VANDERBURGH COUNTY

DRAINAGE BOARD

MARCH 2, 2010

The Vanderburgh County Drainage Board met in session this 2^nd day of March, 2010 at 6:30 p.m. in room 301 of the Civic Center Complex with President Troy Tornatta presiding.

President Tornatta: Mr. Jeffers?

Bill Jeffers: Good evening, Mr. Tornatta.

President Tornatta: We’re going to open up the March 2, 2010 Drainage Board meeting. It’s about 6:30.

President Tornatta: I need approval of the previous meeting’s minutes, please.

Commissioner Winnecke: So moved.

Commissioner Melcher: Second.

President Tornatta: A motion and a second. All in favor say aye.

All Commissioners: Aye.

(Motion approved 3-0)

President Tornatta: Okay.

President Tornatta: Approval of the 2010 specifications for annual ditch maintenance.

Bill Jeffers: Yes, we have here the specifications that were completed by Linda Freeman today. The regular, general specifications that apply to all the ditches every year, updated, and then the special provisions for the work that we contemplate needs to be done under special circumstances for 2010. They are ready to go. We ask that you approve those.

Commissioner Winnecke: So moved.

Commissioner Melcher: Second.

President Melcher: A motion and a second. All in favor say aye.

All Commissioners: Aye.

(Motion approved 3-0)

Ted C. Ziemer, Jr.: I would ask for a copy of that, but I don’t know what you’re going to charge me per sheet.

Bill Jeffers: A dollar a sheet, or you can come scan it and replace my light bulbs.

President Tornatta: That’s a colored sheet too.

Bill Jeffers: Yes, oh, the color sheets are a dollar fifty.

President Tornatta: Good job, Bill. Way to use the marketing.

Bill Jeffers: I’ll have Linda send one over to your office.

President Tornatta: Authorize notice to bidders to advertise and set March 30, 2010 as date for opening proposals.

Commissioner Winnecke: So moved.

Commissioner Melcher: Second.

President Tornatta: A motion and a second. All in favor say aye.

All Commissioners: Aye.

(Motion approved 3-0)

President Tornatta: Alright.

Bill Jeffers: Okay, that’s the notice to bidders.

President Tornatta: Okay, Surveyor’s report.

Bill Jeffers: Very briefly, because you’ve had a long evening already. Your ditches are in good shape. Okay?

President Tornatta: Super.

Bill Jeffers: Of course, they are ditches so there is places that need to be repaired or revegetated, or need special attention. That’s all covered in the special provisions. For example, we’re going to do some work on Pond Flat Main between 41 and the 3,100 feet down to the CSX rail. We’re going to do some silt dipping and bank repairs where it’s sloped off. We’re going to do, we’re working with the railroad on that one place I’ve sent you e-mails about, we’ve got a problem there with a railroad trestle that’s dilapidated. They are going to replace that. They are going to remove some pipes that are obstructions and old crossings that are no longer needed. Throughout the county we will have places where there are items that need to be addressed in 2010. That’s covered in the special provisions. You know that the county has, or the city has annexed a great part of the county out there along Burkhardt Road, and so now all of our Eastside Urban south half, the south half of Eastside Urban drains are all now inside the city limits. So, the only, out of 20 miles of drain that’s called Eastside Urban, we only have about six miles remaining, north of Morgan Avenue draining to Pigeon Creek. The other 16 miles, 14 miles, whatever, is now in the city. That’s a good thing. We continue to take care of it for them, and that shows that many things are already consolidated. We work together on those things. We continue to, they pay us, it’s a good thing because all of that land that was annexed increases our ditch assessment, the draw into our ditch assessment by almost $30,000. So, we have more money to work on the urban drains that will enhance a developer’s ability to develop that TIF zone that you created, the Burkhardt Road TIF zone. We can do things to enhance the drainage in that area. So, we now have another $30,000 to work with that will make it, hopefully, will make it more attractive to develop that TIF zone. So, and, I think the Union Township farmers want to start a, what we call dormant spraying, like we do up in Armstrong Township, and like we do in some of our eastside drains, where we go in...this time of year while everything is dormant, before it buds out, and we spray herbicides on woody vegetation, and that sticks to the bark and kills that type of woody vegetation before the grass emerges. The other, what we call beneficial vegetation, it doesn’t affect that. So, it kills brambles and so forth, and then as spring comes around, the grass comes up and it’s not affected by those herbicides and we end up with nice, grassy ditches, rather than brushy ditches. So, that’s your Surveyor’s report. I will probably update you on that as time is more at a premium than tonight.

Commissioner Winnecke: Hey, Bill, before you....excuse me.

Bill Jeffers: Yes, sir?

Commissioner Winnecke: Before you move on, just sort of under this, a couple of weeks ago there were some e-mails flying around about software availability. Were you able to get that, your questions satisfactorily answered?

Bill Jeffers: Oh, we did complete our ditch assessments this week. That’s been worked out to our satisfaction this year. We may have to fine tune it when we start again next year. Bill Fluty’s office, the Auditor’s office has assisted us in that over the years, and we’ve been able to complete that. We had a little couple of rough spots that we worked through. The software, it turns out we don’t need that...what was the name of that?

Brenda Jeffers: ProVal.

President Tornatta: ProVal.

Bill Jeffers: ProVal. We haven’t decided whether we really need it or not. Pam and Brenda are going to examine that to see if we really do need ProVal.

Commissioner Winnecke: Okay, you’ll get back to us on that?

Bill Jeffers: But, they just forged ahead and did it the old way. I would like to fine tune that and do it in a more modern fashion next year.

Commissioner Winnecke: Okay. Thank you.

Bill Jeffers: Yes, sir.

President Tornatta: Motion to approve the Surveyor’s report?

Commissioner Winnecke: Second.

Commissioner Melcher: Second.

President Tornatta: A motion and a second. All in favor say aye.

All Commissioners: Aye.

(Motion approved 3-0)

President Tornatta: Alright.

President Tornatta: Real quick, just not to dip into too much, Bill, but last night you made a presentation to Big Creek.

Bill Jeffers: Yes, sir.

President Tornatta: Okay. Just something interesting, Bill does this and talks to farmers and those who help with regulated drains, I believe, and the group, but Big Creek’s normally a nice group that helps out a lot with mowing and what not. He gave a presentation with Mike Wathen, and I think the most impressive thing that I took away from it, not being an individual that deals with drains all the time, was that the sense it made for not just this region, but for regions farther south in the drain line, once the watershed goes into the tributaries and into the bigger waters, including the Gulf, that the plan that they’re looking at now is to do, and I’m going to ask you to do a 30 second here, but to do a different way of maintaining ditches which would keep the wildlife in the ditches, and also take the nitrogen out slowly along the way, enriching the land and also not putting all the nitrogen down there in the Gulf of Mexico, helping to kind of bring a healthier ecosystem back to this area. I think, Mr. Maasberg was there, but, I mean, that it was one of those “aha” moments where you could see that some of the technological thoughts that the botanists have had, and the environmentalists have had are actually taking hold, and potentially put to good use, especially in our county.

Bill Jeffers: Right. What you have down in the Gulf of Mexico is just billions and billions of tons of sediment that have washed out of the Mississippi River basin, the Ohio River basin, and the Missouri River basin, over thousands of years. But, of course, that’s been accelerated in the last 150 years by methods of farming and methods of land development that haven’t retained the soil as well as we could. Of course, there are naturalists and preservationists who have tried to tell us the day was coming, and the day is here, that all of that sediment, along with the nutrients that bind to the little particles, the clay particles, the silt and the clay, the nutrients that we put on the ground, on our lawns or on our fields, particularly nitrogen and phosphorous, bind up with those particles and are carried all the way down the river system and dumped into the Gulf of Mexico, and it has ruined, or is ruining the wetlands down there, the Barrier Islands and the swamps or bayous behind the Barrier Islands that are a cushion against those tropical storms that blow in and destroy New Orleans and other Gulf regions. So, everyone lives downstream from someone, unless you live at the very top of the Himalaya Mountains, someone lives, or you’re looking upstream at the people that are throwing things down on you. It’s time that we take better care of our ditch systems that pass through our urban areas and our farm areas. What Troy is referring to is a two stage ditch system where we widen out the bottoms of the ditches, we leave the natural, little channel where the creatures live and the ecosystem originates, the micro invertebrates and the fish and so forth are left alone. We come up a little ways to what’s called the ordinary high water mark, where that flow down there is maintained totally natural. Then we go out and have a shelf of heavy vegetation, so when the water comes up, and that’s when the water is silty, it’s carrying all of the sediments off of the farmland and the development land, and it’s able to spread out and move more slowly across that heavily vegetated shelf. The vegetation is like a sponge, it soaks up that nitrogen. Grass loves nitrogen. It just soaks it up and grows lushly, and we filter out a lot of that. Then, at the top of the banks, when the water flows out over the edge of the banks, we have filter grass, you know, grass filter strips doing the same thing. So, basically, what we’re trying to do is capture that nitrogen that causes algae blooms in salt water that destroys fish and wildlife. It’s destroying the shrimp industry. It’s destroying the shellfish industry. You said 30 seconds, I guess, I’m done, but you know.

President Tornatta: Yeah, enough. That’s not shocking to me.

Bill Jeffers: I mean, it’s very impressive. Working, Ohio, Brenda and I drove to Cleveland, Ohio for my heart surgery during a really rainy season, and the farther north we drove, the cleaner the water....it was raining harder and harder as we got towards Cleveland, and the water was cleaner and cleaner coming out of those fields. That’s where this technology is coming from, the Nature Conservancy brought it over from Ohio, and it’s very impressive to see how well it works to strain out sediments and chemical pollution.

President Tornatta: Well, to somebody, like I said, who doesn’t study that enough, I thought it was very interesting.

Bill Jeffers: Well, you can learn a lot more about it at road school. I’m assuming you guys go to road school. I know there’s other meetings you go to, but you might want to look on the agenda and see if there’s anything about this type of technology on the agenda. Or contact NRCS, Natural Resource Conservation Service, which is Darrell Rice, 867-0729. Also, the SWCD staff at the same number, Soil and Water Conservation District, and they can turn you on to these people at the Nature Conservancy. Online just look up two stage ditch, grass filter strips, that type of thing. It’s really something that we should move towards where it can be economically applied.

President Tornatta: Alright.

President Tornatta: Applied modified final drainage plan for Ben Kunkel residence at 12430 Harvest Gate Court.

Bill Jeffers: Okay, several years ago Mr. Kunkel, Mr. Ben Kunkel bought a lot that had a creek running through it, and we worked with him for a for a few months, the creek ran right through where his house is now. We worked with him for a few months to develop a drainage plan to route the creek around the edge of his property. Half of it goes through a pipe, and then there is a flow area for higher flow that runs along side the pipe. This has worked well for the past, I think, six or eight years. Mr. Kunkel comes back now with a drainage plan so he can add a garage on. I don’t have that in the exact right position, but that’s the general area that the garage will cover. So, the red outline there represents the new garage he would like to add on. It covers part of the overland flow area. So, I asked his engineer, Morley and Associates to prepare some calculations and a plan to show that under no circumstances during a 100 year rainfall would the original house, any portion of the original house or the new garage be inundated by overflowing water. They’re proposing to install an additional pipe, plus regrading the yard for overflow. They’re showing the pipe to be, they’re showing the high water, during a 100 year storm, to be two feet lower than the new garage or the existing home. So, they have all of that documented and certified, and they have a plan, and they responded as I asked them to with all of the drawings and certification by James E. Morley, Professional Engineer. So, I’m recommending that we approve the modification, or the modified, final drainage plan for Ben Kunkel’s residence at 12430 Harvest Gate Court, in accordance with these plans.

Commissioner Winnecke: I’ll move approval.

Commissioner Melcher: I’ll second.

President Tornatta: A motion and a second. All in favor say aye.

All Commissioners: Aye.

(Motion approved 3-0)

President Tornatta: Okay, approval of Vectren power line relocation plan, Nurrenbern Ditch/Hirsch family farm property on Oak Grove Road.

Bill Jeffers: Okay, that came to you last September. Don Fuchs, October, excuse me, last October you approved it. Let’s see where are we? We’re on Oak Grove Road and I-164 and Enterprise Lane, and Nurrenbern Ditch runs from this pipe right here, it comes under the road, and then it runs out from this pipe and along the Hirsch family farm. This substation has been upgraded, expanded, and they’re bringing a huge long distance transmission line, overhead transmission line up from the south and then booting out from this transfer station. They were going to go right through the Hirsch’s family farm about, oh, 50 or 100 feet out in the field. It’s a valuable property, and they wanted to minimize the impact on that property, so they came to you and asked if we could put the lines along the ditch bank, between Enterprise Park Drive and Nurrenbern Ditch. I recommended that you approve that concept, and you did. Now, they come back with the final plan from Vectren Engineering, showing the exact locations of those power poles that will be placed there, and as they promised, the closest one is ten feet from the ditch bank, the top of the bank, right here between the road and the ditch, and then the subsequent poles as the ditch kind of veers away from the road, all the way down to Morgan Avenue they get to where they’re around 20 feet from the top of the bank. They’re spaced so that we can work around them. So, I continued to recommend it. So, I want to recommend the final plan, at this time, for approval, on the contingency that the Hirsch family farm comes to us with a signed agreement that they will put in a minimum 25 foot wide grass filter strip on this side of the ditch, the east side of the ditch, for us to have as a maintenance pathway forever, maintained in grass. That will give us plenty of room to operate our equipment when we spray, mow, and otherwise maintain the ditch. Then, if necessary, I told Mr. Fuchs, if necessary, to come back with an encroachment agreement arranged between Mr. Fuchs, or between Vectren and Mr. Ziemer, I’m not sure that will be necessary, because we will never be able to ask them to move these poles. I mean, they are permanently installed poles. I’m telling you we can work around them, so long as we have the grass strip on the east side of the ditch.

Ted C. Ziemer, Jr.: So, who’s going to make the determination as to whether we need it?

Bill Jeffers: Well, I’m afraid they won’t sign it if the current form of the encroachment agreement says that you’ll have to remove the poles.

Ted C. Ziemer, Jr.: You’ll move it, right.

Bill Jeffers: I don’t think Vectren will sign that.

Ted C. Ziemer, Jr.: No.

Bill Jeffers: So, I’m saying I don’t think we need to ever remove the poles. It’s the same as some of the other power poles on our other ditches, or the billboard standards, we’ve always worked around them. They’re set in concrete, we know where they are, we’ve never had a problem with them. The overhead, where, you know, it would affect our booms and stuff is so high up in the air that we never encounter any problem whatsoever. So, only if you think we need it am I saying that that contingency would apply.

Ted C. Ziemer, Jr.: Well, why don’t I talk to you tomorrow about that.

Bill Jeffers: Okay.

Ted C. Ziemer, Jr.: I mean, I’m going to need a little more detail.

Bill Jeffers: Okay. But, the reason I’m wanting to ask for approval of this now is I’m leaving, I’ll be out of town beginning Friday afternoon, and I won’t be back until the 16^th or the 17^th, you have a meeting on the 16^th , they need to move ahead with this. So, all I’m saying is as soon as the Hirsch’s sign that agreement that they’ll put down a minimum 25 foot wide grass strip–

Ted C. Ziemer, Jr.: And who’s drafting that? Is Fuchs drafting–

Bill Jeffers: That would be coming from Mr. Fuchs. Fuchs, yes.

Commissioner Winnecke: Has the Hirsch family already tentatively agreed to this?

Bill Jeffers: When I was out at their farm they said they didn’t think that would be a problem. Okay, candidly here in front of God and country, you know that property could be valuable for development.

Commissioner Winnecke: Sure.

Bill Jeffers: Okay. If it were developed, what we discussed was they probably would not want to get too close to that ditch with a parking lot anyway. I’m asking for a 25 foot grass strip. They could put in a 30 to 60 foot grass strip and go to NRCS and get paid by the acre for setback, you know, for doing that, as a practice. If they want to go wider that’s fine. I’m asking for a 25 foot minimum grass strip so that we always have a maintenance pathway. They’re gaining by having the poles moved over on the west side of the ditch, they’re gaining all that ground for development purposes.

Ted C. Ziemer, Jr.: So, the Vectren poles are going to be in the ditch right-of-way, is that right?

Bill Jeffers: Yes, sir, they will be in the right-of-way for Enterprise Park Drive and the ditch. They’ll be between the pavement of Enterprise Park Drive and the ditch. So, they’re in the right-of-entry for the ditch, and they may be, in some places, in the right-of-way for Enterprise Park Drive.

Ted C. Ziemer, Jr.: And what about the drive? Well, I mean, is there any possibility widening will be required or anything that would require moving those poles? That’s what, I just don’t know, Bill, I would have to have more information.

Bill Jeffers: Okay, that might involve the County Engineer, as far as the county road is....well, you know what, that’s in the city now. It’s starting to get really complicated, isn’t it?

President Tornatta: Do we want to hold off on this?

Bill Jeffers: Okay, it looks like we’re going to hold off on this now, because I’ve got to go....yeah, I was asking for it just to be approved on the basis of the contingency of the 25 foot strip, but now we’re talking about the possibilities of expanding a roadway or right-of-way that belongs to the city now instead of the county. So, I hadn’t thought of that.

President Tornatta: Okay, well, let’s hold off on this.

Bill Jeffers: Okay.

Ted C. Ziemer, Jr.: Then what are we holding up by holding off?

Bill Jeffers: Just, they just want to move ahead.

Ted C. Ziemer, Jr.: Sure.

Bill Jeffers: Strike while the iron is hot. In other words, you know, if Vectren were to get cold feet, then–

President Tornatta: Then they don’t get power out, right?

Bill Jeffers: No, no, no, then the power line might end up back over on the Hirsch’s farm land, if Vectren gets cold feet and wants to move ahead and we haven’t approved it.

Ted C. Ziemer, Jr.: So, this ditch is in the city?

Bill Jeffers: It is now. I just realized that they annexed this too.

Ted C. Ziemer, Jr.: I think you want to talk to David Jones.

Bill Jeffers: Yeah. So, I tell you what I’ll do, I’ll try to get as much done as I can before I leave town, but I’ll be available while I’m out of town–

President Tornatta: Okay.

Bill Jeffers: –and Linda can bring it back if it has to be brought back on the 16^th.

Commissioner Winnecke: Thanks, Bill.

President Tornatta: Any other business?

Bill Jeffers: I don’t have any other business to bring before you at this time, although someone in the audience may.

President Tornatta: Public comment? Come on up.

Bill Jeffers: Mr. Bivins has a St. Joseph Hills drainage plan that I sent a notice of insufficiency on by an e-mail that he gave to me. Is that the correct e-mail?

Mr. Bivins: Yes, but I did not get it. No, there’s another “e”.

Bill Jeffers: Where?

Mr. Bivins: S-p-e-e.

Bill Jeffers: Oh, I left out a letter in his e-mail, so the postmaster kicked it back. He didn’t get this, but I’m thinking that the items that I’m asking for would have extended the work time beyond today anyhow. I sent that yesterday. If you would like to look at that and bring me a plan in our next meeting, that will be the best way to go.

Mr. Bivins: Okay.

Bill Jeffers: Thank you.

President Tornatta: Okay.

Bill Jeffers: I have no further business.

President Tornatta: Any other public comment? Seeing none. Motion to adjourn?

Commissioner Winnecke: So moved.

Commissioner Melcher: Second.

(The meeting was adjourned at 6:55 p.m.)

Those in Attendance:

Troy Tornatta                            Stephen Melcher                      Lloyd Winnecke

Bill Jeffers                                 Ted C. Ziemer, Jr.          Madelyn Grayson

Brenda Jeffers                          Mr. Bivins                                  Others Unidentified

Members of Media

VANDERBURGH COUNTY

DRAINAGE BOARD

Troy Tornatta, President

Stephen Melcher, Vice President

Lloyd Winnecke, Member

(Recorded and transcribed by Madelyn Grayson.)`