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HomeMy WebLinkAbout10/21/98 MINUTES OF THE LAKE ADVISORY COMMITTEE October 21, 1998 I. CALL TO ORDER The Lake Advisory Committee (LAC) was called to order by Vice-Chairman Warner on Wednesday, October 21, 1998 at 6:34 p.m. Members present: Kate Haggerty, Doug Larson, Roger Soderstrom and Rick Warner. Others present: Water Resources Coordinator Lani Leichty, Dale Braddy of the Prior Lake Association, Pat Lynch of the DNR, City Planner Don Rye, Dave Moran of the Prior Lake - Spring Lake Watershed District, John Lamore, Harry Alcorn and other citizens. Members absent: Marianne Breitbach, Tom Kearney and Paul Trapp. II. CONSIDER APPROVAL OF SEPTEMBER 16,1998 MEETING MINUTES MOTION BY HAGGERTY, SECONDED BY LEICHTY TO APPROVE THE MEETING MINUTES OF SEPTEMBER 16, 1998. MOTION PASSED UNANIMOUSL Y. III. REVIEW MOTION ON LAKE ACCESS CLOSURE PROCESS There was discussion about amending the motion made on July 15, 1998 to add wording that would allow the City to close their accesses under certain circumstances. The committee was concerned that closing City accesses while the DNR access remained open would open up liability for the City. The DNR's position is that the lake is never safe when covered with ice. If the City chose to close its' accesses due to extreme conditions, then opened them again after harm apparently passed, implies that the entire lake would be safe under all conditions. Two other reasons mentioned for not closing the City accesses: 1) There is no way to inspect the entire lake to make sure that it is entirely safe in all locations during the winter season, and 2) The general public does usually not know the difference between City and DNR accesses. MOTION BY LARSON, SECONDED BY HAGGERTY: THE LAC ELECTS TO STA Y WITH THE ORIGINAL MOTION AND DISREGARD THE TWO CONDITIONS PROVIDING THE CITY MANAGER DISCRETION CLOSING CITY ACCESSES, BECAUSE IT PLACES THE CITY A T UNDUE LIABILITY RISK WHEN THE CITY CLOSES ITS' ACCESSES WHEN NO OTHERS ARE CLOSED. MOTION PASSED UNANIMOUSL Y. IV. NOMINATION OF CHAIR AND VICE-CHAIR POSITIONS 16200 Eagle Creek Ave. S.E., Prior Lake, Minnesota 55372-1714 / Ph. (612) 447-4230 / Fax (612) 447-4245 AN EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER Election of officers for the upcoming year. MOTION BY LARSON, SECONDED BY HAGGERTY: REAPPOINT TOM KEARNEY AS CHAIR AND RICK WARNER AS VICE-CHAIR OF THE LAKE ADVISORY COMMITTEE FOR THE YEAR OCTOBER, 1998 TO SEPTEMBER, 1999. MOTION PASSED UNANIMOUSL Y. V. COMPREHENSIVE LAKE MANAGEMENT PLAN (CLMP) Leichty briefly described the directive from City Council to the LAC regarding the preparation of a comprehensive lake management plan. He passed out a sheet with questions for Pat Lynch and Don Rye. The following question was asked to Pat Lynch: "Could the City enact an ordinance regulating activity below the OHWL?" Lynchs' response was, "No, the City cannot by ordinance regulate activity below the OHWL, but the DNR could delegate its' permit authority to the City". Larson: Asked Don Rye, "Are there any developers who haven't had a short course in where the 904 elevation is?" Rye: Contractors and developers that normally do work in the City know about the 904 elevation and where it is. Larson: Does the shoreland management ordinance still exist? Rye: Yes, it still exists. Larson: Did the DNR waive the requirements for this, for some metro lakes? Lynch: Most communities use some flexibility's from the DNR's shoreland management ordinance. Larson: Does either the City or the DNR have a rip-rap budget for placing boulders on residential land at low or no interest? Lynch: No, we are in the same boat as the land owners, we own a lot of lakeshore land that is experiencing erosion. We are begging for money also. Lamore: Nobody seems to have a handle on what already currently exists. It seems that everyone should review the shoreland management ordinance as they exist and start working from there in making decisions. Warner: That's why we invited the Planning Director and the DNR was to try to get an understanding of the existing ordinances. Larson: I think that this is a very reasonable statement. To pull a package together to respond to requests about shoreland regulations would be pretty easy. Soderstrom: One of the issues that we are really addressing here is that lakeshore do not know where to go to get the rules. Trying to get this information into the hands of new citizens and prospective lakeshore buyers. In any given year the water may be 100 feet from their doorstep and 10 years later the water is on their doorstep. Rye: A fair number of new residents call in about shoreland regulations. The City planning department handles the shoreland management rules, DNR manages work in the beds of public waters and the watershed works with different areas. Someone may have a question about placing rock below the OHWL, depending on who you talk to at City Hall they may not know that this is a DNR function. I can see how the issues can be confused. Lynch: Most people don't know what information the DNR has. Most rip-rap can be done without a permit. Moran: Does rip-rap create an impact on fish life? Lynch: A positive impact. The lower life on the food chain hang out there. Keystone walls, sheet pile wall and timber walls provide no habitat space. Leichty: Part of how we got to where we are today is when the lake was at 904.5 this summer and erosion that was occurring above that level. Council then mentioned that we need more erosion control on the lake. Lynch: When I hear erosion control includes letting the vegetation grow, it doesn't automatically mean putting in rock or steel, there are a lot of other things to try to promote the growth of emergent vegetation in the water. Soderstrom: Another issue is erosion at all levels of the lake, not just when the lake is high. You get erosion from wind and ice all year long. Ice does a huge amount of erosion especially on certain kinds of walls. People have put these types of walls in and ice action has pushed them out. Part of the issue we are addressing here is that maybe going back to the DNR and getting a sense of what type walls should be used. Lynch: You need a permit to install a timber, Keystone or sheet pile wall below the OHWL. Leichty: A question someone had from the last meeting was: "Are there rules about what type of walls can be built?" Rye: If they are over 4 feet high they will require a building permit. It seems to me that one productive course of action would be to take those six issues and compare them to the rules that are in place and see to what extent those rules either hinder or support your ability to address each one of those issues. Defining what it is that your goals are relevant to each one of those issues. Soderstrom: At the last meeting it was brought up that this is a very broad issue. We are addressing the same issues that were tackled in the late 1970's in the guide "Water Resource Management". Lamore: There is an issue of shoreline preservation that needs to be addressed. We should go back to what the existing DNR ordinances are and see if the City's' need to be amended or changed and maybe the issue of water level management will take care of itself. This is a regional lake, Dakota and Scott County residents don't really have a voice in what's going on here. Larson: Perhaps you could answer a question for me. When you came from Dakota County, did you think about what the impact of your wake was from boating on the shoreline? Lamore: I'm a hunter and am affected by erosion. Based on what we know the no- wake zone being 150 feet from shore, I've stopped people myself telling them that they are not to be boating closer than 150 feet from the shore and people just get mad and yell back. Piling on more ordinances and not dealing with the ones that exist will not change anything. Warner: We are trying to come up with a management plan that is typical to everybody. That's our charter and that's the path that we are going to go down. We want to hear from Mr. Moran on what the Watershed District is doing within the boundaries of the City's jurisdiction. Moran: Our engineer would like to be at your November meeting to give you an update on the outlet. When the lake is at a high level, around 904, we get about 25 calls a day from people saying the lake is too high and 25 calls from people saying that the lake is too low. Our plan at the Board of Soil and Water Resources is being approved. I've brought a study along addressing water quality and phosphorous loading. In the "Water Resource Management" plan there is an item in there that suggests Prior Lake adopt a no-phosphorous ordinance. It appears to me that it would help significantly in improving water quality. Warner: Have you looked at the dam upstream of Spring Lake for holding back water during heavy rains? Moran: We started using that this spring. It has a gate on it that allows us to pond 33-1/2 acres of water in this area. It's main purpose is to serve as a sediment basin for this area. There was discussion about proposals for a new outlet box, associated costs and downstream channel improvements. Lynch stated that there was a lot of discussion that needed to occur before any changes could be made to the outlet. Moran discussed some of the plans the watershed district had for improving the channel in the City limits. Soderstrom: What type of reaction time, or how quickly can the outlet be controlled given a reasonable rainfall? How efficient is the proposed system? Leichty: The districts model is being updated and will soon be able to run scenarios that will predict lake levels given a certain rainfall event. Larson: Are we seeing the benefit of the ferric chloride system yet, or do you think Prior Lake water quality is still being degraded from Spring Lake? Moran: The clarity of Spring Lake went up, but it's hard to draw any conclusions yet from just one season. -----.-----.---.-.-----r--..-..-.-------.. - ---------...--------.--. .....---..-- Lynch: Seeing improvements to the water quality of a lake is a very subtle thing, one will hardly notice the difference in a short amount of time. Larson: I think what we should be looking at here is erosion, point source degradation from things like phosphorous and fertilizer, enforcement of rules uphill of the shoreline itself and yard waste blown into the streets. Warner: The issues we want to deal with are water quality, water level management, shoreline preservation, surface water management, land use practices and public education. These are the items that we have been directed by Council to look at. Leichty: Question to Lynch; "The process to be followed in lowering the no-wake elevation is to re-submit the packet to DNR along with the DNR, correct?" Lynch: I have nothing to do with this, it goes through the Boat & Water Safety people. If there is documented erosion at 903.5 they ought to deal with it, if it's at 900.0 then they ought to be looking at 900.0. There is nothing magic about 903.5. The reason the normal water level of the lake is at 902.5 is because that's the maximum that rules allow, 18 inches below the OHWL and nothing lower. Soderstrom: We are definitely dealing with two issues. There is major confusion between the OHWL at 904.0 and the no-wake zone elevation at 904.0. People confuse the two issues. Has there been a precedent for having the no-wake at the same elevation as the OHWL? Lynch: I can't tell you. I would recommend that you invite some of the DNR's Boat & Water Safety people in to answer some of those questions. Leichty: The lake questionnaire survey showed that the water quality was the highest issue of importance. Approximately 100 surveys were returned from the public. A majority of these were from Waunds' Lake News. Soderstrom: Trying to get an accurate evaluation of the public's concerns is very difficult. The water does not belong just to the lakeshore owners. I think it's perceived that we are only doing this for the lakeshore owners. This is a recreational community. Larson: I've heard that several times, that we are a recreational community. I can only think of maybe 30 people who make a living from the recreational use of the lake. I would submit that the greatest number of people who live in Prior Lake are employed in non-recreational activities. Soderstrom: My comment is that "recreational community" does not just address business, but that this is a recreational community because people have migrated here in view of the recreational activities that are here. I would propose that the people who live on the lake live here to use the lake, not just look at it. Larson: I suggest that we move forward, prioritize these items. We should reassess our shoreland management ordinance, review the watershed information and get some input from planning and zoning, DNR, and present these issues in part so that we can meet our March deadline. When the first part is done, an informal hearing should be conducted and responses recorded, holding the meeting far enough in advance so that adjustments can be made. Then, present this information to Council and let Council conduct a formal public hearing. Lets' prioritize these six issues and present them for public consideration one at a time keeping our time frame in mind. We can probably come up with a document in a reasonably expedient manner. Leichty: Should we go to Council right after we are done with one, or would you wait and take them all to Council in one bundle? Larson: Let's do these in parts and send them to Council so that they can be on their schedule. They want to be done in May and have some kind of shoreline preservation and surface water management portion in place by May. Warner: Would committee members take a look at the responses from the questionnaire and try to summarize them so that we can have a basis for each issue. Try to get them to Leichty before the next meeting. Let's prioritize each issue. The six issues identified to be studied by Council were prioritized by members as follows: 1- Shoreland Preservation 2- Surface Water Management 3- Water Level Management 4- Water Quality 5- Land Use Practices 6- Public Education Efforts Leichty: I will send members copies of the shoreland management ordinance, DNR shoreland rules and summary of the watershed management plan. Braddy updated the members on his conversations that he had with University officials about doing a study for Prior Lake. He also spoke with the lake manager of Lake Geneva. Lake Geneva went through similar problems 15 years ago that Prior Lake is experiencing now. Braddy agreed to be the point contact between the University and the LAC if any questions or discussions that may arise in the future. VI. BYLAW AMENDMENTS MOTION BY LARSON, SECONDED BY HAGGERTY: ACCEPT THE CURRENT LAC BYLAWS AS WRITTEN FOR THE UPCOMING YEAR. MOTION PASSED UNANIMOUSL Y. VII. NEW BUSINESS No new business was discussed. VIII. ADJOURNMENT MOTION BY LARSON, SECONDED BY HAGGERTY TO ADJOURN THE MEETING AT 8:40 P.M. MOTION PASSED UNANlMOUSL Y. Respectfully submitted, ~~ Lanol Leichty . Recording Secretary