MEETING MINUTES 2007         June 18

Lake of the Ozarks Watershed Alliance (LOWA)

June 18, 2007  General Meeting Minutes

(LOWA)

Public Meeting Minutes

6/18/07 Tan-Tar-A Crystal Ballroom

 

Donna Swall, Executive President of LOWA, opened the meeting at 6:30 with a welcome to all and introductions all around.

 

Next: committee chair reports:

 

Education/Outreach – Christy Fera – this committee is gearing up for some water events coming up later this summer and this fall.  LOWA is seeking volunteers to help with designs for t-shirts, programs, tri-folds, as well as working the LOWA table at various events, even if just for an hour or two.

 

Waste Water – David Morgan – the DNR minigrant has been approved and the Pump Out Program is primed to begin as soon as the monies come in, July 1st, we hope.  Then, beginning in Camden County, 125 tanks will be chosen from applications for a discounted pumping from a company that disposes of the waste in an environmentally responsible manner.  Be looking for applications online at the LOWA website (www.soslowa.org) and in local newspapers.  Making sure human waste is disposed of properly is probably the quickest difference we can make right now for the Lake of the Ozarks water quality.  Boaters need to be sure to dispose of their onboard waste at designated pump-out stations and home and property owners need to be sure their waste water treatment system, no matter what type, is functioning effectively.  A listing and map of the Lake’s pump-out stations can be found on LOWA’s pump-out brochure, available at many marinas, restaurants, and other locations around the Lake.

 

Water Quality – Greg Stoner – the 5-year study looking at E. coli levels at the Lake of the Ozarks has begun.  Scott Robinett, of MO DNR, will be presenting some preliminary results later in the meeting.  LOWA is coordinating volunteer efforts with MO DNR on this study.

 

Membership – Carol Lee Prosser is the new membership chair and encourages all to join LOWA by making a donation.  Some benefits of membership include a window decal, membership card, discounts at local merchants, and a warm, fuzzy feeling knowing you’ve done a good thing.

Lake Safety Council – Seary Niccoli – the billboards are going up around the Lake and now this committee needs a few more volunteers to help contact restaurants and other businesses and establish the Designated Captain program around the entire Lake of the Ozarks, but especially around the Osage Beach and Lake Ozark highly commercialized area.  This committee meets every 3rd Tuesday at 10 am at the Quail’s Nest.   LOWA will chair the “ Designated Captain on Board” project to get bars and restaurants to give free soft drinks to boat pilots.  At this LOWA meeting, signs and banners were handed out for people to put up at home and work to keep the boating safety message out there and active and to help put out the word about the Designated Captain program.

 

Lake District 4 County Alliance – Marv Mondy – The map establishing the boundaries for the Lake District Plan has been decided upon and is the HUC-14 sections that surround the Lake of the Ozarks and expanded slightly to include Versailles.  Now that the boundaries of the watershed have been agreed upon, this committee can now begin collecting information on the many natural resources of the watershed like, flora, fauna, demographics, and other statistical data.  This group is writing the Watershed Management Plan that will be used by LOWA to establish the priorities for the Lake of the Ozarks and its surrounding watershed.  This map of boundaries will also be the map that LOWA will use to establish its area of focus.  In the future, LOWA will be partnering with neighboring or satellite watershed groups to help work on important issues that still impact the watershed of the Lake of the Ozarks but that are beyond the scope of LOWA’s focus.

 

Guest Speaker

 

Barbara Fairchild:

The first guest speaker of the evening was Barbara Fairchild with the Grow Native program presenting “Native Plants Provide More than Beauty”.  Grow Native is sponsored jointly by the Missouri Departments of Agriculture and Conservation.  Originally, north of the Missouri River was prairie and south was the oak/hickory forest of the Ozarks.  Rivers had lots of open slow moving areas and native flora and fauna was diverse and abundant with many different plant systems.  Prairies were the original water quality systems with the deep roots of the native grasses, unlike the shallower root systems of the grasses abundant today.  Rain gardens are depressions around buildings, parking lots, and other impervious structures that help absorb runoff and keep that rain water in your area instead of allowing that water to flow away and absorb into the ground farther away, often after picking up debris and pollutants on the way.  Parking lots can utilize rain gardens situated in several spots around their perimeters.  Golf courses are being encouraged to use prairie grasses around the edges where water runs into ditches and storm water systems, carrying fertilizer and pesticides with it.  Around our Lake area, water parks, miniature golf, go kart tracks, and other large expanses of impermeable surfaces could also make excellent use of rain gardens planted with native wildflowers that can look attractive all year long.  And, when any of us are landscaping and planting in our yards and on our properties, we should all Think Native and Grow Native.  Native plants are more adapted to our climate and more likely to survive and thrive.  Native plants do not need fertilizer or irrigation. 

 

Please see www.grownative.org for more information on plants and on where to find suppliers of native seeds and plants.  The Missouri Dept of Conservation also has several publications that may be of great help.  Please see www.natureshop.com to browse their selection.  A couple of publications about native plants are Tried and True MO Native Plants for Your Yard and Central Region Seedling ID Guide for Native Prairie Plants. 

 

Some bookmarks with tips on being successful with native plants were passed out.  One of the tips was to be sure to put the plant where it belongs.  Like other plants, some native plants need full sun, others are water-loving plants, others need partial shade, etc.  Also, don’t add fertilizer to native plants because they don’t need it, sometimes it actually harms the plant, and fertilizer encourages weeds.

 

 One piece of information is that the native plant, the New England Aster, attracts Monarch butterflies.  The Monarch also needs another native plant, the milkweed, to lay its eggs.  Native plants encourage biodiversity (having many different species of life in one area), which is a sign of a healthy ecosystem.  At State Fair will be a large native plant garden featuring 5 different native plant gardens.  This is the garden’s second year and so will be more developed than last year, but not quite as developed as next year.  As a rule of thumb, native plant gardens need about 3 years to fully mature and have all species in their full glory. 

 

Around residences, depressions in the yard where it’s hard to mow are perfect places for rain gardens, but rain gardens are not the only places for native plantings.  With any kind of landscaping project, we can all remember to Grow Native.  Several publications are available for free.

 

Other Topics

 

Pump Out Brochure:  Next on the agenda was a piece of information about LOWA’s Pump Out Brochure.  AmerenUE is printing 10,000 copies of it and the Coast Guard Auxiliary is helping to distribute the brochure throughout the Lake area.  LOWA says a great big Thank You to both of these groups!

 

DNR Water Testing Results:

Next on the agenda was Scott Robinett with the MO Dept of Natural Resources and project director for the 5-year study of the Lake of the Ozarks for E. coli bacteria, an organism associated with all warm blooded animals, and an indicator of the possible presence of human waste in the water.  Two samplings have been run and the results from the first set collected in May are in.  Some initial results showed that out of 62 samples and 5 duplicates for quality control, 3 showed E. coli levels greater than the 126 mpn standard set for Missouri lakes.  This is the maximum number of bacteria colonies from a sample that can be found and still have the lake water considered safe for whole body immersion.   People should remember that this is a number that can fluctuate quickly depending on factors such as weather, precipitation and temperature.  One reading does not a crisis make, but these readings do send up a red flag that the departments of health and natural resources respond to and investigate.  LOWA has no authority in these matters but sees its function, in part, to disseminate the information found.  Of all the samples tested in May, 3 were greater than 126 mpn, 5 were between 40.1 and 126, 23 were between 10 mpn and 40 mpn, and 31 samples were less than 10 mpn.  Overall, 54 samples out of 62 were less than 40 mpn and the coves sampled were pretty clean.  Jennings Branch Cove showed some of the largest numbers, as well as an unnamed cove west of Cherokee Road.  This data will be on the LMVP website, which can be linked from the LOWA website.  MO DNR’s SW office has the Lake of the Ozarks (LOZ) in its region and they’ll be looking into the coves with high numbers to try to find out why their numbers were so high.  All data gets passed on to the 3 counties’ health departments, as well.  Preliminary results from June show only 1 sample greater than 126.

As a side note, wells drilled before 1987 in areas of high bacterial counts could be looking at contamination issues.

 

Public Comments:  Last on the agenda was comments and concerns from the public. 

First mentioned was a program from Boat USA concerning monofilament line waste (fishing line) recyclers that can be placed at just about every boat take-out and put-in, as well as at canoe livery sites throughout the watershed surrounding LOZ.  Missouri’s own Laclede Industries makes the recycling containers that are easily mounted and perhaps LOWA can get the Scouts in on this program.  Carol Lee Prosser will look into this.  MO Stream Team is also involved in monofilament line recycling.

 

 

Another issue brought up by a LOWA member was the sinking of bottles and cans in the Lake by boaters.  People enjoying the Lake were observed depositing their empty beverage containers over the side of their boat and allowing the container to fill with water and sink and the LOWA member asked what could be done about this.  Captain Matt Walz of the Water Patrol, who was present at the meeting, said that he can cite them for littering and that he would need some kind of identifier in the citizen’s report.

 

 

In closing, the audience was encouraged to pick up a Designated Captain sign or banner.

 

 The next meeting will be July 16, 2007 at 6:30 at Lodge of 4 Seasons Escollo Room.

 

These minutes respectfully submitted by:

 C. King Toole.

 

 

 

 

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