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HomeMy WebLinkAboutSept 21 2026 - Enfield Water Protection Comm MinutesEnfield Water Protection Committee Minutes Sept 21, 2026 Attending: Nancy Spero, Dan Walker, Stephanie Redmond, Nancy Lorr (Zoom), Mary Lynn Cummings, Peter Penniman (Zoom), Tom Joyce, Hans Soderquist. These minutes will be sent to the Water Protection Committee mailing list which contains current and past members of the committee who said they would like to be kept up to date about the business of the committee. If you would like to be removed from this list, please let me know. They are also sent to Town Board members and the Planning Board, and kept on file on the Town of Enfield web site. Minutes respectfully submitted by Nancy Spero Next meeting: Monday Nov 16, 7:00 pm. In person at the Town Court House. If you are unable to attend, but would like to attend in a hybrid- computer method, Stephanie will send a zoom link. DWSP2: We still await the final approval of our plan from NYS. The approved plan may be able to assist us in getting grants in the future, in addition to being a working document for our town. We are continuing our work as a committee using the ideas in our plan while we await official approval. The Drinking Water Source Protection Plan was approved by the Town Board at the November meeting in 2023. Pamphlet and Website: A digital copy of the pamphlet is now on our committee page on the Enfield Website. Tom Joyce has gotten the Ithaca school district to send the pamphlet home with students at Enfield School. The Town Clerk has printed copies in the Town offices. Mary Lynn brought approximately 25 copies to the Enfield fire station to be available during blood drives and other events. Nancy will bring more copies to the Enfield Grange in October. Website: Our minutes are currently on the website. But some seem to be missing. Stephanie will check with Mary Cornell about adding more copies of the minutes. Also, we need to update the list of current committee members on the web site. Nancy sent this information to Stephanie and Mary Cornell. The most recent Water Survey is now on the web site. Town Board and Planning Board: The Town Board is discussing a possible law for a Town ban on AI Data Centers to protect our water supply and not use large amounts of power from our grid. There have been discussions with the lawyers. Jude Lemke and Robert Lynch are working on this project and may form a committee. The Bostwick Road project to prevent future flooding is underway. There has been a delay due to problems with the culvert pipe. Agriculture/ CAFO meetings: No meetings are planned at this time. There was a recent meeting about the proposed wind farm in Mecklenburg. Water Testing: Tom Joyce, Peter Penniman, Bill Miller and Nancy Lorr were able to do two samples during the last quarter. We had missed one quarterly sample due to dry weather conditions, so now we are up to date with planned testing. Peter has the bottles for future testing. Another test can be done anytime between now and December for the current quarterly sample. Here are the links to the results for the March 12 Willow Creek and Glenwood Creek sampling: Glenwood Creek: https://www.database.communityscience.org/events/4521 Willow Creek: https://www.database.communityscience.org/events/4519 Grascen is back at CSI after a leave over the summer. Tom Joyce will talk to her about adding the most recent results to the web site. He can also find out if she is interested in coming to another committee meeting to talk about the information we have been tracking. We also talked about home well water testing. Some committee members have had their home wells tested recently. Testing is expensive for many home owners. Hans will follow up with some community organizations to see if they would like to sponsor an event that could help some home owners get free or low priced testing. The organizations he plans to talk to include: Cooperative Extension, Soil and Water, INHS, or any others who might be interested. He will report on this at the next meeting. We also discussed putting the resources listed on page Four in the Enfield Water Needs Assessment document done by RCAP Solutions, (which is on our website) in the next community newsletter. This newsletter comes out in December. This information may help some home owners know where they can get more information or assistance. Ditch management projects: We continued discussing how to follow up with the great presentation from Rebecca Schneider about roadside ditches that took place during the March meeting. We decided that a next step might be to put together a hand out for residents about ditches and the importance of them in flood prevention and preservation of our lake water quality. We could give home owners ideas about what they can do to help prevent erosion and pollution. Mary Lynn and Briana began working together to find out what already exists that we may be able to use, without creating something new. We talked about having both a handout and something on the website that could give more information to residents. We might consider a QR code to link to the web site for more information. Mary-Lynn compiled URLs for some of the better existing websites that offer information about ditch best practices for discussion at this meeting. They are listed below: URLs City of Tacoma: https://cms.tacoma.gov/SWMM_WebBook/Responsive%20HTML5/ BookBook/Volume_6_Source_Control_Best_Management_Practices/BMP_S137_- _Maintenance_of_Ditches_and_Culverts.htm Oregon Dept of Agriculture: https://conservationdistrict.org/wp-content/uploads/ 2024/11/Guidelines-for-Stream-and-Ditch-Maintenance-ODA.pdf Field Guide for Maintaining Rural Roadside Ditches (Minnesota): https:// www.lakesuperiorstreams.org/stormwater/toolkit/contractor/resources/ DitchGuide_SeaGrant.pdf Washington Stormwater Center Ditch Maintenance: https:// www.wastormwatercenter.org/permit-assistance/construction-permit-assistance/ditch- maintenance/ - many resources, including: •Ditch Cleaning Strategies: https://www.wastormwatercenter.org/wp-content/ uploads/factsheet-f2-ditch-cleaning-final.pdf •Ditch Maintenance Matrix: https://www.wastormwatercenter.org/wp-content/ uploads/ditch-maintenance-matrix-final.pdf Ditching Best Management Practices (BMPs): https://nysltap.org/nysltap-local-roads/about-us/research- projects/ditching-bmp We talked more about the need to tailor the information to the specific issues for Enfield residents. This Enfield specific information includes info about who owns which roads in the Town. (State Highway, County Roads and Enfield town roads.) and best practices for your own land including keeping ditches cleaned out, and keeping green plants growing in the ditches. We started to talk about what people might be able to do in cases like storm events, or other weather emergencies. Stephanie will talk to Buddy about what the Highway department would like homeowners to know, or do, related to their ditches. Next meeting: Monday November 16 at 7:00pm. In person at the Town Court House. If you are unable to attend, but would like to attend in a hybrid- computer method, Stephanie will send a zoom link.