We had a turnout of around 30, which was far less than for the Sheriff meet & greet but still not too bad. I have been told we are allowed to deduct $20.00 per volunteer hour for these meetings from our grant contribution so figure it out, this just saved Candlewick $600.00 for the first hour alone and it ran longer than that. Chuck Hart told me also that the next Lake Management meeting attendance will count toward our contribution since they will be discussing procedures for soil sampling and that is part of the grant work. Attendance is needed to help defray costs. The meeting will be March 13th. I will post the time later as a reminder.
This meeting was chaired by Joe Rush (our lake manager), Rebecca Olson (our grant writer) and Nathan Hill (researcher). Each spoke on our progress toward the implementation grant and the necessity of finalizing the specific areas we will be improving with our first monies. Nathan showed a map of our watershed including the areas outside Candlewick that are planned for commercial and residential development and spoke of the impact this development will have on our lake in the coming years. We need to be ahead of the curve in our planning of wetlands, plantings, bioswales, and retention to minimize any impact of the development. Joe Rush has been speaking to the surrounding landowners in and attempt to have a rapport with them going forward in hopes we will have their cooperation in any surrounding projects we undertake. Rebecca spoke of our preliminary approval of grant funding for our implementation stage. It appears we will be receiving the grant but nothing is sure until the final signature. It will be a 60/40 grant with us paying the 40% of the $80,000 grant. That means our portion will be $32,000 from our pockets of which much can come from volunteer hours, both physical and at meetings. That is why attendance is so important.. plus you will be better in the loop regarding what is happening and when.
We broke into smaller planning groups to decide which specific projects are feasible for the first year of implementation, then input from all groups will be compiled, and a consensus will come forward for the specific first year plan. That plan will be put together by Joe, Rebecca, and Nathan after which consultants will review the plan to be sure there are no problem areas.
Initially it would appear we agree the bioswales and plantings are the main focus the first year, along with any other retention and filtration that can be worked into the plan. Most of the work will of course be done in the north and west end of the lake where our main infiltration of pollutants and nutrients occurs. Samples will be taken in the inflow areas so we will have a baseline from which to measure results as the plan is put into place.
You can see this is a major undertaking and it will even include some samplings of Boone Lake shoreline since they are part of our downstream watershed.
Our Lake Management commission is very heavily involved in this project and should be commended for the huge amount of time they are individually devoting to this. I congratulate and thank each of them. Without their help this would die.
This post is long enough but you get the general idea. I am sure Dale Mediema will be writing a much more detailed article for your Candlewick paper so be sure to check that out.
Ken