 I'd like to welcome you all here to our public information meeting on the Sheboygan River cleanup and restoration. It's a really exciting evening for many of us. And thank you for taking time out of your busy schedules to learn more about the Sheboygan River. And I'd like to also start out by thanking the John Michael Kohler Arts Center for working with us so that we could have this event here this evening. My name is Debbie Byer. I'm with University of Wisconsin Extension as a natural resources educator. And I'll be serving as MC for this evening. And we have a great lineup of speakers to share just a wealth of information with you and background on the Sheboygan River projects that are coming up. So as you arrive tonight, hopefully you stopped at the sign-in table. I know it's a little congested there here towards the end. We had some handouts that hopefully you picked up. And I'm just going to go through a few things to kind of guide you through the evening here. First, there is a little half sheet program agenda for the evening. Gives you a list of the presentations. So we're going to start out with some opening comments from the EPA, the Wisconsin DNR, and also the county and the city of Sheboygan. We will then follow with about a half hour presentation from the US EPA Great Lakes Legacy Act project. This is Heather Williams, the project manager. And then that will be followed by a Corps of Engineers project presentation from Terry Long, who's the project manager for that. Followed by Tom Sear, who's with SEH Incorporated, who is doing some contract work on habitat restoration projects for the city of Sheboygan. After those presentations, just before 8 o'clock, we will be kind of adjourning the formal part of the meeting and dispersing back out into the community gallery that you entered and saw all of the posters and exhibits. And that is where we would like folks to have discussions with the staff that are out there and ask your questions and let your thoughts be known. In addition to that one-on-one interaction, we do have comment forms that hopefully you picked up at the sign-in table. And we'd like you to use those as well if you have some questions that don't get answered tonight here in person. You can jot your question down or your comment and fill it in and turn it in at the comment box that's at that sign-in table where you first came in. And someone would be getting back to you with an answer to your question. Also, if you didn't pick one up yet before you leave tonight, there was a Sheboygan River Explorer news letter at the sign-in table. And there's a wealth of information in there, some of it's kind of overview of presentations for tonight. But also, there's information for if you have family or friends or associates that weren't able to make it to the meeting tonight. There's information on the front page for accessing these presentations over the internet or through WSCS-TV8. And so there's information for gaining access to those presentations that way after the fact. So please share that with folks that are also interested. Additionally, there's a magnet out there as well with the website address to help you keep in touch with all the things that are going on. So this is something you could pick up too to help remind you where to go for information. So as kind of an orientation to the evening, I'd like to move into just saying that this is a very exciting time for the Sheboygan River. There are many, many people, probably several hundred, working on the various projects that we're going to be reviewing and learning about tonight. A few of the people in the room here, I'm sure I know of a few who have been working for this day for over 30 years. So that's a long time, and we've come a long way. So without taking more of your time, I'm going to turn the podium over to our presenters who wanted to make some opening comments. And so we'll have Mark Tuckman from the US EPA Great Lakes Legacy Program, followed by Steve Galarno, director of the Wisconsin DNR's Office of Great Lakes, followed by Adam Payne, our Sheboygan County executive, and then Chad Peleshek from the city planning office. He's the development director. So Mark. Thanks, Deb. And thanks, everybody, for coming tonight. Really appreciate your participation and interest in this project. Deb used the word exciting. That's the way I was going to start off my presentation, was this is really an exciting time and exciting year for the Sheboygan River. Thanks to the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative and the funding that it provides, we really think that this year we'll be able to do some amazing things on the Sheboygan River. The Sheboygan River was denoted as one of four priority AOCs for conducting cleanup and restoration actions around the Great Lakes. So a lot of resources and a lot of effort will be put into the Sheboygan River over this coming year to do these actions that will hopefully move the Sheboygan River towards delisting it as an AOC. So the actions that we're proposing, there are three major actions and that's where the presentations we'll focus on tonight. There's the Great Lakes Legacy Act project. We'll have a presentation on that by Heather Williams. There's the core strategic navigation dredging project that's downstream of the A Street Bridge and there's six habitat restoration projects that will be taking place over this next year. All this work is being funded through the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative. So there's the potential for over $35 million in federal Great Lakes Restoration Initiative funds to come into the Sheboygan River this year to conduct this work. Now agreements still need to be signed. These deals are not all in place yet. So things still are a little bit fluid. We're hoping the Great Lakes Legacy Agreement will be signed in the next two weeks. That's being negotiated right now between EPA and our project sponsors. The Corps of Engineers project is still under negotiation. So we're hoping that in three to four weeks, all these projects will be have agreement signed and will be ready to roll. I would be remiss really if I didn't acknowledge the partners who have been working with us over the last two years on this project. Adam I know is gonna get into this a little bit more but there are some groups that really have been hugely responsible for getting this to where we are today. Wisconsin DNR has provided immense financial and technical resources, specifically Steve Gallarano and Vic Pappas have been hugely instrumental working with us all the way through. The Corps of Engineers has come onto this project lately but are really focused on the project from Eighth Street Down and have really put a lot of effort, a lot of resources into that strategic navigation project. Wisconsin Public Service have, they just concluded a super fund project but they provided $100,000 in design money for the Great Lakes Legacy Project and PRS has been a technical contributor and a coordinator with us in this project. Also from a local standpoint, I mean these projects don't happen unless you have local community involvement and support and you've had some leaders in this community who have really stepped up on this project from Shaboygan County. Adam Payne has been a force behind this project. He has just made sure this project has kept moving ahead and really has been a huge, had a huge impact on moving to where we are today. From the city of Shaboygan, Mayor Bob Ryan, Chad Peleshek, Steve Sokolowski, they've all had huge roles. They provided great input, logistical input, they've helped us with staging areas and helped us with permits. So the local impact and the local input has been huge to getting us where we are today. So really a great thanks to the local community. But at the end of the day, it's really about the river. It's about having a clean river, it's about having a river that you can recreate on, that you can enjoy and that's a clean river and it's an environmental and an economic asset to the community. So at the end of the day, that's what it's all about and that's where our whole group and our whole team is moving forward. So anyway, I'm looking forward to an exciting and productive year and I think I'm hoping that we can come back at the end of the year and really talk about how what a great job we did and really talk about the successes. So anyway, thank you very much for your time. Okay, you've had a number of people say it's exciting. I agree, but I'll say it's fun. I mean, this has been a long time getting to this point just to kind of give you a better feel for how long it is. I have a slide for every day that we've been, no, not really, but we are, because of the EPA and the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, we're one of the few areas where we have an area of concern that we are gonna be implementing all of the actions that we believe necessary to delist. This is not a common occurrence. This is a huge thing we're accomplishing here in Wisconsin and something you should feel very proud of here locally. It is a big deal. I'm gonna tell a little bit of the story because I know there's folks that have been involved in this for many years. I recognize a lot of the folks out here been working on this for years. We have Superfund actions that occurred out here. So I just wanna make sure I can tell the story a little bit because the Superfund did a terrific job of stepping up to the plate, the company's doing what they need to do to fulfill their part, but as you recall when we were having some of our public meetings, it became apparent to the locals and to the state that some of the future use of the river was not gonna be what the locals and the state wanted to see. There were gonna be some contamination that was legitimately being left at greater depths and that's because what you need to accomplish for Superfund was not necessarily the same thing that we wanted to see for the really deep dredging potential and navigation concerns. That's where the legacy program really played an important factor in being able to come in and meet that much needed need for the greater depth, removing a lot more contamination and that's some of those stories you'll be hearing about today. Critical partnership between all these different programs, the funds that were spent by the company doing a Superfund helped provide that critical match money needed for the legacy program, so very exciting. It's all about a lot of different companies, the companies, the agencies, the locals, all these different entities sitting around a table, not saying I can't do this, but sitting down and troubleshooting and figured out how do we get this job done and we're here now and we're gonna see a tremendous number of things get accomplished this year. You heard about some of the partners and I wanted to identify a couple of partners that have been involved early on before the GLRI came in with money. The Schrodinger River Basin Partnership really played some critical role here. I saw Pete Pitner, I'm hoping John Gumtals out here too as well. Please say hello to them and share thanks for their hard work and their continued work because they're working on the area of concern, fish and wildlife, technical advisory committee now. So you get a chance to ask a lot of questions tonight, learn what this project is about and there are ways you can still be involved in helping to see this done. So please stop at some of the tables and if you have an interest in helping to participate please do so. Thank you. Good evening. Good evening. This is awesome. I mean it's just awesome to see this kind of turnout tonight. I couldn't believe when I walked in and saw that many people lined up and getting information and being here to participate in the process and I want to thank UW Extension and Dev in particular for helping lead, just coordinating this tonight. My name's Adam Paynham, the Sheboygan County Administrator. I've been here 13 years and it is a privilege to be a part of this process and this team. It's a privilege. I can't believe the resources and the teamwork that's come to bear to bring us to this. You know, Steve and Mark talked a little bit of all the work that's gone into it over the decades, all the good work by people, many of which that aren't here tonight. I've just had the chance to be involved the last few years, perhaps the last couple of years or the last six months in particular depending on the intensity of this and how it's increased. One of the things that makes me tick and I'm sure many of you in this room is you like to be part of making good things happen, making your community better, doing the best you can in your job, just being part of a successful team. And I'm blessed to be surrounded by outstanding employees at Sheboygan County and Aaron Brault is here this evening. He's our planning and conservation director. He's been providing such a critical leadership role. The city of Sheboygan, Chad Pellecek, he's been providing a key leadership role. We've got some good local teams in place. But then it got broadened for us. And when you think about the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers and the Department of Natural Resources, Sheboygan County, city of Sheboygan, UW Extension, the town of Sheboygan Falls, the private sector, all the different stakeholders that have been involved with this, it is amazing. It is amazing and a privilege to be part of a process where everyone is striving to collaborate, problem solve, work together to see this through. It's just been incredible. Many of you in this room may have questions or concerns tonight. Let me assure you, the representatives that are gonna be before you tonight and in that hallway later are just exemplary people, superb people with a passion and a desire to see this through for the benefit of our community. I am so proud and privileged to be a part of this group, this team that's been working on it. Ask your questions. If you need more information, it'll be provided. But don't hesitate to get engaged and make sure your questions and concerns are addressed. So I just wanna say thank you for being a part of this. The opportunity for Sheboygan County, what it means to our community, to once and for all eliminate this designation, ultimately eliminate not to eat the fish warnings, to have the economic development opportunities here, what it's gonna mean for this generation and future generations, I wanna be part of that legacy. And I'm certain you do as well. And again, I really wanna thank the representatives of the agencies and stakeholders that had been a part of this because they are some wonderful, hardworking, dedicated individuals. Again, thank you for being here tonight. Last but not least, I'm Chad Pelisak with the city planning department. And I just wanna thank everybody for being here as well. And what I wanted to kind of end with and a lot of people have talked about stuff prior to this is we've taken on the planning department in the first floor of city hall has taken on the role of the local contact for this project. I know there's a lot of people, I've talked to a lot of people in the last couple of weeks that are some frustrated, some excited, some not so sure of what's gonna happen, what's gonna face me, where do I park my boat? Where do I, how do I get out of downtown? How much truck traffic do I have to face? The list goes on. And I guess what we wanna say is we're trying to address as many concerns, questions as people have. If there's questions moving forward, be happy to stop in our office, give us a call. The mayor's office, our office are happy to direct you to the proper people to get those answers. One of the things we've dealt with is Mark mentioned in the beginning this is still a fluid project. We don't have any sound drawings. We don't know for sure what's gonna happen. There's a lot of speculation out there of what the impact is gonna be. And from a city standpoint, all I'm asking is that you work with us as a stakeholder in this and we look forward to 2013 and what it can bring for our community. So with that, I would just like to close. But if there is any further questions, concerns about locally that need to be addressed, we're here to answer them to the, as much information as we have available. There's been a lot of struggles. There's been a lot of stuff we've overcome and there's a lot more to happen with, in particular, the impacts that are gonna happen in the river going forward. So hopefully most of your questions will be answered. We'll be out in the hall. We'll be happy to address them and I thank you for your time. Good evening folks. Hello, my name is Heather Williams. I'm with the US EPA Great Lakes National Program Office and I'm the project manager for the Legacy Act Sediment Project. And I'm also very happy to be here today and happy to have so many people here hear about the details of this project. You've heard everyone mention that there's been a great many people working on this and several of us have been very involved in developing the details of this project and we're happy to share it with you and transfer the information about what we know about the legacy project to date. So there's, there has been a few sediment projects going on in the past year. Last year we did have two sediment projects on the water in Sheboygan and I will touch on those a little bit tonight. But mostly tonight you're gonna hear about sediment projects that are gonna happen this year. And the Great Lakes Legacy Act is one of those projects. The second project is the Army Corps Project and Terry Long with the Army Corps is going to give that presentation next. So a little bit about the Legacy Act Program. We are a program geared for sediment remediation. We are sediment cleanup program. So that is our intent. And the mechanisms that we use are partnership agreements. So you've heard a lot of people talk about the wonderful partnership that's gone into this project and it's really true even to the level of designing this project. So everything that you're gonna hear tonight about the Legacy Act, all of the project partners have had input into, provided comments on, shared concerns, shared technical information. So there's been so many people, agencies and entities that have gone into this planning. So we, the Legacy Act does need to work within areas of concern. This is a map of the areas of concern around the Great Lakes. And what an area of concern is, rivers and harbors on the Great Lakes that have some sort of industrial pollution, the sediments are contaminated, and that they suffer from loss of natural habitat. So there's a great effort to attend to these areas of concern to improve the quality of the rivers as a whole. So Sheboygan is an area of concern. Steve mentioned a little bit about the process of removing the Sheboygan River from this list. And we hope to implement all the actions necessary to do that. And the large part of that is the sediment work, sediment remediation projects, as well as the habitat remediation projects that you're gonna hear about tonight. And ultimately, the intention is to remove the advisories in place at the river, and to improve natural habitat along the river. There will be monitoring efforts that need to take place, but the goal is to remove Sheboygan from this areas of concern list. So a little bit about the historical contamination of the river sediments. We have one of the two main contaminants in the river is PCBs that you've probably heard about, read about in information about this evening and about these projects. Polychlorinated biphenyls. This is a chemical used in industry before it was banned in the 1970s, and it is present in the sediments in the river. It's a toxic compound, and in particular, PCBs accumulate through the food chain. The other constituents in the river we're concerned about are called PAHs and napple material. These are really indicators of petroleum contamination. So they're sort of like a heavier petroleum compounds, oils and tars in the river. A large part of the PAHs are associated with an old manufactured gas plant that was situated across from Boat Island, the area of Riverside Park, in the early part of 1900s. So consequently from this contamination, we have two Superfund sites, as Steve mentioned, on the river. A little bit about each of these. The Sheboygan River and Harbor Superfund site is the PCB cleanup project. This is being completed by Pollution Risk Services, and they were one of the two entities out, dredging last year. The Superfund site includes 14 miles of the river from Sheboygan Falls all the way to the harbor. There has been upland cleanup work performed in the 80s and 90s, as well as sediment work done in the upper river in 2006 and 2007. So the current sediment project is a hydraulic dredging project. This is a picture of one of the two dredges that they had out last year. So they were there all last year, and they will be in the water this year as well, starting hopefully when weather breaks in April, and working through, this should be completed in August timeframe. The other Superfund site is the Cantorina site. This was the manufactured gas plant site, and Wisconsin Public Service performed this cleanup this year. This was removal of the napple material just across from Boat Island, and they did complete this project in December. So why another cleanup site? Steve sort of discussed this briefly. The Superfund projects were required to do what they were required to do. For the PCBs, it was spelled out in a record of decision, and for Cantorina, it was written out in an emergency action agreement. So there is this remaining sediment, and that is something that the Great Lakes Legacy Act can attend to. So we are performing our work as a betterment to the Superfund projects. So where is all this happening? We have several maps, there will be several poster maps out in the hallway area for this project, and for the Army Corps project. But briefly, this is the area of your downtown, and in general the areas here identified with orange arrows is the Superfund reach, and the Legacy Act project reach. The yellow arrow is the Army Corps project. So everything I'm going to be discussing tonight, and really the area of the remaining contamination that we'll be taking out is upstream from the Eighth Street Bridge, and Terry Long from the Army Corps will talk about things downstream from Eighth Street. Okay, and I do just want to point out the project partners, because as everyone has said many times, they've just been so instrumental in getting this all put together and accomplished. It's been a great team of people, and these are the six entities on the project agreements for the Legacy Act, and we wouldn't be here today, as Mark mentioned, by the contributions from your city, your county, and your state, as well as Wisconsin Public Service, donating that initial $100,000 each to start this project. Okay, so just briefly, what does a Legacy Act project entail? Four basic steps, the first step being site characterization work. This is the actual sampling, going out, figuring out what do we have, where is the contamination, how deep is it, what levels do we have in the river? Step two is called Feasibility Study. This is our evaluation of what ways can we possibly get this material out? What are the alternatives that we could put in place? We're finishing up step three now, and this is the design work. How are we gonna do it? How are we gonna go about getting this material out? This is all the details involved in leading up to construction, permits, staging areas, depths on dredging, and specifications. And then step four is to hit the water and start dredging. So we like to get our EPA sampling boat out as often as possible, and we were able to bring the RV Mud Puppy 2 to Sheboygan for sampling this past November. But most of our sampling effort was performed in fall of 2010, and many groups, both Superfund entities took samples in 2009 and before. So really there's a tremendous amount of data on this river. We were worried and wanted to know how deep the contamination went. Many of our cores went to refusals, hitting the hard clay in the bottom of the river, or we went down 10 and up to 35 feet into the sediment. For this area, for the Legacy Act project, we had over 2,900 sampling points of information on PCBs and PAHs, so we really have a good understanding of where the contamination is. Feasibility study again is our evaluation, and I just want to point out, this gets a little technical, but I do want you to understand how we came up with this project. All of that 2,900 data points goes into a three-dimensional model, and then we're able to look at the areas of contamination with different color coding ranges for different concentrations. So we can visually see where the contamination is in the river. We're able to look at the Superfund projects. This was a great tool for developing our project and ultimately coming up with the recommended alternative. So this is just a picture showing you all of the data points. It's right in the middle of our project reach, and it's probably hard to tell where it is, but I just want you to note that all of these dots are the sampling locations, and they're color coded by the contaminant level of PCBs. So the red dots show in this picture PCBs over 50 parts per million. So the computer model is then able to take this and generate zones of contamination so we can really see that visual depiction of where the contamination is, how deep it is, and use this in our design. So from this information, we've established what is our removal criteria. This is what we're going to take out. So essentially some things were a main focus. We wanted to get as much PCBs and PAHs out of the system. So it's a mass removal idea. How can we get the most material out? There was also a focus on what's called TOSCA material. This is that red dot. This is anything over 50 parts per million. We wanted to get as much of this material out as possible. And then for this project, there was also a focus on the near surface sediments, meaning that anything below 10 feet of the water line, we really wanted to do a more critical evaluation so that in the future, that material that would come back and be deposited would be clean. There wouldn't be a concern for future dredging. So we have different criteria for the first 10 feet of material below the low water line. And here's just presenting the criteria. This is what we will be dredging to. This is what we will hope to clean up from the river. And so there is a difference between the first 10 feet and below 10 feet. We'll be going to one part per million PCBs and 18 parts per million PAHs down to 10 feet. Below that we'll be going to five parts per million PCBs. And then in the area of Boat Island, we mentioned that was the manufactured gas plant. We'll be going to 18 parts per million deeper there as deep as we need to go. So this results in a volume right now of about 191,000 yards. A pretty good volume of material. So with that information, then where do we dredge? It's hard to see this picture right now, but there's a poster of it out in the hall. So you can take a look at the dredge lines and we can discuss and ask questions out in the poster area afterwards. But this will show you where our dredge cut lines. So this matches up to that criteria and in an effort to get as much PCBs out of the system. So a little bit about what our project is going to encompass. This will be a mechanical dredging project. So similar equipment to what was out at the Camp Marina project this year. We want to try and get all this material out in one season. So we do plan to have two to three different dredge units on the water at one time. There's different water elevations. We'll have different types of equipment out, but there'll be several excavators loading into barges along the river. And in order to get this work completed, we will be doing the dredging on a 24-hour basis. There will be turbidity control set up. We will have an air curtain at the Eighth Street Bridge to control turbidity. We have seal curtains if necessary, but we'll also be monitoring for turbidity around each of the dredges upstream and downstream of the project. So staging areas are really important for any sediment work. This is where you offload the material on land from the barges. And this is in the downtown stretch of Sheboygan. We really are very limited as to open areas for staging. So this is where material is brought on land and dewatered. It's dewatered for two reasons. We need to be able to transport it and also for landfill disposal. It needs to be dewatered. So dewatering will include probably mixing with the stabilizing agent. This is so in staging areas it's loaded into trucks and taken to the landfill. So our project is going to use two staging areas. We will be using the staging area that the Camp Marina project used this past year. So across from Boat Island in the Riverside Park area. The second area we plan to use is the Winsa property. This is Wisconsin Naval Ship Association site. They used to be the Alliance Energy Building. There's still a substation there, but we're hoping to use that property as our second staging area. It's down in the right corner. So a little bit of our project timeline. As Mark mentioned that we have project agreements to sign. We have a project agreement now with all of our partners for the work we're doing currently and then we'll have a project agreement for the remediation portion. Really that sort of lets us go on construction. At that point with weather permitting we'll start the staging area development of those two staging sites. We hope to be in the water dredging by May and completing in September. Sand cover placement as necessary and demold from the staging areas in the fall. So this is a legacy act project we're estimating right now between 20 and 28 million dollars. Again, we're moving about 191,000 cubic yards. That number may go up a little as we reach final design. And the big push here is that not only are we taking out that many yards of sediment but that we're removing a substantial amount of PCBs from the system which is what we want to do. 1,840 pounds of PCBs, these are estimates and about over 37,000 pounds of PAHs. So really remarkable. So we have, there's a lot of information here and there's more information out on the posters. We have people here tonight from EPA and also people representing all of our project partners as well as the people that have helped put together the design and people who may be involved in the construction this year. So we look forward to questions and discussions after the presentations. I think that's it for me. Thank you very much. Good evening, my name's Tay Long with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers out of Detroit District. On the chief of plan formulation branch and what we're responsible for is conducting studies in order to implement for dredging operations. With me tonight, since there'll be other questions, I have some other team members we're gonna talk about. I have with me the chief of design and cost engineering. You wanna raise your hand Bill? Sure. Thank you. I also have the chief of environmental analysis branch, Charity Ularek. I've also brought with me a chemical specialist. We have Ham Horner and we also brought Bridget Rowan environmental specialist just so that I know you'll be asking questions later on in the way you can address them. Thanks. This gonna work? Okay. This area particularly that we're showing is the area that the Corps is involved in. Originally, the draft of the harbor was 121 feet. Although things have changed, it was originally commercial harbor. Now it's more of a recreational type. So the justification to be able to direct it to that depth is decreased and it's more difficult to get funding though. So to dredge. One of the tasks we have to do is form a study and we'll be able to justify the dredging operation. And that's called the dredging management plan. This is something that we've conducting. What that does, it explains the type of dredging. How would we go about doing it? The cost comparisons of different alternatives would be mechanical dredging, hydrology. Where would we place it? All those things are considered in that operation. And I gotta say though that I don't know how many people understand that we really wanna thank the EPA to be able to funding this at this point. This harbor hasn't been dredged since 1969. And one of the reasons it's not considered a high priority compared when it's gotta compete against commercial harbors that are larger and the shipping capacity is a lot higher than it would be in here. So really, they've really come through and helped us there providing funding to do the study and for the actual dredging operation itself. So as part of this task, we have to do an actual dredging management plan. And like I said, we're looking at just as a one-time dredge, this is not a 20-year dredging operation plan that we would typically do on this. And like I said, we talked about different types of equipment and methods that was done and analyzed it. And that's how we come up with this final recommended plan. The goal right now is to be able to complete operations by the end of this fiscal year, which for the government, it's September 30th, 2012. And then again, that's a goal. As part of this process, the rules are that the local sponsor has to provide lands easements the right way for place to put the material. The county and the city have certainly stepped up to this point and provided a place for us to do this. I can tell you I've been doing this for about 27 years and it makes a difference on how well cooperative a sponsor is. It'll basically make or make a project. And in this case, they really come through and everyone and all the other agencies have come through. And I can tell you, I've done a lot of these all across the Great Lakes. It truly does make a difference. On this drawing here, the original depth was 21 feet. Do you do cost constraints on that? We're not gonna be doing that. There was a lot of coordination between the local men that looked at fishermen and looking at drafts and what was needed and the city had coordinated and said, what are the real needs and what do we have to do? What do we have to have to really make this work and be able to have a safe draft? And so we come up with a plan and said, we're gonna having the area in green about 16 feet draft and the area upstream of that is 12. And that'll be sufficient for handling the fishermen and the local small craft boats. Included in that is this is a transfer site and what that really means is we're gonna mechanically dredge the harbor, that material will then be transferred to a large barge that then will come up and it'll be docked up to this piece of property here. Those boats that you see slips will have to be temporarily removed in order to be able to dock your barges up to the edge. Most likely the railing on there had to be removed and possibly the sidewalk temporarily. And in order to do that way, because you're gonna have hydraulic excavators, you're gonna be moving material and you certainly can have people walking down there. It'll be for a safety hazard. There have to be walking around blessing you want us a bucket swinging around hitting somebody. So most likely the summer or while this is taking on, it will be blocked for people's safety on that. Once the operation is done, this site will be restored back to its condition. This is the site we're looking at. The county is willing to provide this site. That will be developed and be able to place material. It'll hold around 170,000 cubic yards of material. This particular site is a natural clay in this area and will contain the material once it'll be excavated out and then we'll be placing material in there once that's done, then it will come back and it'll be capped by the county after this is set. This is the potential design we're looking at here. You have three cells. One of the reasons we did that is you can fill the first cell quickly and then the county can go back afterwards and cap it and it's done. Followed by the second cell and the third cell whether they have one large one or haven't exposed out in the open in that it's just quicker to prevent moisture and rain. You can just, that way we can finish it off quickly. So that's about it. I'm Tom Sear, project manager with the short Elliott Hendrickson project team and we're under contract to the city of Sheboygan to address the Sheboygan River Area Concern Habitat Restoration Projects. We've been under contract since October of last year and we've already made some considerable progress. I do want to recognize my project team members. I'm a water resources engineer and I believe as an engineer I have some talent but one of my other talents is to identify a talent that I don't have and recruit it for my project teams. So I'm very pleased to have a pretty broad and diverse project team to help me with these restoration projects including Inner Fluve. This evening is represented by Marty Melcher to my right here, we'll be talking later. Also Ecological Services Milwaukee who is owned by Rolf Schimelowski also here this evening. Rose is working with Scott Horizen with Oatai who's also Scott as a resident of the city, lives near the restoration sites. He's working very closely with Rose and other team members include Gary Casper with the Great Lakes Ecological Services and James Havel with NES Ecological Services. So the three sites that we're looking at are along again of course the Sheboygan River, those being Kiwani's Park. I'm sure everybody here is where Kiwani's Park is located near downtown. Just upstream from there is Wildwood Island which is an interior island to the river that maybe some of you haven't seen because it's pretty hard to get to. And then further upstream is a broad area near Taylor Drive and Indiana Avenue and a little later here Marty will be telling you more about those sites. The overall goal of our project is to address habitat beneficial use impairments. So you heard of course you all know about the Sheboygan area of concern. In order to get to the area concerns status there is a long list of beneficial use impairments that have been identified. Among those are use impairments that are out of related habitat. A habitat that's been degraded over time for a variety of reasons. So our project using GLRI money that was acquired by local stakeholder groups is to address those BUIs, beneficial use impairments, by enhancing and increasing habitat along the river, providing more habitat for desired wildlife and fish species. Moving then to removal of those BUIs and the delisting of the AOC over time. We've been on board since October of last year and since that time we've done background investigations and assessments, evaluations of hydrology and hydraulics. We've looked at habitat and species that are currently living along the river, both fish and wildlife with help from the stakeholder groups which have also done a considerable background research in those areas. We have developed conceptual restoration plans which we're presenting tonight. And our schedule is such that after tonight we'll be moving towards the preliminary design of those restoration improvements and then final design which will result in plans and specifications which will be delivered to the city towards the end of April. And then the intent is to advertise for a contractor who would construct those improvements during the summer with those improvements being essentially complete by September of this year. So the overall project objective of course is to restore, enhance or protect the connectivity quality and quantity of desired fish and wildlife habitat. And beyond the city and the county, the DNR, our real clients are shown here on this slide. Our project sites, again, are Kewanis Park, most downstream site, as you'll probably all aware of. Further upstream is Wildwood Island. Again, that probably has some of the greatest potential for habitat improvements. And as a course of challenging site that Marty again will talk about. And then further on upstream, Taylor Drive and Indiana Avenue is a broad area along that intersection. The strategies for addressing BUIs, habitat-related BUIs, restoring and enhancing connectivity such that of habitat areas along the river, such that wildlife and fish species can move up and down the river at ease and thereby help expand their habitat and provide diversity along the river. Protecting high quality habitats that already exist so they don't get degraded further. Restoring degraded habitat by stabilizing river embankments and also adjacent riparian areas. Reducing erosion and sedimentation to the extent that's appropriate. Providing, again, in-stream and riparian habitat. And controlling invasive plant species. That's one of the things that Rose and Scott look heavy at in terms of how you can remove the invasives and then replace those with native vegetation such that we have a better habitat going forward. At this point, Marty's gonna be talking about each one of our sites beginning with the broad conservation targets for restoration. And it's gonna be a pretty quick review, but the three of us, Marty, Rose and myself will be right outside that door and we'll have the sites there. We can talk to you at length if you care to talk to us. So thank you. Thanks, Tom. So on your way in, you may have seen off to the right when you came in the door, the DNR has a booth out there talking about some of the background information that they collected. And so background information was collected by the DNR and others. And then from that, impairments were identified for the various habitats present throughout the system here. And then from those, these three publicly owned sites were chosen as opportunities to address some of those impairments. For instance, if you look at this table here, we've got the list of some of those opportunities on the left and then each of the, if they applied each of the three sites. For instance, the migratory birds, stopover habitat, we can apply that to all three sites. For instance, improving habitat for blue birds, songbirds, things like that. So what I'll do now, I guess, is just really introduce the sites. And then like Tom said, we'll be outside and can answer any questions you might have. So the Kiwanis Park site is pretty heavily used. It's great habitat for people right now, but we kind of want to improve that a little bit for the rest of those clients that we mentioned. So there are some stormwater pipes coming in there. We've got some, a lot of concrete and the riparian vegetation for the most part, meaning the vegetation along the shoreline, the river side or riparian vegetation has been removed and replaced with turf grass for the most part. And there are a lot of non-native invasive plant species, especially in the upstream and the downstream ends. So here's a picture of the kind of the downstream half of the project, basically. The dark green areas, you can see where we're really concentrating on establishing a forested, native forested ecosystem, a buffer, if you will. And we also want to try to concentrate public use. So we're not going to impact any of the recreational areas. We don't want to impact softball and soccer and things like that. But what we do want to do is just kind of focus on that 30, 40 foot buffer next to the river. So we want to be able to have people get down to the river, but we want to kind of concentrate those areas into a couple of different spots across from the main building area and then the pavilion that's just a little bit upstream. Zooming in, the yellow areas are areas where we're talking about prairie grass or grassland treatments. We're really looking to preserve most, if not all, of the weeping willows that are out there and the aesthetic that they provide. And they're also really good at holding the banks together too, especially where we have ice flow in the spring. And then the other areas upstream, there are more opportunities for forested buffer, especially on the very upper end of the project area. And focusing in on this pavilion area, thinking about how to integrate more grassland treatment around the playing fields and perhaps remove some of the concrete. You'll notice on the right side of the picture there, there's a little tiny stream coming in that right now there's a big concrete pad that I'm sure a lot of you are familiar with. We're thinking about daylighting that little stream so it would have flow in it every once in a while after rain falls. The Wildwood Island site is of course the most wild, but it's got some problems also. The Wildwood site, the big island was at one time much larger and has slowly eroding and the whole site's kind of changing over time. There are some problems there with invasives. Fragmites, which is a giant reed grass. Some of you may have seen that along roadside, it's very tall, has the kind of poofy white heads on it. It's an extremely invasive plant and it propagates itself through roots, so rhizomes. It's difficult to get rid of. The best way to do that in some cases is to dig it up. So on the downstream end of the island, we're talking about excavating some of that and also on the northwest section of the project area, excavating that fragmites out and also getting rid of some of the other invasive species out there and replacing them with native plants. Talking about doing some bank stabilization to try and mitigate some of the erosion that's occurring on the island and try and slow that down. And also implementing some fish habitat details and one of the things that we wanna do, if you notice there, you can see some little pieces of wood which are in fact large logs or engineered log jams that we can put in place to both create fish habitat and also help to change flow patterns or encourage deposition in areas if we want it to or encourage scour in others. So that's kind of the gist of that. I can talk more about that in the hallway if you're interested. So the Taylor Drive Indiana site, there was at the southwest corner of that intersection of Taylor and Indiana detention basin was put in many years ago. It's really been taken over by invasive plants and carp are in there and geese use it a lot. So it's a degraded wetland that isn't serving the function that it was really intended to. There's some shoreline and stream bank erosion in this area and fragmentation of habitat as well. So we've got some challenges there because of the roads and we can't really get rid of the roads. So we're going to be working around them. In the Asselin Park area, we're not talking about doing a lot just expanding instead of turf everywhere, some native grassland areas and then a little bit of forested riparian area. We want to preserve some corridors so that people who want to picnic out there or do some fishing have access to the river and also just some real minor fish habitat in stream. The pond site's a little more intense. There are four stormwater inputs in this area and what we want to try and do is you can use wetlands to filter out nutrients and pollutants and so here's an opportunity where we can create some pre-treatment wetlands which are the three towards the right of the picture that have the little stream running down from them. We can capture the flows coming in across the road, pre-treat that stormwater and then the whole area is going to be designed to more positively drain so that carp do not become a problem and that it's more of a wet marshy area instead of a stagnant pond. You'll notice a lot of different hatches there and we can talk about it in the hallway if you like but there are some shrub car areas, some wetlands, some marsh areas and some forested areas as well as grasslands so there's a big diversity of habitats there. Then downstream on the other side of Taylor, this area is used a little bit by folks who want to park there and launch kayaks or canoes and then also fishing too. It's a popular spot for that so we thought we would try and enhance some of those opportunities and also gain some habitat features. So concentrating parking there, building some trails down, restoring the native vegetation and then also enhancing some of the in-stream fish habitat, removing some of the broken concrete that's in the riffles and on the banks and replacing that with more native stone and creating some more riffle pool type features. And that's all I have. Like Tom said, we'll be outside and I appreciate the opportunity to answer your questions, thanks. Well, thank you so much for your attention. I would like to offer a few minutes for the folks who are staffing some of the displays out in the hallway to make their way out there now so that they're available before everyone else exits and want to just remind you that we have these question and comment sheets and so feel free to fill these out and turn them in the comment box before you leave. If you want to remember contact information for getting ahold of the city development and planning office, just tear off the bottom of this sheet. Also, that information is on the backside of the newsletter, as well as on the bottom of the program for tonight. So if you think of something on your way home or in the next few days or weeks or months, hang on to this perhaps so you know who to contact to ask your question or share your thought.