1 2 3 4 5 SAVANNAH HARBOR IMPROVEMENT PROJECT 6 7 STAKEHOLDERS EVALUATION GROUP (SEG) MEETING 8 9 AUGUST 5, 2003 10 9:00 A.M. 11 MIGHTY 8TH AIR FORCE HERITAGE MUSEUM 12 SAVANNAH, GEORGIA 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 2 1 2 3 4 5 I N D E X 6 7 OPENING REMARKS AND INTRODUCTIONS ------------- 3 8 9 MARSCH SECESSION MODEL PRESENTATION ----------- 6 10 OLD BUSINESS ---------------------------------- 55 11 MITIGATION DISCUSSION ------------------------- 75 12 BEACH EROSION COMMITTEE ----------------------- 78 13 COMMUNICATIONS COMMITTEE ---------------------- 78 14 ECONOMIC WORKINGS GROUP ----------------------- 79 15 NEW BUSINESS ---------------------------------- 81 16 MEETING SCHEDULE ------------------------------ 85 17 CERTIFICATE ----------------------------------- 86 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 3 1 INTRODUCTIONS 2 MR. DYSART: Good morning. It's approximately 3 9:00 o'clock, and let's call the meeting of the 4 Stakeholders Evaluation group together or to order. 5 I'm Ben Dysart, facilitator. 6 We're going to start with John there. And if 7 you would, introduce -- say who you are, who you 8 are representing. Speak nice and distinctly so the 9 court reporter can get your name, we'll go around 10 the table. 11 MR. BOSSART: I'm John Bossart with Applied 12 Technology and Management. 13 MR. WRIGHT: I'm Tom Wright, citizen. 14 MR. BROWNE: Tommy Browne, Savannah Pilots. 15 MR. SUTLIVE: Charlie Sutlive, Savannah 16 Maritime. 17 MR. WESLEY: Rick Wesley, Savannah Pilots. 18 MR. ROBINETTE: John Robinette, Fish and 19 Wildlife Service. 20 MR. FLOCK: Allan Flock, Fish and Wildlife 21 Service. 22 MR. BERSON: Will Berson, Georgia Conservancy. 23 MS. MOORER: Hope Moorer, Georgia Ports 24 Authority. 25 MR. BARRETT: Tim Barrett, Georgia Department 4 1 INTRODUCTIONS 2 of Natural Resources. 3 MR. ELLIS: Bo Ellis, Applied Technology and 4 Management. 5 MR. KEEGAN: Larry Keegan, Lockwood Greene 6 Engineers. 7 MR. SCHALLER: David Schaller, Georgia Ports 8 Authority. 9 MR. REES: Morgan Rees, consultant for GPA. 10 MS. VAUGHN: Cathy Vaughn, Georgia Ports 11 Authority. 12 MR. SCANLON: Bob Scanlon, City of Savannah. 13 and also the Savannah Harbor Committee. 14 MR. KYLER: David Kyler, Center for a 15 Sustainable Coast. 16 MR. BAILEY: Bill Bailey, Corps of Engineers. 17 MS. JENNINGS: Judy Jennings, Georgia Sierra. 18 MR. LEFFEK: Teri Leffek, Stevens Shipping. 19 MR. BECKMANN: Lee Beckmann, Georgia Ports 20 Authority. 21 MR. OFF: Lou Off, Tybee Island. 22 MR. DYSART: Thank you. You have had access 23 to the transcript from the last meeting. Be 24 thinking about if you have any comments on that. 25 You also received the draft agenda for today's 5 1 2 meeting. Look that over. If there are any changes 3 or shifting things around, let's hear from you. If 4 not, we'll assume that it is satisfactory. Seeing 5 no comments, we'll work with this agenda. 6 The transcript of the last meeting, any 7 comments or anything, any corrections anyone would 8 like to enter into the record. If not, we will 9 assume that it is accurate and so forth. 10 As is our custom, we take scientific 11 presentations, briefings on work that has been 12 going on first so that busy people can move on with 13 their life, if they want to or need to. 14 So I would call on John, if you would like to 15 start and Bo or Larry, would y'all like any kind of 16 introductory comments? 17 MR. ELLIS: John, has been working on this 18 particular -- this is John Bossart. He's a Phd 19 with Applied Technology and Management. He heads 20 up a lot of ecological work, especially with 21 wetlands and marshes. 22 He's at our Gainesville, Florida office, and 23 he does like gators quite a bit. He has been 24 working out in the Savannah National Wildlife 25 Refuge with these studies since 1997. They started 6 1 MARSH SECESSION MODEL PRESENTATION 2 field work and have been continuing through on a 3 joint study and collaborative effort with Fish and 4 Wildlife Service, and with a group from USGS doing 5 these studies. 6 He's going to present, this morning, the 7 culmination of much of the field work that's been 8 done, and development of this marsh secession 9 model we've been talking for a number of years now. 10 John going to run through a demonstration, of what 11 he's got today, for the SEG. 12 MR. BOSSART: Okay. Thanks, Bo. Once again, 13 my name is John Bossart, and I'm Applied Technology 14 and Management, and we have been working out in the 15 marsh since late 1997 on the feasibility study. 16 And we did a lot of work in late '97, and then 17 we took it up again in late '99. And from that 18 time, we've been in a cooperative effort with a 19 team from the Fish and Wildlife Service, headed up 20 by Wiley Kitchens at the University of Florida, 21 working John Robinette at the refuge. 22 We've been doing a big ecological study out in 23 the marsh, and compiling that data into a lot of 24 statistical analyzes, with the intention of 25 producing some sort of model that we can use to 7 1 MARSH SECESSION MODEL PRESENTATION 2 look at vegetation changes in the marshes under 3 different project alternatives. 4 So we have studied the marshes from '97 5 through 2002, and we've compiled everything into 6 some data reports that, basically, provide all of 7 the data points we've ever collected out there in 8 five years. 9 And they're up here in a number of volumes. 10 You can take a look at those, after the meeting, if 11 you would like. But what I'd like to do first is 12 just kind of give a quick review in a summary 13 fashion of just what was the field work we were 14 doing, and real basically what are the types of 15 things we found, and how did we incorporate those 16 into the model we have developed, how do we -- I'll 17 give you a little demonstration of the model at 18 this point. 19 It's just kind of a prototype model. We're 20 still waiting on one more piece to be developed by 21 USGS. When that's available, then the model will 22 be ready to use for impact assessments. 23 So this is a satellite image of our study 24 area. This is the City of Savannah and the port 25 right down through here. This is I-95, Tybee 8 1 MARSH SECESSION MODEL PRESENTATION 2 Island is just off the edge of screen down here. 3 This is the Talmadge Bridge through here. 4 The project is to, of course, dredge the 5 channel starting out in the ocean, move all the way 6 up the shipping channel by the port, and stop just 7 short of Houlihan Bridge. And the concern is how 8 will changing the geometry of the navigation 9 channel affect the tidal prism, and the intrusion 10 of salt a little bit farther up the river. 11 The area that we're looking at is primarily 12 tidal freshwater marshes and very low salinity 13 oligohaline. 14 This is kind of a schematic of where those 15 types of marshes occur in these types of systems. 16 Kind of the magic number .5 per thousand of salt is 17 just the defining line between what's freshwater 18 and saltwater. 19 At salinities below .5, you can still have a 20 lot of tides, so that would be tidal freshwater 21 marshes. When your average conditions, your 22 salinity is a little higher than .5, then that type 23 of marsh is called oligohaline or low salinity, 24 and then another magic dividing line is up around 25 five parts per thousand, and that's, you know , 9 1 MARSH SECESSION MODEL PRESENTATION 2 you're turning into brackish marsh at that point. 3 So where does all this fall out on the 4 Savannah River? Out in the ocean, ocean salinity 5 is about 35 parts per thousand, and as the 6 freshwater comes down the river, it dilutes that 7 salt, which is carried up the river at high tide. 8 So at high tide, this would be kind of about where 9 you would expect to see the salinity gradient, 10 under normal high tide conditions, you would see it 11 drop off about the middle of port just above the 12 Talmadge Bridge, you might expect it to be around 13 five parts per thousand or so. 14 Get north of the Houlihan Bridge, suddenly 15 you're approaching that 1 PT, .5, and then the 0 16 area. 17 So before you get to I-95, you still have a 18 pretty good tide, but the salinity has dropped to 19 0. So this area through here, north of Houlihan 20 Bridge, but just downstream of I-95 is where the 21 tidal freshwater marshes and the oligohaline 22 marshes are found. One more landmark, the tide 23 gates sits about right here. 24 So when we got started in '97, with the 25 intention of coming up with this marsh secession 10 1 MARSH SECESSION MODEL PRESENTATION 2 model, the first thing we needed to do was to 3 compile ecological data on which to base the model. 4 So most of what we've been doing, over the past few 5 years, is doing tidal wetland studies. 6 So the first thing I wanted to do was give a 7 brief overview of what we were doing. The most 8 important thing was monitoring vegetation out in 9 the marsh, at a number of locations up and down the 10 salinity gradient. 11 And we set up 10 areas along the front river, 12 middle river and little back and back rivers that 13 encompass the salinity gradient from very 14 freshwater areas far upstream. This is just 15 upstream of the Luck Now Canal where Fish and 16 Wildlife Service pulls the freshwater into their 17 impoundment areas way up the middle river and front 18 river. And then our most downriver are, just 19 upriver of the tide gate, the tide gate would be 20 just here off the screen. 21 So this gives us a good distribution of the 22 salinity gradient upriver and downriver, and also 23 the differences between the three main river 24 channels. 25 Now, we have gone out since '97 up through the 11 1 MARSH SECESSION MODEL PRESENTATION 2 end of last year, and we have counted the plants at 3 these areas, at eight different time at each spot. 4 Each of those spots I showed your before, we have 5 a big transect set up across the marsh 500 feet in 6 length. 7 Each of these red dots would be 100 feet 8 apart, and they correspond to permanently marked 9 locations out in the marshes where we have PVC 10 posts set up. So what we're able to do season 11 after season is return to the exact same spot in 12 the marsh and look at the same 1,000 square feet of 13 ground and see what's still there, what changes 14 have occurred. 15 The type of data we collect we compile into 16 these big tables, give a little close-up on it 17 here. What we do is for every increment along this 18 500 foot transect, we tally what species are 19 present there and measure what's the abundance of 20 that species right in that spot. 21 So this gives us a huge amount of highly 22 quantitative data on plant species and their 23 abundances at numerous locations across the marsh. 24 It allows us, over the five years we've been 25 collecting data, we have amassed tens of thousands 12 1 MARSH SECESSION MODEL PRESENTATION 2 of data points regarding the species and 3 abundances, which allows us pretty robust 4 statistics on individual species. 5 I won't go into what this is, but it's an 6 analysis of just one of plant species out there. 7 We found 148 different species. And what this is 8 showing is this particular plant's response to 9 salinity at different areas in the marsh. 10 We can also compile that into some different 11 statistical analyzes, which allow us to look at the 12 whole community structure at any given time, and 13 then changes in plant communities from one season 14 to the next, so that we can look for any distinct 15 trends in community changes. 16 Other things concurrent with the routine plant 17 monitoring, we set up a number of data logging 18 stations out in the marsh, which consists of a lot 19 of electronic equipment in a box. But the 20 important thing is they're attached to salinity 21 sensors, where we were constantly monitoring 22 salinity levels down in the marsh sediments, to 23 look at the interaction between what's the salinity 24 in the river versus the salinity in the marsh 25 sediments. 13 1 MARSH SECESSION MODEL PRESENTATION 2 It's the salinity in the marsh sediments that 3 are most important to the marsh plants because 4 that's where the roots are sitting. We also 5 installed staff gauges to be able to track tidal -- 6 the tide heights, and compare those to the marsh 7 elevations that we surveyed using GPS gear. 8 So we have hundreds spot elevations around the 9 marsh that we can compare to the tide level data, 10 and just for fun we also put together a nursery 11 based salinity screening experiment, where we 12 pulled a bunch of samples of big blocks of sod out 13 of the marsh at a number of locations, took them 14 back to our facility down in Gainesville, Florida, 15 and set them up in these tubs and held them at 16 different salinity levels, and then tracked what 17 salinity level it took to cause changes in which of 18 the plant species. 19 So, what did we find over that, our five year 20 period starting in '97? One thing we found was 21 that a tremendous drought occurred. I want to kind 22 of touch on the drought a little bit, and what it 23 may or may not have done to us, in terms of our 24 data collection and what we might be able to do 25 with it. 14 1 MARSH SECESSION MODEL PRESENTATION 2 This graph represents all of our different 3 vegetation monitoring locations, and they're 4 arranged from way downstream, this would be by the 5 tide gate, moving basically upstream all the way up 6 by I-95, and then along this access, this is all 7 the dates that we collected. 8 We were out monitoring vegetation, but while 9 we were out there monitoring vegetation, we 10 concurrently took salinity samples in the sediments 11 at those times. 12 Over on this axis is the salinity in parts per 13 thousand. This axis goes from 0 to 16 parts per 14 thousand. Remember the dividing line between 15 freshwater and saltwater is .5 per thousand, which 16 is going to be way down here. 17 So the first row here are the salinities that 18 we found in 1997, 1997 was preceded by five or more 19 years of normal to wet, slightly wet conditions out 20 in the river, so probably a pretty good baseline, 21 you know, if you can call it baseline conditions, 22 that '97 data. 23 Then the drought set in, starting in late 24 '99 or 2000, and you can see that everytime that we 25 were out monitoring the salinities, in general just 15 1 MARSH SECESSION MODEL PRESENTATION 2 went up up up. 3 So our original intent, when we got involved 4 in the project and we were trying to develop this 5 model, the original intent of the model was to come 6 up with a way to look, you know, be able to judge 7 changes in plant community changes if the salinity 8 were to change. 9 But with the drought we, basically, were able 10 to observe a river-wide salinity tolerance 11 experiment because everytime we went out there, the 12 salinity and the sediments were just a little bit 13 higher. 14 So we were able to look at it in a real world 15 situation with what's happening to plant species 16 under these higher salinity levels. So because of 17 the drought, salinities and sediments just went up 18 up up the entire time we were out there. 19 So if we were to take our spot data around the 20 marsh, and try and put a contour on a map as to 21 where the magic line was at any given time, in '97 22 this is about where you would go out in the marsh, 23 if you were walking around out there looking at the 24 salinity and sediments, this would be about where 25 you would find that .5 parts per thousand salinity 16 1 MARSH SECESSION MODEL PRESENTATION 2 line. 3 By May 2000, because the flows in the river 4 were down because of the drought, less freshwater 5 coming down the river allows the salt to creep up a 6 little farther. That pushes that salt farther up 7 river. High tide floods over the marsh and 8 constantly makes the marsh a little saltier. So by 9 May 2000, the .5 PPT line had creeped up to about 10 this area, and by June 2002, the .5 line is off the 11 map. I-95 would be about right here. The tide 12 gate sits down about right here. Houlihan Bridge 13 is about right here. 14 So last summer the .5 parts per thousand line 15 was way up by I-95 somewhere, and down through the 16 middle of the tidal freshwater vegetation, the 17 salinity was up around 1. 18 Now that got us to thinking, wonder how often 19 this kind of situation occurs out in the marsh. 20 The salinity gradient up and down the river is 21 determined by the tide coming in, but also how much 22 freshwater is coming down the river that can dilute 23 the ocean salinity. 24 So the river -- the nearest USGS gauge is 25 upriver about another 20 miles 30 miles at a place 17 1 MARSH SECESSION MODEL PRESENTATION 2 called Clyo. That's the gauging station that 3 everything is measured from out on the river, when 4 you are looking flows coming through our study 5 area. 6 And they have been monitoring the river flow 7 everyday since 1938. So they have a pretty long 8 data record, and you can download it off the 9 Internet and put into a spreadsheet. That's what 10 it looks like. 11 There's a red line across here, which is the 12 median flow for all of those years, and that's 13 about 8,700cubic feet per second is the median 14 flow. You can see it gets way up. 15 I think the highest flow reported at Clyo is 16 127,000. Then you can see there is kind of an 17 annual signature. You have wet seasons and dry 18 seasons. 19 If you're to take just every day of the year, 20 you know, all your January 1sts and all your April 21 15ths and everything, average what's going on per 22 day, you can get a signature for what a typical 23 year looks like. 24 This goes from January through December. This 25 is the cubic feet per second of flow on this 18 1 MARSH SECESSION MODEL PRESENTATION 2 axis, and this signature shows that you have your 3 peak flows out in the Savannah River coming 4 through Clyo happening in March and April. 5 You have a wet spring that quickly drops off 6 by early June, so you have kind of, you know, the 7 lower flows during the summer. In December, it 8 starts picking up through this late winter again. 9 You take this typical annual signature and 10 just kind of repeat it. You can get a signal that 11 looks like this. 12 I've got setups from 1997 through -- here's 13 the year we're in right here. This is what the 14 river should be doing in a typical fashion, and the 15 line right here represents what's the record low 16 flow for any given day out here of the year. 17 On the top of this, let's overlay the data 18 from the Clyo gauge everyday since 1997 through the 19 middle of last week, and you can see that the red 20 are the actual flows. The black is what the normal 21 range should be for any day of the year. 22 And you can see that, you know, these type of 23 flows in the midst of the drought are well below 24 normal, and a lot of them are basically setting a 25 new record low. 19 1 MARSH SECESSION MODEL PRESENTATION 2 Back when we first started our plant 3 monitoring right in here, they were having a kind 4 of a very normal summer, and the years preceding 5 this were normal to slightly on the wet side. '98 6 we had kind of El Nino winter, so it was a very wet 7 winter that year. Summer of '98 was pretty normal, 8 but then we dropped into the drought, and that's 9 pretty much the way things sat the entire time we 10 were collecting data, except we stopped collecting 11 right here. 12 Now, wouldn't you know it, we're into an 13 unusually wet summer. So that's what's going on 14 right now as of last week. 15 So looking some more at what's the frequency 16 of wet years and dry years? If you take that Clyo 17 gauge data and just do an annual average, you know, 18 what was the average flow for any given year, and 19 take the median value of all -- that's 65 years 20 worth -- take the median value, which means half 21 the flows will be below the median and half the 22 flows would be above the median, spread them out 23 for all the years; this shows you years which were 24 a little dryer and a little wetter than normal in 25 a relative sense. 20 1 MARSH SECESSION MODEL PRESENTATION 2 So 2002 over here had the lowest flows on 3 annual average of any year on record at the Clyo 4 gauge. That's 1964, that's the wettest year that 5 was out there. You can see we've had several back 6 to back dry years, prior to 2002, so that's the 7 drought that has been going on right now. 8 We had a few wet years before that, another 9 big drought in the 80s, huge drought in the 50s. 10 So that's everything on a year to year level, but 11 then one more thing that we were curious about, if 12 you started doing running averages of years, what 13 groups of years would be, you know, what years back 14 to back would be dryer than other years back to 15 back. 16 The reason we were looking at that was we've 17 been monitoring since late '97 up through 2002. 18 That's five years. We had pretty good drought that 19 had set in for most of that time. 20 Most of the plant changes, in terms of 21 community changes that we saw, occurred during 22 2002. So that kind of gave us an indication of how 23 long things needed to be dry for, before you 24 started a change. 25 So we just started putting some averages 21 1 MARSH SECESSION MODEL PRESENTATION 2 together. When you look at a five year running 3 average of, you know, each of those lines on this 4 graph represents an average of five years. Right 5 here, the final line out here, that's 19 -- is that 6 '96 through 2002 -- and you can see that averaged 7 together, that's the current drought that we're in. 8 And you can see also, kind of an interesting 9 periodicity in dry periods versus wet periods. So 10 it seems that they're very periodic and somewhat 11 regular. 12 The intensity of the drought that we're now is 13 certainly not that unusual to have a drought of the 14 magnitude that we're in. On a multi-year average 15 basis, it's not even as bad, in some ways, as what 16 was occurring in the 80s. This is '86 through '90 17 right here. On a five year average, it's the 18 driest five years out there, as recorded by the 19 Clyo gauge, and then another tremendous drought in 20 the 1950s. 21 So that made us feel a little bit better about 22 the time period that we collected the data in. 23 Even though it was a drought, it certainly is not 24 an unusual thing for the Savannah River. And we 25 may be coming out of the drought now. We'll just 22 1 MARSH SECESSION MODEL PRESENTATION 2 see what happens, in terms of the additional points 3 we can put out here. 4 So what did we find in terms of all the data 5 that we collected? Here's all our plant monitoring 6 locations, and these numbers represent the 7 cumulative total of all the plant species that we 8 found in any of our monitoring locations over the 9 five years of our study. 10 Up here in the very freshwater area, we got a 11 cumulative total of 120 species. And as you kind 12 of the salinity gradient gets saltier as you move 13 toward the front river, and also go downriver, so 14 you can see the decrease in species as you move in 15 any direction and it gets slightly more salty. 16 This represents the cumulative total of 17 species we would find in these areas. It took five 18 years to be able to come up with 120 species. At 19 any given time, when you go out and monitor, you'll 20 find substantially less. 21 These represent the average number of species 22 that you would find in any location. A very 23 freshwater area, you'll go and find an average of 24 64. You might find 57 one time and 71 the next. 25 It would just kind of go up and down, and it worked 23 1 MARSH SECESSION MODEL PRESENTATION 2 that way for all these other areas too. 3 Way down here by the tide gate, it was always 4 the same, you know six or seven very salt-tolerant 5 species. 6 Another interesting thing, you can see the 7 dividing line pretty much is this red area versus 8 the green, where it gets slightly more salty. That 9 pretty much coincides with a very dramatic decrease 10 in the number of species you find across that 11 interface. 12 So that's a pretty good indication of where 13 the dividing line is between the tidal freshwater 14 marshes and the slightly more saline oligohaline 15 marshes. 16 Now, and important thing to remember, though, 17 if you are standing here versus here, there's 18 nothing that grows in this oligohaline marsh that 19 doesn't grow up here in the tidal freshwater marsh. 20 Visually, when you are standing there looking at 21 it, it doesn't look any different. You have to go 22 through all those big tables to basically tell the 23 difference between them. 24 The main difference here is that you get a 25 whole lot more occasional species that grow. So as 24 1 MARSH SECESSION MODEL PRESENTATION 2 the salt increases just a little bit, the frequency 3 of the occurrence of those occasional species goes 4 down, and that's why you see the difference between 5 this number and this number. 6 All the species that grow here grow here. 7 It's just a few more grow up here, but none of them 8 are the dominants. Community change-wise, these 9 are the areas that we were actually able to do some 10 analyzes and show some trends in community change 11 because of the drought, and there was a trend 12 toward slightly favoring the slightly more saline 13 species, although very few species actually dropped 14 out. 15 What the community changes show up in, changes 16 in relative abundance of species against one 17 another, so very few of these areas you would 18 really notice, you know, a very dramatic change in. 19 Most of the species trends, you have to pull out of 20 that monitoring data. 21 But the interesting thing is we didn't see any 22 change up here in the freshwater area, even though 23 the salinities were raised for, you know, at least 24 the one summer. We didn't really see any species 25 change. It just didn't get high enough to do 25 1 MARSH SECESSION MODEL PRESENTATION 2 anything or persist long enough. 3 Also, we didn't see any change down here where 4 it's already very salty, and no matter what the 5 drought would do, it wasn't going to raise the 6 salinity high enough to bump them over the next 7 threshold. 8 Where we saw the changes was kind of in the 9 middle. These are already oligohaline to slightly 10 a little bit more brackish-type communities. 11 They're kind of on the fence. The drought was able 12 to raise the salinities up enough to kind of knock 13 them over, you know, knock them over to one side of 14 the fence, so we were able to detect community 15 changes in these areas. 16 But once again, you know, you didn't see any 17 wholesale loss of species. Some would decrease in 18 abundance and other ones would increase in 19 abundance. 20 Okay. So that's kind of an overview of what 21 we found in our wetland studies, and the trick was 22 now to incorporate all that data into a marsh 23 secession model, and we wanted to have a model 24 that was geographic information system-based model, 25 which means that the inputs to the model are in the 26 1 MARSH SECESSION MODEL PRESENTATION 2 form of the maps, and the output is in the form of 3 maps. 4 So we wanted to be able to put in, you know, 5 spatial data regarding where salinity values in 6 marsh sediments, what plants are occurring in the 7 different areas at any given time, and then the 8 output from the model would be a vegetation map 9 reflecting species distributions under whatever the 10 model salinity scenario is. 11 So we want to be able to have a way to look at 12 the marsh and, in the model, increase the salinity 13 and produce maps which -- vegetation maps -- which 14 represent those different salinities, and then be 15 able to compare the maps to one another to see what 16 changes occurred and where the changes occurred. 17 So the prototype model that we submitted in 18 March uses a salinity map, also soil zone map, and 19 drops that into a series of decision statements 20 that are incorporated into the GIS software, and 21 this marsh vegetation map comes out. 22 I want to quickly show you how we came up with 23 our data layer for our soil zones. This is an 24 aerial photo of marsh, just north of Houlihan 25 Bridge which would be running right down here at 27 1 MARSH SECESSION MODEL PRESENTATION 2 the bottom of the screen. Here's the Fish and 3 Wildlife Service shop. That's the middle river, 4 that's the little back river. 5 What I want to show you is all the canals that 6 are cut through the marsh. Those are the remains 7 of the old rice field water supply canals back 8 before the Civil War which still persist. 9 They give us some very interesting zonation in 10 the marsh sediments. One thing -- the first thing 11 we did was take the aerial photo and then digitize 12 all the creek banks and ditches. 13 From that -- well, we did that for the whole 14 marsh from 95 way down below the tide gate. That's 15 the ditch system that is out in the marsh today 16 distributing water everywhere. 17 In the GIS, we were able to then tell it 18 buffer areas along those all those creek banks so 19 that it gives us an area that's within 50 feet of 20 any of the creek edges, then areas within 200 feet 21 of creek area edges, and other areas that are 22 greater than 200 feet away. 23 If we overlay that on top of the aerial photo, 24 you can see areas like this. You can see the 25 zonation in there, and how out in the interior of 28 1 MARSH SECESSION MODEL PRESENTATION 2 the marsh you get different signatures right up 3 next to these edges. That's very important in 4 plant zonation. It really influences, you know, 5 how the GIS will draw the vegetation maps. 6 The next part is how we did our salinity map, 7 and our inputs to the marsh model, regarding 8 salinity, are supposed to be produced in the 9 hydrodynamic and salinity model that you guys have 10 heard about for a number of years now, and that's 11 pretty much ready to go, but -- so that will 12 produce salinity readings in the river for input 13 into marsh model. 14 The problem is the marsh model has to work on 15 the salinity in the marsh sediments, not out in the 16 river. 17 So we need a way to be able to extrapolate the 18 salinity readings that the H and S model will be 19 producing out in the river, and how we pull those 20 in to put them in the marsh sediments. 21 This is one more little piece of the model 22 that's being worked by Paul Conrads at USGS. 23 That's the called model to marsh modular, I think 24 is the acronym for it. So that's kind of that 25 middle missing piece we're waiting on that will 29 1 MARSH SECESSION MODEL PRESENTATION 2 allow us to connect the H and S model into the 3 marsh secession model. 4 So we wanted to be able demo our model, we 5 have just kind of cooked up some salinity 6 scenarios, but I wanted to kind of run you through 7 how we did that real quick. 8 It's kind of interesting. It shows the way 9 these creeks influence the salinity out in the 10 marshes. 11 These creeks are all ditches left over from 12 the rice field era. That's what they look like 13 when go up in a boat. Some of them are wide. Some 14 of them get pretty narrow, but they're the pretty 15 extensive. 16 They're remnants of when the entire area, from 17 95 down through the tide gate back before the Civil 18 War, it was all developed as rice fields. 19 It was all very agrarian and pastural out 20 there. This is a map from 1846 showing the north 21 end of Argyle Island completely developed as what's 22 called Red Knoll Plantation. You can see all the 23 ditches and things that were out there. 24 This is kind of a schematic of what Argyle 25 Island and Ursuala Island would have looked like. 30 1 MARSH SECESSION MODEL PRESENTATION 2 We took some old maps and aerial photos and drew in 3 where the water supply and canals and things would 4 have been. 5 So all of Argyle Island and Ursuala Island 6 were all farm fields, and they were originally 7 developed starting in the mid 1800s or so, not mid 8 1800s, mid 1700s and up through the Civil War. It 9 was a highly productive in rice fields. Civil War 10 they kind of took a hit when Sherman's troops came 11 through and burned everything. 12 Then the industry kind of limped along till 13 about 1900, and then they abandoned it altogether. 14 From the mid 1700s up through the Civil War, 15 everything out there that we're looking at, in 16 terms of marshes, you know, used to look like this. 17 They were all developed farm fields. The rice 18 would have been grown in these areas which were 19 plowed. Water would then -- rice fields, you want 20 to be able to flood them or keep them dry. So they 21 would use -- all the fields were enclosed in these 22 berms. 23 There were interior water distribution 24 ditches, exterior water supply canals. Right here 25 you can see a water control structure, a big wooden 31 1 MARSH SECESSION MODEL PRESENTATION 2 culvert with gates on each end to allow you to hold 3 either hold water in the rice field or drain it 4 out, depending on what the tide was doing. 5 So this is what the area would have looked 6 like for, you know, well over 100 years. And every 7 year, you know, the slaves would have been out 8 plowing the area flat as a pool table and growing 9 rice, and basically ducking very intensive 10 management on the area. 11 But early 1900s, tide water rice industry was 12 defunct and the area was abandoned. So everything 13 we see out there today is what has grown up since 14 the rice fields were abandoned. 15 Most of that area was incorporated into what's 16 now the Savannah National Wildlife Refuge about -- 17 when was that John, about the 1930s or so -- the 18 refuge got going? 19 MR. ROBINETTE: 1920s. 20 MR. BOSSART: So anyway to exploit that ditch 21 system that persist out there, this is what kind of 22 the output from the H and S model looks like. It 23 gives you a bunch of grids out in the river 24 channels, and each of those grids will have a 25 salinity value associated with it. 32 1 MARSH SECESSION MODEL PRESENTATION 2 We told the guys, all our model guys in 3 Charleston, we told them to give us a grid which 4 represents the high tide, because the marsh is only 5 flooded at high tide, what the salinity would be in 6 the river channels high tide, and represent a 7 long-term average condition, representing normal, 8 just normal flows, and then something that would 9 represent a moderate drought and a really severe 10 drought. 11 In the model, they're able to manipulate how 12 much water they show coming down the river. That 13 affects how far the salt gets up the river from the 14 tide. 15 They gave us three different grids, inside 16 each of these -- on top of the grid, we were able 17 to overlay our ditch system. And then inside each 18 one of these grid cells, this shows up as a dot on 19 this power point, but there's really a number in 20 there that represents the salinity in the river 21 channel at that point. 22 In our GIS system, we told it at grid cells 23 where these ditches come down and connect to the 24 main river channels, whatever the salinity value is 25 in that cell, the GIS system should grab that value 33 1 MARSH SECESSION MODEL PRESENTATION 2 and then assign that value, the salinity value, to 3 this entire ditch system. 4 So what this did was allow us to take the 5 salinity gradient, within the river, and distribute 6 it across the marsh throughout all this ditch 7 system. And then the next thing we told the GIS to 8 do was then contour the salinity concentrations 9 across the marsh surface, based on all these points 10 that we had distributed across there. 11 You end up with this funny looking thing, but 12 when you overlay the ditch system back over the top 13 of it and flip it back out, you end up with this, 14 and this represents our three different scenarios 15 that we use in our demo model. 16 This one represents kind of normal flow 17 conditions, during the growing season, of about 18 8,200 cubic feet per second. A moderate drought we 19 find as 5,900 feet per second, and then severe 20 drought about 4,000 cubic feet per second. 21 You can see we've overlaid where the .5 parts 22 per thousand contour is on each of these. Under 23 normal conditions, it's showing up about right 24 here. 25 Moderate drought, it gets pushed upriver just 34 1 MARSH SECESSION MODEL PRESENTATION 2 a little bit. Under the severe drought, it's off 3 the map. This is the one part per thousand contour 4 here. This gives us three different salinity 5 scenarios to kind of pop into the model, just to 6 see how it affects the plant distributions. 7 Back to this little diagram, we're up to this 8 part where we're actually able to take the data 9 layers and run them through the logic decisions 10 that are built into the GIS. 11 This is the decision tree that was developed 12 by Dr. Kitchens off the data he was collecting, and 13 what -- how this works is the information that's 14 contained in the salinity data layer and the soils 15 data layer gets dropped into the top here. 16 It just starts making decisions bouncing down 17 this little chart. When it gets to the first one, 18 how far from the channel is any particular area 19 we're evaluating. If it's less than 50 feet, 20 that's right up next to the channel ledges. 21 They're all just this big tall grass called 22 zizaniops. So it's a sign of a community-type 23 of zizaniops which is represented by that acronym 24 there. 25 If it's greater than 50 feet away from the 35 1 MARSH SECESSION MODEL PRESENTATION 2 river channels, then it's got to go through a whole 3 lot of decisions, based on salinity brackets, and 4 it ends up with eight different community types 5 that it will map out. 6 So that's the decision tree that's built into 7 the GIS, and the output from the GIS is actually a 8 map, and these are the maps being produced by that 9 salinity tree. Under these three, you know, the 10 decision tree, under the three different salinity 11 scenarios, different colors represent the different 12 marsh plant community types that are found. 13 You can see that the colors change from one 14 map to the next, representing changes, community 15 changes, under different conditions. 16 You can take that same information and boil it 17 down into the table. These are all acreages. The 18 area that's included in the model is about 5,200 19 acres. 20 Each of these community types is represented 21 by acreage under each of the scenarios, salinity 22 scenarios. So you can see which community types 23 change as the salinity gets higher or the salinity 24 gets lower. 25 You can also take the same type of data and 36 1 MARSH SECESSION MODEL PRESENTATION 2 show it in a graphic format. And another thing 3 that's built into the model is in addition to the 4 overall community change maps that I just showed, 5 we also have the capability of looking at any area 6 of the marsh on species by species level. 7 We have some other things built into the GIS. 8 I'm not going to run through all of this. There 9 are some other decision trees built into it, which 10 look at other data layers and make different types 11 of decisions, you know. 12 Again, you can see distance from the channel 13 is like the initial decision that you look at, and 14 then you start breaking it up from there. 15 Our species by species level ability kind of 16 comes down, and there's a whole bunch of look-up 17 tables that it's looking at, which gives us the 18 frequency -- well, it gives us the probability of 19 occurrence of any species under any salinity 20 conditions. 21 It also accounts for differences in -- what it 22 is accounting for is changes in plant communities 23 in any area, based on salinity changes, is also a 24 function of what is already there. 25 So the way our look-up tables are structured, 37 1 MARSH SECESSION MODEL PRESENTATION 2 it accounts for the zonation out in the marsh, 3 because different plant species have different -- 4 well, the same plant species will have a different 5 reaction to salinity depending on where it is at. 6 There's a distinct difference between each of 7 river channels, in terms of an individual species' 8 response to any particular salinity value. So one 9 of the things that we can -- type of map we can 10 produce with our species by species approach is, 11 you know, very simply we can just count up how many 12 species can occur in any one area at a particular 13 salinity scenario. 14 You know, that's just the total species. You 15 can also pick any particular area. The table I'm 16 about to show you, okay, what's right down in here, 17 what would those species be. It's made up of a 18 relatively few number of species that could occur 19 in that area. Here's the probability of their 20 occurrence, any of these different salinity 21 scenarios. 22 Then you can also -- a plant community is 23 nothing but the species that comprise it. If you 24 have a list of the species in any area and a 25 measure of their abundance, you can then run that 38 1 MARSH SECESSION MODEL PRESENTATION 2 through a community classification scheme and come 3 up with a community name. 4 In this particular area, you know, under any 5 of the salinity scenarios, it's always dominated by 6 species of scirpus, but the subdominants change, 7 based on what salinity is occurring. 8 So that's our -- that's my last slide. It 9 kind of gives you a little overview of what we can 10 get out of this model. It's basically ready to 11 use, pending the module being completed by Paul 12 Conrads at USGS. 13 We've been having some discussions on what we 14 need to do to do some verifications on the results 15 of the model. 16 One final thing I want to emphasize is the 17 model wasn't intended, you know, the model doesn't 18 make the decision as to what impacts will occur out 19 in the marsh, as a result of the project. 20 People make the final decision. The model is 21 merely a collection of tools, that are available 22 for those people to base their decision on, and 23 that's the end of my presentation. I'll be glad to 24 answer any questions. 25 MR. DYSART: Questions. 39 1 MARSH SECESSION MODEL PRESENTATION 2 MR. KYLER: Yes. You said that in 2000, the 3 year 2000, the maximum amount of salinity effect on 4 the community or plant species was observed. 5 MR. BOSSART: 2002. 6 MR. KYLER: I thought you said 2000 -- anyway, 7 whatever the year. 8 MR. BOSSART: It was the final year and it was 9 the depths of the drought. 10 MR. KYLER: When do you start seeing effects 11 in the sediments, salinity changes in the sediment, 12 as a result of salinity changes in the river? 13 MR. BOSSART: Pretty much anything after '99, 14 you can see it creeping up. 15 MR. KYLER: What is that in years following 16 the change in river salinity, roughly, or months, 17 whatever? 18 MR. BOSSART: Oh, when it goes up in the river 19 how long does it take to creep up? 20 MR. KYLER: Yes, when you start observing it. 21 MR. BOSSART: It's -- the river is extremely 22 variable, but whatever is going on in the river at 23 high tide, when it gets up over the top of the 24 marsh, that's allowed to soak in. 25 That's what affecting those marsh sediments. 40 1 MARSH SECESSION MODEL PRESENTATION 2 So one thing we found was that the marsh doesn't 3 flood nearly as often as you think it would. It 4 floods every high tide -- well, it doesn't. At 5 best it's flooding ever other high tide. 6 It's only flooding on the higher of the two 7 high tides per day, and then during the neap parts 8 of the tidal cycle it doesn't flood at all. 9 It might go for a week or more without 10 flooding once. And then other conditions, unusual 11 weather conditions mostly, will hold water up in 12 the marsh and it's flooding all the time. 13 So the marsh kind of lags well behind what's 14 going on out in the river, in terms of the 15 salinity. So you can have salinity spikes 15 or 16 something out in the river, and you don't even see 17 that in the marsh, but the marsh is kind of lagging 18 several months behind whatever the average 19 conditions are in the river. 20 We're having kind of an unusual summer now, in 21 terms of it's kind of a wet summer. You know, at 22 the end of last year the salinities and the marsh 23 sediments were as high as we have seen them, and 24 then we've been kind of into this wet period now, 25 we've had some guys up in the marsh working on 41 1 MARSH SECESSION MODEL PRESENTATION 2 something else a couple of weeks ago. 3 They went around and just took some real quick 4 graph samples in our -- where our monitoring 5 stations were. 6 The salinities appear to be way down from 7 where they were this time last year. So it's a 8 pretty quick response to, you know, the new wet 9 conditions out there. 10 MR. KYLER: Related question, what, if any, 11 are the habitat implications of these variations 12 that are salinity-related in the vegetation? 13 MR. BOSSART: Well, Dr. Kitchens has been 14 doing a number of, you know, habitat oriented-type 15 studies. He's doing the nekton study -- what else 16 is going on out there -- Chris has had is migratory 17 bird study. 18 MR. ROBINETTE: We had breeding season bird 19 study, and we had migratory season which was the 20 fall and the spring in each of the areas over that 21 salinity gradient to measure that response. 22 MR. KYLER: Any correlation or findings yet? 23 MR. ROBINETTE: Yes. We're finding about the 24 same thing you find in the plant community. You're 25 finding more species in the bird species in the 42 1 MARSH SECESSION MODEL PRESENTATION 2 freshwater and less if you're a species in 3 saltwater, and finding some that overlap. 4 MR. KYLER: Are there any implications for 5 wildlife management that can be drawn from that? 6 MR. ROBINETTE: Yes. The limiting factor for 7 us is the tidal fresh marsh. That's what we've 8 lost, over 90% of that in this system. So that's 9 what we need for the system to function closer to 10 a more natural way. So we're looking at no loss of 11 tidal fresh marsh, is our goal, is what we're 12 looking at. 13 MR. KYLER: That's the most critical resource 14 affected by the salinity change? 15 MR. ROBINETTE: Correct. Right. 16 MR. KYLER: Another observation I would 17 appreciate a comment on, if you have an opinion, is 18 how this kind of stuff is affected by or 19 potentially affected by this project? 20 It needs to be -- those kind of decisions need 21 to be integrated in other watershed management 22 issues such as water supply, because obviously 23 upriver outtakes and diversions like 24 interbase transfers can have the same or presumably 25 larger effects than droughts on downstream 43 1 MARSH SECESSION MODEL PRESENTATION 2 salinity. 3 MR. BOSSART: Right. Anything that's 4 affecting how much water is coming down the river. 5 MR. KYLER: It seems to be obvious that 6 whatever strategy is taken, the rationale is for 7 the final decision in this project, that needs to 8 be fully integrated in some sort of reliable, 9 accountable basis with watershed management 10 decisions throughout the watershed to reach 11 conclusions about impacts you're trying to control 12 or are most concerned about, is that correct? 13 MR. BOSSART: Absolutely. Anything that, you 14 know, anything that affects the amount of 15 freshwater coming down the river will certainly 16 affect the distribution of plants in the marshes. 17 As we work through the alternative analyzes of 18 the harbor deepening, you know, we'll be able to 19 look at what are the effects from the project 20 itself, where are they going to occur. 21 The next step after that is what can we do 22 to avoid those or minimize them. You know, that's 23 when -- that's the arena where we pull in more of 24 the holistic management approach, and Bill might be 25 able speak a little more to that; how do we 44 1 MARSH SECESSION MODEL PRESENTATION 2 integrate the overall watershed management into 3 looking at mitigation options for the project, is 4 that even an avenue for that. 5 MR. BAILEY: That's pretty challenging. You 6 have different agencies responsible for that. 7 MR. KYLER: Let me just go on record as saying 8 if this leads somewhere, other than just hot air, 9 that whatever effect this project has is not 10 independent of other activities within the 11 watershed. 12 That's true of any congregative situation in 13 any watershed. With water supply issues and water 14 management issue in Georgia being as hot as they 15 are, because of the state water management 16 program, for that and agricultural use as well, I 17 don't think we can take a responsible position on 18 this project unless there is some assurance that 19 there are some protections in flow throughout the 20 watershed, because if we can reach agreement on 21 acceptable of salinity impacts of this project, 22 that may mean nothing if we can't control salinity 23 effects caused by flow disruptions and withdrawals 24 diverted to other river systems, or get converted 25 to steam, or otherwise are not returned to the 45 1 MARSH SECESSION MODEL PRESENTATION 2 stream. So I just don't see how this group can 3 reach a reliable decision on the project without 4 such assurances. 5 MR. DYSART: Teri. 6 MS. LEFFEK: My question goes sort along the 7 same lines as the last statement of Dave asking 8 about the river. I noticed you had a slide about 9 Clyo. 10 When was the dam put into effect and did the 11 dam releases affect that data, you know, of what 12 you have in the sense of flows down the river? 13 MR. BOSSART: Bo, help me out. I think the 14 dams were built in the 40s, 50s -- 15 MR. ELLIS: 40s, 50, late 40s. 16 MR. BOSSART: Been there a while. You know, 17 my initial thought was gee, this drought in the 50s 18 is merely filling up the reservoir. There was a 19 huge drought in the 50s. The State of Georgia 20 wrote a book about it. 21 Last year at this time, I think the reservoirs 22 were as low as they have been since the dams were 23 built. 24 MR. ELLIS: Yeah. 25 MR. BOSSART: This year they're full again, 46 1 MARSH SECESSION MODEL PRESENTATION 2 right, discharging normally? 3 MR. ELLIS: Yes. 4 MR. BOSSART: So it doesn't take that long to 5 fill them up under normal conditions. 6 MR. ELLIS: But it has hydrologically 7 equalized. If you look at the large peaks before 8 the dams, which you don't see those large peaks 9 anymore, and also it's hard to see that there were 10 a lot of low periods before the dams, which has 11 actually elevated the low flows quite a bit through 12 the summertime. 13 MR. FLOCK: Dave and John had a discussion 14 about the impacts or the responses of the wildlife. 15 I want to reiterate a point that Dave touched on is 16 that for our management capabilities, we only have 17 one reliable freshwater intake, and the salinities 18 you saw on the map were going up above that in some 19 cases. 20 We have to deal with that for the natural 21 events like a drought or something, but it impacts 22 our ability to deliver freshwater into the managed 23 freshwater marshes. The ones that are outside the 24 levy, we can't do anything about. They have 25 already converted and respond to natural changes 47 1 MARSH SECESSION MODEL PRESENTATION 2 and manmade changes, but that one critical intake 3 is really important. 4 We also have to deliver water to private lands 5 on our neighbor's property, the Fife Plantation. 6 They're dependent on us to let water through. They 7 don't want saltwater in there either. They have 8 had as bad or worse impacts as we have from the 9 saltwater. It's critical. 10 MR. DYSART: Teri. 11 MS. LEFFEK: A follow-up question, Allan, is 12 there any discussion on moving that intake at any 13 point dependent -- independent of the project just 14 because of the flow conditions in the river? 15 MR. FLOCK: That's about the northern most 16 part of the impoundments. You can't go any further 17 north or you're out of the impoundment system. 18 You're at Clyo or the creek. You can't go past 19 that and get freshwater into that. 20 The only alternative, and you don't want to go 21 there, would be a diversion upstream into our 22 property. That just creates another scenario of 23 problems for other users. That's about as far as 24 we can go. 25 MR. ROBINETTE: You would have to go through 48 1 MARSH SECESSION MODEL PRESENTATION 2 Tupelo Gum Swamp above that. That would be very 3 tough. 4 MR. DYSART: Judy. 5 MS. JENNINGS: I want to make sure I 6 understand a little bit about the M to M work. 7 When I saw it, it said map to map, but you said 8 model to marsh. Does that use -- I saw it as a 9 link between the H and S and the marsh secession. 10 Does it take input from the H and S model or is it 11 a freestanding model? I'm lost on what that is. 12 MR. BOSSART: Can we call a model? It's more 13 -- Bo, can you explain? 14 MR. ELLIS: It's a model. It's a neural 15 network, based on -- 16 MR. KEEGAN: You remember Paul Conrads 17 presentation? 18 MS. JENNINGS: Data mining. 19 MR. KEEGAN: That's a large part of what's 20 making that module up, so we see the H and S model 21 output feeding into that, being processed, and 22 providing salinity predictions in the marsh itself, 23 based on that data mining. Does that help you? 24 MS. JENNINGS: Yes, it does. Can that move -- 25 how much water can be done on that before the final 49 1 MARSH SECESSION MODEL PRESENTATION 2 calibration on the H and S model -- do you have to 3 be fully calibrated to do this, or does one -- 4 feedback -- is it feedback for calibration? 5 MR. ELLIS: Before you apply it, they will all 6 have to be completed and calibrated, but the 7 development of the model to marsh is not dependent 8 on calibration of the hydrodynamic. Development of 9 these three different tools, the marsh model, the 10 model to marsh and the -- 11 MR. KEEGAN: We're thinking rather than 12 calibration, like you say for the H and S model, 13 think in terms of would these conditions predict 14 what the salinity would be here, give me a numeric 15 value. 16 We compare that to field data, for instance. 17 In this case, we really are talking in terms of 18 validating the performance of all these models from 19 the marsh to model output, to the decision tree, to 20 the GIS based interpretation. 21 When you put them together, and I say 22 validation because it's different than calibrating 23 to produce a numeric value for a physics-based 24 model. How to do that validation, we're still 25 working up some different ideas of how we do it, 50 1 MARSH SECESSION MODEL PRESENTATION 2 because we want to be able to get some feel for 3 the, if you will, the degree of accuracy. 4 Is it 85% accurate? Is it 20%, you know, what 5 is that? So rather than calibration, we're going 6 to do some sort of validation with all of the 7 modules put together. The ANN and the model to 8 marsh module itself will get looked at, as far as 9 its performance is concerned. 10 We're anticipating the same thing will happen 11 with the decision module. Then when it is all put 12 together, all three pieces will be looked at how 13 they measure together and work together and how 14 valid is that prediction. Is that a pretty fair 15 summary? 16 MR. BAILEY: The USGS model is that link in 17 between that they're developing and is just based 18 on data, so it doesn't need the output from the 19 salinity model. 20 MS. JENNINGS: I know, but there's still a 21 mechanism for checking validity. 22 MR. KEEGAN: I'm sorry. I didn't hear you. 23 MS. JENNINGS: Bill answered me that the M to 24 M isn't dependent on output from the H and S. That 25 answered my question. The H and S need not be 51 1 MARSH SECESSION MODEL PRESENTATION 2 fully calibrated in order to use the output. 3 MR. ELLIS: It will to need to for the 4 application for the impact evaluation, but not for 5 development of the tools. For calibration and 6 acceptance of the tools, they're independent. So 7 that work is proceeding sort of in parallel with 8 other work. That will come together, and then like 9 Larry said, the whole thing will be linked together 10 in the development. 11 MS. JENNINGS: I'm mostly clear. The only 12 point I'm hung up on is using output from H and S 13 into the M to M before it's fully calibrated. Is 14 that the answer? 15 MR. BAILEY: It won't apply until it's fully 16 calibrated. 17 MS. JENNINGS: Okay. All right. Answered 18 that. 19 MR. DYSART: Further questions or comments? 20 Will. 21 MR. BERSON: I hate to show my ignorance, but 22 I heard you say that during periods of drought what 23 you see is not necessarily a change in abundance, 24 not necessarily a change in makeup but abundance. 25 The freshwater species basically retreat and 52 1 MARSH SECESSION MODEL PRESENTATION 2 the saltwater advance; is that accurate? 3 MR. BOSSART: Yes, but you know, you can't 4 just think of plants in terms of these are 5 freshwater plants and these are saltwater plants. 6 There's a huge overlap between them. 7 So we were actually surprised at the amount of 8 salinity change, that we could have in the marsh 9 sediments, over that long period of time, and the 10 relatively small amount of species change that we 11 saw. 12 The big difference between, you know, just 13 undeniably freshwater areas and grading down into 14 the low salinity areas is you don't -- you don't 15 lose, you know, wholesale numbers of species and 16 they're completely replaced by something else that 17 would be in saltwater. 18 What you see is the dominants remain the same 19 in the freshwater areas. There's opportunities for 20 lots of just occasional species, we call them, that 21 you find them now but you don't find them out there 22 the next time you're out there. 23 There's just a few of them scattered around, 24 but over time they really increase the species list 25 that you can find in that area. However, most of 53 1 MARSH SECESSION MODEL PRESENTATION 2 what you see is the same thing between the two 3 areas. So visually if you drop from one down into 4 the other, you don't notice a lot of difference 5 between them. 6 MR. DYSART: Will, there's not ignorance here, 7 there's only enlightenment around the table. 8 MR. KYLER: Just to make sure this gets on the 9 record, I'm not sure how what's on the screen gets 10 transferred into the record, but I think it's an 11 accurate summary, and if it's not correct me, that 12 the greatest percentage reduction in species 13 diversity is caused by increasing salinity in the 14 freshwater area. 15 MR. BOSSART: Well -- 16 MR. KYLER: It went from 120 something down to 17 60, that's a 50% reduction. 18 MR. BOSSART: No. The difference between the 19 120 and the 60 was in that area, you know, we went 20 out and sampled eight times. 21 Cumulatively, we counted 120 different species 22 in that one area. At any given time we were out 23 there, we only found 60. So the other 60 were just 24 hit and miss. 25 Sometimes they were there and sometimes they 54 1 MARSH SECESSION MODEL PRESENTATION 2 weren't. You know, the point of that was that 3 anytime you're out in any particular area, the 4 number of species you can count at any given time 5 might be half of the total number of species that 6 you can find if you were to do repeated monitoring 7 in the area. 8 MR. KYLER: So what can you say, if anything, 9 about what I was trying to incorrectly interpret 10 from that data about how salinity affects the 11 diversity in the various -- 12 MR. BOSSART: Certainly, as you look at the 13 number of species, as you move down the salinity 14 gradient, up in the freshwater area we didn't see 15 any definite trend in response to salinity. You 16 know, the numbers stayed about the same. We always 17 found around 60 or so. 18 But if you just look at how the, species you 19 know, the species numbers you get as you work your 20 way down the salinity gradient into higher salinity 21 areas, you know, you can see what species dropped 22 out under what salinity regime. 23 As you move farther downriver you're getting 24 fewer and fewer species. Yes, it definitely 25 affects the species diversity. However, the areas 55 1 OLD BUSINESS 2 over the course of our study, we were able to show 3 definite trends in, you know, when we started we 4 found this number of species, but over time, you 5 know, some of those species dropped out. They were 6 actually farther down the salinity gradient in that 7 middle area. 8 It looked like areas that got bumped over the 9 five parts per thousand is the areas we saw a 10 change in. 11 MR. KYLER: Is it not true the main reason why 12 we're concerned about this is the habitat affected? 13 MR. BOSSART: Correct. 14 MR. KYLER: And to emphasize that significance 15 is greatest in the freshwater area? 16 MR. BOSSART: Correct. 17 MR. DYSART: Further comments, questions? 18 Thank you very much, john we appreciate this a 19 great deal. Let's take a five minute break. 20 MR. BOSSART: Thank you. 21 MR. DYSART: Okay. We will proceed now with 22 the old business. Larry, do you want to give -- 23 Larry, you're on, review of the general evaluation 24 study status. 25 MR. KEEGAN: Okay. The July report has been 56 1 OLD BUSINESS 2 up for a bit, so I'm going to touch the highlights. 3 Agency coordination, what you just saw and a good 4 deal more was covered in wetlands coordination 5 effort the first of July. 6 The various agency representatives got copies 7 of that data report, and we talked through a lot of 8 what you saw plus more for them. The district now 9 is querying those agencies to start to get feedback 10 on this information, and what they're thinking we 11 don't have. I haven't seen anything really of note 12 back yet. 13 Water quality, there's a question there that's 14 open about the application of the DO model and the 15 K rates that is still working between states, EPA, 16 city, or manufacturer's council. 17 Economic analysis, we really think we'll be 18 able to work through the details of the economic 19 analysis in the next two days. We've got some 20 working sessions to do that. 21 In the model business, H and S, we're looking 22 at answering a question raised about how the 23 vertical diffusivity is calculated in the H and S 24 model. 25 The DO model, the draft of the calibration 57 1 OLD BUSINESS 2 report was distributed the beginning of this month, 3 and we're looking at sitting down and working with 4 the federal agencies starting on the 20th of this 5 month to go over that calibration. 6 There's some note there about the ecosystem 7 restoration study is funding an associated piece, 8 an advanced neural network for DO boundary 9 conditions. That work has started, as it says 10 completing in early 2004. 11 Chloride model, we've had to push back on our 12 priorities just to keep the people working on 13 resolving the H and S question and the water 14 quality on the DO model. That will come a little 15 later. We thought it would be -- a calibration 16 report would be ready for review this month. It's 17 going to be a month or so before we get to that. 18 Marsh secession model, you've heard most of 19 what's in the report already. There's some 20 discussion about refinements that have to take 21 place between what John called the prototype of the 22 model, includes the model to marsh module being 23 completed and reviewed, plus some refinement of the 24 -- what John had on his slide as the decision tree 25 gets built in that Dr. Kitchens did. 58 1 OLD BUSINESS 2 We've got to expand the boundary a bit, which 3 shouldn't be a problem, as we talked about a bit, 4 the validation method for all those pieces when we 5 plug them together, how we need to do that. 6 Engineering and analysis, real not a lot of 7 great note. Progress consistent. Progress getting 8 to the point where we'll be able to start to use 9 some of the information out of it to get the plan 10 formation process. 11 Probably the biggest thing of most interest 12 recently is the CSS Georgia. I'm sure you saw in 13 the media recently the announcement of the 14 investigations that are going on. 15 That's very interesting and very exciting 16 possibilities there. It turns out, from what I'm 17 told, conditions at the site where the divers are 18 working are difficult but not unmanageable, in 19 some cases, a little better visibility than they 20 thought. And by, I guess, mid September or so we 21 might start to have some preliminary feel for what 22 they have located at the site. 23 Doug and I have worked through the schedule, 24 based on all of this update information. The one 25 that's in there you see is a revision. There are 59 1 OLD BUSINESS 2 some things that are controlling that. 3 Some of our time estimates for impact 4 evaluation, mitigation discussions, we have to 5 validate those with the agencies and the people 6 involved there. They are our estimates. They may 7 be short. They may be long. We don't really know 8 yet. 9 We're looking to make that process go with as 10 little wasted motion as we can, not to cut it short 11 but just streamline it. 12 We're also looking at the times to produce the 13 physical documents, how can we take some time out 14 of that production effort and make that shorter 15 than what we think it will be now. 16 As we do that, this will reflect the changes. 17 We're pretty hopeful that we can try to get the 18 draft review of the combined reevaluation study 19 report and the environmental impact statement in 20 mid 2005. That's a goal that we'll try and reach. 21 May be able to do that. That's it unless there are 22 any questions. 23 MR. REES: Just a couple of things that 24 occurred just last week at the Washington level 25 that may be of interest -- I'm sure of will be of 60 1 OLD BUSINESS 2 interest to this group. 3 The House Transportation and Infrastructure 4 Committee passed a water resources development act 5 of 2003. The full House will act on it probably in 6 September. 7 It's available on the Internet. It includes a 8 provision for what is called independent peer 9 review, and anybody interested in that subject, I 10 recommend you have a look at it. 11 The principle provisions are that any project 12 over $50,000,000 would be required to have a 13 mandatory, independent peer review, and then there 14 are some discretionary authority to require that 15 kind of review on other types of projects and under 16 certain conditions; for example, by request of the 17 governor or another federal or state agency that 18 has a particular concern, or if the project is 19 controversial. 20 There's also a provision to excluded projects 21 from the mandatory peer review, but the exclusion 22 conditions are very, very limited. 23 It has to be non-controversial, have 24 negligible impacts prior to application of any 25 mitigation, and then there's an opportunity to 61 1 OLD BUSINESS 2 exempt what the Corps calls their continuing 3 authority program. 4 They're very small projects that have a 5 maximum federal investment, typically less than 6 $5,000,000 anyway. And then if the chief of 7 engineers decides not to do a peer review, for any 8 reason, that decision is appealable to the 9 Secretary of the Army. 10 Then it gives a lot of details about the 11 timing of the review, how the review would be 12 handled, and basically it would be by either the 13 National Academy of Sciences, or an equivalent 14 independent group that has the proper 15 qualifications. 16 Those are pretty much the highlights. It 17 applies to projects that were started -- studies 18 that were started two years before enactment of the 19 law. Now, as I said, this was passed by the 20 Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. it 21 will go to the full House in September, but the 22 Senate has not even started preparing a water 23 resources development act. 24 So it's not likely they will do anything this 25 year. So whenever the law gets implemented, if 62 1 OLD BUSINESS 2 this provision remains the way it is, it would 3 apply to studies started two years before the date 4 of enactment, and four years after the date of 5 enactment, at which time there will a reassessment 6 of how the program is working. 7 Anyway, that's available on the Internet, if 8 anybody has an interest in looking at it. The 9 other action was the Coast Guard published a 10 proposed rule making on ballast water treatment 11 making it -- if the rule is adopted -- making it 12 ballast water management practices mandatory, and 13 there are four specific options that people have. 14 Number one, they would have to have a complete 15 ballast water exchange no less than 200 nautical 16 miles from any shore, or if don't do the exchange 17 they would have to retain the ballast water onboard 18 while they're within that 200 miles, or there is 19 an environmentally sound method of ballast water 20 management that's approved by the Coast Guard. 21 I don't know if anybody has followed this 22 issue, but there's a lot of technical study going 23 on on how to treat ballast water, either onboard or 24 the fourth alternative is to discharge the ballast 25 water to an approved reception facility, which 63 1 OLD BUSINESS 2 there really aren't any yet. 3 That's also on the Internet at 4 http://dms.dot.gov. DMS stands for Dock Management 5 System, I think. 6 MS. JENNINGS: This wasn't my original reason 7 for putting my card up. Morgan, I appreciate you 8 mentioning those things. It's my read that the 9 bill that came out of the House Transportation and 10 Infrastructure had relatively good marks from the 11 Washington environmental community, with some 12 caveats that possibly the provisions on peer review 13 be strengthened, as in eliminating some of the 14 voluntary nature of some of the reviews in the 15 House or Senate Bill. 16 MR. REES: Uh-huh. We'll see what happens. 17 MS. JENNINGS: Generally, it had really good 18 positive feedback. The reason I brought my little 19 tent up was about the blurb on the Economic 20 Analysis meeting on August 6th and 7th in Savannah. 21 Can I have a little more information on that and 22 could I sit in, and in the future could I be copied 23 on plans for the meeting? 24 MR. PLACHY: Basically, I had asked to meet 25 with the technical staff with the district NIWR to 64 1 OLD BUSINESS 2 go through and go over the scope of work, which is 3 part of the project management plan, and to ensure 4 the work gets scheduled to be done, and meets all 5 the needs of what's in the project management plan. 6 And I have to get budget information from 7 them for our budget will process, and I'm trying to 8 get some updated schedule and network information. 9 It's basically my working level meeting to meet 10 with them. 11 We don't normally, of course, never say normal 12 in this project. I really don't see a definite 13 issue of not including you. Like I said, it's 14 basically my internal meeting with the project 15 team, and is essentially what it is, which I meet 16 with them every Wednesday morning. 17 Anyway, in this specifically I want to get 18 into more details with them. I set up Wednesday 19 afternoon and Thursday to do that, but it's not a 20 public meeting. It's not a meeting where some 21 information will come out that would be of interest 22 for the group. 23 It's mainly a meeting for me, so I can get my 24 job done as project manager. I guess the second 25 part of your question, I would say no. It wouldn't 65 1 OLD BUSINESS 2 be possible to put out notices on those kind of 3 meetings, because that's just our way we do 4 business as an agency. 5 I meet with folks all the time. I don't put 6 out notices to the public unless it's intended to 7 be a public meeting. 8 MR. DYSART: Closure on that? 9 MS. JENNINGS: For here. 10 MR. DYSART: For here, okay. Will. 11 MR. BERSON: Two very basic questions 12 regarding ballast water, can ballast water be 13 exchanged while the ship is underway? 14 MR. KEEGAN: Yes. 15 MR. BERSON: It's an effort question not a 16 time delay question? 17 MR. KEEGAN: Shouldn't be. 18 MR. BERSON: Is the future of the CSS Georgia 19 dependent upon what the analysis now says, in terms 20 of suitability to be raised or retrieved? 21 MR. KEEGAN: I'm sorry. I didn't hear what 22 you said. 23 MR. BERSON: The future of the CSS Georgia is 24 dependent on what's found, in terms of raising it 25 or salvaging it -- 66 1 OLD BUSINESS 2 MR. KEEGAN: In part. 3 MR. PLACHY: When they looked at it 20 years 4 ago, they did some mapping. What they discovered 5 already is there has been some serious 6 deterioration since 20 years ago. That's just due 7 to maintenance dredging and the tide gate being 8 shut down. 9 With the tide gate shut down, the water comes 10 flying out of that back river and basically scours 11 the site. 12 There's two parts to the study report that we 13 will receive. One is how to stabilize it with the 14 existing channel and the existing project 15 scenarios, and that piece has been funded by the 16 district. 17 Then the other part is well, if there was an 18 expansion, what would need to be done coming 19 through that site with expansion, and that part of 20 the report is what you base on. And this field 21 work is just to gather up that kind of information 22 to make decisions on regards to what's currently 23 down there, the best way to bring it up, if it was 24 brought up. 25 I don't understand all the archeological 67 1 OLD BUSINESS 2 terms. There's cases where they actually just map 3 what's there, obtain the information and then just 4 leave it because it's not worth bringing up. 5 There's some really good information that we 6 have pulled together so far. That was given out at 7 the press conference last week. If any of you want 8 to see some of that stuff, send me an e-mail or let 9 me know. 10 We'll be glad to get it. It's interesting 11 stuff. It's not bugs or bunnies, but it's very 12 interesting. 13 MR. KEEGAN: Doug hasn't mentioned it, but the 14 Corps has a website up specific to the CSS Georgia 15 investigations. 16 MR. PLACHY: You can get to it off the home 17 page or the Savannah Harbor Expansion page, either 18 way. 19 MR. BERSON: Thank you. 20 MR. SCANLON: Most of it is still under 21 development. I found it yesterday and started 22 looking at it. I think it's only one page that's 23 active. 24 MR. PLACHY: Yeah, they're cranking away on 25 it. It's probably going to stay under development 68 1 OLD BUSINESS 2 until the process is done. As they learn stuff 3 from the investigation, they will be uploading 4 things. What they have the most of is some of the 5 historical stuff. 6 That's mainly because that's one of the first 7 draft reports we got in was the archival research, 8 but we were pleased that a lot of the news media 9 picked up the story. It's already helped us. 10 We've already received a letter that somebody 11 stored away from 1865. That gave us some very 12 vital information about the CSS Georgia, and that's 13 mainly the reason why we have the conference, the 14 press conference last week, to try to get the word 15 out to get more of this kind of information. 16 MR. BERSON: One more question. Did -- has 17 the public ports taken any position on the ballast 18 water rule yet? Is it problem for y'all, I mean? 19 MR. SCHALLER: No -- yeah. The AAPA is 20 monitoring that whole subject matter. They may 21 have a white paper on their web page. 22 MR. REES: There is. There is a stated 23 position on their website. There's also testimony 24 that they gave at the hearing. 25 MR. BERSON: Supportive? 69 1 OLD BUSINESS 2 MR. REES: Very much supportive. 3 MR. DYSART: Bob. 4 MR. SCANLON: Maybe just a comment off the 5 subject but on the subject of the CSS Georgia, if 6 it is raised and if there are archeological things, 7 the city is very interested. It is being 8 incorporated into the battlefield site, and the 9 museum which will be created as part of the 10 battlefield restoration. There's hope of having a 11 whole room dedicated to the CSS Georgia -- just a 12 related. 13 MR. DYSART: Next item on the agenda is the 14 Aquifer Committee recommendation status. Doug, do 15 you have anything on that? 16 MR. PLACHY: Yes, I do. Sorry. Essentially, 17 what's been transpiring the last couple of months 18 is putting together the specific task details on 19 the different -- of the six different activities 20 that are recommended to be done by the district. 21 What the chart up there shows, just for 22 information, is the locations of the land borings, 23 the additional land borings that we propose to do, 24 the additional marine borings that we're proposing 25 to do, and also the location of test wells that we 70 1 OLD BUSINESS 2 anticipate to either put in place or utilize as 3 part of the study. 4 And then the yellow band, kind of like the 5 highlight marker yellow is the area where the 6 seismic the additional seismic surveys would be 7 done. 8 One of the first tasks will be the 3D 9 numerical model, and just to give you an idea, 10 there are various regional scale models that depict 11 the effects of heavy pumping in Savannah on the 12 groundwater flow of the Floridan Aquifer; however, 13 none of those are solute transport-type needed to 14 depict saltwater intrusion. 15 In progress, the USGS Savannah model will have 16 the solute transport capability; however, it's 17 scale is not suited to model harbor specific 18 simulations. 19 In other words, it's too huge of a scale. It 20 will not give us specific impact information in the 21 area, specifically, that we're looking for to get 22 impact information on. 23 And therefore, we will be developing one 24 specifically for expansion impacts. It's going to 25 be done in coordination with the USGS existing data 71 1 OLD BUSINESS 2 sets. There's going to be particular attention 3 paid to the paleochannel areas. 4 There will be model sensitivity, in regards to 5 the confining unit, and determining the necessity 6 to perform the full aquitard testing. 7 Those are some of the things that will come 8 out of model effort per se. The second item is 9 what I mentioned is that highlighter yellow is the 10 additional subbottom seismic surveying. 11 And basically the problem that we've run into 12 in the past is we can get very good seismic in the 13 center of the channel, but when we get to the sides 14 of the channel, the fluff of the sediments are such 15 that we don't get a really good signal. 16 So again another attempt is going to be made 17 to look for additional paleochannels, and try to 18 determine some depths of paleochannels, because 19 they curve in and out of the site. 20 Even though there's not one seen in the 21 seismic center of the channel, there very well may 22 be one to the side of the channel that's still 23 within the project area per se. That's what we're 24 trying to identify and see, if there's any more out 25 there, and map them adequately. 72 1 OLD BUSINESS 2 Of course, if we see any that we've determined 3 are critical areas, then we would do some 4 additional borings on those sites also. 5 We talked about data gathering of some 6 additional marine borings. Like I said, those are 7 showing up there on the chart. There's also some 8 land borings identified up there on the chart. I 9 can go through a lot of detail about what all those 10 are for, but I'll save the you expense at this 11 point. 12 We'll have this available, once we finish up 13 getting the scope finalized. All the scopes for 14 all the studies are posted. This will one will be 15 too, when it is finished. 16 Of course, the last task of the project is to 17 do the aquitard testing. Basically, what's planned 18 there is to determine that that data of the 19 confining unit and aquifer are affected by tides 20 and ship traffic. 21 Continuous, direct tide data will be collected 22 from the river, and levels and wells and 23 transducers will be taken for a three to five days 24 prior to each test. Then there will be pumping in 25 flows of excess 300 gallons per minute. 73 1 OLD BUSINESS 2 Then there's going to be some consultation and 3 some tests done with USGS, Georgia EPD, and South 4 Carolina DHEC. And then based upon this initial 5 test, decisions would be made whether or not to do 6 some additional aquitard testing on the project. 7 And of course the very last task, of course, 8 is to take all this new data, analyze it, and write 9 up the new report. 10 So a lot of work has been done in the last two 11 months since the decision was made. We have 12 subsequently brought onboard a saltwater intrusion 13 expert, I guess is the term I would use, who is 14 very, very familiar with what specifically we're 15 looking for. 16 So under contract we brought somebody in to 17 work with us on that to get the expertise we wanted 18 in that area. 19 We're well on our way to getting this thing 20 mapped out. Our prediction's based upon the budget 21 process, and funds and all that is. Probably we 22 won't see any field work start, probably till the 23 October time frame. Anybody have any questions? 24 You know, feel free when we break, to look at 25 the map and ask me any questions you wish. You'll 74 1 MITIGATION DISCUSSION 2 see that basically the area that we're looking at 3 is the part mainly over the Tybee high. 4 MR. DYSART: Thank you. Next item is 5 mitigation discussion. Teri. 6 MS. LEFFEK: We did talk about mitigation 7 briefly at our committee meeting, the Operating 8 Guidelines, in May. And I don't recall that we 9 reached a specific recommendation, and committee 10 members can correct me if my recollection is not 11 correct. 12 We talked about nixing the brainstorming for 13 now, because we felt as though that activity had 14 reached its end at this point. 15 We generated mostly ideas people had right 16 now, and instead to continue the discussion because 17 committee members -- there were some that felt 18 strongly about continuing to talk about mitigation. 19 We threw out the idea of talking about mitigation 20 at the end of the SEG meeting, after the committee 21 reports, or possibly scheduling a separate meeting 22 after the SEG in the afternoon for those who are 23 interested in continuing to talk about mitigation, 24 and maybe start looking at some of the specific 25 items that have been suggested. 75 1 MITIGATION DISCUSSION 2 I can't remember the name of the mitigation 3 option -- one of the things we threw out was adding 4 to oxygen to the river -- oxygenation system that 5 was an item people thought they would like to know 6 more information about this. 7 We didn't reach closure on the issue. Those 8 are the things we talked about. I don't know if 9 the committee feels comfortable maybe letting the 10 SEG talk about that and decide on that, or do we 11 want as a committee to talk about that further? 12 MR. DYSART: What about the members of 13 committee? 14 MS. LEFFEK: That's what I was asking. 15 Operating Guidelines we talked about it. We didn't 16 reach a specific recommendation, other than to pull 17 brainstorming off the table at this point. 18 MR. BAILEY: It is kind of whatever the group 19 wants. 20 MS. LEFFEK: I'll throw out to the SEG, do you 21 want to continue a mitigation discussion. And if 22 so, should we schedule a separate meeting, or add 23 that as an agenda item at the end of the meeting, 24 set aside a half hour or an hour to talk about 25 those things? 76 1 MITIGATION DISCUSSION 2 MR. DYSART: Opinions? Judy. 3 MS. JENNINGS: I think there's a lot of 4 interest in the topic. I think what happened in 5 Operating Guidelines is we're just having a hard 6 time determining the structure or mechanism for 7 dealing with it in this group. I encourage some 8 form of ongoing and additional discussion, when it 9 is timely. 10 MR. DYSART: How about the recommendation of 11 including that at the end of the agenda? That way 12 if there's something that someone wants to talk 13 about, they can. David. 14 MR. SCHALLER: Said another way, I think maybe 15 we ought to not try to formalize and put pressure 16 on ourselves to talk about that issue. This is a 17 pretty free-flowing, you know, idea-generating 18 activity that we have going here. 19 Anytime somebody wants to make a mention of a 20 mitigation option, they're free to do, so put it on 21 the table at that point in time and then we'll talk 22 about it, as opposed to forcing ourselves to sit 23 and talk about mitigation, particularly in light of 24 the already communicated fact that we don't know 25 the impacts yet. How can we deliberately debate 77 1 MITIGATION DISCUSSION 2 the efficacy of a particular mitigation strategy? 3 MS. LEFFEK: If you don't mind, my intention 4 and I think the intention of the Operating 5 Guidelines Committee has always been that the 6 mitigation discussions are open-ended and it's 7 never forced. 8 If somebody wants to put something on the 9 table, then we're here to talk about it. If I'm 10 correct, the intent isn't to schedule a time period 11 until somebody has something to bring up and bring 12 to the table, guys. Let's talk about it. 13 If somebody doesn't have anything, move on to 14 something else. I think the intention is it is not 15 forced, leave it as an open-ended discussion 16 process. 17 MR. SCHALLER: That's fine with me. I wasn't 18 arguing it. 19 MR. DYSART: If somebody has something to talk 20 about, send me an e-mail, stick it on the agenda. 21 It gets on there. Why don't we let's just do that? 22 Okay. Thank you. 23 Peer review, anything that needs to be said 24 about peer review today? Seeing no tent cards up, 25 move on. Aquifer Committee, is there anything else 78 1 BEACH EROSION - COMMUNICATIONS COMMITTEE 2 on the Aquifer Committee? How about Beach Erosion 3 Lou. 4 MR. OFF: The only thing that I can say is 5 we're waiting for the recompletion of the ATM 6 report. I think that that information has been 7 given to the Corps, and they're working that 8 through with ATM. And then we, at Tybee Island, 9 are going to get a consultant to give an analysis 10 of the report and report that back to the Beach 11 Erosion Committee. 12 MR. DYSART: Okay. Teri, could you share with 13 the group the communications involving the 14 Communications Committee? 15 MS. LEFFEK: As directed by the SEG, I sent an 16 e-mail to Ben Brewton, the only way I'm aware of to 17 get a hold of him. I copied the members of the 18 Operating Guidelines Committee on that inviting any 19 of them, the Communication Committee members to 20 join the Operating Guidelines Committee. 21 Will took me up on that offer, and I added him 22 to the Operating Guidelines as an official member. 23 I have not heard anything further from Ben Brewton. 24 I didn't have a response to it. So I am 25 assuming that the Communications Committee is now 79 1 ECONOMICS WORKING GROUP 2 disbanded, and those function have been included 3 under the auspices of the Operating Guidelines 4 Committee. 5 MR. DYSART: That seems to be consistent with 6 the discussion that took place here at the last 7 meeting, and it appears that the directives and 8 suggestions of this body have been carried out, so 9 we will assume that seems to be acceptable. 10 Thank you. Dredging and Disposal, anything to 11 report there? Economics Working Group. Judy. 12 MS. JENNINGS: Thanks Ben. We did meet after 13 the last SEG meeting on June 3rd. Great crowd, 14 probably about as many as are here today. Georgia 15 Ports was kind enough to host us. 16 Bill Bailey made a presentation about how the 17 Corps intends to quantify the environmental impacts 18 of harbor deepening. The minutes I'm mentioning 19 now are on the website. Bill's hand-out is also on 20 the website. 21 We had present Laura Knight, a Phd student at 22 the University of Georgia, doing her dissertation 23 work on developing a decision-making model -- 24 decision-making tool for large infrastructure 25 projects such as harbor deepening. 80 1 ECONOMICS WORKING GROUP 2 I was a little unclear whether she's -- how 3 focused she was on this project or not. Dave 4 brought up a very good discussion about potential 5 ways to assess environmental impacts associated 6 with plant site development and economic activity 7 with ongoing and future harbor activities. That 8 conversation is ongoing, and no meetings are 9 scheduled at this time. 10 MR. DYSART: Comments, questions? Fisheries 11 and Aquatic Resources. Will. 12 MR. BERSON: No meeting. No report. No joke. 13 MR. DYSART: Okay. MTRG, anything from MTRG? 14 Anything else from Operating Guidelines, Teri? 15 MS. LEFFEK: No. The summary is posted as 16 noticed -- mentioned on the agenda. I'm still 17 waiting for further suggestions on the peer review 18 process. 19 So until that happens, I'm not scheduling 20 another meeting, unless something else comes up we 21 need to discuss. 22 MR. DYSART: Striped Bass. 23 MR. BURNETT: No report. 24 MR. DYSART: New business, anything about 25 marsh die-offs, anything to be reported on that? 81 1 NEW BUSINESS 2 Seeing none, Doug. 3 MS. JENNINGS: Yeah, I'll go back to that just 4 a minute, if you guys will indulge me just a minute 5 or two on a personal experience. I had joined 6 Nat Ogden, and Meredith and Laura Deffendor one day 7 last week at some sites on Mellon Bluff Plantation. 8 Nat is doing some work on marsh die-off. For 9 the record, I don't think it has anything to do 10 with harbor deepening. These were all issues we 11 were very interested in. 12 Really, I swear I could have kept Nat all day. 13 It was fascinating going out to some of the sites 14 and actually walking around on them, it blew me 15 away. You know what you can see on I-95. 16 It's not just crummy looking marsh. This is 17 dead stuff. I mean it is dead. I actually didn't 18 have time to go to the meeting that day, but we 19 live on Isle of Hope on the marsh. 20 My husband teased me saying no, you spend all 21 day minding other peoples' business. You really 22 are going to this meeting. I'm glad I did. It 23 freaks me out what Nat is able to say. All of 24 these theories that we talked about early on are 25 falling, as a pure piece of science. 82 1 NEW BUSINESS 2 I think it's one of the most interesting 3 things I've seen in a long time. A lot of the 4 early-on studies, the blue crab, the periwinkle 5 snail, it just doesn't appear to be the case. 6 Just as pure science, I think it's one of the 7 most fascinating things I've seen lately. It won't 8 be very fascinating if my backyard turns into a 9 moonscape, which some of this stuff is. 10 It freaked me out at the spots on his map 11 where these die-off spots are showing up. I don't 12 think it has anything to do with harbor deepening, 13 but I think a lot of us are interested in similar 14 issues. I was sadly fascinated. 15 MR. DYSART: Bo, do you have anything from 16 MTRG? 17 MR. ELLIS: No, no committee activity to 18 report. 19 MR. DYSART: Okay. Doug, how about the 20 Savannah Estuary and Freshwater Wetlands 21 Reconnaissance Study? 22 MR. PLACHY: Thanks, Ben. I wanted to make a 23 brief mention this morning of a new study that we 24 will be startING the reconnaissance phase on this 25 month. 83 1 NEW BUSINESS 2 It was inserted by Congress in the 2003 3 budget, and as its name implies, what this study is 4 is -- I'm kind of excited about it in the sense 5 when I have been working the expansion project, 6 sometimes we get into these discussions of impacts 7 that are already there versus impacts of a future 8 project. 9 Every once in a while somebody says, when are 10 we ever going to do something about impacts that 11 have already happened, and that's exactly what this 12 study is about. 13 It's basically to look at the estuary and try 14 to restore -- basically, determine feasibility of 15 restoring tidal wetlands. We're going to be 16 reviewing the current environmental conditions in 17 the estuary, as related to the degradation of the 18 freshwater and saltwater marshes, trying to 19 identify sources of degradation, and specific 20 solutions proposed to restore freshwater functions. 21 It's an ambitious effort. It's going to take 22 probably a while before anything is specifically 23 produced from this study. But the first thing that 24 has to happen is that we have to do a 25 reconnaissance report, and so some of you may hear 84 1 NEW BUSINESS 2 about this in the future, and I just wanted you to 3 be aware of it, in case you hear the term come up 4 in some news conference or something. It's the 5 Savannah Estuary Freshwater Wetlands. 6 Like I said, the whole goal is to look at the 7 past sins of the harbor, and to try to work out 8 some type of environmental restoration project. 9 MR. DYSART: Will. 10 MR. BERSON: Was this a line item in your 11 budget specifically for the Savannah or are these 12 sort of being tracked in other districts? 13 MR. PLACHY: No. This is specific language by 14 Congress to do this, and it did get fairly good 15 support from some of the environmental 16 organizations, as well as some of the other 17 agencies have supported doing something like this 18 for a while. 19 MS. JENNINGS: In fact, Bob and Will, the 20 Chatham Environmental Forum wrote a letter to 21 Congress which Jack Kingston supported this. 22 MR. SCANLON: A year ago. 23 MS. JENNINGS: We wrote the letter about two 24 years ago. It don't happen overnight. Doug is 25 right. It was strongly supported by the Sierra 85 1 MEETING SCHEDULE 2 Club and others. 3 MR. DYSART: Other comments, questions? 4 MR. PLACHY: One thing I wanted to point out 5 too, should we ever get to the point of actually 6 studying specific projects, we would need sponsors, 7 so we'll be scratching the fields looking for a 8 sponsor for an environmental restoration project. 9 MR. DYSART: Looks like we've worked our way 10 through the agenda. What about the next meeting 11 date. Recommendations? 12 MS. JENNINGS: Two months. 13 MR. DYSART: Two months recommended. Any 14 reason to go sooner or later? Two months -- 15 October 7th. 16 MR. BERSON: Here here. 17 MR. DYSART: Anything else for the good of the 18 cause, for the expansion project or the environment 19 or the welfare of humanity? Seeing nothing, I 20 thank you all for being here, particularly 21 appreciate all the good discussion, and especially 22 the wonderful scientific presentation that started 23 this off today. I think everybody is always happy 24 when they can see results coming in from studies 25 and appreciate it very much. John, thank you. 86 1 2 3 4 C E R T I F I C A T E 5 G E O R G I A : 6 CHATHAM COUNTY: 7 I hereby certify that the foregoing 8 transcript was taken down, as stated in the 9 caption, and the questions and answers thereto 10 were reduced to typewriting under my direction; 11 that the foregoing Pages 1 through 85 represent 12 a true and correct transcript of the evidence 13 given upon said hearing, and I further certify 14 that I am not of kin or counsel to the parties 15 in the case; am not in the regular employ of 16 counsel for any of said parties; nor am I in 17 anywise interested in the result of said case. 18 This, the 25th day of August, 2003. 19 20 21 ________________________ 22 Kathleen Dore, Certified Court Reporter, B-2041 23 24 25 87 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25