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HomeMy WebLinkAboutLand Conservation And Stewardship Board - Minutes - 04/11/2007MINUTES CITY OF FORT COLLINS LAND CONSERVATION & STEWARDSHIP BOARD Regular Meeting 200 W. Mountain, Suite A April 11, 2007 DATE: Wednesday, April 11, 2007 LOCATION: 200 W. Mountain Avenue, Suite A TIME: 6:00 p.m. For Reference: Bill Bertschy - 491-7377 Mayor Doug Hutchinson - 416-2154 John Stokes, Staff Liaison - 221-6263 Board Members Present Michelle Brown, Greg Eckert, Greg Snyder, Linda Stanley, Karyl Ting Board Members Excused Michelle Grooms, Vicky McLane, Dave Theobold, Bill Bertschy Council Liaison Mayor, Doug Hutchinson Staff Present Natural Resources / Natural Areas Department: Rick Bachand, Geri Kidawski, Karen Manci, John Stokes Guests City of Fort Collins Utilities: Jim Hibbard, Owen Randall, Dean Saye Public Comments It was agreed by the Board that public comments would be more relevant at the end of the Canal Importation Project presentation. Attending: Lloyd Walker Cod Bride Edgar Romero Dean Saye Owen Randall Lori Brunswig Agenda Review None Review and Approval of Minutes Linda Stanley motioned to approve the minutes of April 11, 2007 as written. Greg Eckert second. The minutes were unanimously approved as written. Restoration Update Bachand thanked the Board for the opportunity to provide a brief summary and talk about the long term restoration plan. • Bachand: Restoration is about three quarters of my job responsibility and I am very proud of the program we have going. I would like to provide a brief summary of what we'll be doing in 2007, and what was done in 2006. I will talk about a few highlights of the program and I'd like to talk about the long term plan as well. Bachand showed the Board restoration pictures of Pineridge Natural Area from February 2006 to April 2007, and explained how well the restoration in that area is progressing. In a PowerPoint presentation Bachand spoke about the following with the Board: - Vegetation Management Guidelines - How do we Manage Vegetation? - Input = Output Herbicide Application 2001-2006 - Budgeting for Restoration - Ten Year Restoration Plan Completed in 2004 - Prairie Restoration by Fire - Traditional Prairie Restoration - Poudre River Corridor Restoration at Kingfisher Point - Down River Corridor Riverbend Ponds Partnership with Stormwater, Natural Areas and Engineering - Resource Management Information System - 2006 Summary (by the numbers) - Restoration Plan for 2007 - 2005 Accomplishments - 2005 Weed Treatments • Snyder: Have you had a chance to look at the data from the accidental burn at Cathy Fromme Prairie Natural Area? Did you get any improvement? • Bachand: That was January 28, 2006. It burned through a smooth brome field and it came back one hundred percent smooth brome. Smooth responds very well to fire. So in areas where we have smooth brome and we want to return the area to native grasses we'll plow, disk and plant in that sequence. • Stanley: When you say native prairie, how close is that to what it would have been? • Bachand: I `m not able to define that real well, so I should say native grasses instead of native prairie. • Bachand: For the first time we will have a dedicated seasonal crew of three employees for 2007. They will spend seventy-five percent of their time monitoring, doing plan inventories, coming up with vegetation maps, and etc. • Eckert: Will that be incorporated into a database? • Bachand: Yes, it will all be in the computer. • Ting: Will that database be public accessible? • Bachand: Anything we do is public accessible, but we do not have any plans to put it on the web site. • Ting: Are you looking ahead to what trees you need to be saving now, before you have a chance to protect them. • Bachand: I'm hoping that part of the Poudre River inventory that we are proposing, will look at these issues at a broader context. • Stokes: Part of the idea is to get a sense of what the trends over time are in terms of the riparian and riverine vegetation along the river, because we don't have any information about that. So we like to go back in time and see what kind of data we can find about it, and also implement a monitoring program so we can observe change over time and then have data to backup our findings by. • Snyder: Is there an approximation of the age of the Cottonwoods that are there? • Bachand: We are not sure of their age. • Stokes: We don't know the answer to that, but we will research the answer and get back to you. • Snyder: Any ideas on the finish product at River Bend Ponds Natural Area? Will the road way on the top of the project be a hiking trail? • Bachand: Yes, that will be primarily a hiking trail, with foot and biking activities. • Cory Bride (citizen attending): When you do volunteer restoration with volunteers do you get your volunteers through Parks department or do you have a separate program • Bachand: We have a volunteer program, and I believe some of the people coming out next week are CS Unity. • Stanley: I think restoration is one of the most important programs you have going. Can you tell me a little about Red Fox Meadows in regards to what is going on there? • Bachand: There are natural values there today, and when we are done with this project there will be natural values there in the future. What this project adds is storm water protection for the community. Anything we can do to make it native is a move in the right direction. • Eckert: I would like to get back to objectives — how are you setting objectives and how do you decide what species to plant? • Stokes: The objective is to take a system that is degraded and turn it into one that has a high composition of native species, and is hopefully more sustained with limited imputes from us. One of the things that we talk about internally is to go back to a site and check the condition year after year. Mark Sears and I have been urging Rick to build in a budgeting process to be able to go back and visit these sites. We don't want to start a site if we can't go back and maintain it. That's why I like Rick's plan, because we select priority projects in areas. We have to be strategic as to how we do our job. • Ting: In those areas are you interfacing the wildlife management guidelines life- line ridge. You must be able to overlay that on top of your measure of success as far as your re -visitation, and as far as the prairie dog management specifically. Do you overlay those things? • Bachand: Any of the objectives we came up with in the wildlife management guidelines, we would want the restoration objectives to facilitate the wildlife objectives. • Stanley: You talk about weeds. Are these weeds on the County's noxious weed list? • Bachand: Basically they can be on the noxious weed list or they can not be on the weed list, but be invasive. Canal Importation Project Hibbard gave an introduction to the project saying that it represents the next major step of a long list of collaborative projects between the Storm water Department and the Natural Areas Department. Hibbard said that the one thing he would like to hear from the Board is how they like the concept diagram. The PowerPoint presentation to the Board included: • Existing Canal Importation Floodplain • Canal Importation Ponds and Outfall Project • Concept Diagram • Concept Rendering • Slope Design Concepts • Red Fox Meadow Detention Area Design Concept • Communication Plan — Open house at Westminster Presbyterian Church on May 9, 2007 • Project Schedule — over 3-4 years. Red Fox Meadow project end by end of 2008. • Site Concept • Outreach Goals • Education Goals • Communication Plan • Project Schedule Public Comment: • Lloyd Walker from the Rolland Moore West neighborhood north boundary. I have a few questions from a neighbor Linda McNamara: - On the north boundary of Rolland Moore how will you get a backhoe in there for maintenance without disturbing the soft trails that have been made? - Can the trash be intercepted further up stream so that equipment can be brought in less frequently? • Walker: These were Linda's comments. Walker: The proposed CIPO project will directly affect one of the attractive features of our neighborhood — Red Fox Meadows Natural Area. Along with Ross and Fischer Natural Areas and Rolland Moore Park to our east, Red Fox Meadows creates a necklace of wonderful walking and recreation areas around our neighborhood where we and all Fort Collins residents can enjoy wildlife and other natural attributes in the midst of our urban environment. Members of our Neighborhood network heard the City's proposed CIPO plans at our spring meeting. As representatives of our network, we met with Storm water and Natural Areas staff to further explore this project subsequent to that meeting. Based on those interactions, the following questions and concerns have arisen: - Overall Configuration - Better Integration - Ponds and Wetlands - Trees - Water Quality Area - Access Mr. Lloyd Walker's document of questions and concerns is on file at the Natural Resources Office, 200 West Mountain Avenue, Fort Collins. • Lori Brunswick: I've been studying this project for the past nine months. - I have comments regarding sub -surface drains, which are pipes underground that draw the ground water down and out of the basin. I don't see how it is possible to have streams on the surface basin. - There are a lot of trees in that area and they will all be gone. I heard that 2.5 inch diameter trees will be planted to replace the ones removed. - My comment to Natural Resources regarding vault toilets is that we do not need a toilet in an urban area. - On the rendering they show large trees, I just want to comment that the area won't look like this for at least twenty years. • Stokes: Lori it would be good if you could share your concerns or questions in writing and send them to the Board. • Brown: Are there any questions from the Board? • Eckert: The reason that you don't want to address Siberian Elm is because you have input that people want larger trees there? • Hibbard: Yes that was the concept. • Manci: What Forestry and the Natural Areas have done on sites in our evaluations is to take out the smaller caliper trees and leave some of the larger ones especially those that are providing nesting sites. We wait for the native trees that we plant on the site to grow taller. We know that there will be Siberian Elm seeds will be dispersed on these Natural Areas anyway. We'll need to evaluate that as we go. • Eckert: What I'm hearing is that there is a longer term strategy. • Stanley: I live close to Red Fox Meadows, and I go there often. I have some trepidation about all of this and if I had to do a cost/benefits analysis I'm not sure the benefits would be greater than the cost. I see the detention ponds around town and I look at Red Fox Meadows, and we're going to take this area that so many people use and where we see fox and deer and you're going to turn it into bath tubs. I'm thinking that because the Natural Areas owns some of this area that it should be better after the project is complete then it is now. I hope that there is more than a one to one mitigation of the wetlands and that it becomes a better place than a worse place. I'm not just concerned for me living near there, but for the people that use it, the animals, and the Natural Areas program, and that it possible could become a worse place especially in the short run. The phasing part is important. • Manci: It will take time for this to be better than it is now, as far as diversity of native plants, wildlife habitat and accessibility for people. • Ting: Are there as many trails at Red Fox Meadows now? • Manci: There's probably more, but we are trying to make an established trail system. • Ting: If that's the case, is that part of the issue of putting in a vault toilet, because we will have more public access with the trails? Will there be a need? • Manci: There is a need for a toilet right now and there is a need for a parking lot. There are several schools that use this site and they have a difficult time parking their buses. With that many school children it's nice to have a vault toilet available. It's been our standard that when we put in a parking lot we include a vault toilet for the convenience of the users. We're here to get input from the Board and the public. The convenience of the vault toilet is that it is a smaller structure and it can be open all year. • Snyder: Since you'll be moving dirt and re-creating reality when you're done, is there a reason why the parking lot and vault toilet need to go between the residential area. Can it go more towards Taft Hill or Prospect Avenue? • Manci: You can not have the access point to the parking lot close to the corners, Engineering -wise. • Snyder: Can you go off another corner and go north. • Manci: We like to have the parking lot near the edge instead of the center, this works better for the wildlife and natural systems. • Snyder: What is the capacity as far as the amount of water this is designed to handle coming in and going out. Would it be able to handle 1997 or is there other mitigation that's going to direct water. • Hibbard: No, it will not be able to handle 1997. This is designed to handle the updated 100 year event. This will provide a better protection for a lot of the areas around here. • Snyder: Will the water be transported through the pipe or is there going to be a canal? Are you running it between the Condos? • Hibbard: The canal and the pipe will be used. We've looked at other alternatives and it gets into very complicated hydraulics modeling, and those kinds of alternatives won't work. • Snyder: To make an improvement that will help the number of people that this is going to help, there has to be some short-term sacrifice. If you look long-term into the future I think it will be nice. There are legitimate points raised about the tree placement and the concrete retention placements. It's something that needs to be done and I hope a better cooperative tone, on going to completion. • Eckert: Who is the contractor or designer that will do the wetland mitigation? Hibbard: The sub -consultant that has input into the wetlands would be Brook Anderson Consulting who works in a lot of hydrology and hydraulics as well as Cedar Creek & Associates a sub -consultant who specializes in wetlands. Manci: One thing I like with the design that we've been working on is that we are trying to recreate how that stream flowed through the property historically to the best of our knowledge. This is really valuable because as much as the people like the little ponds out there they are not natural. Stanley: I hope you can do that sort of thing because it will benefit everyone for the most part. I like the idea of the stream. I get concerned about what the final outcome will be. I've seen so many plans for so many things when I was on the planning commission, for a number of years, and you see these beautiful concept plans come and what you end up with in the end is nothing like that. I have a lot of trepidation about where we end up at. Hibbard: We own this property as a City and we will address any future problem caused by the project. We are committed with Natural Resources all across the town and we continue to co -manage those properties in a way that is directed by City Council and the Natural Areas easement policy. Stanley: It's about having a win win situation here, because the neighborhood uses this area a lot and the wildlife uses this area a lot, and it's a positive thing for the City of Fort Collins. It has some problems now; there is no doubt about that. Randall: The Army Corp of Engineers is very strict about creating wetlands. The Corp will tell us how many wetlands we can create. There are still a whole series of ponds that will exist on the site when we're done. We'll be talking to the Corp in the next month and we'll have a tour with the Corp on this site and other sites. You have to do what the Corp tells you to do. Not only that, but you have to monitor it and survey it for usually three — five years after you've recreated it. Hibbard: The next level of detail will be at the open house on May 9, 2007. We would like to invite any and all of you to the open house. We would be interested to come back to this Board in the future with an update. Ting: It seems to me that it would be very helpful for you to interact with the public. To make sure the issues with water rights and what the Corp will and will not allow you to do are fairly laid out. I think that the public is not aware of this. Saye: When we apply for the 404 permit there is a public comment period on that. New Business: No new business Announcements: Stokes: In front of you is the Natural Areas annual report for your review. Stokes: We are working on a grant with US Fish and Wildlife Service and Rocky Mountain Bird Observatory. This grant won't come to us, but will go to RNDO to do a research project. They are going to look at breeding grassland birds up at Soapstone and down in Chiwawa New Mexico where they go in the wintertime. We are trying to understand what is happening on their home grounds vs. their breeding grounds. Adjourn The meeting adjourned at 8:20 p.m. Submitted by Geri Administrative Sec 7//3/O