 hearing about use of indigenous knowledge in work planning. So to kick us off, we're going to hear about the 2023 integrated delivery schedule and expectations for CERP progress. And this is with Tabitha Elkington of the core in Mindy Parrot. I think Tabitha is joining us remotely. Just before we kind of dive into some of the questions that are outlined on the agenda, we'll go ahead and do a couple, just to mention a couple of quick introductory things about the IDS itself. So if you could go to the next slide Mindy. All right, great. So today we're going to be providing an overview of the 2023 integrated delivery schedule or IDS will mainly focus our presentation around the questions that are kind of outlined on that agenda, but just a couple opening notes about the IDS itself or integrated delivery schedule and what this document is and what it's used for. So it's an optimized schedule and sequencing strategy for planning, design and construction that's based on engineering and science. It's also a pretty significant communications tool for our program that kind of helps both the program across the program and members of the public kind of understand where we've headed in the last or where we've been in the last couple of years where we're going out into the future. And it kind of brings predictability to project budgeting and decision-making by having that kind of laid out in the IDS. And also serves the purpose of the master sequencing and implementation plan that's described in the original CERT plan or the yellow book. So it fills that function that was originally envisioned in the yellow book and it's also updated annually. So this is a document we refresh every year in partnership with the Water Management District, which is why Mindy and I are presenting together today. We work on updating this document jointly and it's updated through a public process in consultation with the South Florida Ecosystem Restoration Task Force and its working group. So next I'm gonna kind of tackle, we're taking some of the questions out of sequence here, but next I'm going to cover how prior IDS budget estimates have compared with actual budgets and implications for progress. And part of kind of getting to that explanation or a bit of it, I'll kind of step through what some of these budget numbers mean that you see on that front page of the IDS. So there are two tables I'm gonna be talking through in particular, one at kind of the top right and then another that's kind of right above the top of all of the project schedules on this front page. So the front page of the IDS shows investments in the surfer program through 2022. That's that first table on the upper right-hand side. It kind of breaks down the funds spent to date as of 2022. So you can see in black, we've got federal investments from the core and DOI. And then we also have non-federal investments from the state of Florida. And kind of as you can see, we've got the breakdown of kind of some pre-surp pieces and then also things that are CNSF SERP projects. And total South Florida Ecosystem Restoration Funding to date is just over $8 billion. And then you can also see below their investments to date and Herbert Hoover-Dyke and Restoration Strategies and ECP. And then if you go to the next slide. So this you'll see kind of, this is the bar that appears at the top of the project schedules on page one. And I'm gonna take a minute to kind of break down what these numbers are and kind of where they've come from and highlight a couple of changes in recent years about how we approach building these numbers that are included in the IDS. So just kind of starting off, FY22 and FY23 show funds that were actually received. So those are kind of known amounts that were received and those were our budgets. FY24 reflects the president's budget and the governor's budget. And FY25 and beyond are projections based on the optimized schedule in the IDS. So if you were to go to look at back years of the IDS, that's kind of how we've done that breakdown is the first couple of years are what we know we've received recently. The next year is, and then from that year out are kind of projections based on that optimized schedule after we've got the kind of what we anticipate from the president's budget and governor's budget. So this, the IDS itself, as I mentioned, is kind of an optimized schedule. And these funds this year, one of the changes we made this year is we assume that we'll get full funding in the year of a construction contract award. That's kind of shifted the numbers a bit compared to last year. And we kind of wanted to illustrate what that looks like given that currently we only have incremental funding, which would allow us to award a contract and then have funds for that in kind of out years versus needing to have all of the funds in the year a contract is awarded. So kind of an example of this is an FY24 that kind of represents the award of a large construction contract for the EAA reservoir. That is incrementally funded. So those dollars for that construction contract will are kind of distributed across the years of construction. And then it also represents the acceleration of three large construction part contracts that are funded by the bipartisan infrastructure law. And those contracts were fully funded for full construction in FY24. So rather than distributing the cost across the years of construction we're fully accounting for those bill contracts in FY24. So hopefully that kind of explains one piece of how those out years look and why. And also just to note, we starting in 2019 kind of shifted the way we come up with those out year projections before they were kind of constrained and a bit more averaged across the years. And then in 2019 we made the decision to kind of show it reflected based on that optimized schedule and what the engineering said you could do. So there's been some ways we've kind of changed in the last year in terms of showing an assumption that we would not have incremental funding except for the one piece we have authorization for incremental funding. So that's one change that was made this year. And then in 2019 we had kind of shifted the way we projected those out years to kind of reflect the optimized schedule included in the IDS itself. So hopefully that's not too confusing but just trying to explain how we get those projected numbers past the numbers that are either known or based on those estimated figures in the president's budget and governor's budget respectively for the state and federal budgets. A couple of other things to note when you look at these top line numbers that this really represents we've had kind of unprecedented amounts of funding for the last few years that have helped increase kind of accelerate program implementation. We had a billion dollars from the bipartisan infrastructure law. We've had unprecedented amounts of funding in addition to that from both the federal and state side for the last few years. So that's also a shift if you were to go back and looked at some of the kind of further back IDS and their top line budget estimates. But of course, once you get those projections those are just projections and what our actual budgets are dependent on either the state legislature or Congress. So just kind of noting that's kind of an obvious these here but in terms of going back and comparing those projections to what money we actually get there's a couple changes I mentioned in terms of how we calculate those out years and then of course knowing that the final budget numbers is just going to be dependent on what we get from the state legislature and from Congress. Next, oh and sorry, this just shows the breakdown for FY 25 showing what the president's budget was for construction what the governor's budget recommended budget was and then showing that the billion dollars under construction for the bipartisan infrastructure law. So that's the actual breakdown for FY 25 between those different pieces that went into that top line number. All right, so next we're going to move on to the next question around project schedules and like kind of looking at the large scale view of where restoration is headed and I'll hand it over to Mindy for this piece. Yeah, so as you can see if you put the IDS on a slide there you can't see anything. So that's why I brought you a handout so you can take a look at it with me. So yeah, I'm going to talk a little bit about like the sausage making of the IDS and what affects schedules and what we're doing when we're updating it every year. And as Tabitha said, we update it every year. It's a month's project process that we go through to make sure we have all the information correctly that goes into the IDS although it is a snapshot in time, right? So this is based on the information we have and follow this year, things change, right? Schedules change all the time. And why do schedules change? There's a number of reasons why things might change. And some of them have to do with policy and budgets and others just have to do with the projects themselves, right? So, funding might be available. Right now, lots of funding is available. So we are putting as many projects and designing construction as we can and that's reflected on the IDS for 2023. There's over 10 projects between the district and the core that are scheduled to start construction in FY24 and several more in 25. Also, sometimes funding isn't available. We've seen that in previous years where things have had to be shelved. So that's something that can change the schedule. Cost share balance. Another, something that's not on the IDS is the cost share balance between the district and the core. So that's one thing that we have to consider when we're thinking about who's doing what because the district and the core have a programmatic cost share agreement for CERT projects. And some of these are not CERT projects but most of them are. And the CERT projects, the state need to say just a little bit ahead of the 50-50 with the core to keep everything on track. And so we do look at that and if we have to make a shift like we did this past year, the district took on a couple more projects that the core was originally going to build and that's reflected in here. A couple of examples are the Indian River Lagoon south reservoir for the C23-24 area. That was originally going to be constructed by the core but because we have the funding and we have the ability, we are putting that one out further, bringing it forward and it also helps us on our cost share because it is an over 50,000 acre foot reservoir. So that's another example. We also have to think about things like what the PIRs say about sequencing which pieces have to be in place before others. Operational planning, we think about that because operational planning and we'll talk about that on the slide. We have to have the operational plans in place when the features are done constructing so that we can operate them to achieve the benefits of the project. And then things happen, right? Planning processes get extended like in LOSM, right? We might have a change to the TSP that things might take longer than we expect or construction might take longer or any number of things to take longer than we expect. We might come up with a better design for a feature and then we have to maybe document that through a NEPA process or design documentation process and all those things are affecting schedules in some way. And then we have projects that are in the central Everglades in public lands and then we have projects that are in Miami Dade County or in Martin St. Lucie counties where we have to build the projects in and around where people live and work, right? And there's all sorts of complications when you have those kind of projects because we have to have utility relocations and agreements with landowners and agreements with counties and there's a whole lot of other work behind the scenes that has to happen before we build those. So that's what some of the things that go into making the schedule. And so if you took the schedule and you looked at last year's schedule next to it, you could see that something shifted but we are doing everything we can to keep everything on track and ongoing. And we also last year started Low Car which you'll hear about in a little bit and that was added to the bottom of the schedule this year. So that's new and if it's authorized and it goes into design then it will be added. I don't know how we're running out of space but it will be added to the schedule and we will see how that plays out and what its schedule will be. So part of the reason we updated every year is because of all the different things that affect how those schedules work. So with that, I will see what next slide is. I will toss it back over to Talitha for discussion of the page. Thanks, Minnie. And then do you wanna also make sure you hit on the couple of things that'll be operating within the next few years? I can take that too. Yeah, I'm sorry. So we wanted to also mention, one of the questions was, what are we looking forward to having completed and operated in a big picture in the next two years? And well, we have the SEP new water seepage barrier wall that will be done in a, it's mostly done. It'll be done very, very soon. We are very close to completing within the next two years a picky industry and restoration project and also Biscayne Bay coastal wetlands. And so as those projects complete, their operating manuals are being updated. They'll go into what we call the operation testing and monitoring period. And as we work very hard to make sure that once we have something built that we're able to operate in some capacity so it's giving us benefits until the rest of the project is ready. So those are some of the major ones that will be done in the next two years. And as I said, we've got many more projects starting construction very soon. All right, thanks, Mindy. So with that, I'll kind of jump in and wrap up with the last couple of questions. The first is discuss contingencies for SEP and SEP progress so the committee can understand ripple effects if delays occur. So kind of as we mentioned, we're at least updating the IDS on an annual basis to kind of reflect what's possible in terms of the engineering and accounting for any shifts in schedule, either opportunities to move things forward or where things may slow down, accounting for any changes and budgets compared to what we might have anticipated and kind of using that to help guide our work. But just in terms of the big picture, there's an urgent need for this work. If delays occur, we can expect to see the same types of ecological damage that we've seen in recent years and in the past in terms of kind of continuing to put strain on a system that can sometimes have too much or not enough water in different locations. So you could see the types of ecological impacts we're familiar with, like tree islands being impacted by water causing erosion or vegetation change, seeing Lake Okeechobee impacted by high water levels and not having enough submerged aquatic vegetation to support the fisheries and other parts of that ecosystem, seeing extreme fires and the Western Everglades of soils continue to be too dry or seeing land loss in the coastal fringes if they're kind of not able to keep up with the pace of sea level rise. So we can expect to see those types of ecological impacts, but what we're doing kind of the best we can with at the moment is using operational flexibility and operations when we have water to send places we need it to kind of work with the existing system. And then also kind of as we are building these projects do operational planning, so we're ready to operate pieces as they're completed and they can come online and be integrated into the system and provide additional capacity and flexibility. So we're kind of moving forward as much as we can with the funds and authorizations that we have it at the time and then trying to make sure that as we get those pieces completed, we're able to use them and have that extra flexibility in the system to either store more water or move it to different places depending on what's completed. And also just kind of a note that like the plan, the yellow work plan and SERP as we're kind of implementing it, these restoration projects are designed to be interconnected. You need to reduce seepage into urban areas to be able to raise water levels in the central Everglades. You need to decompartmentalize the central Everglades so you can flow water across it. You need to raise the Tammy and me trail. Also as part of making sure that water can flow south, making sure that water is clean that's flowing around the system, having storage so you can store water when it's not needed, provide it when it is needed, having the storage both kind of north and south of Lake Okeechobee to have water to flow south and east and west to try and avoid damaging discharges to the Everglades. So all of these pieces will kind of provide the largest benefits once they're all complete and can work in concert. But until then we're trying to take advantage of incremental improvements to kind of reduce the severity of those types of ecological damaging events that I mentioned at the beginning where we can. So also just to note a couple of key dependencies in terms of the sequencing of projects. For example, the C-111 impoundment portion of Broward County water preserve areas needs to be in place before SEP South benefits can be fully realized. That dependency is noted in the SEP Chiefs Report. Southern portions of SEP also have to be built before the EA Reservoir north of there can provide the water at storing south towards Everglades National Park. SEP New Water will provide seepage management that will help support that increased water flow through towards Everglades National Park. And then Tammy and me trail next steps is important to again get that water flow moving. So those are just a couple pieces that are connected to each other that are important. So with that I'll move on to the last question and kind of wrap up so we hopefully have some time for questions. The last question is discuss what's left that's not scheduled on the IDS and kind of talk a bit about that and what's already underway and what's to come. So just kind of noting as we move through these slides this shows the operational planning schedule and then this I'll focus on, yeah. So if you are interested in the sequencing of operational planning and how it matches up with those project schedules on the front, you can look at this table which is on page two and see how we're moving different pieces of operational planning forward so that when those things are constructed we're ready to start using them and implementing them into overall operations. So next slide, now I'll kind of focus on if you look at page two on the back page kind of the right hand side you'll see this large map and this has a breakdown of all of the original yellow book components and shows their status. So this gives you a really quick snapshot of how much is kind of underway and in what phase and how much is left to consider. So right now we've got 32% of yellow book components are either completed or phase one implemented. 18% are either an authorized design and construction phase 8% are in planning and feasibility phase and 26% are pending. 4% have been deauthorized but that 26% is kind of that piece of the pie that remains for consideration whether or not it's feasible and if we wanna move it forward. So that's just kind of a quick high level snapshot of kind of how much is left to do but I also wanted to highlight that a big chunk of those pending projects will be taken up for consideration in the next planning study we have queued up which will be Southern Everglades and you can see the timeframe for that on page one at the bottom of the IDS it shows our planning studies both ongoing efforts that are already underway like Western Everglades and BBCR but then also Southern Everglades which is kind of the next in the queue that we'd like to pick up and look at. So of the remaining components you can see that we've got an awful lot of them included in Southern Everglades. This is going to be a large study area WERP and SEP are kind of the two other largest chunks but Southern Everglades also has a large potential Southern or a study area and picks up a lot of these remaining pieces. And we decided to move Southern Everglades forward as the next potential study kind of largely informed by the work that Recover is doing and that Recover report card showed that the part of the system that was in kind of the poorest health was the Southern part of the system. So that was kind of the impetus to look at this and look at what components we might wanna consider next. So I will note that these are just the possible components that may be included in that study but these are kind of likely what we will look at when we take it up. And once we've moved that forward that remaining 26% will shrink pretty significantly and we kind of take things up in these planning studies as we go along but just noting that like really the bulk of these components will be evaluated or have already been evaluated and even more will be have been evaluated for feasibility after the Southern Everglades study. So in terms of that, what else remains I think kind of getting to the magnitude question if you look at the yellow book and kind of some of the original estimates for water storage for Everglades restoration a big chunk of that would have been accomplished through ASR we've had a bit of a delay in terms of implementing ASR and have some kind of ongoing scientific investigations that we'll talk about a little more this afternoon but that's kind of one piece to think about where the original magnitude, you know like as we've implemented that we've had to make some adjustments and take a little more time to evaluate things as we've kind of gotten to beyond feasibility and looking at implementation. So with that, I can wrap up from there and hopefully we'll have some time for questions. Questions from the committee? Thank you. Next, we'll start with an engineer as well. One more quick question. I'm going to turn it on to you. There we go. How's that? Better? Better. Sorry. What we also heard yesterday is that the bounty of the bill money, the bipartisan infrastructure along money was not necessarily evenly spread across some of the other agencies and entities who have to permit the construction or study some of the study work. And I'm specifically referencing Fish and Wildlife Service, ESA, Park Service Coordination, Tribal Coordination, perhaps even some state coordination that's necessary. My question is is there as I know you guys are under a lot of pressure now to spend the money and get these projects going and rightfully so. How are you handling this increase in the permitting requirements? Because it does impact your time of getting these things in place. Don't we turn it up? I think in terms of, go ahead. Well, from the, from the R2 agency side, we work very closely with the state and federal agencies and we try to be very upfront with the schedules and coordination for those projects. From the funding side, I can't, I don't really have the ability to answer that question, but we do try to work through, programmatic permitting things if they're available. We also have to consider the tribes review in that process and the time that they need. And so, yeah, it can be difficult for them to keep up with us, but hopefully that message will be heard in Washington and funding will begin to flow that direction. So you need some more money. Thank you. We'll direct it to those agencies specifically, right? Like we can't send the money elsewhere, right? And I would just also add, having the IDS itself for, obviously we're not responsible for other agencies budgeting priorities that are completing some of those additional reviews, but they could at least have the IDS as a tool showing here's what we have teed up. Here's where we know we're going to have work. That could be something they could use and consider in their budget requests, but I think that's a question that's better for someone at DOI who's involved in the budgeting process to answer for the Fish and Wildlife Coordination Act pieces or ESA consultation. I think you'd have to ask the agencies responsible for some of those other permits and reviews to kind of talk about their budget implications. I have a question about the cost share issue. So I know this was a big issue eight, 10 years ago, and then it resolved through some project partnership agreement. So sometimes it's not how much money the state has spent, but it's how much is tied up in a plan that hasn't gotten a sign off on it. But I'm looking at budgets ahead seeing this BIL money and it sounds like you're already at a level of concern. And I'm wondering how you anticipate cost share to affect the ability to keep spending large federal dollars in the years ahead? Well, so in the past, right? The state was ahead of the core, the federal side in terms of cost share. And that was largely because the state went out and bought a lot of real estate that was needed for the projects that were foreseen. So eventually with these large slugs of funds coming from the, for the federal side, BIL, I think the Inflation Reduction Act also, or is that the same one? I don't remember. There were two of them sent a lot of money toward the federal side. And so when we started to look at that and that's something that we have spreadsheets for and we look at closely between us, like how it might play out in the future. We look at the IDS, it represents unrestrained funding to get the schedule, right? But we don't necessarily get unrestrained funding. So that's part of the adjustment every year as we look at what do we have, what resources do we have to work with? And then the priorities might come to bear at that point between leadership. So in looking out, would you say the 22, 23 if you're actually budgeted are the ones that are super reliable and 24 and beyond or what you would hope for, but you might have these costs for everything that may impact or in the near term, like 2024, is that a number that takes, we said that was based on request. So 2024 is where it reflects the construction of the schedule that's shown. But the slide, we do have the actual 2024 budgets and that's why we had the slide in here because we didn't report it that way on the IDS this year, but it is the actuals, right? So up and through this fiscal year, which is FY24, we have the actual amount of money that were budgeted for both sides. And beyond that, it is what we need to accomplish the schedule based on the constraints of how projects have to be funded. And a couple of quick pieces to add to the cost share balance question too, I think continuing to move forward those agreements for cost share crediting for projects is important. We just signed a new cost share or a pre-partnership credit agreement that allows the state to move forward with potentially some pieces of work. We're trying to, there are some pieces of projects that the state was able to take on and start doing construction on that previously the core had planned to do construction. So I think we are constantly kind of evaluating where there's flexibility to manage that cost share balance and keep things kind of balanced and on the right side of the ledger for the state. So, President, you're not concerned at this point that cost share credit, like you have enough tools in the toolbox to manage that, because this is where it gets frustrating. Like sometimes the state's in the lead, sometimes the feds are in the lead, but you can never let the feds be in the lead of $1 more than 50% total credit. And so, which is sometimes procedurally challenging, even if, you know, because as you know, money doesn't come evenly, but are you feeling confident that you have enough tools or is there a concern in the years ahead? Well, I think we're pretty confident for the next few years. Hopefully each other agrees. Yeah, no, I agree. And I think we're like, as part of this annual update of the IDS, we update that cost share analysis as well. And we look kind of for a balance, I think it's five years out. So kind of making sure within a certain average we're doing okay. And when we do that analysis, we can kind of look for places to tweak things and make sure the state is staying a little bit ahead of us. So I think for the last round of analysis we did for the next few years, we feel confident that we're in a good place. But, you know, for those projections in the out years, it really just depends on the funding we receive and then how we have to kind of manage things from there. But again, I think it's something we do and partnership and strategically plan together to make sure we're able to work as a team to move things forward as quickly as possible with the resources we have. Any more questions for Mindy and Tabitha? Okay, thank you both. So next we're moving on. We'll hear from Zula Mae Vega-Liriano and she's going to focus on progress and plans for storage in the north of Lake Okeechobee. And this will cover Lake Okeechobee watershed restoration project, aquifer storage and recovery and Lake Okeechobee component A Rajivore. And committee members, sorry I forgot to give you an opportunity to introduce yourselves. So when you ask questions, please take that opportunity to do that yourselves. Thank you. Well, Zula Mae is getting set up. I just want to remind people there's a sign up for public comment. We have public comment at 2.30. So if you can sign up by 2.15 outside on the front table. Perfect. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is, good afternoon, everyone. State council committee and participants. My name is Zula Mae Vega-Liriano and I'm the current chief of the watershed planning section in the Army Corps of Engineers. And what we do is really to focus on studies in South Florida that are focusing on inland problems. This is within the aquatic ecosystem restoration purview and also inland flood risk management. So today I will present to you the agenda topic for this section, which is information to address some of the concerns on the topics that are in the SIPSERP agenda about the North Lake Okeechobee. And specifically I will disclose it within that paragraph in three parts. So the first question to describe the rationale for needing to make additional major changes to the third draft LOPE PIR EIS. And we will be focusing on that information in slide five for reference. There's also in that same bullet, please provide an update on the state of the latest proposed plan of LOPE and how those features will contribute to the regional project objectives and affects the lake storage conditions for a lake Okeechobee and the hydrologic conditions, timing and flow volumes for the northern estuaries and south of the lake. That information will be presented in slide number six. And what is the vision for ASR within the project footprint that will be covered in slide five more as a talking point. And I will do my best to highlight the answers to these questions. On this slide to really to introduce the topic, I know that the Northern Lake Okeechobee is listed in the CISREP agenda with three kind of components. So I want to talk a little bit about that. In LOPE when we started in 2016, we started with above ground storage. We started with wetland restoration. And we also started with aquifer recolor ASR wells, right? And although the above ground storage was removed from LOPE, South Florida and the core are still working on authorizing the same features but pursued under different mechanisms. And in this slide, I'm trying to present the different mechanisms. So it's clear for everyone. So it's really a split between LOPE and LOPE, the first being state funded under the section 203 and that's LOPE which right now is targeting award of 2024. And it will be completed by this state. And it's really focused on above ground only. Then on the second one, we have the LOPE component which is cost shared. And in this particular effort, we're focusing on kind of wetland onlys and it's targeting on 2024. And this effort will be completed by South Florida Water Management District and USACE or the core. And as I mentioned, it's really focused on the wetland component. And also as part of work, we have this cost share piece which is the ASRs, which there's no targeted water right now. And I will explain why through my presentation. And again, it will be completed by both agencies. And as I mentioned, it's focused on ASR. So I just want to point out that my presentation today will be focused on the last two efforts which are the wetland restoration and the ASRs which are components of LOPE. And following my briefing, I believe Elise Keneha will be talking more about the section 203, which is the above ground storage. I'm sorry, perfect. Thank you for bearing with me. So LOPE, what are the objectives? So before talking about the objectives, I want just to give a summary on what the purpose of the project is. So the purpose of Lake Okeechobee Watershed restoration project is to increase water storage capacity in the watershed, resulting in improved Lake Okeechobee water levels, improve quantity, timing and distribution of water to the Northern estuaries, improve water supply for existing legal Lake Okeechobee service area or LOSA users and to restore wetlands within the project area. So LOPE will achieve these goals and objectives by reducing high volume freshwater releases from Lake Okeechobee by utilizing aquifer storage and recovery wells or ASRs. And in addition, LOPE provides resiliency to potential changes in future climatic conditions, restoring about 5,900 acres of wetlands along the historic Kissimmee River. And also provides recreational facilities at multiple sites in the wetland restoration sites. So just giving that purview, really the objectives of LOPE are focused on ecosystem restoration and that's covered by the improved the Lake Okeechobee stage conditions and improved these charges to the Northern estuaries, the objectives of ecology, increased spatial extent and functionality of aquatic wildlife habitat within the Lake Okeechobee and the watershed and then the water supply aspect which is increased water supply and basically that summarized on those three major categories. On the next slide, we will be focusing on some of the questions that are to be covered in the agenda. And before I want to walk through a little bit of the background, right? So after the release and review of the LOPE PIR EIS in August 2020, the LOPE draft report of the Chiefs of Engineers and the USACE determined a revision to the document that recommended plan included above ground storage, wetland restoration and ASRs was wanted, Warren. There was some concerns that were brought up forward by the stakeholders about acceptability. This triggered the need for a second release of the draft PIR EIS in February 2022. And this release include the removal of the WAF and 25 collocated ASRs which were associated to this wetland attenuation feature. It also highlighted the ASR science plan and included costs for ASR treatment and ASR science plan itself. So one of the questions of CISREP is related to the rationale for needing to make additional major changes in the third draft LOPE PIR. Review comments received from February 2022 resulted in the need of detailed analysis of environmental effects and aquifer resources including potential effects of nutrients in the recharged water going into the aquifer, the potential for mobilization of arsenic and other constituents already in the aquifer, methylation of mercury and the potential for bio-clogging as a result of nutrient introduction. And also additional information about ASRs implementation in general and the governance structure, which is a phase approach which includes design and construction activities paired with scientific investigations detailed in the ASR science plan. Propose ASRs closers and this is to target some of the other question of the last question on that paragraph. These proposed ASR closers that are currently included in the plan locations are based on findings from the 2015 CISREP ASR regional study. And however, these locations are conceptual and maybe adjusted based on the results of exploratory testing and the whole ASR science plan and the additional information that we're currently collecting. So now we're going to cover the basically the second point in that paragraph about low benefits. So low can facilitate any real flexibility in the timing and distribution of water in the lake to the north and estuaries and throughout the Lake Okeechobee watershed. Water can be stored during wet times to reduce damaging the high lake stages and later be releasing to the lake to reduce the impacts of low stages during dry times. And as you can see in the slide, the storage component by low really increases the amount of time that the lake stage levels are within the ecological preferred stage envelope. And also captures and this is basically that increase in the amount of time Lake Okeechobee is within the ecological preferred stage envelope is covering our first objective that was presented earlier in the presentation. It also cap, sure. Just a clarifying question. When you say LORP, are you saying LORP with ASR but not LOCAR or are you saying LORP with just the wetland features? No, LOCAR, sorry. LORP includes the wetland and the ASRs. Yes. But do you have to get it authorized as you have to get it authorized with just the wetland features separately if you're going to put that in Word of 2024? So we currently the PIR will have, the PIR EIS will have the information for both but the ASRs will be, we will clarify in the report that we're still gathering information and it's pending, the authorization will be pending on that additional information that we're gathering as we move along. So that's why we're presenting to you the benefits as a whole. That's why at the beginning of my presentation I clarify that everything that you see in this presentation is basically telling the story about the wetland restoration features plus the ASRs. In the second bullet is targeting the second objective for the project and basically is showing how we can capture about 5,273 acre feet of water from flowing to the Atlantic Ocean in the San Luisi and 7,495 acre feet of water flowing to the Gulf of Mexico in the Kalusahashi on annual average annual. And really the combination of both results or represents a 21% reduction of flows to the Northern estuaries. In addition, the third bullet is really targeting the third objective that was presented early in this presentation which is to provide the restoration of wetlands and public recreation. And the fourth bullet is really targeting the fourth objective which is to reduce water supply cutbacks volumes by about 35%. And it is important to note that the full realization of benefits are pending additional science as I explained earlier from the USAC Engineering and Research Development Center or ERDIC for short. And as conditions of the South, to answer the question about conditions South of the lake, I just want to clarify that the future with our project for loop assumes set in place and assumes the same condition with the alternative plan. So that's how it is tied. The condition is not changing and that was basically almost like a set point for this project. And as of the overall benefits to the Lake of Kashobi watershed, the additional flow car will result in an increasing benefits in overall. Just wanted to mention that that's how everything is tied. So the low path forward SAJ or the core has requested additional resources to revise the final PIR EIS, the rod and prepare the SHIFT report for wetland restoration components. So this is basically to including in the report that additional data, scientific data is needed in order to pursue the ASR component. Also the scope of this additional time for resources includes a revision in the project costs or project cost updates and the recertification and also includes internal and external coordination. As you can see as part of also the plan is just to go to that first report on the wetland with the emphasis on the wetland restoration targeted for water 2024. And in order to do this, we need to complete a final PIR EIS. And right now we started it for early spring. And then we will need to come back with the second report for the ASRs which we don't have a specific timeline right now because it's pending additional science from ERDIC. And just to finalize, and I know that it's difficult to read on the screen, but it's really to show how all these components are pieces of a bigger piece of puzzle. So if you look at Lake Okeechobee watershed in general, all these ongoing parallel efforts will work together to meet the general objective for the whole watershed. And just to reiterate a little bit as mentioned before, the additional scientific data that has been collected in order to reduce overall ASRs uncertainties is part of this puzzle. These data will look at the water quality uncertainties in the Florida aquifer resulting from the treatment technology and operations of ASRs wells. And we'll continue to address uncertainties identified in the 2015 National Research Council review of the ASR regional study final technical data report. And just for, I know it's difficult to see here. So at the top left, we're just highlighting kind of like a big summary, like a high level summary of low car, which has been lead by South Florida Water Management District. Then at the top right corner, you will see the Lake Okeechobee watershed, which is really targeting two main components of the yellow book, which is component GG, which is the ASRs and also the OPE, which is focusing on the wetland restorations and basically the strategy of this space approach. And then on the lower left and right side is basically the overall companion of the ASR efforts under Erdick, the scientific effort, which is right now break down in basically two pieces and we'll come together to inform Lope. And that's my last slide. Any questions? Great job. Yeah, so the benefits you showed, or Lord, does that include from ASR as well? Yes, sir. It's wetlands and ASRs. And did the analysis you did, did that include the new operations plan for Kissimmee River that's soon gonna be operating? Does that affect those wetlands? No, so it's an interesting thing. This planning studies, we need to kind of set a baseline in time, right? So the assumptions are basically set when we started the project around 2016. And includes some of the changes, but not necessarily identical as how we're seeing it now. So that will be part of those aspects, operational aspects are picked up by operation projects that will be increments throughout the years as soon as new infrastructure comes in line. So it looks like on your schedule, you intend to complete the PIR EIS in 2024. And that's for the wetland features and ASR? Yes, sir. So just to clarify, the PIR EIS will have both components, but the emphasis will be for the wetland component. And we will just highlight in the PIR EIS that the authorization of ASRs is pending additional data that we're gathering. Okay, it seems to, the project relies very heavily on ASR and to have a PIR EIS prior to finishing the science around ASR seems to be in a peculiar order. I think is we see it as like a phase approach, like an implementation phase approach. The wetlands right now are the pieces that have, we're more certain and we can just move forward. So why hindering the construction of the wetland restorations and start that process while we wait on gathering more information on the ASR component? So that is how both of our agencies or at least in my perspective, we're seeing it right now. But we definitely, as soon as we receive the additional resources and we dig into this effort, we're going to coordinate all the language that needs to be included in that PIR EIS for WADA 2024 to make sure everything is clear and that we can proceed as intended. But do you ever separate the benefits? Because you're putting all your benefits in which probably largely derived from ASR and those are the ones with uncertainty. So you're selling part of the project based on how uncertain do you have a component of the document that just said if we only built the wetlands, these are the benefits. Yes, ma'am. So that's the beauty on how we create, put together the plan formulation for this particular study. The wetlands have been always kind of like a separable element. So as you read the report, it has the quantification of the benefits and then you have the ASR component and then as a whole is the benefits that I showed in the summary in this slide. Okay, online from Al Steinman. Thanks, Jim. Thank you, Zulemet. Thank you for the presentation. I have two questions. They're more technical than the prior questions you've had. One of the benefits you identify is to have more time in the ecological beneficial zones of Lake Okeechobee. And is that definition in your mind zone D? What are you considering a more ecologically beneficial lake stage? Ecologically, lake stage is really the fluctuation within that desire ecological regime. That's how I'm referring in that bullet. I guess my, let me rephrase it. My question is since zone D is so large now, virtually any change that you do in the schedule is gonna put more time in that zone. And so if that's considered ecologically beneficial, that's kind of a, I don't know, in my mind it's a red herring as a benefit. So without knowing exactly where more time is gonna be spent based on these changes, it's hard to quantify what exactly that benefit will be. And I guess I'm trying to figure out, has that analysis been done to give us that kind of detail? Sure, it's included in the PIRES that was released on June, 2022. And just for percentages, what I have here in my notes is that we're showing about 29.1% as compared to 27.7% for the Fisher Without Project when model over the 41 year period of record. That's looking at the whole period of record, right? So we can definitely look at the PIRES to see if that different different, like how to see the data differently. But that's the overarching statement that we met that we did through the PIRES. Is that based on LOSUM or is that based on LORS? I think so. I'm sorry, I didn't hear the answer. They're saying LORS in the audience. Ah, okay. Thank you. Forget my question then. The second- No, and I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I didn't catch the whole question. I should have been more specific. The second question I have, I think it's great that you're doing a floodplain wetland restoration in the Kissimmee and from a water quantity benefit, that's great. From a water quality benefit, there needs to be a wetland restoration in Taylor Creek, Dub and Slew. Is there any activity that's being planned for work in that sub basin? Not under Lope. Not under Lope, okay. Thank you very much. No, no problem. And just to clarify for Lope on the alternative itself, we look at LORS and we also took advantage of the infrastructure. So there's also some criteria that we use in the operations. So all that is well-captured in the PIR EIS. But if you have further questions, please feel free to reach out and I can give you more information. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Did you have a question online? No, actually, Stephanie asked it. I was also curious about what proportion of the benefits that you had on slide six could be attributed to ASR and what to the wetlands restoration? Because I was struck that most of that would be a consequence of having increased storage to be able to mute pulses of flow in a big way not just in the delay of timing that you would get in a watershed. But Stephanie asked it and you answered it. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Okay, I think we'll keep moving. Thanks, Zula May, very much. Thank you very much. And next we'll hear from Liz Kanayha from the district. And I think she's gonna pick up on ASR a little bit and elaborate on low car. Okay. Good afternoon, everyone. My name's Liz Kanayha. I'm the project manager of the Lewa Choby Watershed Restoration Project and the project manager for the Aquiferist Origin Recovery Program with the South Florida Water Management District. So this is a comprehensive Everglades Restoration Program project meets the cost share project between the Army Board of Engineers and the South Florida Water Management District. The project is still in the planning phase which Zula met just covered. However, the district has received state funding to move forward with the implementation of ASR wells. So today I'll be focusing on the ASR program and the science plan but also covering a little bit about LORP. So this is the revised recommended plan alternative ASR that was selected for LORP. Zula met already went over the project purpose. I'll focus a little bit more on the project features and in particular the ASR wells. So the red circles that you see on this map are the proposed locations for the ASR wells. So we're envisioning 55 ASR wells within the watershed. So the number of wells in each cluster is still unknown at this time. And that's gonna be determined based on the siting evaluation and aquifer suitability analysis that we're conducting. And what we're envisioning is that the wells are gonna be installed in well pairs meaning they'll be installed in two different aquifers which is the upper Florida aquifer and the Avon Park's permeable zone. And the graphic on your right is showing how we're implementing ASR in a phased approach based on comments by the National Research Council. So this is basically showing the timeline to build out one ASR cluster. So this would probably be the scheduled for C38 South. The photos on this slide show some of the drilling activities that we have conducted already for the ASR program. We have completed continuous cores at several locations which include the C38 South, the L63 North and the L63 South site. We are currently conducting a core at the C59 site and that's gonna be completed in the next few months. We also have completed our first set of test wells at C38 North and C38 South, meaning that we'll be installed, that we installed two wells in both aquifers in the Avon Park's permeable zone and also the upper Florida aquifer. Aquifer pump tests or APT tests are currently underway along the two C38 South canal, I'm sorry, the C38 canal sites. We're anticipating some reports identifying what was found during those APT tests in March of 2024. And what the APT tests do is it helps us determine spacing for subsequent wells as we continue to build out these ASR clusters. Also ongoing is the design for the demonstration facility at C38 South. So the demonstration facility is gonna be a smaller facility, it's gonna be a 10 MGD facility with just utilizing two ASR wells instead of moving forward into a full-scale design. So we're using a more conservative approach in testing different treatment technologies or membrane technologies for longer durations to help us answer some of those uncertainties with ASR wells. So just as a reminder, because I think this was presented before at CISRO, the purpose of the ASR science plan is to address the National Research Council uncertainties associated with ASR wells and also guide our ASR program in a phased implementation approach while incorporating science. Workshops are intended to be held annually or as needed with the peer review panel and the public to discuss these studies and findings and then the plan will be updated with guidance from the independent peer review panel. Initially, the plan was intended to be updated annually. However, once we started constructing the wells and doing some of the science, we realized that maybe we need more time instead of giving an update every year. So we're intending to update the plan as data is available. The first version of the ASR science plan was published back in 2021 and that's available on our website. We also prepared a draft 2022 ASR science plan that is also on our website and that was never finalized. And the reason for that plan not being finalized is we're waiting for some of these proposed science activities to be included in the next update of the ASR science plan. So as Ulamet had mentioned, Erdekt is gonna be conducting some research and we thought it would be more comprehensive reports than include some of their research or at least some of their studies they're intending to do and this next update of the ASR science plan. So instead of it being called the 2022 final plan, we'll probably just call it version two of the ASR science plan. There's four main uncertainties that the court has highlighted, which is concerns with water quality, construction costs, O&M costs and well recovery performance. For the water quality concern, we're looking into ways to remedy for arsenic by creating a mixing zone or a deoxygenation system. For the cost concern, we're looking, our consultant actually prepared very detailed costs for the treatment costs and O&M costs predicted for the future. And these costs were documented in the LORP ASR treatment proof of concept report that was prepared back in July of 2022. For the well recovery performance we're installing continuous course, conducting aquifer performance tests and also conducting localized groundwater models to determine the attributes of the aquifer and also avoid some of these fractures and also maximize our recovery efficiencies. You may recall, if you've looked at the PIR, what the recovery efficiencies that were assumed in the LORP PIR. So for the LORP PIR, we assumed a very conservative approach. We thought there would be a 70% efficiency recovery for wells installed in the upper floor in aquifer and then a 30% recovery efficiency for wells installed in the Avon Park Criminal Zone. So what we noticed is that these rates are also consistent with the SERP ASR pilot project that we conducted at the Kissimmee River ASR well site. And it's also in the same range as other publications that we noticed in USGS publications. So ERDIC has begun conducting their own studies and is currently under contract with the district. They've already begun collecting some core materials at some of our project sites and they have begun water quality studies to address arsenic and geochemical concerns. They also intend to begin additional studies this coming year to help address some of the concerns with treatment and also cost. So this may look familiar to the committee, but we've actually shown this before while presenting on LORP ASR. But I think it's worthwhile highlighting just to show some of the concerns in what we're addressing with water quality. So a treatment technology evaluation was conducted to meet permit requirements. So prior to injecting water into the ground and into the aquifer, the water must meet FDEP UIC requirements for ASR facilities, meaning it must meet primary and drinking water standards. So the photo on the top left shows the setup for the proof of concept testing at the Kissimmee River ASR well site. And we tested several, used several different technologies to see which one would work best, which included the media filtration and UV and also ceramic membranes and polymeric membranes. So overall, what we saw is that the membrane technology performs better compared to media filtration and UV. It was also noted that ceramic membrane performs better than polymeric membrane because it constantly met drinking water standard criteria for color. We also determined that with the dark color of the surface water that comes from the C38 canal, UV dose is unfortunately wouldn't work. So with the color in our project area, it would be very difficult to remove coliform bacteria by using UV treatment. The photo on the bottom right shows what the color difference between the brawl water that was collected from the C38 canal versus the color of the water once it has been run through some of our treatment trains during the proof of concept testing. And it shows the different vendors that we use during that testing period. According to the National Research Council, arsenic mobilization is a concern with ASR during the design of the demonstration facility, the district is considering various technologies to mitigate for arsenic based on other facilities in Florida. For the preliminary design, our consultant is recommending the use of chemical addition by using sodium hydrosulfide. I also wanna highlight what we do know about arsenic from the Kissimmee River ASR well. So if you can look to the graphic on your right. The FDEP groundwater criteria for arsenic is 10 PPP, which is shown by the red line on this graphic. So what we saw was that with arsenic during cycles two and four, it actually was below the 10 PPP criteria. So we were anticipating if we were continue to cycle test, we'd probably see that similar degradation of the arsenic concentrations going down over time. Okay, so moving on to the ERDIC studies. So these are the proposed tasks. They actually haven't officially been approved by the district yet. It's pending governing board approval, which is going to governing board next month in February. According to the course ERDIC group, engineering considerations for ASR can be groups into three broad categories. The first category pertains to the mobilization and release of pollutants, contaminants or hazardous toxic and radioactive waste constituents. The first category is primarily driven by the uncertainties associated with the rate and extent of mobilization of arsenic and other metals in the Florida aquifer system, but also includes the concern for increased potential of mercury methylation and receiving surface water bodies due to elevated levels of sulfate in recovered groundwater. The second and third category pertains to the first cost construction and long-term O&M cost uncertainty. These are driven by the need for water treatment that may include pretreatment of injected water to applicable standards. Any pretreatment to minimize constituents in the injected water that may mobilize arsenic. Any treatment of the recovered water to the applicable standards of that receiving surface water body to include elevated sulfur concentrations and pretreatment to prevent the aquifer from clogging or accumulating suspended solids in the injected water. So additionally, ASR well performance has a secondary uncertainty for long-term O&M since aquifer processing and permeability may change over time due to this suspected biogrowth, which may also affect long-term performance. So here are the tasks included in the ERDIC studies. Task A is for the collection of core material for laboratory investigations. Task B is for batch and small-scale column studies to characterize arsenic speciation and distribution within the Florida aquifer system and geochemical reactions that occur when the Florida aquifer system is exposed to representative surface water. Task C is for the intermediate scale reactive transport studies and task D is for the development of calibrated invalidated reactive transport groundwater models capable of simulating fuel scale, ASR injections and associated changes in groundwater. Task E is for the surface water treatment characterization. So this graphic here shows how the proposed ERDIC studies are interrelated and dependent. And this is when it starts getting really confusing. Task B and C are designed to characterize arsenic-associated biochemical reactions. And the laboratory investigations proposed in task B and C require subsurface core material from the upper Florida and APPZ aquifer. They also require groundwater from both of these aquifers and physical samples of surface water that reflect the expected composition of treated water that will be injected into the Florida aquifer during ASR. The goal of task A is to obtain the necessary core material and groundwater for task B and C. Task E will develop a pilot system to evaluate proposed surface water treatment strategies and provide water samples for the batch and column studies in task B and C. So the results of the analysis obtained in task B and C will be integrated with available aquifer data and used in task D to develop a reactive transport model, which then will be used to simulate both ASR performance and the fate and transport dynamics. So this ability to track arsenic fate and transport will provide the basis for assessing how strategies designed to prevent mobilization of arsenic and other constituents of concern will be how it will be affected across the wealth field over time. So here are a list of some of the studies that have been conducted by the district that will be included in our next version of the ASR science plan. We have completed a seismic study and core analysis with the Florida Gulf Coast University and also the United States Geological Studies. Erdick has revised their statement of work to complete their studies. And that, like I mentioned, is going to February governing board for approval prior to execution. We have completed or we are near complete our aquifer pumping test along the C-38 canal. The two sites there at C-38 South and North. And we also have completed our ecological studies for the year of 2023. And both of those reports for the aquifer pumping test and ecological studies will be received sometime in March and April of 2024. So today we don't really have any technical data to share with the committee. That will be provided at our next upcoming ASR peer review panel workshop. So this is the graphic that shows our schedule to update the next ASR science plan. So, okay, last slide. So this is a schedule to complete our next version of the ASR science plan. The team is going to be kicking off their ASR science plan revisions in January. Those will continue through May. We intend to meet with the peer review panelists in June of 2024. And that will be open to the public as well. At that time, the panelists will be given a draft of the version to ASR science plan so they can take a look at what we intend to present. And then after we meet with the panelists based on their findings and their reports that they prepared, we would begin updating any final revisions to our ASR science plan. And our goal would be to complete the science plan in fall of 2024, but no later than mid-December of 2024. And here are the links to the LORP website and also the ASR website. If you are interested in seeing our 2022 ASR science plan draft or our finalized 2021 ASR science plan. Thanks, Liz. I think you have a presentation prepared for low car. Is that correct? I think in the interest of time, we're going to go straight to that if you have the stamina. Hey, Liz. While they're working on the audio visual, you've mentioned that there's a couple of test wells that have been started in 38 South and 38 North. Just two sets of test wells that have already been drilled and completed at C38 North and South. And we're currently constructing another set of well pairs at L63 North. And what's the difference? Is the test well? Would that be once it's tested? Is it? They will drill it to ASR well. So it would be fully operational. But right now it's still, we would need the treatment first and then it could become operational. So it's just right now a well. Okay, but when do you plan on beginning sort of recharge and recovery tests in that? Is there a time frame for that? Yeah, it's still several years out. So we're beginning the design for the demonstration facility, which is ongoing right now. So that's probably going to be maybe another two years. And then construction would be another year or two after that. So it would probably be another three, four years before we can actually start cycle testing. Okay, thank you. Okay. Moving on. So in addition to LORP and ASR, I'm also the project manager of low car, which is north of Ligokucho V component A restaurant. So this is a feasibility study that is being conducted by the district. And then I wanted to give a brief overview because I don't think this project was ever discussed as CISRIT before. So what's different about this study versus our normal planning effort is this is a feasibility study that is conducted by the non-credible sponsor, I mean the district. And so we'll be leading the feasibility study and we'll also be assisting with the environmental impact statement for low car under section 203 of the Federal Water Resources Development Act. So the district is taking the lead on the feasibility study, which includes the coordination, modeling and report preparation. However, the report has to be technical and policy compliant with federal planning processes. So we're working with our federal partner, the Army Corps of Engineers and they're providing technical assistance and also helping with federal activities for the study. So the goal is for the district to transmit the feasibility study report to the assistant secretary of the Army. And then once they have reviewed it, it'll be submitted to Congress for authorization. And once the report is actually approved, it will become part of the CERP program and make its debut on the IDS. So this graphic shows the low car study area. The study area is positioned directly north of the lake in the center of the state and south of the Kissimmee Orlando area. The study area is outlined in turquoise. It encompasses both estuaries, the Colusa Hatchee and St. Lucie estuaries. And within the study area, there are four sub watersheds that include the Fishing and Creek, Indy and Prairie and Taylor Creek Nubbin Sleuth Subwatersheds. And it also includes drainage basins S65D and S65E of the Lower Kissimmee Subwatersheds. So this area looks really similar, the study area to LORP, but the two projects are separable. So LORP will be continuing moving forward with the wetland sites and ASR wells. And then low car is focused solely on above ground storage. So we're looking at that feature that was removed from LORP, the wetland attenuation or WAF, the above ground storage feature. So that's the purpose of low car. The goal of the Lake of Kuchobi Component A project is to obtain 200,000 acre feet of storage north of LECO. The purpose is to store water during wet periods or when there's excess water in the system and later use the water during dry periods when Lake of Kuchobi water levels are low. The increased storage capacity would help keep the lake within that ecological preferred band and benefit the lakes ecosystem. The project would also benefit the Kalusa Hatchee and St. Lucie estuaries by reducing those discharges from the lake that impact their ecosystems. So in general, the project will keep water in the system for environmental and water supply uses. So here are the alternatives that were considered for low car. All of them are targeting 200,000 acre feet of storage, but the acreages for each alternative do vary between 12,000 to 19,000 acres and the water depth also varies between 10 to 18 feet. So for low car alternative one, which is that top left graphic, that's referred to as the potential reservoir. It's approximately 12,000 acres in size and would have a maximum water depth of 18 to 19 feet. Low car alternative two, which is the top right graphic, it's referred to as the dual reservoir. The two reservoirs combined are approximately 19,000 acres in size and it would have a maximum depth of approximately 10.2 feet. Low car alternative three is referred to as the north-south reservoir. It's that bottom right graphic. It's approximately 13,700 acres in size and we would have a water depth of approximately 14 feet. Rough order magnitude costs or ROM costs and modeling were prepared for the three alternatives. All of the alternatives performed very similarly because they had the same acre storage benefit of 200,000 acre feet. However, the cost did vary between each of the alternatives because of land acquisition, the dam embankment construction costs and also infrastructure costs. For low car, the recommended plan is alternative four, which is a modified version of alternative one. So alternative one was modified to avoid a environmentally sensitive area at the southern end of the reservoir. It is approximately 12,000 acres in size and it would have an average water storage depth of 18 feet and provide that 200,000 acre feet goal for storage. The length of the perimeter dam which goes around the reservoir is approximately 18 miles and the total length of the divider dam between the two cells is 2.7 miles. There will be two inflow pump stations. One inflow pump station is located at S84 which is denoted by the square that says PS. So the purpose of that pump station is to pump water upstream towards the reservoir and the other pump station is located at the southeast corner of the reservoir and that would be to pump water into the reservoir at 1,500 CFS. There will also be a gravity discharge back to the system to the C41A canal via two gated structures and the discharge would be totaling 3,000 CFS. The location of the two reservoir outflow culverts allows for water to be released from the reservoir into the C41A canal either upstream or downstream of S83 to allow conveyance of water to the Indian Prairie Subbasin via the C41A, the C41C39A, C40 or C38 canal as well as Lake Okeechobee. And the perimeter canal around the feature allows for water to be collected from seepage and also rainwater and then be able to be returned back to the reservoir. The reservoir is being designed to current Army Corps of Engineer dam safety requirements and ultimately it's being monitored by the dam safety program. It incorporates the Corps 3Rs, which stands for robust, redundant and resilient to meet modern dam safety criteria. The design also underwent a risk assessment review process by the Corps of Engineers Center of Excellence for Dam Safety to maintain flood protection and water supply. The reservoir will be designed for extreme storm events including a PMP for 54 inches of rainfall and also control waves in category five storms. The design will incorporate recreation features such as boat ramps and nature areas. For low car, we use the regional basin models which is typical for SERP projects and it included the recover performance metrics to help show the effects of storage. Several scenarios were produced to demonstrate hydrology changes as storage was added to the system. The existing condition baseline is the current condition which includes existing projects or planned infrastructure such as LOSUM C44, Kissimmee operations and COP. The projected future without scenario includes the projected future conditions without the projects and includes the EAA reservoir, the STA and STA, the C43 project, IRL, Kissimmee headwaters operation, SAP and LOSUM. And the future with the project is referred to as low car which is denoted by the LCR1 run and you'll see that in our draft reports as well. For low car, we developed three different project alternatives which are LCR1, the tentatively selected plan that turned into the revised recommended plan, LCR2 and LCR3. So for the modeling, we looked at storage and conveyance features for each alternative as well as diversion to and recovery from storage features. Water could be released from the C41 and C41A canals once the reservoir was about a third full to maintain and improve water supply. Overall, what we saw was that the three alternatives performed very similarly and they all targeted that 200,000 acre feet of storage. However, LCR1 was our selected TSP due to land acquisition and the cost differential identified in the ROM costs. Under ideal conditions and when the lake is within the ecological preferred band the shoreline marshes approximately 100,000 acres in size. Submerge aquatic vegetation occurs in the deepest areas of the marsh around eight and a half to 11 feet in elevation. Then sparse vegetation like grasses and bull rush grow from about 10 to 11 feet in elevation. And then at about 12 to 15 feet there's a broad diverse marsh that's seasonally flooded at different water depths and for different durations which provides a wide variety of habitat for fish and wildlife. Maintaining stages within this ecological envelope or between roughly 12 to 15 feet per year maintains this diverse habitat. When lake stages are too high for too long it reduces the size of the marsh pushing plant communities towards the levee which reduces the presence of shallow marsh communities. When stages are too low for too long everything moves down slope which drives out shallow marshes and converts them to uplands or woody species. And it allows marsh plants to take over areas that were previously SAB or open water. So this is why the performance metrics for Lake Okeechobee, for the lake are focused on how long stages are above or below or within that ecological envelope as well as the duration that the time the lake is at those stages at specific elevations. So to measure the benefits of the lake we rely on stage duration curves which show the benefits of the lake. So this is gonna show you with the addition of low car what happens to the lake. So what we see with low car is there's an improvement at the extreme high stage and we spend less time at this stage. So you'll see the two circles at the top left of the graphic it shows a decrease from 10 to 2% at that high extreme elevation. And then at the low end we also see less time in the extreme low stages. So overall with low car what we're doing is flattening the curve and we're minimizing the amount of time that we're either at these high extreme stages or extreme low stages. It's way over time. So if you could sort of fly through even the benefits at the key point. Okay, so I could just maybe skip over and kind of summarize what the cutbacks are kind of important. Okay, so for the water supply cutbacks we look at reductions in we look at the previous years of drought over the period of record and compare the project conditions to the existing condition baseline and future without. So for low car what we saw is less water cutbacks meaning more water supply reliability for water use of the Lake of Ochobe service area. And then this slide here just kind of highlights some of the benefits that we'll see with low car. So we'll see benefits to the Lake estuaries and both Lake and estuaries. So some of the benefits that we'll see is improvement in liquor ecology by reducing drastic water levels and fluctuations. We'll see an improvement in marsh inundations. We'll see improved conditions for emergent and submerged aquatic vegetation while also improving water supply. For the estuaries we'll see an increase in fish populations while also improving the timing and distribution of flows to the estuaries. So with both of these, with this project we'll also see benefits via recreation and also economic opportunities. So moving along quickly to get to the timeline this has been an expedited planning effort. So we're almost at the finish line as you can see. So we've already released our draft EIS that was out for review and that comment period ended back in December. So the team is working on finalizing the EIS. We're trying to target completion of that report by the end of January and submitting it to the ASA in February and then on to Congress sometime in March or shortly thereafter. And we also have a webpage for low car so you can see past engagements and some past presentations. And also you'll be able to see the feasibility study. So the EIS is available on the course webpage and the feasibility study is available on the district's webpage. And that all taking the questions. Thanks very much, Liz. We have time for a question. You do. Hi, thanks, Liz. I enjoyed your presentation. And I'm Casey Brown from the University of Massachusetts. On maybe just a few slides back we showed bar charts of reduction in demand cutbacks. And I just am trying to understand how to interpret these as well as some of the previous graphs. So the, what we really want to compare low car one with is the spam and colored bars. Is that right? So the future without the project which is assuming some assumption current infrastructure that's in place are about to be online. Correct, yes. So the red bar is it includes the future without which includes a couple projects. So the C43 and the EAA. And so we're basically showing with the addition of low car you'll see that the reduction, the green bar is lower showing that we have less water supply cutbacks. So it's an improvement. So less is better in this case. Yeah, right. And I'm just trying to interpret these. So for some of them, for example, I'm sort of curious why, how these are chosen. But you have 2001 highlighted in 2007, 2007, 2008, maybe these are the years in which cutbacks took place, I guess. These are the years, yeah, over during our period of record for modeling that had the severe years of drought. Yes. And so I'm just wondering, are these differences, do you think that these differences that are shown here are significant relative to say the uncertainty in the modeling that produces these results? Because I guess I'm saying the changes are kind of small and maybe they're within the error or confidence interval of the model. So yes, I'm just wondering how to interpret results like these, they seem small differences. I think the overall goal is just to show that water supply is going to be improved over time. I mean, with the project. So even if you're looking at like, for example, 1973, 1974, I mean, it's still a significant jump. So you'd have 6% less cutbacks in that time period if we experienced the same amount of drought. But this is just one project to help with that drought. So there's other projects in the area too that could also provide input and support to help increase the cutbacks. Thanks. Go ahead, Tracy. Thanks, Tracy Quirk from Louisiana State University. And this maybe sort of ties in to Casey's question, but on the previous slide, no, yes, that's correct. So to me, a lot of the benefits that you put forth have to do with benefits to wetlands or a literal zone along the lake edge. This figure doesn't look like there's that big of a difference between project with low farm and versus without. So I was just wondering, and we were also having some discussion about how 200,000 acre feet got chosen for storage quantity and I just wanted to... Okay, so for, I'll answer the second question first. So the goal for the 200,000 acre feet of storage, that was in the yellow book. So it was one of the components and that was what was envisioned for SERP. So it envisioned a reservoir north of the lake for 200,000 acre feet. And so with LORP, we tried to achieve that goal, but we had received a lot of just negative feedback and lack of support for above ground storage. So we started looking for different alternatives in that same area north of the lake. And so we would further north, north of the C41A and that's where we're placing this reservoir. As far as the benefits for the lake, our lake guy, Zach, he was really impressed with the benefits. He thought this looked really great. So I guess that's significant, the extreme high he seemed really happy about because with LORP when we modeled it for just the ASR wells, we didn't see a significant improvement. So this project actually shows quite a bit of lifts in comparison to LORP when we had the wetland attenuation feature because the storage was much less. Okay, thanks Tracy. One more question, because about the differences in these scenarios, when I looked at the document, I thought that the models were different in the future without compared to the existing condition that you used LOSM for one and LORS for the other. And maybe you fixed that now as you're doing it because what you presented here, you said you used the same one for both, but can you tell me what was done? I may have to call on Walter to help answer that. Oh, yeah. I'm going to get to a mic. I mean, I know everything was rushed in it, just. Hey, good afternoon all. Do you hear me? This is Walter Wilcox with the Interagency Modeling Center in the Board of Management District. Yeah, so there's a little bit of a process procedure question in there. The EA Reservoir as authorized is based on an analysis that has LORS 08 as the basis because of when that project was authorized. So there hasn't been a step yet to circle back and update the EA Reservoir work with the most recent science and planning that was done with LOSM. So when you look at the document, it gets a little confusing because in certain parts in order to adhere to the policy in the way that all those federal requirements that Liz just mentioned to lay out everything in the way that it's authorized, we have to do a comparison of both LORS 08 and LOSM, which is kind of like the real trajectory forward with the best science and policy that we expect. So you'll see both this presentation focuses on LOSM to make it a little more clear what the story is actually doing. And going back to Zulman's point earlier, the PIR actually does the same thing for LOR. It looks at both LORS 08 and LOSM to kind of make sure that the actions we're taking are complementary with each other and also work regardless of the regulations kind of what it's being. So you do have a modeling that can do future without an existing condition and alternatives using all the same baseline? Yeah, so we have two sets of comparisons, existing condition to future with LORS, to future with project with LORS, existing to get a condition to LOSM with the project. Just to make it, it's in the appendices report. And again, depending on where you are in the report, your kind of requirement makes it work. It's in the feasibility study, not the EIS. So on our webpage on low car, you'll see it in there on appendix A. Annex A is for the modeling. We've analyzed it upside down, left, right, everything. We have confidence that adding storage, the system is going to improve the performance of the lake and the northern estuaries in this case. And that's kind of intuitive, but we can show that with the modeling data regardless of the underlying regulation schedule. The team like adding the reservoir added more low conditions in the lake. And I didn't know whether that was an artifact. I thought there was an argument that that was an artifact of the existing condition baseline thing. If you go from LOSM today to LORS of eight plus in the future to LOSM and storage, you can see some of those comparisons because LOSM has built into it some things that increase the variability of the lake compared to LORS. So, and I'll just mention to the sensitivity question just since I have the mic, we get lost on the scale of these things. Like when you're looking at a tent or a floater, half a foot of lake stage here, 200,000 acre feet is half a foot of lake stage. That's why you see all the benefit at the upper end. So on the water supply cutback, it's the same thing. It's 100,000 acre feet of cutback. It's 5% of the demand. So these are pretty big volumes. And when we go into work, you're going to see much smaller volumes. So just to set up the next conversation. Thank you. Thank you. We're questioned. Did I hear someone? I heard someone. It was me, Al. I had a question for Liz, but since she's left the podium, I can live without it. She's just coming back and then we're transitioning the public comment. It's a quick question. I'm just curious why you have the two cells in the dividing dam instead of one reservoir? Oh, just for added dam safety. So if there were a breach and the dam, perhaps still one half of it would be intact. And so it was pretty much just for safety. What we learned from other projects, just lessons learned. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, we're going to move on to public comment and the contributors here each have three minutes at the podium and we're going to begin with Ben Olson. And then we'll follow up with Kevin Kniff. Good afternoon. Can you all hear me okay? Okay. I just want to let you guys know I only really realized I could get to this meeting about two hours ago. So I didn't really practice or come up with anything. I kind of jotted some notes down to talk. So forgive me if I'm reading a little bit. I do hope everybody who went on the field trip yesterday enjoyed it. It's always great to get out in the swamp and everything. I saw you guys went to the Tamiami Trail. I'm sure you saw a lot of flooding and some degradation that was unfortunately created by a past generation of the core trying to do fixes and recoveries. Unfortunately, I was not able to attend that meeting or that field trip. I have now, I'm a private landowner in the West Weir Basin of the work project which unfortunately will be reported on after this public comment period. But I have now read the draft report in its entirety, all of the appendices. I've watched every single PDT meeting. I've watched every working group and science coordination meeting I could find that was publicly available. Quite a few of them from the early years are 404 now you can't get them online anymore. The ones that were before YouTube or before streaming on YouTube, this plan as it's designed fundamentally is insane and it will destroy tens of thousands of panther and endangered animal acreage, all at the behest of certain groups that are insisting it get pushed forward. What we're going to hear is how good this project is and how much we're inspecting we're respecting indigenous knowledge and we're going forward. What they will leave out is the panthers in the western portion of the West Weir that will be flooded at the behest of indigenous knowledge. The only panther territory that's acknowledged in the report and I went through it pretty extensively is in the North feeder STA area. They speak about the 3,000 acres that will be flooded and destroyed a primary panther territory and that they will use panther credits to restore land where panthers aren't currently living to offset that. That's 3,000 acres and they're talking about restoring some 5,000 acres if I remember correctly, don't quote me on that. Conservatively, the Winggate Mill and Larkin Canal footprint would be 12,000 acres. That's just the sheet flow that if the project works, the core intends to flood and it all floods into what we call the Kissimmee-Billy strand. That doesn't include another 10,000 acres up there which I think will flood with this plan nor does it include another 12,000 acres which I think will flood when the Kissimmee-Billy strand culvert system is closed nor does it include all of the land in and around a crazy little private land owner group that we call Looneyville. That's its name, it was owned by Mr. Looney. The backfilling that we intend to do on privately owned land will flood areas such as the privately owned panther conservation area specifically designed to protect panthers right now in the modeling, as we have it, in the best case scenario that will be with like an additional foot of water sitting on it. I don't think cats like the water very much. Last year, before one of these meetings, the day before I was driving from my property to town so I could go to the meeting, I came across a panther right on top of the Kissimmee-Billy culvert. That is a culvert that my great-grandfather put in four generations ago on a road we now call Boy Scout Road. It goes to Mr. Ronnie Bergeron's property. What this plan would do is put in a closeable culvert that up until a few months ago we thought was totally out of the plan. And for months we have asked what the operational orders of this culvert will be. Who's going to control when this culvert openly closes? Because we're concerned, the water from the Wingate Mill and Larkin Canal will sheet flow into this area as designed and then it will back up because it's not flown through Mr. Bergeron's property. That's all Pine Islands. Some might trickle through. You guys plan on putting four culverts in there. Some might trickle through, but the majority of it will have to back up and find another path. I was told this is conjecture by water management a few weeks back. They said, we haven't done the modeling but when we do the modeling, we'll figure it out. And that was one of the biggest red flags to me. We're talking, I skipped around a little bit, I apologize, but what we're talking about, Mr. James Sealers I believe was talking about a concern which I wrote down here that the committee was moving forward on a PIR EIS plan without really finishing the science. But water management is acknowledging to me they haven't even run a data analysis on what happens when the culverts are closed. This plan gives unilateral authority to this culvert, the culvert that my great grandfather put in and they're expanding it some six to eight times more water flow than already is. Unilateral control to the Seminole tribe of Florida under indigenous ecological, indigenous tribal ecological knowledge. Under that executive order, they do not have to say when they closed the culvert, they don't have to say why they closed the culvert. They can keep the culvert closed as long as they want and damn be the consequences. I mean, it's clear from the draft report there is no concern on the private land owner land. And as I've said time and again, I am happy to work with you guys to show you a plan that would work because you acknowledge you used LIDAR, your triangles for elevations are not accurate. We've shown that to the project managers of this draft. I'll finish up. They have no concern for that. What they do care about is pushing this forward behind closed doors. I propose a plan which will be in my draft report. It includes adding closeable culverts into the West feeder basin canal, stopping the flooding into the tribal lands, the Mexican tribal lands. I've got no problem of fixing these issues, but we will not do it at the expense of tens of thousands of acres, which will probably cause another generation, we'll wind up with another generation of Army Corps giving field trips to people on how to fix the next problem. We can do this together. We don't have to do this fight, but we will not put this project through as it is right now. I'll talk to you all next week when we have more than three minutes. Thank you. Okay, Kevin. And then we'll go to Tom McVicker and Edward Orstein. Good afternoon panel. Kevin Kniff, Chief Sustainability Officer for the Mikosuke Tribe of Indians of Florida. It's nice to see you all. It was nice to see you all yesterday. I'd like to make just a couple of quick comments for your consideration, considering your important roles as panel members, CISRA, to be providing your input and your recommendations in a congressionally mandated fashion to help us drive forward Everglades restoration planning and decision-making processes. You saw this morning or this afternoon's presentation on the IDS and all 68 of those projects. Okay. Clearly, we have a lot of engineering and construction focus. I don't understand, but I want to cue in on part of that conversation that talked about flexibility. And this is something by which process right now doesn't lend for a lot of flexibility in how these projects come online and then the water control plans that are associated with those projects coming online in a segmented fashion. Flexibility, I would argue here on behalf of the tribe is something that we need to be much more considered of as we're moving forward with our current plans as we have and obviously to build in the degree of flexibility. And I'd even further stretch this. Some room for experimentation in terms of how water control plans actually come to fruition such that we are managing water on a conditions-based manner as opposed to a hard and fast, state-driven water control plan with a set level of criteria or constraints. I will note as you were out on the Tamiami Trail yesterday and you were hearing quite a lot of input about water levels within Mikosuke Conservation Area and how that compares with water levels in Big Cyprus, water levels making it down south into Everglades National Park, et cetera, et cetera. The tribe spearheaded the effort here this fall in order to affect an operational deviation at the S-12A and B and the S-343A and B structures in order to address the high waters in the Mikosuke Conservation Area 3A. This is after 30 plus years of almost on an annual basis experiencing similar conditions of Tree Island's flooding and for which there has not been a previous conversation really agency-wide to engage in that flexibility. I'm very happy that we have the outcome that we have now and that there's been great coordination amongst the agencies as being again spearheaded by the tribe. This is the manner I feel that we need to be, that you all as CISRAP panel members need to be advocating for in your recommendations and in the capacity that you have to do so. This is where we are, is that we are seeing negative trends across the landscape due to water operations, but we have the ability to make changes in a system that is inherently variable and variability is an extremely important component of the Everglades. We cannot be managing for static water levels year after year of which we're never achieving them really to begin with anyway. So let's please continue to foster conversation on where we can have flexibility and take a conditions-based management approach. With respect to lower, there is no controversy in terms of wetland restoration. I'd argue that the tribe has been critical about the ASR plan as being proposed because it is being proposed on a scale and with an effect that doesn't have an analog anywhere else. This is on a level and scale that is unprecedented and therefore requires a robust science base and data-driven and highly transparent process in which we evaluate whether or not as a technology for this particular application and for its scale, it is safe to be using now to the Water Management District's credit. They do have a science plan as taking the recommendation from the National Council and Research Council, but the Mikosuki tribe wants to ensure that this science plan receives the due peer review and additional input from all stakeholders and that we work together to evaluate the results of this before moving forward with a plan that puts into effect a very high cost and potentially dangerous situation across the entirety of the landscape of the Lake Okeechobee Sending Area. Now that brings us to low car. We've been very, very good at being able to dig very deep holes in the ground to put water into. And while recognizing that low car can certainly bring benefit to high lake levels, I want to make the criticism that there are two main reasons why you all need to continue to be diligent on this project. First of all, there is no water quality component or benefit that is given to putting water out of Lake Okeechobee highly impacted eutrophic water at this point and putting it into yet another deep water reservoir that doesn't have a littoral zone, doesn't have a degree of treating that water. And while you've heard some of the presentations talked about the importance of clean water getting back into the environment, this is not going to meet that need. Secondly, I'd also argue that this is again another big Band-Aid, a very expensive, very high impact on the landscape Band-Aid for an inability to have clean water moving itself down through the system, down into the Everglades, down into the Big Cypress and that we are not addressing the root causes of why we need these big reservoirs and why we need to put storage into a system that did not have this kind of storage north of Lake Okeechobee by its own design. So that all being said, we are certainly where we are, where we are, but I wanted to make this for you all not to be a wet blanket on any of these efforts but for you to continue to be diligent in asking the very reasonable questions that you were asking about Low Carb. Thank you. Okay, Tom McVicker. Yeah. And then we have Edward Ordstein coming up and that will end our comments. Thank you for the time. I just have a few brief comments. My name is Tom McVicker. I'm our engineer here in South Florida, hydrologist, been practicing for 40-some years. I think I've been to 90% of the meetings of this group in your previous, it is good to see Stephanie again. I'm here today on behalf of the Bergeron family, long-term landowners in the West Eater Canal Basin. He owns property north and south of the Winged Mill Canal if you know the orientation of that project. The project overall work has some very good elements to it. What you're doing down by Tammy Henry Trail is very good. A lot of us are already under construction. A new STA, the way it's proposed, I think that's a good idea. Fixing the plume down at the south end of L28 Iow to the Mikosuke property is really important and should be done. What's proposed for the West feeder though is a real, real problem. If you look at L28 Interceptor, the canal was authorized in 1954, very specific purpose to drain about 70,000 acres of land upstream. Maybe 15,000 acres of that or either the Seminole Reservation or other properties owned by the Seminoles, the rest of it's all private property. The project was built to serve the private property when it was built and proposed. The landowners up there, especially in the West Weir Basin where the Winged Mill Canal, Arcane Canal are, got together and dug the two canals that you now call by those names, the Winged Mill and Arcane, they connect directly to the West feeder. The families that dug those canals still live out there. And that was 60 years ago, long time ago. It means a lot to them, more than just range. What this plan does is it says that canal no longer exists for anybody except the tribe. Only the tribe can put runoff into that canal. All the private properties gotta find another home for their water. The new SDA will take part of that but there's 36,000 acres of land that have to go through the West feeder that no longer can go there. And all that water ends up going south. The only outlet that's described in the plan is the Kissimmee Billy, yeah, Kissimmee Billy Slew. I'm not sure if that'll work. What Ben Olson called the Boy Scout Road is labeled on your maps as the West Boundary Road. One side of the road and it's a little one lane dirt road. One side is the Seminole Reservation. The other side is the Bergeron property. Has been forever. There's a small culvert there. There will be another culvert put there. But the idea that you can take all the water that flowed from 36,000 acres into the West feeder can now be diverted over land and squeeze through one culvert where there's an existing road. It's not gonna work. I think the modeling is a good model but not for this area. It's not a tool that you can even analyze the impacts of what you're proposing. So what we are being told by the core is don't worry. We're gonna work all that out in the planning, engineering and design phase. That is not gonna get it. The landowners are angry, mad, sad, emotional. And I don't think it's fair to say that's what you're gonna do for them. They are willing to work on a solution that works, all of them, but they're not willing to work on a solution while the government's moving ahead with a totally flawed plan and asking Congress to authorize it. Whether the core will say we're not gonna build it doesn't matter, that plan will be there 10 years from now when the core might get around to building some of it. And none of the people who made the promises now are gonna be around, including the people in Congress. So it's not fair. I don't think it's in the spirit of SERP. SERP never envisioned SERP projects being a tool to take that scale of private property that's been in those families for generations. And it's still in the same families. So not too much, I have one science point since you're a science committee. The piece of the L28I canal that's left is gonna be blockaded at the south end. It's got levies on both sides. It's gonna be a three and a half mile linear stormwater detention area, no outlet. And all the reservations borders gotta go into that path. I don't know what kind of hydrogeology has been done to verify that. I couldn't find it in the report. Maybe it's been done. Seems like a pretty iffy concept to me. And if that doesn't work, what's in the plan? There's no other, there's no fallback in the plan. That doesn't work. So I had to put a little bit of science into it. The rest of it's more policy and motion. Thank you for the time. Yeah, Edward, Edward Ornstein. Good afternoon committee. Thank you for the time. My name is Edward Ornstein. I serve as special counsel on environmental affairs for the Mikasuki tribe of Indians of Florida. I also serve as the chair of the indigenous law committee of the American Bar Association. And I am myself a tribal member of the southeastern Muskogee nation in Alabama. We're very grateful for the engagement and the time of the committee to come out to tribal lands, to take a look at the Oseola pool camp yesterday, take a look at those structures along Tamiami trail. We've really been working on the operation of those structures and the implication of those structures to tribal lands since the 1980s. The Mikasuki have made the area now called the Mikasuki water conservation in area 3A South, their home for generations. Long before the armed occupation act of 1842 allowed settlers to take land in South Florida. We're very supportive of cleaning the water coming onto the reservation through the work and the rehydration of the Ocaleo Coche or Kissimi Billy slu and the Shark River slu through work and sep. But we also wanna highlight some important features of the Mikasuki water conservation area and its topography. That water conservation area has long been complex ridge and slu ecosystem with varied elevations, hundreds of tree islands and hammocks which dried down below the surface so as to allow crossing by ox carts and foot in certain dry seasons. The Mikasuki water conservation area was once home to a sizable population of panthers of woodstorks, of wading birds, of everglade snail kites. Now, due to water management restrictions, the Southwestern third of that manmade basin never dries down, not the dry season, not in any rare year, just remains a pool of water. In order to keep dry, a habitat of a subpopulation of sparrow to the Southwest, which was declared virtually extirpated by the acting director of the US Fish and Wildlife Service in 2020. And all the while, the historic sheet flow moves to the Southwest. A comment made by the tour guide at Shark River really stuck out to me. After we walked around and took that tram ride around and saw that beautiful, shallow sheet flow moving through the Shark River segment of Everglades National Park, she pointed to a borrow pit that we are passing on the side of the road and explained the dramatic ecosystem shift that was taking place and that led to that different appearance of the borrow pit, which had some lotus floating on top, had some cattails ringing it. What really stuck out to me is that that borrow pit looks more like pretty much the entirety of the southern half of Water Conservation Area 3A than anything else I've seen in the Everglades ecosystem. A lot different than the rest of the Shark River section of Everglades National Park, which is immediately to the south of Water Conservation Area 3A. This really speaks to the compartmentalization of the system and the erasure of ecosystem variability and habitat in Water Conservation Area 3A. And to make a suki, Water Conservation Area 3A. So please look out for some forthcoming indigenous traditionally geological knowledge, which we've been working hard to prepare with our consultants in compliance with the Information Quality Act, speaking to the historic ecosystem and Water Conservation Area 3A pre-drainage or in this case, pre-flooding. Modo, thanks again for your time and I'll be here if you guys have any questions. Thank you. Okay, so we're going to take a brief break and we'll return at 3.30 sharp to get an update on Western Everglades restoration plan. Behind schedule, so I'll run a little long. Thank you. Nice to see you. Nice to see you. Welcome. Hey, mom. It's all right. I was taking a line. We're behind the schedule. We'll be waiting. Okay. Mostly in total phosphorus concentrations. Next, I'll take you through what we know about the current status of water quality in the Big Cypress, mostly in terms of paraffitin. And finally, I'll take you through a little bit of our work comparing paraffitin in the Big Cypress to the Everglades Protection Areas. And just before I get started today, I'm really talking about water quality in terms of phosphorus and phosphorus enrichment. And you might be wondering, I'm taking through these old data sets. And it's because we really don't know much about the current water quality conditions or within the work footprint of the Big Cypress. I've been doing a lot of work trying to gather all the data we have and all of what we know. And most of it is older, but I will be taking you through that today. Okay, first I'm gonna take you back to the 90s with a USGS study about surface water total phosphorus in the marshes and canals of the Big Cypress. And so here I've outlined the Big Cypress in the black oval so we can see a little bit better. And during this time period, median surface water total phosphorus in the marshes and canals range from about nine to 18 parts per billion. And just to provide a little perspective, during the same time period, phosphorus concentrations in the Everglades National Park range from about one to 11 parts per billion. So we're seeing slightly higher concentrations in the Big Cypress compared to the Everglades National Park. Next, these are some images from the EPA remaps 1995 and 1996 sampling event, which included the Big Cypress National Preserve. Here on the left, these are surface water total phosphorus concentrations from the marsh environment and on the right are from the canal environment. And again, I've highlighted the Big Cypress in that black oval, just so you know, these scales for phosphorus are different for the different graphs. So during this time period, surface water total phosphorus in the marshes range from approximately zero to 20 parts per billion and the canals range from two to 20 parts per billion with one measurement in the L28 measuring around a hundred parts per billion. So we're seeing really similar measurements from the EPA as we did in the last slide from the USGS study. Just one more to note, these concentrations are relatively low, but the EPA only samples where they can land their helicopters. So this is not necessarily a comprehensive sampling of the marsh environment. I also want to point out that the EPA is sampled again in 2005 and 2014, but those events did not include the Big Cypress. So we don't have data from that time, but they also went and sampled in 2023 and that sampling event did include the Big Cypress, which we're really excited about. We'll have access to those data soon. Next, I want to zoom in a little bit more about what we know about the work footprint within the Big Cypress. So here is some data from the DB Hydro Database. The last time that surface water total phosphorus concentrations were taken in this region was 2011. So here I'm showing the surface water total phosphorus a geometric means from 2000 to 2011 across those seven stations. And you can see that these concentrations range from about 4.3 to 20.3 parts per billion. I know those numbers may be a little small to those in the back, but I did want to point out that the higher concentrations tended to be on the northern and eastern portions of the preserve. And my suspicion is that these stations were influenced by the canals, the L28 in that northeastern portion of the preserve and the L28 tieback on that bottom eastern portion of the preserve. So just to summarize what we learned from the water quality conditions from 1990 to 2011, we saw that surface water total phosphorus concentration range from approximately 4 to 20 parts per billion over a couple of different data sets, indicating both the presence of highly oligotropic habitat, but also some areas of phosphorus enrichment near input sources. Now, while we don't have current water quality data from within the work footprint in terms of surface water total phosphorus, we do have paraffin data. And lots of research in the Greater Everglades has shown that paraffin can be a really great indicator of phosphorus load. And sometimes it can be an even better indicator of phosphorus load than surface water total phosphorus measurements, not because these markers are so oligotrophic that as soon as phosphorus comes into the marshes, it is rapidly assimilated by the microbial communities, including the paraffin. And so Evelyn and I had a chance to go out to the work zone in the fall of 2022 to do some sampling. And this is an image from that trip. And I just want to point out that visually, the paraffin and macrophic communities from the marshes in the work zone are very visually similar to what we see in the low phosphorus marshes of Everglades National Park. And the data that we collected from that trip support that same idea. This is that same graph I showed earlier, but now I am showing paraffin map phosphorus concentrations from that sampling trip. So here the units are different. They are micrograms of phosphorus per gram of dry paraffin map. This is a little small, but the sides are coded as either green or yellow. Greener concentrations that are less than 200 micrograms for phosphorus per gram of that, and the yellows are greater than 200. Just because previous research has shown that concentrations of over 200 can be indicative of phosphorus enrichment. So over the sampling trip, we saw that concentrations range from about 121 to 396 micrograms of phosphorus per gram of dry map. Once we get indicating, there might be some stations that have seen phosphorus enrichment, especially along this modern and Eastern boundary. And again, I suspect that could be because of canal inputs. We also had a chance to analyze diatoma assemblages from these samples. And what we found was really exciting. So here I am showing you a mean percent relative abundance of diatomapaxa across the seven stations. The right hand side, you can see the names of the diatoms, which might not mean much to a lot of some people here. Some people might know. But what's really exciting is that these taxa are representative of highly oligotropic communities that we really only see in the lowest phosphorus sites in the Everglades. And so it's real, these communities are rare. So it's cool that we are also seeing them in the thick cypress. You might also notice that there's only about eight taxa that make up 90% of the assemblages. And that's a relatively low number. Again, we only see in the Everglades. To put it in perspective, if I went to another stream or wetland or lake in the rest of the United States, and I took a sample of diatoms, I'm on 50 taxa. And that's because in the Everglades, only a low number of taxa can withstand these low phosphorus conditions. And this is just an image of some of those diatoms, mastaglia calcarea on the left and insinemia Evergladyatum on the right. And this is to highlight, again, we're seeing these same taxa in the big cypress as we do in the Everglades National Park. Now I wanna zoom out just a little bit and tell you what we know about current water quality conditions that's outside the work footprint and compare that to what we're seeing within the work footprint. So the data set I'm going to focus on next is the South Florida and Caribbean monitoring networks pair, fight and sampling that has been occurring yearly since 2009. And these black circles represent their sampling locations for the 2022 sampling effort. You might notice that a lot of these, it's kind of contained in this northwestern corner of the preserve. And that's because park staff identified this area as being of high importance because of potential agricultural runoff to the north of the preserve. I'm now going to color code these with their pair, fight and map total phosphorus concentrations. So here I have the SFC and samples in circles and those warp samples I showed earlier in squares and the pair, fight and map total phosphorus concentrations are coded as green for less than 200, yellow, red and then purple for increasing levels of phosphorus concentrations. So two takeaways here. The first is that the warp zone generally has a lower pair, fight and map total phosphorus concentrations than that northwestern corner of the preserve. In the warp zone, we did not see concentrations over 400 but in the SFC and samples, some concentrations were up to 2000 micrograms of phosphorus per gram of dry map. The next thing I want to point out is that those high phosphorus area are really contained in that very northwestern portion of the preserve. The warp zone pair, fight and map is pretty close to some of the more interior sites of the big Cyprus from the SFC and samples. Next, we also compare diatomic assemblages from the warp zone to the SFC and samples. Here I'm visualizing the diatomic assemblages with a non-metric dimensional scaling plot. So here each point represents a diatomic assemblage from an independent sample and distance represents similarity. The closer the points, the more similar the diatomic assemblages, the further away, the more dissimilar the assemblages. I'm using the same coloring and the codes as in the previous slide. So two things here, the first is that you can see the warp assemblages are really close to the low phosphorus assemblages from the SFC and data set. That means these assemblages are really similar. So we're seeing those oligotrophic taxa that are rare and only in Everglades communities and low phosphorus sites outside of the warp zone as well. I also can point out that the pair, fight and map total phosphorus concentrations separate along that primary axis. What this mean is the diatomic assemblages from the low phosphorus sites are different than from the high phosphorus sites. Now I'm adding in environmental factors that represent environmental factors associated with those diatomic assemblages. I wanna point out that TP vector right there and that just indicates that phosphorus is a factor that strongly influences diatomic assemblages across the big cypress. Finally, just to summarize what we learned from the current big cypress water quality, we saw that diatomic assemblages are dominated by highly oligotrophic indicator taxa that are unique to the low phosphorus marches of Everglades. Pair fight and map total phosphorus concentrations and diatomic taxa in the big cypress are suggestive of enrichment at some stations, especially in that very northwestern corner of the reserve. Finally, I'm just gonna take you very quickly through a few key findings from our work comparing big cypress diatoms and pair fighting with Everglades diatoms and pair fighting. So here we're looking at pair fighting from the SFC and diatom data set in the big cypress national reserve. And comparing that what we know from the certain map diatom data set from the Everglades protection area which have been more intensively studied. You might hear me referring to the Everglades protection areas as just the Everglades or the EPA for short. Just gonna hop right into our major results for short on time. Here I have another NMDS plot that visualizes the big cypress diatoma assemblages in red and the Everglades diatoma assemblages in blue. And I again have the environmental factors that are associated with the diatoma assemblages over lane. So two points I want to make here. The first stat we see a big overlap of the assemblages on the NMDS plot. This indicates that the big cypress and the Everglades have similar diatom assemblage composition. The next thing I want to point out is that you can see that really long vector on the right here that is total phosphorus. And this is telling us that assemblage composition in both regions is heavily influenced by phosphorus. The next thing we did is compare diatom taxa, paraffite and map total of phosphorus optimum between the two regions. In other words, we're comparing at what phosphorus concentration each taxon reaches its highest abundance. This is one method we're using to try to understand if diatoma assemblages from each region respond similarly to phosphorus. We conducted a linear regression to compare the relationship between the two regions. So here on the x-axis, I have Everglades diatom taxa phosphorus optimum. And on the y-axis, I have big cypress diatom taxa phosphorus optimum both on a long scale. That black dash line indicates a one-to-one line. So if we see the points fall along there, that means the optimum are similar between the two regions. And that's what we're seeing. We found that the diatom taxa phosphorus optimum are similar between the two regions. And this indicates that both the diatoms from both regions respond similarly to phosphorus. Finally, this is my last result I'll present. We took this optimum that we calculated in the last slide and used them to create diatom weighted averaging models. So here we are using the Everglades as the training data set and the big cypress as the prediction data set. So in other words, we're using the optimum for the Everglades diatoms to see if it can predict paraffin phosphorus in the big cypress. So here on the x-axis, we have observed paraffin map total phosphorus for the big cypress. On the y-axis, we have the inferred values that we got using the models. And what we found is the diatom inference models created using the EPA assemblages that can predict the big cypress paraffin map total phosphorus concentrations with quite reasonable accuracy with an R squared of 0.40. This is once again indicating to us that assemblages from both regions respond similarly to phosphorus. So last just to summarize what we learned from our comparison of the big cypress to the Everglades. We found that phosphorus is a critical driver of paraffin and diatom assemblages in the big cypress. We found similar responses in the big cypress to other better study areas of Everglades. With that, I'd like to just thank all the help we've gotten along the way for this project and we'll be happy to take any questions. Thanks. Questions from the committee? Go ahead Margaret. Thanks for the presentation. How much data did you have for the total phosphorus and what kind of frequencies were those? What kind of data was that? If you can describe it a little more. Can you repeat your question? How much data did you have when you were working with on the total phosphorus numbers you showed for 1990 to 2011 and what kind of frequency was that for the data? You could describe that data. The frequency. I'm going to just go back to the slide you're referring to here. Where I got a little delay. That's a good question. I would have to look into that more. This is USGA study, but USGA study, I believe it may have come from the district database in which case they're sampling all of those, all their stations at different frequencies but that's a good question. And I'll have to look into that further. Yeah. Thank you. Jeff and then Phillip. I realize you're only sampling where there is paraffin but I mean, Big Cyprus has some pretty different habitats. Do you see any effect of how close you are to some of those habitats or any of them possibly like a place that some extra phosphorus might come from? Like near, there's a lot of pine in there, a lot of pine ridges and things. Like if there are any like sources like that or if it just doesn't seem to be any effect of what else is around. There's a lot of those edges out there. Yeah. Can you go to Mike? Yeah, I think that's a really good question. The Big Cyprus is an incredible mosaic of habitats. And indeed the sampling is done in the marsh habitat that is supportive of paraffin. We were zeroing in on that to understand the water quality of those marshes of the most vulnerable kinds of areas of the system. James Stevenson is our collaborator on this work. He's up at University of Michigan and has been supported through SFNRC to collect the data from that Northwestern region. And he's looking for exactly that, not just gradients relative to canals, but gradients relative to those kinds of pumps that we know exist in these habitats, which is when you get close to a tree island, often you do see a halo of enrichment around that just because those trees are able to tap in and draw it into themselves. And so I think there's probably more resolution to come on that. That's a good question. Phillip. Phillip Dixon, nice talk. If I'm sort of stepping back a little bit and thinking about why you might want to measure paraffin if you're interested in trying to understand surface water, phosphorus concentrations, which is what the water quality concerns are all about. And I wonder if, is it true that the paraffin, in fact, integrate spatially or temporarily rather variable water concentrations? Are they long enough lived or not dynamic enough so that they might represent three or six months moving averages of water concentrations? Hi, Phil. Yeah, that's the main, really wonderfully desirable feature of paraffin. Not only are these communities out there absorbing the phosphorus that comes to them and therefore creating a water column that isn't reflective of what is coming in often, but they also are doing this over a period of time retaining that phosphorus in their, we use the word tissue sometimes, but these are algae and they don't have tissues technically, but they retain that nutrient in the paraffin mat. And so the kinds of variability that might exist from day to night and from day to day that's so hard to capture unless you have an autosabler distributed, many of them distributed throughout the system, the paraffin can give us an integrated picture of what's happened over the last few months. That's just so hard to capture an actual water quality data given that the signal is actually there and often it's not in the water data itself. Great, Charlie. Phil, proceed. So I would suggest that you probably want to get data on the water concentrations in areas where there are no paraffin. If you're going to try to use the paraffin as an indicator of water, because I imagine that there are things other than phosphorus that determine the occurrences. Excuse me, I'm recovering from a flu. There are things other than the phosphorus concentrations that determine whether or not you'll find paraffin in an area. Yeah, for sure. And that is our next step in this park-funded project is to play around with that experimentally in the lab and try to understand the other factors that might be influencing both the presence of paraffin and its abundance of species and the amount of phosphorus it might have. Mainly the vectors that Kelsey was showing, hydrology and pH, those two are often highly regulatory of what you see in the paraffin. Thanks. So I had a couple of questions, but first, thank you for a very nice talk. So the first one was sort of following up on what Evelyn said about what is the pH angle? Why is there a response to pH? What's the mechanism behind that? And the second question is we have looked at different forms of phosphorus. So soluble reactive phosphorus or organic dissolved phosphorus and particulate phosphorus. So presumably paraffin are responsive to soluble reactive phosphorus, but are they also able to tap these other forms? Do we know anything about the bioavailability of those forms? Can you speak to that at all? The pH question is a really good one. We see really strong gradients from the water conservation area one on down south in paraffin attributes driven by the very strong pH gradients that exist in the rest of the Everglades. And out in Big Cypress, we definitely have these acidic water communities occurring alongside more calcareous forming communities. And that acidity can be driven by a number of different things, including the substrate and the plate community type and the soils around there. And so that is one interaction we're really interested in. Diatoms respond really predictively and strongly to pH gradient. Interestingly, in the work that Kelsey's done, I think you're finding that the pH effect is very different from the phosphorus effect. And so the species that like low pH are gonna be different from those that like low P and vice versa. And we do have some understanding of that given that these are the same communities as we've studied deeply across, for instance, the acidic Loxahatchee down through the more calcareous Everglades. So we kinda know what those different diatoms are like those different conditions. The second question is a really good one and we're just starting to really appreciate the fact that these different forms of phosphorus that might be out there would have a different influence perhaps, have differing abundances and influence perhaps on the biota. Perifitin includes lots of its algae and diatoms but it's also a ton of bacteria. And those bacteria include species that send out enzymes into the water like you've heard about it. I mean, you know about alkaline phosphatase that can break down complex organic molecules and get the phosphorus out of it both for themselves and if they're throwing that enzyme out into the community that can benefit the algae as well. So yeah, I think it's a great question. You haven't delved into that a ton yet but I'm kinda looking forward to it. I have a new collaboration with Sue Newman at the district who loves doing that kind of thing. We've just been talking about playing around with that so. Okay, thank you both very much. So now we're going to move on to Western Everglades restoration plan and update. We have several presenters on this topic and we're gonna start with Steve Bayston. He's gonna give us detailed project objectives and explain final proposed project features. All right, good afternoon everybody. Are you gonna be pulling up the presentation? Okay, where do I need to share it? I think you need to share because we don't have a copy as far as I know. Are you able to see the presentation? No, we're seeing your Zoom screen. Not as versed with Zoom. Here we go. How about now? Yes, thank you. If you can make it full. Fantastic, okay. Thank you all very much. Hey, good afternoon. Sorry about that. Steve Bayston, project manager for the Western Everglades restoration project. As with many CERP projects, the objectives of Western Everglades restoration project is to get the water right. The quality, the quantity, the timing and the distribution of the water. So with WERP, we wanna kind of remove some of those impediments to the natural flow of water to restore those freshwater flow paths, reconnect ecological areas and restore groundwater levels. And the restoration of those groundwater levels will help with the reduction of the frequency and the intensity of the wildfires in the area and particularly in the big cypress. And then the last objective, of course, is to reduce the phosphorus loads in the water column. Back in just a little bit, the study area is a large study area. It's approximately 1200 square miles the size of Rhode Island. And it's fairly unique. It does have two Indian reservations within the footprint. The one that's kind of oriented horizontally, kind of orange polygon is the Seminole tribe of Florida, big cypress reservation. And then the vertically oriented polygon that's light green is the Mikosuke tribe of Florida, Alligator Alley Reservation. Okay. So moving forward with the tentatively selected plan as that has been released in our draft project implementation report and environmental impact statement. It's alternative HNFR, which stands for the hybrid natural flow revised and kind of how do we even achieve those objectives? And I'll kind of highlight some of the, I think one of the aspects was what was the tribe's initial request in terms of the features for the project. So again, to the restoration of the natural flow pass we have over here, the yellow polygon is the North feeder stormwater treatment area that will help lower the nutrients from the water in the North feeder basin. That water will be collected here and then sent through the L3 ultimately in the Northwest corner of water conservation area 3A. So one of the requests from the Seminole tribe was to reroute the water, route the water around the Seminole tribe of Florida. And then over here in the West feeder basin, we're plugging the Wingate Mill Canal and the Lard Can Canal portions of it. And in order to restore the natural flow path, allow water to flow into the headwaters of the Kissimmee-Billy Slough, which is right here at the western edge of the Big Cypress Seminole Reservation where there will be a culvert there, a gated culvert, and we're going to allow them to utilize their indigenous knowledge and the operations of that culvert. That was another thing that they had requested. And so returning the flow pass, these two areas here, the water currently goes through the L28 interceptor and ultimately discharges down here in the Mikosuki tribe of Indians, Alligator Alley Reservation. So these canals do drain the areas very well and in particular in the dry season where they can reach up to upwards of two to three miles away, kind of lowering that groundwater level. So again, if we reduce or eliminate those effects from the canals, the drainage of those canals, then it will help raise the water levels back up. And so one of the other key requests from this Mikosuki tribe is to backfill this triangle area here, which is formed by the L28 interceptor and the L28 north canals and I-75 that kind of bisects the site right here. Over the years, you know, the water that's been coming down here has been and this terminus is down here and it has affected at least 5,000 acres of vegetation down here. It is now mostly Cattail and Willows. So that's one of the other main requests from the Mikosuki tribe is to restore that area as well as eliminate the effects that's caused the change in the vegetation. And of course, with that change in the vegetation, there's very limited wildlife within that Cattail and Willow area. And there's a, you can't really necessarily see on this particular map, but there is a historic tree island, the McCormick's Tree Island, which was a very culturally significant important site to the Mikosuki tribe. So we're going to restore an upland area here, reconnect that area with, again, some advice of their indigenous knowledge to help to support that and restore the vegetation, the right vegetation. And then the, another request was while we're plugging these canals, if we could kind of create some, some a little bit higher ground within those plugs to provide some high water refusia for the wildlife during extreme events. So again, we want to try to remove those impediments, reconnect this ecological area here, the triangle area. And then we also have culverts down here. This is the L28 South. These are three gated culverts here. And these are going to be, this will allow water to go in both directions. However, the tendency is for the water to accumulate here down here in the southwest corner of water conservation area, 3A. So predominantly it will bring water from 3A into the Big Cypress National Preserve. And then we also have culverts. We're adding culverts to 11 mile road, Tamiami Trail here, that's the southernmost light blue line that's coming across the page, and Loop Road here. We're adding culverts along those three roads to help convey the additional water. And then lastly, I guess we had the, the maintaining the floodwater to avoid the impacts to the built infrastructure. And so it kind of highlighted some of the key points for the project. Again, it's to rehydrate the Western Everglades mostly through groundwater and to avoid some of the unnatural over-drainage and in particular in the dry season. So we wanted to increase the hydration because semi-billy slew by creating more natural flowway in that area. Let's see. The other thing is that again, the groundwater levels to increase the groundwater levels and note that the water levels, groundwater and surface water will not be increased above the natural ecological ranges for that diverse mosaic habitat that we kind of discussed earlier. So in other words, it will be within the range of the cypress stones or the, or the pine islands, pine hammocks, et cetera. So with that, I've got the last slide I have here, can you any questions? There's just kind of a how, what's the timeline? So as mentioned, we did, we will we reach the tentatively selected plan back in August, and we've released the draft project implementation report and environmental impact statement last month. That is undergoing agency technical review, independent external peer review and our legal and policy compliance review, as well as public review and those public comments are due the 29th of January. And our next milestone will be our agency decision milestone, which would then lead us to a final project implementation report in June, where it will culminate in a chiefs report in September of 2024, where then it will be eligible or we'll enable it to be authorized in the next Water Resources Development Act, in particular, if we have one in 2024. So that's all I had pending any questions. And I guess next we're gonna move into, we do have a couple more presentations on the Western Everglades, where we'll get into the hydrology, expected hydrology next. So any questions on the features, draft report, timeline, et cetera? Any questions from the committee? You mentioned a little about vegetation, but almost everything was hydrologic. Are there any objectives that are more focused on biology and ecology or vegetation issues? You know, I think when you're right, most of it is hydrology. And I guess once we get the water right, it will, I guess, improve the vegetation. Other than the removal, there are two areas that we're doing some vegetation restoration. The one was down there on the triangle that I showed you. The other was up along near S40 up here. Both are within the Mikosuke reservation, the alligator alley reservation. But I'm not aware of any other specific objectives to for vegetation, but I think we do have Melissa. Masuti will be after Walter and she may be better versed at answering that question. Yeah, this is Walter. The next two parts of the presentation we'll go through hydrology and then the ecology, because the objectives are tied to the performance measures which are ecologically based. Thank you, Walter. He has them, so, at least he has mine. I have them, yes, I can run the show. Can you make it bigger? Can you hit that little screen share at the bottom? Sometimes that causes wackiness to happen. Presentation mode, thank you. Well, that little screen down there, try that one. Yeah, that doesn't usually work. I've tried that in the past. I think that will work. Or if you're in PowerPoint, go to slide show full screen. Oh, up above. Center, top center. Oh, slide show. Yeah. Okay. Look on that full screen. From current slide. Is that what it says, front current? No. That one? No. Which one is it? Is that a bad two? Which one is it? One, second from the left. Yeah. There you go. Good, try it. All right, awesome, awesome, awesome. Thank you. Excellent, Steve. Any more questions? All right, I think we'll go on to Walter. Thanks very much. Fantastic. All right, thank you. All right, Steve, I'll just say next slide when we get there. So I'm Walter Wilcox from the Interagency Modeling Center and the South Florida Warrant Management District. I'm gonna go over a little bit quick because I know that we're a little behind on the schedule and I've been drinking a lot of coffee. So if I'm talking too fast, please slow me down. When we talk about restoring natural flow paths, I guess I just wanted to give you a feel for what that looks like from a hydrologic perspective. And then Melissa Nassudi will come in and tie that back to the ecology and the landscape performance subsequent to my portion of the presentation. So the one thing that we've learned as part of this project, our project has been going on for probably close to a decade now. I think we call it Western Everglades and it's kind of tempting to think of it very much like the Everglades, but it really is a very unique landscape. It's got a mosaic landscape where there's a mix of different landscape types within a very small area, even within one model cell. And in addition to that, this area, early in the project, we were actually looking at connections to the northern part of the system to Lake Kuchobee to the C43 Kusahachi area. It turns out that none of that kind of regional import of water was necessary to achieve the hydrologic benefits in this part of the system. So it's very much the mindset of work is to restore the natural flow paths, remove the effects of built infrastructure like levies and canals and really return it to a mosaic rain driven system. And so that's what you're gonna kind of see in this hydrology. So we started with some of the modeling work. This is the natural system, regional simulation model. It just kind of shows and I wanted to highlight here on the graphics that again, unlike the Everglades, which has kind of persistently long hydro period wet all the time, in this part of the system on the right side of the graphic, you can see that during the wet season, there is what we would call quote unquote, surface water flow. And on the left side of the graphic during the dry season, there's much less surface water movement through the system. But I do want to caution you all that when you hear the discussion about surface water and groundwater, especially at the scale that we're talking about, it's not a one size fits all, right there are depressional portions of the landscape that will stay wet most of the year or all of the year and there will be water moving through the landscape through those areas. There's other portions of the landscape that are more like a wet prairie or even upland flatwoods and things where the hydro periods are very short and they don't really get wet even during the wettest times. So you have to be a little careful as you're looking at this model data and as you're looking at the performance of the plan to kind of make sure that you're referencing yourself to which landscape you're standing in because it might be surface water in the area adjacent to you and groundwater in the area that you're standing in. So if you go in the next slide, Steve. So just a big picture to give you an idea of some of the flows. Steve, do you mind advancing? There we go, sorry, yep. So in addition to the models, we have been trying to gather information from this portion, you know, from scientists from landowners in this portion of the system. You've already heard from some of the landowners today I think we're trying to improve the communication and get more information. As unfortunately near the end of this project but we're trying to get as much as we can into the work that we're doing. On the left, you can see another example of some of the information that we've used. This is the west feeder portion of the basin that is probably still the most contentious part of the project. You can see that the west feeder is kind of the yellow triangle on the far left. The north feeder is the triangle kind of in the middle and then that's just north of the Seminole tribes, Big Cypress Reservation. And so this map on the left is an aerial photography image from the 1940s-ish. And what we've imposed on there are some of these blue lines that show areas that kind of illustrate depressional areas within the aerial photography. And those locations were kind of confirmed by looking at some of the soil characteristics in the area. So where there were hydric soils, we kind of drew the lines where the blue traces kind of mimic those paths of what appear to be aerially, you know, water flow points and kind of confirmed by the hydric soils. And so what you can see is that in the graphic on the right, today's system is drained through essentially one connected canal system and it all goes down the L20 interceptor. And in contrast, the area on the left had a number of different pathways for the water to move. And so again, the mindset of connecting natural flow paths that WERP is operating under, you can see on the right, there's a comparison between the blue volumes which are the current flow volumes as simulated by the regional model over the 1965 through 2005 climate rainfall period. And then contrasting that to the orange tags which is what Western is proposing in its alternative, tentatively selected plan alternative. And you can see that in the current system, all of the flow essentially shows up at the L20 interceptor and moves down the system. It's kind of drained through that area. And in Western, we're distributing that flow across multiple points of entry into the downstream system. So some portion of it is never headed to the east and then into the C139 annex from the North feeder, 29,000 acre feet. There's still some water going down into the L20 interceptor even though that area is backfilled. So there's still water moving from the Big Cypress Reservation into the Big Cypress National Preserve. And then on the left side of the graphic is kind of the area that you'll hear a lot of discussion about with the Cassimabili slu, Cassimabili strand, the diversion of water into that portion of the system. And then you can see it's 18,000 acre feet. So it draws that to low car and hundreds of thousands of acre feet. It's not a giant volume of water, but it is very significant to that one. If you keep going, Steve, next slide, please. Thanks. And just go through the end. I think there's some text, if you click a couple more times, didn't mean to leave that on. Yeah, that's good, thanks. So the graphics that you see here are taking the regional simulation model data and imposing it on the best digital elevation model that we do have at a much finer resolution than what the regional model actually simulates. And so these graphics were generated to try to give an idea of what we're seeing within that mosaic. So sometimes our regional tools are kind of aggregated at a very high level and it's very difficult for people to understand what they're predicting and how they're being used, not so much from the performance measure perspective that the projects are using, but from kind of understanding what's happening on the ground perspective. So these graphics were designed to kind of illustrate some of the changes. And what you see is the yellow coloration in these plots. This is a one day snapshot from the regional simulation model. The yellow in the plots is kind of close to the ground surface in those localities. And then as you move toward the reds, you're basically moving below ground surface. And as you're moving toward the greens and eventually the blues, you're moving into water levels that are above ground surface in that particular location. And so you can see that the work project in contrast to the existing condition, there are areas where the conditions are getting significant letter. You can see in the project's flowway, which is on the left side of the graphic, we're kind of where the wind gate mill and the log cank canal intercept west feeder canal. You can see there's a big area of green and yellow. Yeah, thanks. So that's an area that we're looking at in more detail. That's where the backfill of the canals is currently proposed. And then you can see in the L20 interceptor where the canal ends in the vicinity of Looneyville that was mentioned earlier. You can see that there's a large increase in green compared to the existing condition where the canal is kind of drying down and creating that red spot that moves down through the system because of its drainage effect. So by removing these pathways that are collecting water and kind of over draining the system and putting that water back into the natural flow paths, the attempt is to try to create a restored ecosystem in those areas and to improve the function of those ecosystems, both for the local areas within the Seminole Tribes native area and also in the Big Cypress National Reserve. So if you go to the next slide, Steve, this is just the dry season. So the first graph we were looking at is kind of like the end of the wet season, kind of end of the tropical season. And this is closer to the end of the dry season. Again, you can see the predominant red characteristics here where basically everything is kind of moved significantly below ground because of, again, just the rainfall driven nature and the shorter, higher period landscapes that are identified here. Next slide. So in the southern portion of the system, it's kind of the same idea. In this case, as Steve mentioned, we're removing a lot of the levees and canals that are currently breaking up the system. I'm sorry, I'll go back one more. So just to give you an idea again of the flow volumes across that L28 South in the current system, there are some structures that currently exist and there's some flow moving from conservation area three into the Big Cypress National Reserve in the vicinity of US 41. But Western Everglades is increasing that conveyance and allowing more water to move through the system in that direction for lost and slew and some of the other areas downstream. And so you can see that increase of flow again has relatively small and certain volumes been important for this part of the landscape, about 30,000 acre feet coming on the average annual basis. And yeah, you can go to the next one, Steve. And so again, looking at the same graphics for the end of the wet season in this part of the system, you'll notice there's not a lot of difference in most places, like the high water conditions are really not that changed. But you can see that in the vicinity of the L28 South on the right side of these graphics, you can see the increased connectivity as the blues and greens start moving over closer to the Western footprint. And you can see that's kind of where the canal backfill has been implemented in the L28 South canal. And if you just click through, I think there's a couple notes that say what I just said and then go to the next slide and look at the end of the dry season in April, if we can get the text on there. This one's a little more dramatic. You can see that the extension of the water flow into the area upstream of US 41 and then past US 41 further south into the system is kind of seen in the water levels. Again, the volumes aren't that large, that the absolute changes in water depths aren't that large, but they are meaningful in terms of fire prevention and some of the performance measures that Melissa will take you through in the next portion of the slide. So the next slide. And I just included these links. If you wanna go to these links, you can go and see a daily animation of 10 years. You can see what's happening in dry years, what's happening in wet years, the seasonal patterns, and these have been made available to the public as well for people to kind of dig into the detail and if they want to. Next slide. And so this is my last slide. I think I just wanna acknowledge that there's a very important conversation being had right now with the landowners, with the public about kind of how this project is landing. We have a draft PIR on the street, but in particular in the northwest portion of the area, there's still a lot of concerns about what the project is proposing and how that's affecting the system. We're trying to make sure that we're communicating well and improving the communication. We're trying to explain what the modeling tools are currently doing. For example, we're accounting for lateral flows from the eucalyptus lute that a lot of people thought weren't in the regional assessment, but there's still a lot of questions about the data, the model fidelity, are we looking at things in the right way? So that conversation is ongoing. You've heard some of that today. We wanna have that conversation. We're having open houses. We're continuing the conversation over the next couple of months. And one of the things that the project is gonna be doing is expediting some of the development of some of the more detailed tools that would typically happen in the engineering design phase to try to look at what specific features are most effective at achieving the water movement in this northwest portion of the system to achieve the ecosystem response that we're looking for, but also not flood the natural or the built environment. And so that's an ongoing conversation that's kind of critical to how the Western project is gonna land. And I'll just point out the last graphic there. The graph in the bottom in the center on the left is kind of the actual landscape. On the right is how the regional model sees it. So you can kind of get an idea of the irrigated scale that we're working at. It's pretty irrigated. And so when we look at graphics like on the right, which is the ponding depth in the regional model, that blue slot that you see in the lower left portion of that graph is the consumability slew and that's moving down through the culvert that's been mentioned a couple of times into the Seminole tribe area and also moving further south toward Big Cypress. But again, at the scale of the model, when you look at that, you say, oh, it's half a foot higher or a foot higher. What that really means on the landscape is different in a cypress dome. It doesn't mean that there's a foot of additional water on a pine flatwood. You have to kind of dig into it a little bit more and Melissa will take you through some of that. So I'm gonna pass it over to Melissa Nassoudi for the ecology piece. I think how would the two go together? So if we can keep going. Okay. May I have just a quick question? Right, Melissa, hold on just a second. The water budget arrow pictures, I was trying to figure out if those were additive or if so you had like 19 or 18 more from the top and then you sort of had 30 more coming in from the northeast or the eastern side. Does that 18 curve around and contribute to the 30 or is that measured in a different spot in there both? No, it does. The way that the system works if you actually go down. So the 18 that's coming in on the north, if you go further down to the two slides or three slides, Steve to the next one that has the arrows on it, the way that this portion of the system works is there's an area called Muld Slough. So do you see where there's the gap between the built infrastructure of the canals right now in the underlying graphic? That's kind of the low area of topography. And so most of the water that gets captured north and west of that actually comes into the Everglades on the western side into three A. And so some of that 30,000 that that's coming back around, some of it is water from the northern part of Big Cypress and some of it is water that would otherwise be in the central area of the place. Yeah. Thanks. So my question is on the RSM digital elevation model results. So the predictions look relatively localized as far as the outcomes relative to these big projects. I was wondering if that's cumulative effects after multiple wet dry seasons, multiple years, or is it just like daily differences? So the simulation model is daily. And then what I'm showing you in most of the graphics is some kind of high level aggregate, like for example, the average annual ponding difference. So that's across the entire period of simulation. How much difference is there in water level? But the performance measures actually, depending on the performance measure, look at say times of year or timing or return frequency to calculate what that really means for the ecosystem. So there's vegetation performance measures, there's fire risk performance measures. Those have increased level of fidelity and how they're calculated. It's all based on the daily simulation data. Okay, Melissa. Okay, good afternoon, everyone. Can you hear me okay? Yes. Okay, so for my portion of today's presentation, I'm gonna provide a very broad overview of how alternatives were evaluated during plan formulation, as well as touch upon some of the benefits of work that you've actually heard in the prior two presentations from Steve and Walter. So this slide here depicts steps that were taken to evaluate alternatives within the Warp Draft PIR and EIS. So the first thing that the team had to do was develop predictive performance measures and targets. We have project performance measures within Water Conservationary III and Everglades National Park as a result of prior planning studies, but we did not have that for this effort. So we developed an eco sub team and developed those performance measures that were tied back to the Big Cypress Conceptual Ecological Model. Each project performance measure was tied back to a specific project objective as well. And when we developed them, they were reviewed by Recover for consistency with SERP as well as the Core's National Ecosystem Restoration Planning Center expertise. In step two, we had development of the hydrologic models as Walter alluded to. Those regional hydrologic models served as the basis to give us that predictive performance measure output. And then we had to develop a planning model where we aggregated the results of those project performance measures into habitat suitability scores, which were then applied across the project area to obtain habitat units. And so as several of the panel members probably know, habitat units are sort of the main metric that we use to justify selection of an ecosystem restoration plan, but within our NEPA documents, we also utilize whatever is available to us to try and describe potential effects on the environment. So we also use some tools from the Joint Ecosystem Modeling Group within USGS that were applicable to the Western Everglades, specifically some of their waiting bird tools because of the fertile crescent area and potential effects on waiting birds in the southern part of the study area. Next slide. So this just contains a list of the project performance measures that were developed. As I've said, they were similar to those that were used within other CERP planning study area, or CERP studies, excuse me, for water conservationary three in Everglades National Park, but we basically had to tailor them to the Western Everglades. So in general, project performance measures looked at above and below ground water levels, duration of those water levels, frequency of water levels, but we looked at things like ecological connectivity inundation patterns, sheet flow, fire risk, which Walter mentioned. We worked with the prior hydrologists for Big Cypress to specifically look at the amount of time that water was below half a foot and a foot and a half below ground because those were felt to represent sort of a risk for moderate and severe fire within the Western Everglades. And within water conservationary three in Everglades National Park, there's a well-known recover performance measure that looks at hydrologic suitability for slew vegetation. Well, within the Western Everglades, you have various vegetation types, such as moral prairies, Cypress, pine flatwoods. So we actually developed a new vegetation communities performance measure that had specific thresholds related back to the specific hydrologic requirements that are needed to maintain those types of vegetation. And then we looked at how those changes in hydrology that Walter mentioned affected the various mosaic of vegetation communities across the study area. Because water conservationary three in Everglades National Park is adjacent and we're affecting the water budget there, we looked at those performance measures as well for slew vegetation suitability and soil oxidation. And then we did have one performance measure that looked at total phosphorus downstream of the L28 interceptor and S140. Next slide. So as I mentioned, we developed a planning model and we had several performance measures. Each performance measure had several sub metrics but we needed a way to aggregate those results, apply them across the study area to generate a habitat suitability index and then multiply that by the acreage to get habitat unit. So this slide just depicts within the regional hydrologic model that was developed for the project. We delineated these zones which were essentially watersheds based on coordination with the eco sub team and Big Cypress National Preserve Hydrologist to basically evaluate when you apply those project performance measures within these zones, how did the performance measure results differ dependent upon the alternative that you evaluated. And this basically enabled us to see sort of how the individual project performance or once you aggregated those project performance measures into one habitat suitability score, how performance differed across the project area in different portions under different alternatives that had slightly different features. Next slide. But this is sort of a bottom line up front. We have individual graphics for all the different performance measures scattered throughout the work PIR or EIS. But I just included this slide in here to show the overall across all the zones that we evaluated when you look at those project performance measures collectively inundation duration, fire risk, vegetative communities, ecological connectivity. You are seeing lift with work relative to the future without project condition or no action. So on the left-hand side of the slide, this table basically just shows the percent of target habitat units achieved on a zero to 100 scale. And color is just simply used here to sort of help delineate with the eye. If you're achieving less than 50%, between 50 to 74% are greater than 75% of the possible benefits that you could achieve if you met the individual targets for all of those performance measures. And then on the right-hand side of the slide, tongue twister, the table just shows habitat unit lift relative to the future without project condition. So across the study area, we're seeing a potential improvements in terms of habitat units. And remember habitat units are reflective or a direct reflection of those project performance measures that the team developed and that I showed on the previous slide. Next slide, please. So the team has received several comments pertaining to potential effects of water levels on existing vegetation throughout the study area. So as I mentioned, we did develop a specific performance measure which evaluated hydrologic suitability for the various vegetation communities across the Western Everglades, including Cyprus, Marl Prairie, Mesic Pine, Flatwoods. Due to the time that we had today, I just included two example slides as sort of a takeaway. So if you'll go to the next slide. So these next two slides sort of focus in that area of concern that has been mentioned by stakeholders and that Walter alluded to. And these two slides were actually shown at an open house that we did within the December timeframe. So they show how water levels may affect existing vegetation, specifically within the flowway that's located directly south of the West feeder canal that is shown on the left-hand side of the slide within the white circle. So within the middle of the slide, basically the left and the center diamonds represent how hydrologic conditions are expected to change under the current condition and with warp. And then the right diamond represents basically the ecological range. And this is just an example within the flowway for tall Cyprus. And on the very right-hand side of the slide, you can see horizontal lines that depict various water depths which may be a two-wet condition for that type of habitat or a severely dry condition. So with respect to tall Cyprus habitats, the objective really is to try and improve hydro periods and minimize the dry out risk with respect to fire or crown fires. So the takeaway from this slide is that within this area, and this is just one example, as Walter said, we will remain within the ecological range for tall Cyprus. And we're benefiting, you can see at that lower level where the area might become a little bit too dry and the risk for fire or damaging fires is a little bit higher with warp. Next slide, please. Oh, keep going. Sorry, I said sort of what was in the animations. So the next slide shows a seasonal hydrograph where water levels are shown throughout the year. Once again, you can go ahead and click there's animation for this as well, Steve. There we go. Once again, water levels for the current condition are shown sort of in that turquoise line and then with work are shown within that dark blue line. And then on the vertical access are those elevation conditions that were shown on the previous slide, which represent once again the ecological range for tall Cyprus conditions that are very wet, typically wet, typically dry or severely dry. And once again, this is sort of concentrating within that flowway area that we've talked about today. But the take home is that we will increase groundwater elevation relative to the current condition as well as increase wet season above groundwater, but we're still within that ecological condition. So the expectation is that based on this as well as that vegetative communities performance measure that I alluded to earlier across the study area where we evaluated it, work is expected to improve hydrology and the vegetation mosaic within big Cyprus is expected to benefit. Next slide, please. And this is a take home slide that provides a summary of potential benefits expected from work. Actually, Steve alluded to some of this or stated some of this in his presentation, but in summary, all HNFRs expected to promote plant and animal diversity within the study area. Specifically, there's a feature to try and address some of that nuisance vegetation at the terminus of the L28 interceptor. We will rehydrate the L28 triangle, as Steve mentioned with respect to the Miccosuke by removing those man-made features, reconstruction of McCormick Tree Island and then with construction of the STA, the intent is to improve water quality and nutrient conditions. And with that improved hydrology and groundwater that is expected to have a beneficial effect on vegetation across the study area. And then lastly, I just provided a very broad overview of some potential benefits, but I just wanted to put next slide, please, Steve. I just wanted to put in a plug for the Adaptive Management Monitoring Plan that can be found in Annex D, the work PIR and EIS. So Annex D essentially outlines the monitoring that is needed to ensure that we achieve the benefits that we expect. So it's composed of three parts. Part one is the Adaptive Management Ecological Monitoring Plan. Part two is the, excuse me, I can never say this word, Hydro-Media-Rollogical Monitoring Plan. Every single time. And part three is the Water Quality Monitoring Plan. So specifically, part one, the Adaptive Management and Ecological Monitoring Plan, that is gonna identify the monitoring needed to document progress toward meeting the goals and objectives that Steve presented, as well as project-specific uncertainties. And the team developed uncertainties related to flora and fauna, hydrology, and water quality. And then part two, the Hydro-Media-Rollogical Monitoring Plan as I'm sure you're aware, that's basically monitoring that's needed to inform system operations. And part three is Water Quality Monitoring that addresses regulatory requirements. So I don't have any further slides on the Adaptive Management Monitoring Plan other than I think it's a robust plan that several subteams help to develop and we can provide further information about that or address any specific questions on that, maybe at a future CIS-REP meeting. So that's all I have. I believe Leslie is next, but I'll take any questions. Any questions from the committee? Ramesh has a question. Ramesh, you may be here. Ramesh, you're here. Thank you for your presentation, Melissa. Really enjoyed. I just want to know if you include in your ecological monitoring, have not heard anything about the soils, soil types. So in Annex D, that part one contains both the Adaptive Management and Ecological Monitoring Plan, and I'd have to refresh my memory, but I don't think that there's any specific monitoring with respect to delineating different soil types across the project area. Is that what you're asking? Yeah, yeah. I don't believe so, but I can check and if I'm incorrect, perhaps I can respond back to Stephanie at a later time. Thank you. Philip, then Mark. So, Phillip Dixon, this is a follow on onto some of the questions we had earlier about whether or not there was budget for, for example, other agencies to do permit review. Monitoring can be expensive and the money is to build. Is there any forward looking way of incorporating money to support monitoring efforts into these projects or is monitoring going to have to be funded separately as possible after the project's completed, construction's being completed? So there's an associated, within the Adaptive Management and Ecological Monitoring Plan, as well as part two and part three, each monitoring plan should have a cost and that cost is built into the total project costs within the PIR EIS. So when the project is congressionally authorized and funded, the monitoring cost should be built in so it should be there when it is needed subject to funding constraints at the actual time and appropriations. But there is a cost within the monitoring plan itself to say, here's the outline of what we have right now and here's the cost associated with it. Does that address your question? Thank you. How many years of monitoring gets built into project budgets? What's the timeframe of monitoring? Well, it varies depending upon which part of the monitoring plan that you're talking about, the points of contact for the hydrometer logical and the water quality. I don't believe are with us today but for the Adaptive Management Ecological Monitoring Plan, it assumed a yearly cost for various indicators and then it assumed times a duration of 10 years but how that is parsed out based on one construction starts or the frequency but that was sort of what was assumed for the purpose of the budget within the plan itself in the PIR EIS. Margaret. Thanks for the presentation, Melissa. So with respect to restoring a low nutrient conditions, what thresholds or targets are you walking towards and how did you determine those? Well, with respect to that particular performance measure, it assumed that the target would be met and then it basically assumed a benefit of so many acreage based on like if we were doing herbicides or mechanical treatment but with respect to water quality targets, I think I'm gonna kick that question to Leslie Wah and our Ken Bradshaw because I don't know if that gets into sort of the regulatory realm. I feel more comfortable if they would answer because it's water quality specific and that's really not my area of expertise. So looking for a lifeline here from other project members. Leslie, if it's better to punt that until after your talk. Leslie, okay. We have a couple of questions for Melinda. Okay, thank you. Okay, that's fine. Question and answer at the end. After all those questions as well, should I ask now? No, ask now. Yeah, so I have a question I guess maybe about a couple of presentations but in looking at work, there are some... Closer to your mic. Thank you. Are some operational features, it seems that would require I guess operational plans once constructed. And so I'm curious when you're simulating alternatives, what do you assume for the operations when they haven't been optimized yet and how much difference will that make in the results that you get? I'll answer the first part, I'm not sure about the second part but yeah, so when we make these multiple assumptions, we make an assumption for the operating plan that's in place and it depends on where you are in the system. So for example, as you saw in the ponding map, the operation of the culvert on the boundary road is open in the model, right? Because that's one of the natural connections. So the assumption was that the water could flow either east or south depending on the natural gradient that was what was built into the analysis in that location. In other areas where there's structures that will be proposed by the project and operated by the district or the core eventually, we come up with a draft operating manual that says here is how we plan to operate them. Typically it's within the concept of what the other it's called rainfall driven operations where it's a function of stage and rainfall conditions. We open the structures with more flow during wetter times and we close them during drier times to kind of mimic the natural response. It doesn't mean that they're closed during droughts, it's just that the magnitude of flow through the structures is kind of tied to an estimate of what the natural hydrologic flow would have been in that location. So those are analyzed as part of the model run and then there's a draft operating manual put into the PIR and then later there are many steps. There's a preliminary, there's like four operating manual steps before it ever gets permitted where those operations are revisited as the project is designed, constructed and brought online. And then I just had a related to adaptive management. So, okay, sorry. So I'm just trying to think, so this is interesting. So we have a draft operating plan but it'll ultimately be operated differently presumably down the road. And so then that seems to be something that's an uncertainty in some sense of what you're going to get. And so do the, when we think about an adaptive management plan and the things that we're monitoring, can that, is that feed into how you operates or how you develop an operating plan? I think we're gonna need a tag team with Melissa on that one but I think those are two different lanes on the same highway. The operating manual has a process by which it moves forward and continues to get refined as detail and scientific uncertainty reduces but it's always tied back to the original objectives of the project and what Congress authorized. So there's a kind of a check in that process that moves through to try to ensure that it's achieving what was identified in the PIR is what the project was trying to do. The adaptive management uncertainties are a little bit different. They're specific, they're triggering conditions. And maybe Melissa, you can talk to that side of the process because I think they're, they can also trigger action but not the same way they, you know, to the operating manual revision. So Melissa, did you have any more? Yeah, so within the adaptive management plan for each uncertainty, the eco sub team drafted an adaptive management strategy and that basically should identify the monitoring information that's needed to address the uncertainty and the decision criteria or the trigger for which an adaptive management option should potentially be pursued. And we do have management options within the adaptive management plan that do suggest that perhaps we would want to change operations once certain project components are built if the benefits that we expected are not being achieved. But then I think that relates back to the process for how that actually occurs. Because if you have a D-POM or a water control plan and then a project team comes up with a suggestion to change operations based on some of the monitoring that's been done, then you would have to do additional things like NEPA to support a change to a water control plan. But bottom line, the adaptive management plan does suggest things with respect to uncertainties that if benefits aren't being achieved then perhaps you would want to adjust operations. Does that help? Yeah, that's perfect. Because it does seem that that's where a lot of the flexibility potentially is in the operations. And one of the great achievements, I think, is this re-operating the system as new features come online, which is sort of this opportunity also to adapt the changing conditions and uncertainty that are being reduced. And to have that sort of formalized as you go forward, as you continue to learn, as conditions continue to change, seems like that could be great benefit to that, increasing the flexibility for increasing the flexibility of the system. I'll just add to that that SIRP has always envisioned that process that you just outlined, Casey, that you hear the concept of system operating manual, like Adobe system operating manual, that system operating manual concept is that process. So when you hear the terminology in SIRP evolve from water control plans to system operating manual, it's exactly that mindset that you're entering into this kind of recurring update as new information comes on the table, as features are built, as you identify scientific uncertainties, as the permitting conditions change, you have a mechanism to continue to evolve those system operations. That was envisioned in the pro-regs SIRP. I was hoping, did that get you, Casey? Are you done? Yes. I was hoping you could respond to some of the stakeholder concerns, which seem to be primarily in two camps. One is about flooding of residences or land, which I assume is covered by the savings clause that you can't do that. But I was wondering how you, if you can look at some of these inundation maps and clearly water is higher in developed areas. And then the second part is the issue about panthers. You talked about vegetation shifts, but I don't know about how panthers link to vegetation and what is the actual impact of panthers and if there is mitigation, what does that involve? So, Walter, I can address panthers, but I'd have to defer to another team member with respect to savings clause. Why don't you do that one and I'll hit the first one. Okay. Yeah, so within the draft PIR, EIS, we have a biological assessment and we all are consulting with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on potential effects to panthers. As was stated earlier by the gentlemen, we are envisioning to utilize credits from the picking strand restoration project to offset the loss of potential habitat within the footprint of the North feeder STA. So right now we submitted a biological assessment that U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is reviewing it and then they will provide a biological opinion associated with the project which will basically provide concurrence with our effects determination on the panther. We do have some information within the biological assessment that talks about changes in water levels across the project area and the potential impacts on the panther, specifically with respect to deer because deer are a primary prey for the panther but the takeaway is within the work PIR, EIS, while there is an impact to the panther within the footprint of the North feeder STA as a result of that loss of habitat elsewhere within the project area, we believe that the panther is expected to benefit based on the underlying benefit to vegetation and that there is not the expectation that there would be an adverse impact with respect to the panther and deer. And we're also considering a wildlife crossing in the design of some of the culverts in region four as a further minimization measure. And so just to the first question that I guess the best interact you could give right now is that the conversation is still ongoing. I think that it's very specific to the individual landowners in the specific location, how that conversation needs to move forward. Within, I would say most of the discussions that are still outstanding right now are in the vicinity of the West feeder base in the Wingate Mill, the Cassimabili slough area and there are different cases there. There are areas that are north of the Wingate Mill, further up in the West feeder where the project objective is clearly the savings clause don't impact people. We just haven't landed on all of the engineering design to get there. There's areas within the flowway where the water is being redirected, where there's a different conversation that needs to be had with those landowners to identify what the balance point is. And honestly, we have some work to do as a project team to rebuild the trust and communication with those landowners because a lot of them feel like they weren't engaged early enough in the process. So that's still work that we're doing. The draft TIS represents a snapshot in time but those conversations are gonna require more detailed tools and continued evolution of the plan to the final TIS before we get there. So it's not a one size fits all discussion. Some landowners believe that they're being impacted. We don't really see that. So we're trying to listen to them and understand why they think that there's other landowners that we know are impacted. They know that they're impacted. We have to have a conversation about what that looks like and may not be a savings clause violation but it has to be a mutually agreed upon path forward especially with a private landowner. So do you have to resolve this before it goes to Congress? I mean, is that part of the savings clause process or is that something, some of the times you say we'll work this out in design but where- I think that's the conversation we're having. I don't know that I have the full policy answer to that but that's the conversation that we're having. In order to move to Congress, we do wanna have landowner acceptability and a feeling of acceptability from the stakeholder community. We're not there yet. So we have more work to do. That's the best answer I can give you. Hey, Leslie. So Steve, do you wanna still keep driving? Sure. And I'll stick to my notes so I can try to get through this pretty quickly. So I know I'm close to last here. So again, my name is Leslie Wall. I'm a section administrator with the South Florida Water Management District and my part of the presentation today is to talk about the WERP implementation plan. Can everybody hear me okay? So as we've seen with the past presentations, WERP is a very large plan and it has a lot of features to help restore the Western Everglades. But as we implement that plan, we want to ensure that number one, the project is not going to cause unintended hydrologic impacts and two does not degrade any downstream environments. So to address those considerations, the Army Corps and the Water Management District developed an integrated implementation plan and identified dependencies. So there are two types of dependencies that I'll discuss with this plan. First are WERP project dependencies. So that's mostly specific to sequencing of construction. And then second are non-WERP activities. So non-WERP activities are state led nutrient-source control activities on public and private lands in the feeder canal basin to help improve water quality. Next slide, please. So first I'll cover the non-WERP activities and these are focused in the feeder canal basin. So the feeder canal basin is located at the northern end of the WERP project area and the feeder canal basin is divided into two sub basins. So we have the north feeder canal basin and the west feeder canal basin and the available water from these two basins contribute to the restoration flows for WERP. But before some project features can be constructed or operated in some cases, the implementation of the state led non-WERP activities will need to demonstrate improved water quality for total phosphorus in those two sub basins. So the plan provides an incremental approach to these non-WERP activities. So we'll start with some additional water quality monitoring and working with landowners to implement best management practices or BMPs. We have a couple other projects going on in those basins as well. So we'll start with those kind of incremental approaches and then look for trends obviously in the right direction. So improved water quality specifically for total phosphorus. And if we don't see those going in the right direction, then we'll add on to that plan and continue with nutrient source control projects. And then we can also utilize rulemaking in those basins. So although this is an incremental approach and it's the same approach in both sub basins, the implementation might be different in those sub basins depending on what we see as far as water quality improvements. Next slide, Steve. Okay, so what does this mean for the WERP project? So the non-WERP dependencies are focused on water quality and that mainly affects the features in regions one and two with the North end of the project area. So in region one, that's the North feeder canal sub basin. So prior to operating the North feeder STA and installation of a plug at the PC-17A structure, we'll have to demonstrate the effectiveness of the non-WERP activities with the downward trend in total phosphorus concentrations. And then in region two, the West feeder canal sub basin, we have a total or target total phosphorus concentration that don't need to be met at the West weir prior to moving forward with the backfill of the large can and the Wingate mill canals. And then when we talk about the WERP project dependencies themselves, so that's features that depend on the sequencing of construction. And that's mostly to not cause adverse hydrologic effects in the system. So for example, we kind of already touched on it. So backfilling the triangle with the L28 interceptor canal, we would need to make sure that region one and region two are complete prior to the backfill of the L28 interceptor canal moving forward because you need to make sure that those flows that went down that canal are diverted either to the Western flowway or into the North feeder STA. So that's where the plan been between the non-WERP and WERP dependencies become. And if you look in the draft PIR in section 6.7, that's where this plan is detailed and there's also a series of tables that detailed the dependencies for all the features within the project area. So just to get a little deeper in the water quality considerations for the Western flowway and region two. So a lot of parts of the WERP project area don't have numeric nutrient criteria for water quality standards. We have narrative standards and the narrative standards state that water cannot cause or contribute to an imbalance of populations of natural flora and fauna in downstream environments. But for planning purposes for WERP specifically, for alternative evaluations and for plan implementation, we needed, it helps to use numbers. So DEP derived numeric interpretations of those narrative standards and placeholder targets for phosphorus concentrations. So looking at two specifically and the Western flowway. So again, we don't have numeric nutrient standards for total phosphorus, but in the PIR we have placeholder numbers and those numbers are subject to change with additional monitoring that we will do with the project. But for planning purposes, DEP, the Department of Environmental Protection derived a placeholder number of 17 parts per billion of total phosphorus in the Northern area of the Big Cypress National Park. And then if you have the assumption from literature review that we did, if you assume that there's an uptake of nutrients in the flowway between 45 and 50%, then that gives us a target in the West feeder canal sub-basin of 31 to 34 parts per billion total phosphorus that would need to be before we can move forward with backfilling the canals in that region. So that's the gist of it. That's a very high level roll-up version of the implementation plan. It is detailed, like I said, in section 6.7 of the draft EIS. So if you have questions though, just let me know. So are you gonna do any work to test that assumption of 40 to 50% uptake before it reaches Big Cypress? Yeah, we've, there's literature that does back that up, but we do plan to do additional monitoring in within the flowway and within Big Cypress National Park to prior to applying for permits to do the project. And talk about the flowway. You're talking about the little band between filled canal and the boundary of Big Cypress. So you're not worried about that? Except between the Wingate Mill Canal and the boundary of the Big Cypress National Park. Margaret. Okay, thanks Leslie. So that answers some question on the target in the West area. But what about in the Triangle area where they've also been concerned about what are quality of their targets set for those and the plan to achieve them for that area? It's hard. I'm sorry, it's hard to hear with that. Could you repeat that Margaret? I think that way. So what about the Triangle area? There have been concerns there about what are quality coming down the phosphorus concentrations coming through the L28 is. So I can now, are there targets for that area too? And how have those been set? And then after that, I have another question. Right, so I think somebody can- You need to recap the targets for the Triangle area. No, I know. Okay, sorry. Yes, for the Triangle. So we did, again, during the planning process, DEP developed those numeric nutrient criterias, but that's within the Mikosuki Reservation, which they do have targets for total phosphorus within the boundaries of their reservation, which I believe is 10 parts per billion, yes. But it has to also meet those, right? Right, but we're backfilling that area. So there won't be necessarily any inflows, right? So if we're taking care of the inflows on the North End, so now the water that did flow down that L28 I into that Triangle, some is going to be diverted into the Northwest feeder, STA, and treated through the STA. And then the water that came from the West feeder sub canal basin or canal sub basin will be, again, working with those non-warp activities, working with landowners to improve BMPs, including nutrient source control projects if needed, will work to reduce the total phosphorus in that basin to meet that currently the planning target of 31 to 34, before we could implement the project there. So there's a lot on the BMPs and a lot will depend on working with, I'll try and speak a little louder. There's a lot on the BMPs and a lot depends on working with the landowners. So what is the plan for working with the landowners and what's the monitoring plan as well to ensure or to evaluate the progress, especially given the dependencies on that component for other work components. So the plan for like the non-warp activities that we're talking about within the feeder canal basin. So we do have some of that information detailed in the PIR, it's in the Appendix C or some of the specifics of that plan. But a lot of that is current, like a lot of the details are really under development at the moment, right? We're currently talking to landowners, we're having a lot of conversations with everyone out there. But what specifically is going to be implemented is still needs to be determined. Part of our question was monitoring. Oh, right. So we are, right. So we do plan to increase the monitoring in the area. We do currently monitor at the West Weir. But since the majority of the canals in that area are private, we have to continue to work with the landowners to get access to do some monitoring. So that's part of the conversations that we're having with the non-werp activities as well is to be able to have some additional access to do additional monitoring. So still all under development. Yeah, I think Casey asked about adaptive management for the operations. What about the plan to adapt depending on what kind of information you're getting with your monitoring? What's the plan and how will you adapt if things are not going maybe the way you were thinking in terms of being able to bring the rest of the work components online? And I'm gonna see if Melissa wants to jump back on to talk about the adaptive management plan. Yeah, hi. This is Melissa again. So we do have a water quality uncertainty within the adaptive management plan specific to sort of the downstream area from the West feeder canal. And there are management strategies that are outlined such as investigating causes, potentially changing operations or adding additional treatment facilities like dry detention basins, et cetera. So there are some ideas within the adaptive management plan that have been put on paper. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Melissa. Thank you, everyone. We'll go to our last sub-session of the day and it's actually a panel discussion on the use of indigenous knowledge in the work planning process. And I do recognize, excuse me, that we are standing between you all with bathroom breaks and your happy hour. So I promise that we will attempt here to be very specific and... Now, well, can you move my down here? Because they're all on the other end. So I haven't had a chance to speak with Cindy or Mondo about how to specifically address the questions here in the bullet points that were provided. But at least I'm on... Kenneth, can I start off with another question, please? So it's a very broad one. And this is up to your rally, I think. And that's how has indigenous knowledge been incorporated in the work planning process? So I'd like to try and address specific examples rather than talking in generalities. And again, I'm gonna be speaking from Mikosuki perspectives in this case. And I would say that, carrying on with a lot of the conversation we just had with water quality. Water quality is the priority concern here within work, outside of where that water is flowing, of course. But water quality is of particular importance to the Mikosuki tribe, because the tribe knows very well what happens to the system when you introduce more nutrients into it. And so I would say here that the fact that the tribe assumed treatment of state under the Clean Water Act in order to scientifically establish a 10 parts per billion water quality standard on the Alligator Alley Federal Reservation that has been an important component that WERP has had to contend with in order to move forward in the way with planning that it has done so, because the project itself cannot impact that 10 parts per billion standard within the reservation. And so it has been an important driver as to why the North feeder STA, for example, is located where it is and to the size that it is, and the manner with which that a lot of the other components here have come together. I'll also note that there is an important opportunity here where water quality itself is a knowledge gap within the Big Cypress National Preserve and is an area where tribal knowledge is going to directly inform the process that Dr. Geiser and Kelsey are going to be working toward. I'm very happy to report that the tribe will be meeting with the Park Service and with FIU scientists starting next week in order to start hashing out that monitoring and experimental design plan. And I want to assure that the tribe's input will be sent back by way, excuse me, the input within that technical working capacity is going to be brought back to the tribe for its input to understand that we are not going to be performing this work in places of particular cultural sensitivity, but also that the tribe itself because the tribe does live within the Big Cypress National Preserve and the tribe does have its use in occupancy rights within the preserve, the entirety of the preserve that this is absolutely essentially important work to be undertaken and for which the tribe will be working in a partnering capacity to assist and to contribute. Certainly turn it over to Cindy or Armando. Yes, thank you. So I'll be brief to you. I will refer to yesterday's meeting. Essentially, that's how we're incorporating work and I mean, indigenous knowledge into work. We're out there listening to the tribal members trying to bring into the written aspect of a planning process. The question is planning, we're planning process. So we're trying to bring that knowledge into the black and white paper base. We're trying to interpret the guidance that has been out from the White House. There's no per se policy that we can adhere to, but certainly I think all the agencies have been making a tremendous effort to incorporate that knowledge that is very important. I think a staff member from the tribe yesterday kind of brought it up to your attention when we were at the Osceola camp, the human aspect of this whole process. So that's really why. Cindy. Happy New Year, everyone. It's good to see you again. So I read an email earlier this week from our headquarters that was talking about how they were going to develop an implementation guidance for how to incorporate indigenous knowledge into core projects, which is wonderful. The last I had heard that wasn't gonna take place. Well, now it is. Just to make sure, before I announce this to you guys on the drive here, I called the ASA's office and I'm like, is this for real? And they're like, yes. So that's good news. Unfortunately, it's not gonna get here before, of course, we're finished with this feasibility study. Nevertheless, the tribes are our partners. Like Kevin has alluded to or said, they have lived here. They know more about this system than of course the scientists in a different way that are studying this area. So for work specifically, I think you asked how we're incorporating IK into work. Is that the question? Okay. So, I'm gonna start from the top and I'm gonna work down. Right, actually no, no. I'm gonna start from the bottom and go up. First of all, the tribe, first of all, let's think about how work came to be in the first place. Work, I know the Migasuki tribe, I've got documents that the Migasuki tribe since 2006 or either four have been asking for work. To restore the areas that's important to them. That's what we're doing is we're moving forward with that project. In the southern part of the system, the tribe has consistently said, you need more culverts, you need more culverts. So as part of work, we are including culverts into U.S. or Tamimi Trail and Loop Road. Where are those exactly will be placed? We don't know that yet. That's in the PED phase. That's in the planning and design phase. That's when we go to the tribes and we go to the public that lives out there and we say, hey guys, where are you seeing issues along these two roads? That's gonna be incorporating indigenous knowledge, of course, from the tribe on the placement of those. Regarding the vegetation removal for the S140 area and the L28 terminus of the L28s North and Interceptor. That's on reservation land. Together we have to work as a team to figure out, I mean, it's pretty dense. I'm sure, I think some of y'all have been out there is crazy and you're in the middle of nowhere. We're gonna have to use their, they have been traversing this area forever. So we need their input on, hey, how would you go about doing this? What are your ideas for removing this? What needs to be removed? What doesn't need to be removed? McCormick's Landing or McCormick Island, the restoration of that. So that was bisected if you remember by the L28i, back in the 60s when L28i was constructed, it bisected a culturally significant island. To restore that island, we just can't go in and restore it without their knowledge, their information, whether it's plant communities need to be planted at this level, whether, how high is this area gonna be? How is it gonna grade down? Anything and everything you can imagine, what type of soil, that indigenous, but again, that's in the planning and design phase, right? As well as construction, this is gonna roll over through the entire extent of the project, plugging the canals. We're working closely with all the tribes, both tribes are on the eco subteams. Their knowledge is invaluable with regards to how high these plugs need to be for like Stephen Faysden alluded to during high water events for the animals to go and find refuge. And also have some deep water areas within the canal so leave it open so that during dry season, these animals can have water access. The gated culverts and seminal and indigenous knowledge is gonna be incorporated in the operation of those. I don't know, am I missing anything? I can go on. Well, I think, thank you Cindy, that was good. Maybe I'll take a question from the panel. Helen, go ahead. Hi there, Helen Reagan, University of California, Riverside. We've heard a little bit about adaptive management and I was just wondering how or if indigenous knowledge is being incorporated in a formal or informal way into adaptive management plans or the involvement of the tribes. Hi Helen, I'll try and answer that question. So adaptive management is not officially a component of work as an Army Corps project in the sense that for example, BBCR is, it is kind of an ad hoc component as I see it. But to the larger point here, you heard a little bit about some of the constraints that we have with process. What an authorized project is going to look like and what a water control plan is going to look like and to what degree we can make changes to that and quite the lengthy and involved process with NEPA, et cetera, et cetera, in order to make changes. And that's what I'm hoping to continue to assert here is that an adaptive management plan cannot be as rigid as the process by which it is seeking to inject that flexibility into. And so I don't know if I'm really answering your question properly, but I would have to say that in terms of indigenous knowledge being interjected into that adaptive management plan, the Midakasuki tribe will continue to use its communication platforms and its opportunities in the government to government relationship that it has with the federal government and the strong partnering relationship that it has with the South Florida Water Management District to address matters as they might be coming up so that we can work towards solutions. Solutions again, that I'd suggest we have a chance to work a little outside of the box with and that makes a lot of people uneasy when you're talking about experimenting with water operations, for example. Well, I'm gonna argue again that the tribe is not seeking to do something here that is outside of what they know to be true, to be true of the system. The tribe doesn't have a financial dog in the restoration fight, so to speak. The tribe wants the land to be healed. The tribe wants the land to work in the way that generations of knowledge have passed down through the members of the tribe as a matter of life and death, not as a matter of academic pursuit, not as a matter to make and break careers, but because they live on the land, they protect the land and the land has protected them. So I would hope that adaptive management has enough latitude for those discussions as we move down the road that are not going to be rigid, that are not going to be based on constraints, but more based on opportunities for realizing true restoration in a healing sense that is from the top of the watershed down to the bottom. I have a follow-up on that. I don't know if Melissa Nasoudi is still on the line. Do you see her? Melissa, is there anything, I don't want to put you on the spot either, but I don't want to misspeak, but whenever I first got here, do you want to add anything with regards to the Seminole and our experience and the input that they have provided? Well, I don't really want to speak for either tribe because I don't think that's my place, but I... Yeah, I will say that we developed the adaptive management ecological monitoring within the EcoSub team and tried to include both tribes within that form, as well as present components of the adaptive management ecological monitoring plan and government-to-government consultation meetings. With respect to IK, I think of it as largely coming in through those operations of the culverts on the Western boundary, the Big Cypress Reservation. I think that's mentioned within the adaptive management plan specifically, but we did give the tribe opportunity to comment on the development of the plan itself, but that's all I can say, sort of at this point. Thank you. Any other questions from the committee? Well, I have a few scripted ones. Okay, go ahead, Dave. Well, I don't know, your questions may be better, but I guess I'm just pausing. I was biting my lip, Cindy, a bit because you both, Kevin, mentioned the need for flexibility, the long-term knowledge, the generations of knowledge that the tribe brings to the information base, the knowledge that they have. It may not be scientific knowledge, but it is social, cultural knowledge that is important. I'll address that separately. Direct conflict with the environment. Right, I mean, they live that and they've seen the flexibility and the variability and all that goes into that. And I'm just wondering, and there may not be an answer to this, but as we start to frame a future after SERP and after these projects get implemented and we know that there's gonna be changes coming because of climate and hydrology and so on and so forth, in your estimation, do we have the right structure to embrace the long and more expansive, perhaps knowledge outside of academic scientific knowledge? Do we have the right structure in place to help make sure we incorporate the tribal concerns? Absolutely not. In my opinion, this is new to the core, right? It's new to a lot of people in Western science, right? Together, we have to approach this with the tribes hand in hand and figure out how, like I was just making notes whenever Melissa was speaking, ecological benefits. How do I take that to the tribe and be like, can you assign a number to the ecological benefits from the indigenous knowledge standpoint? Take it to your council, tribal council or elders and how would you rate this feature or how would you rate this alternative on a scale of one to a hundred? We don't even have that yet. So these discussions needs, they need to happen and we're gonna have to build it from the ground up and are we gonna get it right the first time? New. So my question is, are you starting to look at how you might develop those structures? Absolutely, I am, I do have a book at home. It's not this book particularly, but I wrote, I have to transfer this over. My biggest concern with the whole concept of indigenous knowledge and developing how to incorporate it into projects is I don't want to go overstep and do something that or interpret something that maybe the tribes are not okay with, right? So right now I'm sure the tribes, I don't wanna speak for them, but the tribes are probably thinking about how they're gonna incorporate or how they're gonna present indigenous knowledge to agencies, just like we are sitting here trying to figure out, how do we ask? How do we keep it confidential? What are our legal, yeah, so it's gonna take time. May I? First off, tribal knowledge is inherently unique in the way that it is imparted both within the tribe from the knowledge holders to those of us who work in the public, mostly in the public space here. With how to bring that forward. And there is a tremendous amount of information that is not shared with us and should never be counted on and being shared in general. However, the Mikosuki tribe acknowledges that in order to achieve the benefits and the successes of Everglades Restoration, not just work, that the tribe's knowledge needs to get out there in a way that is meaningful and in a way that it can be speaking to its audience in the proper way. And the audience or the consumers of information for the most part are Western trained scientists. I sure hope I can consider myself one of them as well. And so in this case, the tribe recognizes and has taken the steps as it has done many times in the past to bring itself to a level in order to have good conversation in a way that is not conventional for the tribe in terms of peer reviewed papers and numerical data that has a particular experimental design and statistical robustness to have these conversations in a very technical data-driven manner. However, that doesn't mean that we can't follow a process in order to present that information and do so in a scientific manner. I would argue, I'm gonna state very clearly that the tribe does conduct science as done so for many years. And again, the knowledge that comes from that Western science, I and my team have the express need to synthesize those numbers with the proper cultural context in a way that comes forward and can be treated on a level of parity with the volumes of papers and textbooks that have been published about how the Everglades works, how the Everglades used to work and to what degree we can proceed in a way and select for a system to perform in a certain way that's gonna be somewhere between that, between how it used to work and how it works today. Where are we gonna land in between? There is a process that Edward has a paper in the UM Law Review Press that is outlining the manner by which the Mikosuke tribe is seeking to take a leadership role in how to do peer-reviewed publication of indigenous knowledge. And I did have a conversation about that in part with Helen yesterday. I went out at the Shark Valley Tower and I was very pleased to hear that Helen had reviewed the S12AB letter that was published and presented from the tribe earlier this year. And she's also read the draft paper that Edward is going to have published here this coming spring. And within that, I'm just gonna state very quickly that the process by which the Mikosuke tribe is going to bring up forward. It's Western science synthesized with indigenous knowledge is a process that mirrors the current science process by which peer-reviewed publication is made. The knowledge holders, the data gatherers present their information. In this case, we are getting that information from the knowledge holders within the community. That information is compiled and properly exerted so that we are retaining what needs to be retained within the tribe and that we have the proper information to make the point and answer the question or ask the question, so to speak, for whatever that pertinent subject matter is. That information from the tribal members is then vetted within the tribe's science technical team and where we are able to add to that in order to bring that level of that Western based science into this. That whole package goes back to the knowledge holders that provided the oral histories or the indigenous knowledge for a internal vetting amongst that combined group. And once we reach a consensus on what that message is going to be, it goes to the business council and is signed off by the chairman. At that point, fully citable, fully referenced within that particular paper, that is now presented as indigenous knowledge for full public consumption, for full citability. And again, is an internally vetted peer-reviewed process of taking knowledge and bringing that forward so that there can be a level of trust and credibility ascribed to that. That is the way that we're seeking to move forward to provide indigenous knowledge outside of you listening to me or some other member of my team and for which you might not necessarily get the opportunity to hear directly from the mouths of the tribal members who are the knowledge holders. If you related to this, one of the main kind of canned questions here was what are successes and challenges to indigenous knowledge? I'd like to just point out here. First off, a success is that work in and of itself is still continuing to move forward. And I would say that work is moving forward specifically due to the Mikosuki and Seminole tribe making sure that we cut through the rhetoric and we cut through the fear and the uncertainty that has surrounded this project for many years to continue to move it forward. That's one common, but really more going back to this. What are the challenges? Well, in incorporating indigenous knowledge, unfortunately we've experienced outright dismissal of information or denying of some of that information that we've put forward because it contradicts some of the information that has been readily resourced or sourced and referenced here over the last 20 or so years about, well, how was the system before drainage? That's a problem. And that's, quite frankly, a bit of an insult for the tribal members who are the knowledge holders who provide that. Two examples are water levels within the greater Everglades and the big Cyprus and the fact that there's been some reluctance to accept the fact that these areas do dry down at every year, but they do dry down and that you heard a little bit about that referenced in Edward's comment this morning. That's very counter to a lot of the plans that are moving forward here with some components of Everglades restoration projects that seek to increase water levels and prevent dry downs. Again, variability within the system, stress in the system are important drivers of system productivity. I'll stop there. The other component that I'd point out as being a key issue of dismissal of information by the tribe is over the presence of larger animals within the landscape. The presence of Miso prey, such as deer and their frequency and distribution in numbers across the landscape. The use of predators within the landscape, within tree island systems. There are those who have contended that large animals really not a component of the Everglades and even some of the smaller animals were not important components in that they were only on tree islands during the dry season or et cetera, et cetera, whatever you wanna say. That is wholly inaccurate for the knowledge that was put forward by the tribe. So there are some key things here that illustrate a need for continued conversation. And for us, again, the Mikosuki tribe realizes that it is one voice amongst many. And so the tribe is trying its best to meet that challenge on how to best communicate with its audience. And so pursuing a pathway and a method that is akin to most of the folks here in this room and how they approach their jobs every single day. I appreciate the examples. I think we have a question from Marla online and then we'll go to you, Casey. Thank you. Hi, Cindy, Kevin and Armando. Great to see you and greetings from Switzerland. I'm sorry, I can't be there with you. And I just wanted to say thank you for Kevin responding to that question about challenges and ways going forward. I wonder if I could pose the same question to Armando and to Cindy in terms of working with indigenous knowledge within the district and within the core. What challenges do you face and what strategies do you see going forward that might be useful? Thank you. Specific to work would be really helpful. Well, I will put it back to the original question about the process. I mean, we're still, it is a new thing and it's described as we're at the infancy basically of trying to develop that process. The district is eager to get that information so it can be incorporated into the planning process. We're happy to hear that there's a report coming out. We're waiting for that because it's essentially that. It's how do we process this information that has been there for many years, millenniums basically and put it into this Western-based way of science basically, but no, the district is very open and eager to get engaged and it's always been engaged with the tribes, both tribes and very open to get into the table to have this discussion. So before, I don't know if it was right before the White House came out with their memo or right after. I don't know if, sorry, can you hear me now? Can you hear me now? Yeah. Okay, so I don't know if this was right before the memo from the White House came out or I think it was right after the memo came out. We were trying to figure out how do we calculate benefits. Sorry, I'm not a biologist. Ecological or ecosystem benefits in the native area, the Seminole native area, if the gates are closed, if the gate culverts are closed or open or what have you. And we had no, again, we had no way to even wrap our head around how to do that, but we knew we needed something. So the only thing we could figure is to have the tribe write a letter which is in the draft EIS or it should be saying what ecological benefits from the tribe's perspective there would be with them operating within that area. Hoping that it would go past muster with our headquarters and our reviewers as it goes up the chain, the vertical chain. So that is a challenge which I've already alluded to regarding warp monitoring. I think I've already alluded or spoke to this before, but contracting vehicle or some way that we can do a CA, a cooperating agreement with a tribe for their reservation. If we need to do monitoring as part of work, right? On the tribe's reservation, why can't we do a CA with them and pay them directly to do that monitoring on their reservation as part of the project, whether it's bugs and bunnies, water, what heck? I think that's a challenge because they have the knowledge, the knowledge to do that, right? More so than the scientists, no offense, but that are normally doing it. I can't think of anything else right now. Yeah, I think it's important to realize that I have a whole bunch of notes, but Western science and IK are complement, we need to start thinking that it is a complementary, not... Oh, it is, yeah. Maybe shape it. I agree. But even CERP right now that a lot of the projects are heading into operations, there's still plenty of projects where we can really do implement that indigenous knowledge. Be partners on this. I mean, the reality is at the end of the day is nature and the environment, whether it's tribal members or regular people, it's nature that wants to work. And one thing I want to point out, not only during the design phase, but also even construction, because if you remember correctly, the Tamiami Trail, that was a feat. That was an engineering feat to go across that expanse, right? With the type of equipment that they had. The Mikusuki and the Seminole were guides and assisted them. And let all that's serving, by foot, when the ground was dry. I have pictures of it, there are pictures in the museum. Armando's got a picture on his phone right now of that. Their knowledge, they've always been there. Their knowledge can assist with us even in the construction of these features. CERP, WORP, whatever. Okay, Casey. This has been a great panel. Thank you so much. Especially at this time of day, I just really appreciate all the great thoughts that are coming from it that you're sharing. My favorite definition of science is from the physicist Riemann Dyson who describes science as the practice of proving the experts wrong. And what I think is interesting about that is science is inherently disrespectful to elders in some sense and to what's come before you. And junior faculty, what they need to do is prove that the senior faculty in their field are wrong and that they're better. And that's why we have tenure. So when they do, we still get to keep our jobs. But it seems conflicting in some sense with indigenous knowledge. It's just a fact, I think, or it's something to deal with, I guess. It's a very different, I think, approach. But this question of how to incorporate into projects, Helen's question regarding adaptive management, it seems like the obvious place in some sense where I hear about indigenous knowledge as sort of this historical body of knowledge. But it's also probably the best available knowledge of the present and how it's changing as well. And so it seems as though it could be such a valuable piece of not just monitoring, not monitoring the performance metrics we need monitored because they're parts of the plan, but just everything that's happening in a way that's not necessarily easily quantified. And so it's not a question, just a statement, sort of this finding a way to incorporate that into our understanding of whether projects are successful or not. And everyone else who's living there as well and firsthand experiencing what's going on, right? A way to incorporate that qualitative knowledge or different kind of knowledge into our evaluation projects would seem useful. Yeah, I can add a little bit because through my career of being the liaison, the biggest thing that I have learned is there's a different way to listen. I have privileges to listen to elders and there's not an agenda like we're custom, okay, you go to a meeting and there's an agenda and then there's directly a point of question. The question may be there, but it's a story. And at the beginning, I was very confused because it will start with a story of some sort that, but if you really were willing to listen, it will come around at the end of the story but it wasn't within the context of how they realized and understood nature or environment. And it's not only here, it happens in South America a lot of the Amazon tribes are the same way. There's this disparity when you sit down in front because they're so, the approach to everyday life is so different. Even the science, what they have, how they treat people, if they are sick, it's so different from what we're so accustomed to. And it's just how open we are to accept it or to listen. And to go on what Armando was saying, so whenever I was on the Everglades study with the Migasaki this past fall and I'm on an island and one of the airboat drivers is Migasaki and Johnny Tiger, I think. And he made a comment about, he's like, wasn't there a satin leaf tree on the island we were on? And one of the other members was like, yeah, I think so and they couldn't find it anymore. And they're like, and I'm like, what other tree or what other islands do you not see that specific tree? And they talked about the importance, the cultural importance historically to the tribe that that tree was, the wood, it was like iron wood, right? To make bows and arrows and things with. So, and I'm like, huh, I need to take this back, of course, because maybe that's an indicator species because maybe the feet are getting to wet for too long periods of time. I mean, that's indigenous knowledge that can be passed along. So like Armando was saying the stories, I mean, if you just learn to listen as a scientist, you might can pick up more on some of these things that can lead you or us as Western scientists or agencies in the right direction. But now how do we convince our leaders? That's the other thing. It is, you know, Casey, understanding the cutthroat nature of academia and realizing that I certainly want to acknowledge that's how it happens in some places in some ways. Indigenous knowledge is not differential to elders and the knowledge that they have per se. Indigenous knowledge is embraced as a collective conglomeration of all lived experiences. And that includes that of what people are experiencing today, whether you're a child, an adult, or an elder. And the difference between how indigenous knowledge is passed along and which I would argue is maybe the true nature of what an iterative scientific process should be is that it adds rather than tries to detract and debunk. And so that knowledge gets passed on and gets added to, not necessarily for the purpose of trying to make other things fall away or to disprove. These are people again, who are living on the land and who are making their living on the land. And it is all in their collective interest to share knowledge and grow knowledge together, not to withhold it, not to manipulate it for a particular purpose. I don't know if I'm answering any questions that you may have, but I'm making a comment in that making this comment for the express purpose of talking to where I think the value of indigenous knowledge comes in from a different perspective that I think a lot of Western based academic knowledge is coming from. You know, we can read papers from 20 or 30 years ago and it's gone. Well, okay, this is a short window of time that we're talking about in those 20 to 30 years. When you're talking indigenous knowledge and sorting through this, thousands of years. Maybe that makes a difference, but I think also what drives it makes the difference. And I will also, I just wanna say here, and I know you guys are looking for us to get done, but how to incorporate indigenous knowledge across the board. Yeah, I'm gonna, there's no roadmap to this right now. There's no guiding principle to a federal agency or a state agency and how to do this. And quite frankly, there isn't a wish list of how to do this for most of the tribes. The whole notion of sharing knowledge from the Mikasuki tribe is something new for them as well. So we have to be committed though to listening and to talking to each other and to not be doing so for the purpose of saying, you're wrong and I'm right or whatever the case would be. If the knowledge is being shared, it's being shared for a reason and that there is a truth to it. I think it's our challenge collectively, those of us working in the room, those of us who are listening on the phone, those of the very well-intentioned thousands of people who are working toward Everglades restoration and working toward landowners who are involved in this as every bit as much as the tribes or the agencies are. We have to be talking and we have to be listening. That sounds really pie in the sky, great touchy feel ideal, but it's harder to do. You got to open your minds and you got to open your hearts and we've got to inject our ability to be flexible and to be able to move and change based on the conditions, based on the information we have and not to be rigid. Okay, that's a good place to end. Thank you, panel, Armando, Kevin and Cindy and thanks for all the other participants today. So we'll adjourn.