the recommendations that are going to be put forth from the ecological perspective so it's been a great partnership between the River Authority and the Dragon Ridge Park Conservancy on looking more holistically at the history as well as the natural elements of this area I think it would be very valuable to everybody that lives along this river to be able to see are you guys to be able to present to us what river restorations you have done and what they look like today because all I'm hearing is what's going to be taken away and I don't see any signs or visual images of what Sarah has done and what the Army Corps of Engineers has done that would describe before and after issues as an excellent suggestion tell me what impact does the Hilda brand drainage project have on your calculations so we will account for that in the hydrology and hydraulic models so when after we get past the feasibility study phase which is what we're in now and if funding is allocated at the federal level then that will move us into the design phase at the design phase we'll be putting together hydraulic and hydrology models to run through and help design the restoration basically the in-stream components basically what you see there and any modifications to the stream the Hilda brand drainage project will be accounted for within those models so that we know that they're working in concert what's the screen modification I'm not clear what that you just call it in-stream what's that mean so there are specific techniques for best management practices that we use as part of a stream restoration technique called natural channel design and to most people it just looks like a wonderful natural stream but as an engineer I look at it and I see the vegetation and I see the rock and I go huh that's a java that's designed to move the water so that the shear stress the force of the water when it's coming down is not straight on the bank but it's moved into the center of the stream so that it's mimicking what would happen over time in nature so this take any of the 35 structures that are in the flood plain 100 year flood plain out of the flood plain or will it add any structures into the flood plain so that's a really good question and we need to be very clear from the get go this is an ecosystem restoration project it cannot by its funding mechanism address flood control or flooding intentionally so if flooded before we can't make it worse part of the funding is that the requirement on that is that flooding cannot increase so that's kind of our bound we can't make it worse if we make it better that's great but we can't use money specifically just to make it better thank you just a quick comment about the concept of ecosystem restoration this is a stretch of water in which the life in the water the aquatic life is really pretty healthy but the water itself is quite clean most of the time so when we're really talking about ecosystem restoration we're talking about stream bank stream bank and protection foam sedimentation and I want to be really clear that that's one item of the three things that I really consider pertinent to this idea of ecosystems right that we have a stretch of water which is pretty healthy and that's let's keep our eye on that too if we talk specifically talking about sure while Aaron was talking about the instrument structures when you look at these you're not going to be able to see they're going to look like piles of rocks but they're like she said they're engineered to reestablish that equilibrium back into the river our second strategy is modifying avenue A either by removing avenue A and widening off the golf park path to maintain to allow access to the golf course maintenance facilities or to keep the avenue A is where the maintenance road goes off right now and remove everything further down from that but that would be with controlled access because we're going to control the use to keep it from degrading the habitat further down so those are the two different combinations of things we're looking at on the east side and in order to the ecological function of doing that would be that we're widening out the riparian buffer that has a lot of benefits both as habitat as well as ancillary water quality it's got to filter through a lot of vegetation before it enters the creek or river so there's some water so this is on the east side where avenue A is right now the maintenance path in between the golf course and the river the old avenue A so if you turn on from Mulberry on the east side of the river and go down to a turn around near the wood lawn crossing that reminds me of something there are three low water crossings on that river I walk with my dogs across that river every single day and to have to go on a bridge where you're up above the river where your dogs can't get down by the river they can't drink out of the river a walker like me has no access to the animals and the birds and things that are around the river when you remove those three low water crossings you'll take away a measurable intimacy with the San Antonio river so we're not necessarily going to remove access to the river that's part of the design process but in that spirit please make sure that when we break out the river in sessions that you get that comment written down and submit that so that we can make sure that that's part of the list that we can send well I'll tell you in your pictures that you have on the tables and they show all of the bridges way up high where you have an intimate contact yeah those are those were just examples that's not what we're proposing we're designing is there a legal requirement that does exist on that side of the golf course that's a conversation with the city parks and recreation department where we need to get together and collaborate to make sure that everyone can function as required there's a question but is any of this in preparation or in discussion preparing for a river walker that was best not to my knowledge our goal here is to restore this section of the river so that we give it the best form and function so that it can function as a natural river and they get safe and enjoyable for the public here's a good question I'm the alternative here and I know where the maintenance is are we going to have any parking for people who want to walk down here or what are we going to do with the parking for it so that the part of it if we do something up ahead you know that's somewhere so that's a really good question we're going to address that in a couple of slides and please make sure that when we get to our small groups that you provide that in our recreation and protect developments so that we get the feedback down on paper again with avenue A is there any thought of putting balance along it like there are along river road and so that the trucks and the cars don't drive down to the river level yes that would be part of the access control to protect the restoration that we would implement in that area so it would be more natural looking but there would be some sort of access control to keep that from happening many years ago we tried we've gone this is not our first study many years ago we tried to get an office to move pesticides and insecticides and all of that fertilizer from the banks of the river so we're going to do this again now just in all this money this taking time on on the banks of the river is there any thought of moving it yet again moving all of their equipment is compassed through out of the way that's a conversation that City Parks and Recreation is going to need to open up we had this conversation we got to know where 8-9 years ago we're looking at two different opportunities for river road the first would be the removal of the river road that small section is marked there and then opening up access on Allison grounds the way that used to be historically and in order to do that we can widen out that riparian area and plant wooded riparian vegetation in Allison Park and the other opportunity would be to leave river road in place and then still do the wooded riparian vegetation in the park itself so those would be the two river road sides we have two different combinations with the alleyway and then we've got the stream restoration handling the different low water crossing stationary on each one of those good question is that movement in order to get it out of the flood plain or is that to protect it from river erosion? yeah so this is one of those interesting things right now river road is uncomfortably close to the San Antonio River and it's somewhat of a pressure point on the river there's some notable erosion along that section I hear familiar with the erosion right next to Anastasia Place so the road is acting as a pressure point and that erosion is being exacerbated by so for this purpose we are looking at the possibility hey what if we went and looked at the old historic Allison Drive could we make things better ecological maybe we have to identify how much and how much it would cost was the Army Corps of Engineers involved in a massive water retention on this right there was the Army Corps of Engineers involved in that was Sarah involved in that what's the project you're talking about under the Mida-Botus Park it's a massive water drainage oh now that's a city project has there been flooding since that to install have you got records of the river flooding since all that massive flooding was put in because the flooding that was happening before a lot of it was coming because before that water I don't think you have the same flooding that you used to have so I would like to ask a question about this river road moving so what a lot of us have thought about for a lot of years is to stop the erosion there because there's all this build out that happened in the flood drain into the alcoholic engineering world so this particular money could not pay for keeping erosion at river road in the Anastasia for instance right so to the extent that addressing the erosion helps restore the ecosystem yes but a protection let's say that someone had the idea we're just going to do an erosion project just for erosion sake and we're not going to restore these funds could not be restored so but let's just say that there were other funds that did address that that we could acquire and we would do this whole thing at one time would have you all done partnerships like that before yes I think we have we've had multi-partnerships to address multiple project goals before because there's a part up there where between Mulberry and Anastasia where there's such erosion now that you can put a two-story bamboo hut that people had built in there and so I wish we had a picture of that but and we keep getting it taken out and but the thing is is that so that erosion which is enormous over there could be controlled and then we wouldn't have to worry about that anymore correct if we were able to restore the natural function and address the erosion then it may not necessarily be that drastic of a feat but the question is going to have to be for the party identifying the benefits what it would cost one way versus another in order to get the appropriate or best thing so just an issue of money and how it just costs that that's easy the pinch point you suggest is where Anastasia plays skills out in river road so there's multiple pinch points but the pinch point where the river is actually eroding the bank is right there where Anastasia plays skills out in river road and that it seems like the movement river road off there wouldn't do anything for the principal pinch point if you look at where the Dysokway is which is the slightly darker blue where the river turns in we're actually getting pretty close there and there's some significant erosion that's another pinch point river road is directly contributing to that one so we would need to address it somehow to your point also that area there just along that area where the river flows is it's hitting that bank and it's starting to migrate a little bit and that's part of the erosion so that's the pressure that I was speaking Jessica going back to an earlier concern so if there's this is federal money that's being used to restore the river so given that there are a lot of neighbors if one of them is using herbicides to treat the golf course and that runs off into the river will that undermine the growth that you're trying to bring back so that you can restore the river? yeah that's a good question and that's one of the reasons why we want to expand that rock area with as much as possible because what that rock area area does is it absorbs nutrients and it filters out pesticides and herbicides so the water that we can make that rock area with the better it is for water falling so it'll be a buffered area but you'd obviously have more impacts on the outside and I have a follow-up question to that and is there excuse my ignorance is there a federal regulation on the level of herbicides that can go into a water especially if you think federal money is there a monitoring that's happening so that everyone's acting as their neighbor? yeah and it's not snog for the federal government it's the federal insecticide, fungicide, rodenticide act regulates the use of pesticides and herbicides so you have to use them according to the label so if the golf course is applying something that has to be labeled for that use you know it'll be applied at that rate that's going to be environmentally what's the name of that act again? federal insecticide fungicide, rodenticide act and golf course can and promise and for cultures told to me that the golf course has all the permits and all the permissions to use all the ground up and all the other chemicals that they want so thank you to those laws and those rules golf course says they are within all the other permits if you were worried about moving a historic road like river road which is the butt of our neighborhood if you were talking about moving it it's so important for the river to be separated from the road that it was named after it would seem to me to put the gavion which is a wire enclosure filled with rocks like gavions along that area that you're so worried about that would flood by Allison road or you could put a concrete wall there's a lot of ways that you could stop the road, the river during club times if there's going to be there won't be any floods anymore which I don't think there are but if there are you could put a concrete wall or gavions there to protect river road from the water running I think moving river road up on the gas station is a extreme measure that I would hope our maker could be very consistent to do provide that comment and sometimes we have no choice but to use a hard structure like that to protect a bank and to ensure that we have that ecological value the goal is to try to use those natural processes as much as possible but at some point you just have to use a hard structure like that just to make sure that everybody is aware these are the three strategies where there's a couple of different options that are on the table for you to consider and provide feedback for as the four goes through and considers your comments does the cost benefit analysis and dives deeper into it they're going to put together a tentatively selected plan which could include different combinations of what you see or they may not choose to pursue an alternative just because it does not fit the project appropriately so you have a wide range from no action at all to some combination of what you've seen in addition to that there's elements for recreation and protective measures which Dan if you would yeah so when we're doing ecosystem restoration is with any of our authorities with flood risk we always have the opportunity after a plan has been selected to try to incorporate recreation features into the project as long as they don't impede upon the purpose of what that project is so we can do things like trails we can do things like fishing piers or bird blinds there's a lot of different things that we can consider and that's one of the things we want to do these round tables as well I think there's actually recreation tables that you can go through and you can recommend some recreation features that you might like to see and then we can consider those to try to figure out if they are compatible with the restoration as well as the need to do that but you know we already have all those right low water crossings are fishing deck sure pedestrian bridge, trails absolutely I mean if there's you know we can think of a wide range of things that are there but this is an ecosystem what's there is sufficient then you can say you don't want anything different we've heard from some residents that they would like for there maybe to improve the walkway or to you know not to make sure that people aren't back in their trucks or their cars up to the banks and fishing off the tailgate those kinds of things if y'all are concerned about those things you need to let us know if you feel like those are the kinds of things that would maybe be opportunities for improvements that y'all would like to see but if you think everything is fine then you can say that as well alright so the next steps we take your comments from here we go back and we fine tune a lot of our alternative development and then a bunch of us will sit around and we'll go through this cost benefit analysis to identify what is within the best use of taxpayers dollars for that restoration that plan is our plan to go forward and present to our leadership after that we'll submit the public document we'll have another public meeting after that to present what that recommended plan going forward is and then we'll complete the feasibility phase of that with a decision document that should come out the fall of next year and then after that the next step would be to wait on funding for the planning the engineering and the design of that project isn't an army corp engineer I don't know what an army corp engineer does I know that Sarah is about the river I've already went to a car show but Sarah is about the river and yet the people that are actually going to do the work the roll call service all that people are people from around here as has been the project all the projects that I've seen in the past I don't understand why the army corp engineer is what exactly is the involvement would you have to explain that so the army corp engineers is authorized to do aquatic ecosystem restoration as well as flood risk management deep draft navigation on the port of Houston the Mississippi river navigation we do recreation on our lakes water supply the corp has a lot of water related authorities so ecosystem restoration is one of those authorities so what we end up doing is we work with non-federal sponsors or local entities on helping them solve some of their water related needs and we do that cost sharing that with for this project it's a 65 federal match with the 35 local sponsor match so we do cost sharing on both the development of what that project will look like as well as the design and the construction we cost share with all of that so we're a funding mechanism we're also a technical expertise to provide that for entities that don't have that expertise we're really lucky to work with Sarah Sarah has a lot of engineering expertise they've got a lot of biological expertise they've been doing this river work for a long time and which is one of the reasons why we depend on them so much for that local expertise knowledge that they have with the community so we rely a lot on them all of the construction people would want to actually do the alternative on work right? it's how that contract mechanism works out but those contracts are open bid to whoever wants to bid on those and then there's a criteria that the court uses as far as the qualification so just just an observation we have 45 minutes left and I think a really important part of this meeting will be the breakout sessions it's a chance for everyone to be here I'm in the time please to that note we really want your written comments you can provide them with the comment cards up front we're doing these breakout workout sessions we're asking for your comments on those and your input on those bad dresses on the cards or comment sheets please and I just wanted to say one thing I'm Suzanne Scott I'm the general manager of the San Antonio River Authority I'm really very glad that everyone is here today but just a couple comments before we get to the table one is obviously we're going through a process we have been looking at restoration on this part of the river for a very long time and we've had various opportunities with neighborhood input to look at this so that's why we're here we've gotten all the players together to try to look at opportunities to protect this river the erosion, the issues that we've seen everything has been talked about here but I want to make sure that y'all understand that as we go through this process if we come up with a plan that this community is not going to support then we're not going to force a project on you that you don't want so please understand that we want to go through a process there are serious issues here that we've identified we want to come up with opportunities to address them that are the best opportunities that we can get the most support from the neighborhood but again, this is part of your project too we're not going to do this without your input, without your support we're not going to push this through you've got a member of the gentleman, Brendan, where are you Brendan he's with Congressman Dawkins office the congressman is not going to want to move forward and encourage funding if his constituents don't feel like this is the right direction but we want to go through the process because we've been talking about this I think since 2006 so it's time for us to figure out if there is something that we can do as a community to address the issues here that's what we're here for so we appreciate very much your input and let's see if we can try to come up with some alternatives that may be different than what we've talked about here today and also address these challenges that we see so thank you all very much for being here we're going to start pretty much all gave me the same idea of what they liked the issues they saw and what was most often discussed so what was most often discussed was preserving the accessibility especially at the wood lawn low water crossing it seems that access to the river in that area is very important to the people it's a place where they feel most connected to the river because they go down and enjoy walking their dogs being able to hear the river and so that was what was most often discussed it seemed as though replacement of the wood lawn low water crossing was the most popular idea expressed by the group there wasn't much concern for the golf course low water crossings but I think it feels as though those are just for the golfers and they don't really use them and then potential issues of course the loss of connectivity I did hear someone mention you know they saw someone pushing some main wheelchair so maybe ADA compliance accessibility desire just to touch feel smell the waterfall over the wood lawn bridge and so very succinct thank you Abigail so the three groups that I spoke with echo the same sentiment it really stood out number one the wood lawn crossing stood out as being very important for a wide variety of reasons historical and cultural it is heavily used as Abigail mentioned by people in pets and so in that pedestrian access element was very important theme through all three groups another theme that was common that folks want to keep some deep pools they don't want to see very drastic change in the water levels the size and scale overall they want to still have a waterfall area at the wood lawn lake in particular but they want to have deeper areas they don't want to lose all the pools and they didn't feel like they had enough information to really say anything about two or three they felt like it was kind of hands off but none of them felt very strongly that they were opposed they weren't necessarily opposed to any change there were comments that they aren't maintained and that there's a need for modification probably on both of those and they're ugly and then another item that was mentioned was safety for any modifications that are made if there are culverts or other ways for the water to go through that they have some sort of safety measure to prevent pets or small kids or whatever from going in and maybe getting stuck so those were the big themes that were some very consistent with Abigail's groups two of my tables preferred the idea of removing both of those tables wanted a parking facility trailhead being requested also by one of the tables near the gate area and two of the tables, the same two were adamant that there not be the option for the widening the maintenance trail take that completely out remove the road out of the pedestrian get rid of the maintenance trail the maintenance access because ultimately the maintenance facility needs to be removed so that was two tables the third table liked all three of the components in that first option they liked removal of avenue A but they also saw the benefit of the expanded maintenance facility and they liked the trail two of the tables the first two that also liked getting rid of the maintenance facility did not want lights on the trail the third wanted low impact lights so we have a little bit of divide with one option seeming to be the most popular but certainly in divide with regard to avenue A for river road no removal of river road for two of the tables for one keep it there was also a notation of the use of the park area and so a couple of the tables wanted to make sure that the vegetation was grasses so that the frisbee etc could be continued but the other table loved the woody area that was in the vicinity would like to see it then out to provide a view and also to control homeless so there was certainly not a consensus on the roadway situation the other side of the room for the transportation going forward to avenue A one of the issues that was brought up was basically city participation in the conversation as well as the golf course and getting that ball rolling and seeing what we could actually do as far as widening the trail and their side and then also one of the issues that was brought up was the joining of the river if moving the trail you're eliminating people being closer to the river enjoying the river one of the issues that was also brought up was running the road potentially the golf course between the greens to new maintenance on that side lack of parking or conveniently closed parking was also another one that was brought up one positive was elimination of cars along the river and you've got potentially using boulders or some other natural looking nature like that to keep vehicles away from that one idea that was brought up also was half access or mixed access so basically having vehicles go approximately halfway of the trail or so and then vehicles stopping there having some parking on the opposite side from the river so that you're not having the vehicles close by the river and then also having a pedestrian trail after that point was another idea that was brought up the main issue that came on both the parking issue and then moving on to river road the general consensus was that people did not want to get rid of river road some of the issues that were brought up were the fact that may not have actually been a full street in the past may have just been a little alley or cut through so it's not really restoring to a natural fashion and then also the traffic congestion that could be caused and then people trying to beat lights and going through neighborhoods and then traffic bottlenecking, yeah, so traffic was the main issue that was brought up for that and then going back to avenue A also another issue that for us to mention was parking in the neighborhoods and people driving to the neighborhoods more. Thanks Josh. So I have been through speaking to everyone about this side of the road talking about recreation potentials for either adding new features or for German what was there. There was a general consensus that the key component of the river through here is the peace and quiet and the natural state and it's really important to the neighborhood to maintain that natural state regardless of what improvements or alternatives we choose that's very important to the community maintaining birding, bird watching walking, running with your dog. A lot of that activity occurs and we'd like to maintain that but as was mentioned earlier we don't want it to become the next river walk so limiting the lighting and limiting the signage there's also some comments too maybe add some select locations and some signs that either talk about the historical nature of the river or highlight some of the cultural or history of the ecosystem or identifying some of these natural grasses that will be potentially restoring but it's all very limited or selective because the natural state of it is really important so in general schema things not the community feel a strong need to add additional features fishing decks or more trails really what's there now is functioning well for the neighborhood and just maintaining the state of it First of all I want to thank everyone for all of your input and your comments it was great to listen to you all tonight. Your voices are very important so thank you just like Christine had mentioned before some of the major things that we were discussing on our tables was parking itself. There's parking issues I guess throughout the whole stages that we're talking about but we do definitely it's got to be a small parking no parking garages or anything of that nature but limited the parking size itself. The walking trails of course is one of the big things the walking trails was there's something there but we want to go ahead and put something in there and prove what's out there but definitely there's not one concrete pavement type of thing like crushed rock or whatever that they do not want pavement maybe because of the fact that they do not want biking going through the area itself too much biking traffic would create a lot of traffic there itself. Some of the other things that we're talking about was possibly adding some more access points to the area itself there was some 50-50 type of thing that we want to go ahead and add some fishing piers or decks that makes sure some others do not but definitely you need something to kind of look at in the general areas there itself. Some of the other things that we're concerned was with the lighting as well but they want to be limiting the hours of access there itself kind of like with the city parks app right now where you can only access the park from you know from certain time and if you're in there then hopefully policing that area so that they try to eliminate that type of activity going on in that to be respectful to the property owners that are there itself. So definitely want to look at that itself. They did talk about making sure that the walking trails are ADA accessibility itself making sure that we have to consider having that place in there in itself and then improving the areas with the walking trails and so forth we got to look at the trash aspect of it there's a lot of heavy trash in there so improving anything in there whether it be the walking trails or parking whatever it is you need to look at that trash aspect of it. Definitely want to keep the area clean with any type of improvement out there so. Say something to the birdies. Oh I'm sorry thank you for reminding me of it. So they do want to look at the birdies itself they want to go and put them those observation days and bird accessibility but one comment that was brought up that there was some issue with some feral cats in the area so handling that type of situation first it's going to be very important to go in with those bird observation points out there because you know without taking care of those cats we wouldn't have any birds around to be able to enjoy that. But also in staging over a three to four year period and away from migration times I represent the we're all a long society and we do a lot of there are walks in that area for instruction and it's a really it's called a hotspot it's where people come and to see more birds coming in there are wood ducks so have a gentle can when it comes to not just come in with bulldozers it's migration time absolutely and that will be something that we would definitely look at absolutely thank you thank you all so much for your participation tonight it was a very lively conversation we have your comments I would like to remind you that you can submit written comments to either on both the Forbes and hand it to a Sarah or a Forbes staff member we can also submit an email to the river road ER email address that is either on a comment form or on the small business part for the project to if you something so we're going to break and if you still have questions please do not be afraid to come talk to us and we can have individual conversations with you just one important general question we have 30 day period for public comment the last couple weeks are over the holidays and so I would ask if there's any way that we could get a consolidated version of all the comments right with 30 day period to then understand what is missing to then make a comment can you address that process normally the draft environmental assessment will have the comments and then time to see all those is there a way to get the video recording prior to 30 days I don't have control but I think that you know we hear this from you that you all have a process we talked about this but we need response back from all of the input it was an aggregation of it from you all why are there 30 days 30 days then you would have 30 days but we did this in August and we didn't hear anything until last week we need you know we need to have that response too typically we don't respond prior to the public meeting we did that because we wanted to address those questions because a lot of those comments are things that we're already considering but we need to be back for our feedback I was just going to say the comments that have been collected from here today at this meeting are those going to be compiled in any sort of publicly available fashion just the things that were noted down I didn't know how those were so the comments provided on these public forms or an email and stuff that's going to be in our draft environmental assessment the official written comments and we usually kind of group those together single anybody out your name's not going to be with your comment or anything like that group those in similar categories or respond like that but yeah the things that if you're not writing it down for us we can't do all the verbal the notes on the map what we'll do is we'll compile all of the we'll transcribe and compile all those notes and we'll provide it to the 14 comment so it'll be in their list to respond I'd like to make an announcement about the recording today so now past has been recording all of this and it will be available in a couple of days for all of us to watch so they provide a very important community service and neighbors got together in order to make this possible today so we would like to request that anybody that would like to help support this important service contribute to now cast and your donations will be doubled between now and the end of the year and I have the information to make a one it's not going to be the I.S. it's just going to be an environmental assessment and that would come out with that late fall 2020 date are y'all expecting to do the I.S.? No I'm curious I don't know what we have 30 days to respond to what I'm not sure what we're responding to and I feel like it's skipping 30 days is just an extension of tonight if something occurs to you that you didn't feel you got out that 30 days is just a an extension of hey let's get it in there and it just provides us with an easy way to say here's one bunch of comments that we're providing at this state at this state of the project so we're responding then to the maps that we start from there are we also responding to things like the other questions we have that hasn't been doubled yes please provide that in comment into the email and I'd like to ask you one more thing and that is that last two meetings August and today the neighborhood has provided this video for everybody's purpose and I'd like to know if you all will provide it for the rest of them to provide the forecast that's certainly a conversation Brian we can we can look into our project and see if we have the availability I know that we did not at the beginning of our fiscal year plan to video public meetings we generally have not done that on other projects but we will consider it my page is at the front of the room I'll send it out