Fall Creek Watershed Committee Minutes
December 7, 2000

Present: Sharon Anderson, Dave Bouldin, Phil Koons, Larry Fisher, Steve Penningroth, Deb Grantham, Joyce Gerbasi, Tim Patronski, Stefan Wodicka, Yvette deBoer, Craig Schutt

EQIP

• 150,000, the maximum amount of funding was received. There is a possibility to receive this funding for up to 5 years.
• Let public know about this program
• Meeting Dec. 8, local working around will review and fine tune the priorities, look at cost share splits.

Farm Service Agency handles the paperwork and the money. SWCD provides technical assistance and to form the local working group. NRCS is very involved with the evaluation and ranking of specific projects. January is the sign up period. By June 15, NRCS has to submit rankings.

Fall Creek Watershed Committee could help in April or May to look at input into the next year's proposal.

Fall Creek Clean-up

May 5, 2001

• proposal submitted
• Town of Dryden and City of Ithaca will do trash handling for free
• Trout Unlimited will help organize
• should hear around January 1

WAG Proposal

submitted in August

• 3-way proposal (Community Science Institute, Fall Creek Watershed Committee, Cayuga Nature Center)
• volunteer monitoring training
• notification was supposed to sent out 11/10/2000; having heard so probably didn’t get it.

New RFP

Great Lakes Commission

• erosion control projects; due 1/17/2001
• less than $25,000; 5 pager (roughly)
• talked about stream bank stabilization demonstration project in Fall Creek, combined with workshop on erosion control; or mini-grants for homeowners erosion control projects.
• Decided that Joyce Gerbasi and Deb Grantham will work on stream bank erosion control demo project proposal; will report in January

Student Intern

• EPA opportunity to fund summer intern; due 2/28/2001
• may ask for funding for intern to work on stream bank erosion control demo project.
• Deb Grantham and Joyce Gerbasi will bring a draft to the next meeting.

Possible speaker on Fall Creek History

• importance of water to communities
• Sharon has a printed history (Forest Home) author
• Dave Bouldin suggested the author as a speaker

Community Associations

• invite them to our meetings.
• Betty has contacted Etna and Freeville about trash pick-up
• Sharon will contact Forest Home, Varna, Etna, Freeville, Lake Como, other community associations; meeting notices in their newsletters.
• Yvette and Sharon have made contact with Lake Como people; interested in participating and hosting a meeting.
• Sharon will find out who in Sempronius is interested in FCWC (Marshall Taylor made initial contact)

Cornell Course

• capstone Cornell senior course in environmental science; will have to do projects; interested in Fall Creek; Sharon will be giving a lecture; Larry Fisher is one of the instructors
• looking for projects in the Fall Creek Watershed area.

Speaker/January

• Steve L.; wants mileage reimbursed
• monitoring scheme in Canandaigue Lake and ideas for Fall Creek

Watershed Steward

• Steve L. has resigned
• Sharon is one of their finalists; decision next Thursday
• will impact FCWC staff support
• funding might flow through CLWN for FCWC; might allow Sharon to continue some support; or someone else at CCE would provide staff support.

IO Watershed Characterization

• out on CD
• also on Web
• series of public meetings in watershed; 2/14 in Ithaca; snowdate - 2/27
• another series in May on management plan

Town of Dryden

• has established Conservation Advisory Council
• working on fill ordinance and reviewing "right of farm law"
• Joyce Gerbasi and Tahnee Robertson are two of nine members.

Water Monitoring

• Future training: Yvette & Steve want to have another workshop: Volunteers collect data, come back to lab to learn or see analytical techniques. Steve’s lab is set up; needs to order chemicals. The lab will be run as commercial lab to cover expenses but under umbrella of non-profit Community Science Institute (has a Board of Directors). Would have to work out liability issues before bringing in volunteers. Lots of discussion about why monitoring should be done, question we’re trying to answer, how to design an effective monitoring scheme, how to use existing data, narrow focus vs. broad-focus. One suggestion was to begin with a contained, well-defined project with objective of changing behavior at same time, start looking at body of existing data, learning from it, formulating questions we can pursue. Dave Bouldin suggested a focus of looking at land uses/land cover and historic changes

• Two good sources of information are book on Fall Creek, edited by Keith Porter and R. J. Young, 1975-76. Lakes and Phosphorous Inputs, Info Bulletin #127 - Sharon will distribute copies.

• Dave Bouldin: what are the implications of zoning, future development? What is the correct density of all sorts of land uses? Could look at his data, come up with monitoring that would answer these questions.

• PA manual is on the web: Sharon will provide web address.

• Bouldin - aim monitoring at specific questions; what is going on in the watershed? What happens with septic/on site? What is coming out of sewage plants? What are the ag practices contributing? Is the geological erosion the key contribution? What chemicals are going on turf (home, golf course)?

• What’s the problem you really want to pinpoint? What is the next step to answer the question/problem? What problems do historical data show? What sampling would confirm if it was still an issued and what cause is?

• Deb - wants to get people to change behaviors to positively impact lake.

• What are the implications for housing density? Impervious surfaces? In general, zoning and development concerns. This could be valuable.

Agenda - January

• erosion & sediment grant proposal
• Nat Res. Course project ideas - also Feb. agenda
• steward update
• staff support for FCWC
• EQIP update from Craig Submitted by Deb Grantham

Next FCWC meeting

February 2, 2001, 7-9 PM at 4-H acres.

Proposed Agenda

Reports and Discussion:

• Erosion and sediment grant proposal
• Project ideas for natural resource capstone course at Cornell
• Land cover map
• PA monitoring training
• Stream clean-up
• Summer intern grant proposal