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HomeMy WebLinkAboutApril 16, 2026 - Enfield Water Protect comm minutes Enfield Water Protection Committee Minutes April 16, 2026 Attending: Nancy Spero (Zoom), Dan Walker, Stephanie Redmond, Nancy Lorr, Mary Lynn Cummings (Zoom), Peter Penniman, Tom Joyce, Briana Joan Binkerd-Dale (Zoom) 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 June 15, 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. Action items for the committee are underlined below. Please note that this is a different day and time we are meeting. 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 approval from the Ithaca school district to send the pamphlet home with students at Enfield School. There is a disclaimer that needs to be added and Tom will get this done and also put in credit for the photographs. He has permission from the town to print copies. We decided to print the 175 copies for the school and then 200 more for other community uses. We will continue to think of places to put the pamphlet. Past ideas included: The Enfield fire station to be available during blood drives and other events, and putting a link to the digital pamphlet in the town newsletter. Website: The presentation we had on March 9 with Rebecca Schneider still needs to be downloaded onto our website for anyone to view. Stephanie will talk to Mary Cornell about putting it on the site. Our minutes are currently on the website, but only go to January 2025, Stephanie will talk to Mary Cornell to have them updated. Also, we need to update the list of current committee members on the web site. Nancy will send this information to Stephanie and Mary Cornell. Town Board and Planning Board: The Town Board and Planning Board finalized the Site Plan regulations. There will be a public hearing on this at the May Board meeting. Committee members are encouraged to attend, and we thank the Planning Board and Town Board for their work on this. The Planning Board is also working its way through the Comprehensive Plan to update it based on what has already been accomplished and looking at future goals. Stephanie would like members of this committee to look at laws which have been passed in other towns, and see if there are any that could be used in Enfield to make the water protections stronger. Agriculture/ CAFO meetings: No meetings are planned at this time. Water Testing: Peter, Tom and Nancy Lorr did a water test in March. They will work on doing another test during this quarter. (between now and the June Town Board Meeting) We did not do a new test this last quarter due to the snow cover and low water flow. Peter has the bottles for testing. Nancy Lorr and Tom will work with with Peter to schedule the tests. Stephanie will talk to Grascen at CSI about getting the most recent information about the water tests added to the website. Update since the meeting: Stephanie talked to Grascen and here is her message: Here are the links to the results for the March 12 Willow Creek and Glenwood Creek sampling: Glenwood Creek: httDs 1/www.data ase.community cience.org/events/4521 Willow Creek: tts://www.dataase4communitscience.or levents/ 1 Committee members also collected field blank and field duplicate samples, all of which met acceptance criteria - fantastic job to them! Grascen noted that the October sample was a stormwater sampling so you'll notice that the levels are all quite elevated compared to previous samples. Well done to the committee members for capturing this! Ditch management projects: We began discussing how to follow up with the great presentation from Rebecca Schneider about roadside ditches that took place during the March meeting. Stephanie talked to Buddy about difficulties with hydro seeding ditches due to many factors such as drought, steep slopes and flooding. Dan said that he followed up on the ditch mapping, and Enfield has some mapping done showing direction of flow, but it is not complete. 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 agreed to work together before our next meeting to see what already exists that we may be able to use, without creating something new. Briana and Mary Lynn shared the link to TC Stormwater coalition and other links to get us started: https://tcstormwater.org_/ , http://www.currentcast.org/stormwater-management/roadside-ditches/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPYAgCWGtyc Next meeting: Monday June 15 at 7:OOpm. 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.