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Stream Inspections · Clean Water Works

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_04: How was your EAT meeting?
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_04: It was fine.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: What meeting?
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_04: We have a new acronym for a new initiative.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: We need more acronyms.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: And what is it?
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: Eat.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: Eat Eat.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: Environmental Enhancement Team.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: So it's E E T.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: But then you also we also have the SIP this year.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_05: The SIP.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_05: Stormwater Improvement Project Projects.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: So there were we have two meetings like Back to Back in Swim and it was the SIP and then the EAT.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, this is great.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: That's good.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: New acronyms.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Clean Waterworks.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_04: This is a podcast about Clean Water at the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: And we're going to talk about streams today.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_04: We have two guests today.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: We are talking to stormwater inspectors Kelsey Hickox and Andriana Hayes.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Clean Waterworks.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_04: I love that you guys both just like nod quietly.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_05: The audience cannot see you nod.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_05: I was just telling you you said my name right.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: That's all I needed.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: So we're going to talk about streams, and I think a lot of people still, even after three and a half years of us doing this podcast, think regional sewer district sewers.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_04: Wastewater.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: What do streams have to do with the work that the sewer district does?
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: The district has their two main branches.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: So we have a wastewater, which is the treatment plans and collection systems that everyone kind of thinks about when they think of our company.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: But we do have this regional stormwater management program.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: There's a little bit of crossover sometimes between the two.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: So if you get a CSO, you might get a combined sewer overflow that discharges from the sanitary system to the storm system.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes we get issues the other way.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: So when we get a large rain event, the storm system will flow into the sanitary system.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: Typically it's called inflow and infiltration, how it gets in there.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: But when we talk about regional stormwater, we're mostly talking more about the streams and related to flooding or erosion and debris issues.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: And you're on the swim team.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_04: Yes.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_04: And that's within our watershed programs department, which runs our regional stormwater management program.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_04: Correct.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: Tell us about the swim group.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_05: Um so swim stands for stormwater inspection and maintenance.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_05: And in the swim group, we inspect and maintain uh various assets such as streams, crossings or bridges, culverted streams and basins.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_05: And so when we're inspecting these, we're looking for structural defects, so erosion or like deterioration of concrete on like crossings and culverted streams.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_05: We're also looking for debris, and that could range from like a fallen tree to like a large blockage, and how that's impacting conveyance.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_05: So is that going to cause flooding?
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_05: In 2025, we completed 1,500 inspections and we removed 2,600 cubic yards of debris and 4,200 cubic yards of sediment.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_05: So we service communities and each inspector, so there are four of us, we each have a watershed.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_05: And so that kind of like breaks us up into different regions of our service area that we are responsible for.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: What are those four watersheds?
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: So we have the Rocky River watershed.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: So on the west side, we have Andriana's watershed, which is the Chagrin River, as well as the Lake Erie Direct Tributaries.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_05: So that's Dugway, Done, Nine Mile, Green, Euclid.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: Shaw.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: Look at us.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: And then the Cuyahoga River tributaries, we have them broken up east and west for each of the inspectors.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: So I cover the west side.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: So Big Creek, West Creek, Chippewa Creek, and then we have the east side is going to be Mill Creek, Um, Brandywine Creek.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_04: Unnamed tribs.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, lots of unnamed trib on the on the east of the Cuyahoga.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of unnamed trib through there.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: So how many miles are we talking?
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: How many miles of streams and tributaries and and what's the difference between a stream and a tributary and a river?
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: Mike wants all the basics.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: A full class on streams, Gabby.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_01: So we're responsible for 365 miles of open stream channel, and then there's about 90 miles of culverted streams.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: So when the stream goes into a pipe underground, and then 16 miles that accounts for the crossing, so the bridges.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_01: The tributary question, a lot of times there'll be these smaller streams that still qualify for us to be in the regional stormwater system, but they they just tend to be a little bit smaller, whereas Big Creek is named.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: So you have the Big Creek watershed and everything that drains to it.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: There's some, especially near the national park, where it's just kind of a small little stream.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: It drains a decent area, but it's just not as much of a big established multi-community.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know who's in charge of naming all of the streams, but I mean, if you want, we can start naming them after people who work here.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: Could you do that?
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_01: Mike Uva stream.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: Mike Uva Uva stream.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: Try and make sure that one is in my watershed.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: ESAD, yeah.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, okay.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_04: What is something that you might point out in a report to a community?
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_05: So if we notice anything like structural defects, so along a stream, if we see erosion that's near a building, the property owner will get a notification as well as the community.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_05: If there's erosion encroaching upon the roadway, we'll notify like the county or the community that that's happening as well.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_04: What's the weirdest thing you've seen in a stream?
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: Andriana is definitely the winner of this one.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: But I will say that we once found a vacuum in a culvert, which is fine, but it was there multiple years in a row in the same spot.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_01: The cord got stuck on the bottom of the pipe.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: Even after you reported it, no one took it out?
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's a mile walk from a manhole that you have to go down.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: There's no you can't just walk in and get it.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: Did you need a vacuum?
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there are a lot.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: I just have a lot of questions about this.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: So this was in the culvert.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: In a culvert, okay.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: And it was too far in to do anything about it.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: Is that right?
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_04: And it wasn't causing any issues.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's debris though.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, isn't that like core to what you do?
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_04: Well, but we have rules about when we remove and when we don't, because you don't want to waste rate pair money just removing every single thing.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: So when we look at debris, it depends on a couple things if we're going to remove it or not.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: So the first thing is kind of how much of the flow area it's impacting.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: If we're looking at either a bridge or or a stream, you can kind of look at like the cross section of the stream and determine if only like 10% of the stream is blocked by it.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: In most cases, that's gonna be fine and not really cause issues.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: If it's blocking like 50 to 60% of the flow area, we should probably be a little more alerted to it.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: And it also depends where it is.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: So there's certain areas where we'll get a really big debris blockage, but it's in the middle of a park and it's a naturalized area and it's good fish habitat and it's holding back sediment, and we will leave that in place.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: It is totally fine, it is beneficial and great for the environment.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: But then we'll also sometimes just get a few cubic yards, but it'll be in a really highly urbanized area, really close to people's homes, that really could increase flooding for them.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: So luckily, we have a modeling team.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_01: We use their models.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: They kind of show us at different storm events.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: If it's a smaller storm event, what's going to flood versus a bigger storm event?
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: And we kind of use that all to put together a puzzle of whether or not we should take something out.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_01: The debris is actually usually really good.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: It can hold back sediment.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, sediment actually can be really detrimental to a stream if it's moving around too much.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: So we really want to keep it in place where we can because it has so many ecological benefits, but we have to balance it with the flooding potential of it being there.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_04: And when we're talking about debris, we're usually what we're talking about is like large woody debris or small woody debris.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_05: Even leaves and sediment would count as like debris.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_05: So, like on some debris racks, we'll just get a large accumulation of sediment and leaves, and that'll need to be removed as well.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: Got it.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes there's other things in there.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: I had one just last week that a customer had called about.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: There was a large log, like perpendicular to stream flow that had kind of started it, and then a shopping cart was also in it, and then a bunch of little stuff got stuck on the shopping cart and created like a four-foot grade change in the stream.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: So we're gonna get that out of there because it is a flood-prone area that it was found in.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_04: But that was triggered by a phone call from a resident.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: Correct.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_04: Other times we'll get a call from a service director, but oftentimes it's just from your regular inspections and you guys going out into the field when you see something, and that's how you just you know to whether it needs to be removed or not.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: And if people see a problem in their community, would they just call our customer service department?
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, you could call it into the customer service number.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: That's the 216 881-8247.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_04: They would log it in, you'd give them an address or a location, and then it would be the watershed team leader who would be responsible for that community, and they would be the one to call you back.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: Especially if you like nature and being outdoors, this seems like a pretty fun job.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_05: Are you outdoors most of the time or so we're outside like 50% of the day?
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_05: We usually will go out in the morning, we'll leave around 8 30, do inspections, and we'll come back around lunch, and then we spend the rest of the day kind of working on the reports from the inspections we did that day.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_05: We capture the structural conditions, so we put notes and details on what we observed, whether it was good, whether it was bad.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_05: Along with that, we'll also put hydraulic information.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_05: If we go out for an urgent storm inspection, which is after a heavy rain event, a lot of times we'll have to say it was like 50% of the bank or it overtopped the roadway, and we'll note if there was any debris blockages.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_05: And each of these things has a score that correlates with it.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_04: And what's helpful for me as a person who calls residents back is that they include tons of photos.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_04: That's helpful because we do send that report back out to the customers so they can see that we were on site, they can see what we were seeing, and then it also gives you a good look back.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_04: If you're like looking year after year at erosion or something like that, you can see how it's progressed through all of these photos that they take.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: And are you doing this year-round, even in the blizzards?
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_01: Mostly.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_01: We ran into some issues this winter because it wasn't so much that it was so cold, but it was that we had snow.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: And so we couldn't, you can't see the stream banks when they're covered in snow.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: So normally when that happens, we're still able to maybe look at some of the bridges and crossings.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: But because the water froze so hard, everything was just so frozen, we we could not physically get out and do a proper inspection of anything.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: Because even a bridge, we need to be able to see like the embankment near that bridge.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: And so there was a period of time where we were kind of stuck inside, but typically we're we're still out in the cold.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: Are you walking in the water or along the bank?
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: Both.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: Kind of depends.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: We have muckboots for shallower streams.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: We have full chest waiters if we need to be in the water.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: It kind of depends what the vegetation is around it and what we what we're looking at, what we need to see.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: So do you carry a machete?
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we have them on our trucks, yes.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: I don't carry one regularly, but in the in the summer, sometimes we do need those, yes.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: Getting a visual in my head.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if I've ever actually been on a stream inspection.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_01: Do you want to go?
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: I mean when it's when it's nicer out, maybe.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_04: Oh wow.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_04: Just a fair weather fan.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: Alright, so you wear muck boots, waiters.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: You're wearing gloves, probably, because you don't want to wreck your hands.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: Do you have uh headgear, like a hat or a uh helmet?
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_01: If we're in a stream, sometimes we'll just wear like a sun hat or a ball cap.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: But if we're in a culvert or construction area, then we have hard hats.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: We'll have a really long, like 200-foot tape to measure.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: If we're measuring erosion, we need to know how long the bank is.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes those can be hundreds of feet in length.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_01: Similarly, we'll have a survey rod, which is just like a vertical way of measuring.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: And then rakes, shovels.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: We gotta remove that little bit of debris.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: Bug spray and sunscreen.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: Very important.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: Very important in the summer.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: We're not really looking forward to tick season, but you don't carry a rifle.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if there's a bear.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_05: We don't really have predators.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: There's a bear.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you don't know what you're gonna.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: There were these Bigfoot sightings in Portage County over the weekend.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: What?
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: Six Bigfoot.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: Get out of here.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: Went right through Gary.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_05: We'll let you know if we run into them.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: I did one time run into it, must have been someone's like Halloween decoration.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: I was walk, I was just walking a stream, kind of like a scarecrow, but it had a gorilla mask on.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: And if you there was like a rope in a tree that if you pulled on it, it's arms.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely not.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_05: We were doing a crossing inspection and we're walking, and we can kind of see it like in the distance a little bit.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_05: There's like some things hanging from the top of the pipe.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_05: As we get closer, we notice that there were like fake bananas hanging from clear strings attached to the top of the pipe.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_05: It was in the middle of like an open field.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_05: It's so weird.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_05: Because who put that there?
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_05: Why?
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_05: Oh, so weird.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_05: I it definitely scared me.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_05: I think it's a good idea.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_05: This is really upsetting.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_05: Get out of there.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: Just the fact that someone did that and then like it's a mystery.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_05: It's a mystery.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_05: We'll never know.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_04: So through the Regional Stormwater Management Program, we have a lot of investments that we've made.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_04: And when we construct uh something, whether it's a regional stormwater basin or maybe we line a culvert, we want to make sure that those assets are being maintained.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_04: And a big part of that comes from your inspections.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_04: Can you just pick a project and talk through how you would go about looking through and analyzing that site?
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_05: So we did a project along Gates Mills Boulevard in Pepper Pike.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_05: And this project was to expand the basin footprint.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_05: We did a redesign to have it take up more of this boulevard area along the roadway to hold more water during a rain event.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_05: And it is working.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_05: The residents have told us they haven't seen any flooding since we've installed the new basin.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_05: And we did repairs on a crossing, which is the inlet to this basin.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_05: So that's where the water comes from upstream.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_05: And they also rerouted the outlet, which is where the water flows out to go downstream in the service area.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_05: So when I go to look at this project, the things that I'll look for is that the vegetation is establishing.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_05: So we planted trees and shrubs along the sides of the basin.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_05: And so we just want to verify that those aren't being browsed by deer or like totally knocked over by deer.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_05: A couple other things that we look for along the embankments, like is there rilling and erosion occurring from runoff from the roadway?
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: Did you say rilling?
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_05: Rilling.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_05: Rills.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_05: R-I-L-L-I-N-G.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_05: So rills are like small grooves that form in the soil from runoff, and it's like the start of like a bigger problem.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_05: If it keeps continuing, it'll just get bigger and cause a gully.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_05: Do you?
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: I know what a gully is.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_05: Oh, okay.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_05: Sorry.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_05: So we'll look for stuff like that around the embankments.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_05: We'll look for invasive species.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_05: So within the stream channel, we'll see like cattails or phragmites that start to grow.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_05: So those are things that we'll have treated by a contractor.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_05: And then the culvert downstream of that outlet will look for defects within that as well.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_05: If it's misshapen or if there's any separation of the joints in the culvert, we'll look at that too.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_05: So we typically go out and look at them every six months for the first three years.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_05: And then after that, we look at them annually, like in perpetuity.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_05: We also have our swim tech group who goes out and does vegetation maintenance and they'll look at pruning.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_05: They also get tasks from us like that we find during our inspection.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_05: So if we see debris that needs to be removed or any other type of maintenance, they can do that as well.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: If it's a a few cubic yards, uh, sometimes we'll do it ourselves.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: If we're somewhere and I'm like, I this is gonna be easy, it's gonna take me 10 minutes, and we'll just go back to the truck, get gloves or tools, whatever we need, and we'll just remove it ourselves on site, bring it back to get disposed.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes we'll have our swim tech crew go out and help with some of the debris removals, but when we start getting into things that are 10, 20, 200 cubic yards, we have a contractor that we work with that has big equipment and chainsaws and bucket trucks and all that fun stuff.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_04: One of the things that has come up a couple of times is urgent storm response.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_04: Could you talk a little bit about what that means and why it's important and how it relates to our modeling?
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: When we get large storm events that potentially could cause flooding, there's a few different things that we check to monitor how how high the levels are getting.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_01: So the modeling crew has level sensors out at many locations throughout the service area.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_01: And so we're able to see, okay, Mill Creek went up three feet.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: So we're able to check that.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: Also, we have a system of trail cameras at notable places.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_01: So a lot of debris racks or culvert inlets, some of our project sites, areas that we want to know how that responds, whether or not there was a problem there, or if it's just kind of a flood-prone area.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: So if we know a storm's coming, we'll make the cameras take photos about every hour.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: So we can watch and see pretty much in real time how high the levels are getting.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_01: And then the model data management group also will use the precipitation data.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: So right after we've had the storm event, they can get this precipitation data and they're able to figure out what could have flooded, like they use all this data and put it together, and they'll reach out to us and say, hey, it looks like nine mile might have reached action stage.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_01: We should go check that area to confirm their data as well as to look for debris or any sort of flooding issues.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_04: Why is it important to field verify data?
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: Could you ask that again?
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't quite understand what you said.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_04: Um Do you want me to use different words like that?
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_04: No, I it Sorry, I'm a mumbler.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_04: You can ask my mom.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a criticism.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: I want a good product here.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_04: We have folks who are in the office and folks that are consultants that look at our models and they say, we think that based on this data that we're getting about rainfall and this other data that we have that are built-out models, that we should theoretically, given the type of storm, get a certain amount of rain and that would cause a certain amount of flooding in a certain area.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_04: My question is, Andriana, why is it important to field verify that information?
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_05: Well, it's important to field verify it so that we can like refine the models further.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_05: If they tell us that this house and this road should have flooded after a rain event, then we go out the next day and we verify if that did flood or not.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_05: And if it didn't, then they need to refine their models, and that'll help kind of tweak everything in that area to either scale it back or scale it forwards to show that there's less flooding or more flooding in that location.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_04: At the end of the day, the projects we're building have to be built to withstand certain rain events, and those designs are built on the modeling that we have.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_04: And so the work that you guys do, I think going out and verifying during these storm events is so important to making sure that we're right sizing all of our projects.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: How long have you each been at the district and have you always been in this role as a stormwater inspector?
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: Andriana?
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_05: So I started at the district in 2019 as an intern in the swim program.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_05: I was an intern for about two and a half years.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_05: And after being an intern, I applied for the analyst position, which is the data side of the swim group.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_05: And I did that for about a year, and then we had an opening in our inspection group.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_05: And I've been an inspector since 2022.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_05: Before I came to the district, actually, my first major was interior design.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_02: Oh yeah.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_05: And I did that for a semester.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_05: And I was just decided that that wasn't really for me.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_05: It was something I was good at, but it wasn't something that I think I would really like enjoy doing.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_05: So I kind of was trying to figure out like what do I like to do?
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_05: And what I like to do is be outside.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_05: And so that's kind of how I got into the environmental science field.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_05: But some of the courses that I took, one of them was a rivers seminar.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_05: And so that kind of introduced me to like streams and stream mechanics and how the water cycle works and everything.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_05: And so just in my search of job openings, I found the intern position.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_05: Actually, the sewer district was one of like the only jobs that I could find in the environmental field at the time.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_04: We are like a large employer of people in the environmental field.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_04: I feel like it's like us, soil and water, and then the consulting groups and the metropolis.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_04: And that's kind of it.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_04: What about you, Kelsey?
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: My first time I was at the district was in 2012.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_01: They call you a boomerang, I think is what they call them.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: I interned for one summer with our water quality and industrial surveillance group, but then I had to go finish my senior year of college.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: And then I graduated.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: I had a job in a lab for a year.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_01: And then in 2014, I came back as an intern again in that same department and then got hired full-time.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_01: And then I transitioned over to swim.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: And we've been here ever since.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: What's your favorite thing about the job?
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: I really like seeing improvements that we get to make over time.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_01: So there have been many years of seeing certain issues going on, whether that be flooding or erosion, degraded stream channels, and then seeing overtime after we put in projects, or if maybe homeowners stop mowing next to their streams, any sort of improvements, seeing over time those things.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Actually get better is super rewarding.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_05: So my favorite part, I think, is problem solving.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_05: Like goes from like small things like removing debris, solving that problem, or on a larger scale.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_05: We kind of already touched on it with um verifying modeling from urgent storm events.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_05: I think that's something that I enjoy doing as well.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_05: You know, contributing to like the greater cause of kind of solving the flooding issue.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_05: A few times I've done like a culverted stream inspection and I've I've observed something that I'm like, whoa, that might be another regional culvert.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_05: And we don't have it mapped.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_05: And so this has happened a couple times where they end up looking into it and it ends up needing to be added as a regional culvert.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_05: So I think that's something that I enjoy doing.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: Those are the culverts that should be named after you since you discovered this.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_04: Andreana sounds like that.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: Andreana Way.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_04: Andreana Way sounds good too.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_04: Is there a least favorite part of the of the job?
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_01: My least favorite part would be seeing just the number of streams that are impacted by development, which isn't always necessarily intentional, but just seeing poor water quality areas, poor stream habitat.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_01: There's a good bit of it in the area just because there's so much impervious surface and it's just such an urbanized area that that's that's what every city deals with.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: It's gonna be there.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: What kind of problems does that cause?
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_01: So there's actually it's called urban stream syndrome.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's a like a series of things that you notice happen to streams when urbanization comes in.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_01: So you get increased impervious surface, so roadways, houses, driveways, sidewalks, all those areas where the water hits that surface and it can't get absorbed and it moves very quickly from point A to point B.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_01: And so once that inevitably makes it to a stream channel, it causes a series of issues.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_01: You'll see a lot of um down cutting.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: So the water comes through so fast and at such a high velocity and volume in a very short period of time.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_01: It'll kind of scour out the bottom of the streams as it goes through.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_01: It kind of just shoots through these streams and it really changes all of the habitat within it.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_01: So it makes it more difficult for certain fish or certain macroinvertebrates to live to live there.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_01: They just can't live in those environments.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_01: And then a lot of times uh with development, we'll either put a stream in a pipe and you know, we want to build on top of this, and we we don't do it so much anymore, but we did before we kind of maybe realized what all we were doing.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_01: But it really impacts overall water quality, and I like the fishies.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_01: So I want the fish to be happy, and they're not happy sometimes.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I like happy streams, which we do have we have lots of those as well.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of times in the metro parks, just some areas that are a little less urbanized, we'll have we'll have much happier streams with habitat.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_01: Those are the fun inspections when you get to go just walk a couple miles and it's nicer water quality on a nice 70-degree day.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: Did you say earlier that mowing along the stream bank is that a problem?
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: Like mowing their lawn along the stream bank?
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's bad.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_01: Especially, you know, people want their their nice green lawns that are manicured, and I totally get that.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but if there's a stream in in their yard and they mow right up to the edge, that can really contribute to erosion.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's just when the water flows across their yard.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_01: There's nothing to slow it down.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas if you leave a buffer, even just a couple feet of just tall grasses or any sort of vegetation, when the water hits there, it can kind of slow down before it actually enters the stream channel.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_01: And honestly, the goal of stormwater management is usually to slow the water down and to keep it from just shooting through either pipes or streams.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_04: And it works the other way too, not only slowing down water that's coming off of the yard and into the stream, but also when the stream level rises and it goes out onto that floodplain, it slows the water down and can catch sediment as it's flowing through, too.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_04: So they need some space.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_04: Streams need space, Mike.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: I believe it.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_00: Are there other things besides not mowing close to a stream that the public can do to help keep our streams healthy?
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_05: So some things that you can do to help keep our streams healthy are to leave a riparian corridor around the streams, which is kind of along the lines of what Kelsey was saying, but it's like leave a buffer between where you're building a home and where the s edge of the stream bank is.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_05: Throw away your trash and the proper receptacles.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_05: Don't throw it away and let it blow into the stream channels.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_05: Don't dump anything down catch basins because they go directly to the streams.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_05: Consider installing rain gardens, rain barrels, or disconnecting your downspouts because this can help capture the stormwater before it reaches the streams.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_04: And if you do that, reach out to your watershed team leader who can help you get a discount for that.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_04: Rain barrel or rain garden, you can get a discount.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_04: It's 25% off of your stormwater fee.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_04: It's good for three years.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: Do you interact much with the public?
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_01: We're constantly in people's backyards, in parks, in areas, and we're wearing high viz, so we're not difficult to spot.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_01: And we're down in a stream, and most people are just really curious with what on earth we're doing.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's funny because a lot of the time it usually follows up with all of the homeowners' stories about when they moved into the home and how the stream has changed over time.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_01: And when it rains, there's so much water, and we would we would never believe, which of all people in the world, I think we're the most likely to believe.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_01: How much water flows through the streams in the yards.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_01: And people will call, will call us if they see something going on that they want us to check out, if they're worried about anything in their in their their backyard streams.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_01: We'll come take a look.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_00: Kelsey Hickox and Andriana Hayes are stormwater inspectors in our stormwater inspection and maintenance department here at the Regional Sewer District.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_04: Thanks for coming out today.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_04: Thanks for having us.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_04: Thanks.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: This has been Clean Water Works, a podcast about clean water.