Ryan Johnson: 0:01

Welcome to the Public Works Nerds podcast.

Marc Culver: 0:07

Hey, welcome to the Public Works Nerds podcast, a Public Works podcast of the nerds, for the nerds and by the nerds. I'm your Ma rc Culver. Today we're going to nerd out on stormwater. What better topic to nerd out about than stormwater? What better topic to nerd out about than stormwater?

Marc Culver: 0:25

When I started my career in the municipal world, I was a traffic engineer and I call myself a recovering traffic engineer, if you haven't heard me say that on previous podcast episodes. I'm still a recovering traffic engineer. But when I made the move from Maple Grove, where I was a traffic engineer, to city of Roseville, where I became the city engineer, I learned a lot about stormwater. I had to learn a lot about stormwater, moving from a community that had a lot of traffic to a community that didn't have so much traffic, from a community that wasn't dealing with stormwater so much to a community that was dealing with stormwater on every day. It was a big shift for me and fortunately I had our guest today, mr Ryan Johnson, to help me out with that. But before we jump into Mr Johnson, we just want to talk about the topic today a little bit. We're going to specifically talk about private stormwater device maintenance.

Marc Culver: 1:28

You say well, what about the public side? Well, obviously we spend a great deal of time maintaining our public stormwater infrastructure, including pipes, catch basins, ponds and all those other BMPs and for your non-nerds, bmps obviously meaning best management practices at least we better be spending a lot of time managing and maintaining those. But the private stormwater system is just as important to the overall operation of our stormwater system, especially as we talk about resiliency and meeting the intended retention and treatment components of those BMPs that are on private property. But what if your private property owners aren't maintaining their system to that level that they're supposed to be? What if you don't have a maintenance agreement with them? I don't know we're going to talk about that side or not, but we might touch on that. Joining us today to talk about these things is my stormwater guru, mr Ryan Johnson from the city of Roseville, the environmental manager at the city of Roseville. Welcome, ryan, and thanks for joining us today.

Ryan Johnson: 2:33

Thank you, Marc. This is exciting. I'm a longtime viewer and first time on the show, so I'm excited to be here, and there's no better thing to geek out on than stormwater, and you know so here to talk.

Marc Culver: 2:48

Yeah, ryan and I actually joined Roseville officially within, I think, two weeks of each other, yep, back in December of 2013. In fact, when I had accepted the position to be the city engineer for the city of Roseville, I gave a month notice at Maple Grove and Roseville said hey, we're hiring this stormwater position. We'd love for you to sit in on the interview. So my first interaction with Roseville staff was sitting in interviews to hire Mr Johnson, and let me just say it was pretty clear, uh, during that interview process, who was going to be our, at that point, environmental specialist um at the city of Roseville. And you had a really great relationship with Roseville staff already. And let's let's touch on that why you had that great relationship. Why don't you take a few minutes to introduce yourself, brian? Give us a us an abbreviated version of your origin story.

Ryan Johnson: 3:48

All right origin story. So grew up in northern Minnesota, I always loved just water. It's like you know we grow up being on the lakes. We do all this. It's like you know, as I was fascinated by the water side. You know, then you start seeing storms, start seeing runoff, you start seeing how all these you know lakes and streams and everything start interacting. So you know that really kind of drew the passion forward and ended up going to college in Minnesota, duluth, and you know it's had to go there because it's like I wanted to go to Lake Superior, I wanted to see all those trout streams.

Ryan Johnson: 4:23

You know just kind of again all that connection around water and stormwater and how. You know how integral they are with just everything that we do. You know, once I kind of went through that, worked a couple for work, a couple jobs kind of on the private side, and then, once past that, started to work with Ramsey County and you know that's where I got really immersed, kind of on just the BMP side, a lot like with a lot more of the residential side, and that's where I started to get connected into the cities, especially, you know Roseville was one of the more active ones with, you know just, you know trying to push a lot of these. You know whether it's infiltration, filtration, a lot of these. You know things homeowners can do on their property to really kind of make you know an impact and then also just have um, kind of that connection with their community. So really got to know, um, you know Deb Heiser. Um, you know AKA Deb Bloom for a lot of us, uh, who's also been on your podcast, um, and you know it's like Chris Giga and then you know it's like uh, and you know it's like chris giga and then you know it's like uh, you know, and you, at the same time, eventually, um, but you know, if it's with ramsey county, it's like yeah, it's like you end up getting to see a lot, of, a lot of different aspects just around the county and then all of a sudden, you know you start honing in on, you know just roseville and just their.

Ryan Johnson: 5:41

Their overall excitement and commitment to you know really try to make Roseville a better place was fascinating for me and just all the work that they do, whether it's, you know, again, on the private side, with residential or doing street projects. You know they really try to take into account everything on the stormwater side to make this a better place. And again, it's just like it was fascinating for me to make this a better place. And again, it's just like it was fascinating for me. I loved working with them on their different projects, even just talking to them about what they're going to do, what they want to do, and, you know, it's like it just built a really good relationship with them right from the beginning because it's like we were kind of we kind of lined up nicely, just professionally and honestly.

Ryan Johnson: 6:22

It's like the staff with Deb and Chris back then, even Dwayne, the public works director, who you actually eventually replaced you probably brought that up a time or two in all your podcasts. But it's like, yeah, it's like everyone here was just, you know, it was just a great place to you know kind of work with. So all of a sudden, this position opens up and then, yeah, it's, you go on your interview. You're deathly afraid of who you're talking to. I mean, it's like there were like eight people in that room during the interview process and you were one of them and you were kind of the wild card, because it's like I didn't know who you were nobody knew who I was.

Ryan Johnson: 6:56

Yeah, chris just said you know, chris said, yeah, it's like, uh, you know, um, deb's replacement is going to be in the interview process and it's like, oh great, let's see what this guy has to offer. And so it was interesting to see you in the panel and just kind of get your, you know, just watching you absorb just everything in that. Yeah.

Marc Culver: 7:18

That was more of a learning experience for me than anything.

Ryan Johnson: 7:21

Yeah, it's like you're going into a room.

Marc Culver: 7:23

Yeah, talk a little bit about your role at Ramsey County. Um, like, what was it? What you know, what was your actual position and what kind of projects were you working on?

Ryan Johnson: 7:33

um, so let's see what was I. Officially the title was like urban BMP specialist, I believe was the actual title. Um, the actual job ended up basically being a technical resource within the county for the three watershed districts that are within even Roseville. So it's like you got Capital Region Rice Creek, ramsey, washington All of them have programs that are basically trying to promote stewardship, reduce rate runoff of stormwater and increase water quality. So it's like with that program it's like I got to go out to anything from residential lots to look at what they're doing or what they'd want to do to increase habitat, do a rain garden, something simple like that, just make sure it goes in properly. They're not going to cause problems for themselves or their neighbors.

Ryan Johnson: 8:26

But then I also got to work on bigger projects, whether it's like with any of the watershed districts or the cities where you know it's like we're trying to stabilize, you know, for example, rice Creek, there's a lot of residences that live on the actual creek itself and there's a lot of erosion. So it's like you know what can we do to? You know, move the Thalweg away from the actual bank. How do we stabilize the bank? You know, how do we just kind of protect what's there so we don't get erosion, you know, move all that sediment downstream, and yeah, that was, you know, that was kind of the job.

Ryan Johnson: 9:00

It's just like, kind of those critical area stabilizations were, you know, just kind of fascinating to work on because I mean they were powerful, powerful water moving past all these residents. And you know it's like I got to work on all of them and stabilize all of them. And you know it's nice actually going back out. You know, even today it's last fall I went out to look at a couple of ones that we did 20 years ago now and they're still there and they look great. And you know, so it's uh, it's really nice to kind of have, you know, all these to go look at too. So, um, but yeah, the day-to-day with that was just, yeah, looking to increase water quality and, uh, you know, protect all the natural resources, uh, water quality wise that we can.

Marc Culver: 9:40

Yeah. So then then then talk a little bit about, because I think there are a lot of communities that have water resources managers and and and such specialists in that um, in their engineering staff or public works staff. But maybe talk a little bit about your position at roseville. It's a little bit unique and in such that it has this environmental uh title instead of like a water resources title yeah, it's a unique is probably the good way to put it.

Ryan Johnson: 10:11

Um, interesting, as I was another two. Um, but yeah, with roseville itself, um 95 of my job ends up being stormwater related. You know, it's like looking at the hydraulics for infrastructure, looking at the water resources, you know working with, which is your superpower?

Marc Culver: 10:28

Like you are the stormwater Superman of Roseville, so it should be 95% of your jobs.

Ryan Johnson: 10:35

But yeah, it is, and I'm glad you said superhero instead of supervillain or anything else that you could have tangentially went on that.

Ryan Johnson: 10:44

So, yeah, with the stormwater side, I look at all that. And then with the position two comes um, you know, which kind of expands the role from that um I also oversee, like our sustainability specialist position. So it's like you know, rosaville is looking at um doing a climate action plan this year. So it's like all of all those functions, um, you know, fall under me too. And then you know we also have a recycling contract to collect citywide recycling. So all that comes into the environmental package which which you see in front of you. So, yeah, it's. It's an interesting position in the fact that, yeah, it's like I get to do the big chunk of the stormwater, which I love doing, and then I also have between the sustainability and recycling which I also very much enjoy doing. But it's also just kind of a nice way to kind of keep things. It's a wide breadth of projects for me to work on.

Marc Culver: 11:38

And it's.

Ryan Johnson: 11:38

Honestly, it's a good way to keep me busy and to keep my mind moving, because only trouble happens when I get bored and start just dreaming up things to do.

Marc Culver: 11:46

So, um, having some things to bounce around with and having some good staff to work with is is always good for me yeah, and and you, you and I, we, we, we could and we probably should maybe do a separate podcast on uh recycling on the solid waste side of it, because we we went through two, two and a half um times of contract negotiations with uh, with recycling and some of the uh. There's some stories with that um, you know, uh revenue sharing, not revenue sharing, carts, not carts. You know, dealing with a really wonderful organization that wasn't a really great hauler, at least at the beginning. So you and I learned a lot about solid waste management in our joint time at Roseville so we could tell some stories on that too. But today we're going to talk about private stormwater device maintenance, because that's exciting stuff.

Ryan Johnson: 12:53

Yeah, where the rubber meets the road.

Marc Culver: 12:54

Where the rubber meets the road. All right, well, cool. And I just want to say preface all this I really enjoyed working with youyan um at our time in roseville. I consider you one of my great friends now, even after I've left roseville and, uh, you know I miss, I miss working with you, miss working with the team and but, um, really, really excited to have this uh podcast episode because you are a wealth of information. Storm watch time so let's jump into that. So let's let's talk about private stormwater mpps. Why, mr johnson, why is this such an important issue? Why, why, why was rooseville taking this, this issue on? Why did you start taking on this issue?

Ryan Johnson: 13:42

um, for rooseville I mean it's, the big thing is. You know, roseville is a first tier, first ring suburb. You know we're built out 50s, mostly in the 60s, stormwater I I don't even know if they thought about stormwater back then other than to put some pipes in the ground, like, well, we got to put the water somewhere, yeah, so it's just like hey, let's put a pipe here, let's make it go that way, and, you know, cut it through a couple yards.

Ryan Johnson: 14:04

But, um, you know, so it's like rose. Hey, let's put a pipe here, let's make it go that way, and, you know, cut it through a couple yards. But, you know, so it's like Roseville itself. You know the joke. I was here, you know, whenever, half the time when I do presentations is, you know, you show a picture of Roseville and then you say, within the big circle we have, you know, drainage problems and the circle encompasses all of Roseville. So, you know, it's like, with that, you know, there's obviously the need for, you know, just, we know that we can't build out, we can't rebuild our system to make it handle what we need it to when it comes to stormwater and you know changing precipitation and everything. So it's, you know, so it's like we do what we can on the city level when it comes to, like, our pavement management projects are, you know, just standalone projects. But even when we look at the amount of storm water that we have that generates in any of these rain events, it's like we don't have enough places to put it.

Ryan Johnson: 14:50

It's you know, citywide it's, we have hundreds of ponds, whereas you look at some of these newer suburbs you know, like maple grove where you were at I mean it's like they're into the hundreds now yeah, and it's like they're thousands of ponds, um, so it's like you know the they're set up where they can actually, you know, take some of the water off the landscape, get it to a place where it can get treated safely, and you know we can reduce flooding issues, things like that. Um, on roseville side, it's like we can only do so much. So you know, with our total maximum daily loads and all these, um, you know kind of impairments that we drain to, um, you know it's like we need redevelopment to kind of help carry some of this load. And since they generate runoff too, um, you know we have our stormwater requirements that have them put in, whether you know it's a pond, uh, you know infiltration basins, uh, whether it's above ground or below ground, you know. So it's like, as we start putting these in, we rely on the private infrastructure too. So now when we're looking at all, right, you know we're trying to meet our TMDL, we're trying to reduce our drainage or flooding problem at this intersection. If the BMPs are put in, you know, at the cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars for these private developments. You know, if they don't get maintained, you know they don't do anything for us.

Ryan Johnson: 16:10

So, and with a lot of them going away from actually being, you know, just kind of the typical nerd pond or something simple like that. I mean, these are the cost of you know, to be in Roseville. The land value is so high that everything goes underground, you know. So it's like, unfortunately, it ends up being kind of that out of sight, out of mind type of a thing. And once you go from, you know the developer who is, you know they're in this, they want the, they want to get their permit, they want to get this thing built, um, you know.

Ryan Johnson: 16:38

Then all of a sudden you hand it over to the property owner. Property owner doesn't know it's there. It's most of the time when you talk to them they're like I have a what where, and you know. That kind of gets us to the point where it's just like you know. So a lot of this ends up being just kind of the. You know. Educating them on this is what you have on the property, this is what you need to do and this is why we need it done. So it's um, you know roseville isn't going to make great gains just on, you know, whether it's water quality or just our straight up you know volume, you know, to help kind of improve just accessibility during these bigger events. We have some critical corridors that you know are underwater when we get a big event and usually it's the 36 Fairview overpass that gets the news play.

Ryan Johnson: 17:22

And you know so we know that we can't fix that alone, you know so, as we get redevelopment, it starts chipping away at it. So if we don't maintain them, it doesn't last. Though.

Marc Culver: 17:32

You know, and a contributing factor to, I think, the scale of this issue is and you touched on this, you know when you were talking about, you know your history at Ramsey County. You have, and I'm learning, I'm beginning to learn how what's the right word, let's say engaged how engaged the watersheds in and around Roseville are from a regulation perspective, versus some of the watersheds out here in that second ring exurb area that I find myself in now. Talk a little bit about those requirements that, if the development is like, if you see a new development go in, or redevelopment, or somebody is even repaving their, rebuilding their parking lot or something, some of those requirements that are contributing to the scale of this private BMP issue.

Ryan Johnson: 18:31

Yeah, I mean just like Roseville. It's like obviously we have our requirements On the watershed district side. I mean, you know, the kind of the good example for us who you know they have even more strict rules than we do when it triggers them, is like Rice Creek Kind of that 35W corridor over there. It's like anything that happens over there. It's like developments have to decrease the runoff rate by 20% of existing conditions. So it's like this is driving just kind of the size and complexity of a lot of the BMPs that get put in within their district.

Ryan Johnson: 19:11

Because it's like, again, it's like you're not going to find a lot of above ground space to put a lot of you know upon.

Ryan Johnson: 19:17

So it's like you start looking at the requirements that you know. It's like they need to treat a lot of water to start getting it down to you know 80% of what existing is. So you know and that's you know it's true, kind of across the city where it's like rice creek has that one caveat or that one requirement in their you know entire program, um, but yeah, it's like the other districts here too, um, race capital region, ramsey, washington, again, it's like they have similar requirements that yeah, it's like it'll also push a lot of these developments to do the storm water, and you know whether it's again, it ends up being a basin that they fit in, or a basin and an underground, or you know any combination thereof. Um, yeah, it's like you know, just within roseville it's like we also have three districts that are also pushing for, you know, these same type of requirements and, uh, with the developments come the bmps to meet those yeah.

Marc Culver: 20:12

So, yeah, you, you're, you're a, uh, a developer, um, you're, you're coming in, you're building a new apartment building. Let's say, um, you're, you're ripping up this two acre site, uh, building a huge, uh, five-story apartment building with a, with a parking lot, and this, that and the other, and, and, uh, let's say, you end up putting in a, you know, an infiltration basin on the perimeter of your, your lot, but then you're also putting in an underground chamber, uh, to meet some of those stormwater requirements. And, okay, yep, city approved this watershed, approved this watershed in the city. Uh, make you enter into a stormwater maintenance agreement for those devices. You sign it.

Marc Culver: 20:59

You're doing great, okay, okay, let's get this built. I want to. I got to get people moved in. I want to lease out these places. You're a year or two in or whatever. And, like you said, you know earlier, particularly with the underground one, again, it's kind of like at some point out of sight, out of mind. Now, if you're that property manager, what should you be doing to that infiltration basin and that underground chamber in order to meet the maintenance requirements of that agreement you have signed and was recorded against your property?

Ryan Johnson: 21:27

You know it really obviously depends on, like, what the actual BMP is. But yeah, it's like when we're looking at anything infiltration, you know, especially like the above ground base and stuff like that I mean it's like just when we start talking to the property owners, you know, especially when it's like they haven't been doing maintenance, is, you know the big thing is just go out there and identify it, look at it. You know how does? Is water getting into it? Does water come out of it? Is it full of trash? I mean it's like nothing that we're asking them to do on the front end is, you know is is really rocket science. It's just like we just want to make sure that you know water can get in and that it's. You know water can get out and you know water does infiltrate over time so it doesn't turn into, you know, kind of a cattail marsh in the end.

Ryan Johnson: 22:08

Um, you know, when we're looking at trying to infiltrate this water, we're trying to use the media and the soil to, um, you know, help decrease the volume and get all the stuff. So it's like if it starts to sediment in, um, you know, functionality drops pretty quick and, um, just keeping the inlet clean and keep some of that sediment out is, you know, goes a long way just for the long-term functionality to keep these things going. It's way easier to go out once a month after you know, maybe the bigger rain events make sure everything's clean and functioning versus having to go through you know, when the city tells you to, when it's not functioning, that you have to rip it up. You got to redo it. It's, you know, a little bit of preventative maintenance goes a long way.

Marc Culver: 22:50

What?

Ryan Johnson: 22:50

about the underground chamber.

Marc Culver: 22:51

Like what? What regular maintenance should?

Ryan Johnson: 22:54

uh, well, whether you're a, public agency or a private agency, if you have an underground chamber, what kind of regular maintenance should you be doing on those devices?

Ryan Johnson: 23:05

You know, anytime, like from the city side, it's like with even with ours, it's like usually what we do is we'll have like kind of a front end manhole that has like a sump, a baffle, you know, some kind of pre-treatment in it.

Ryan Johnson: 23:15

You know, just trying to pull out some sediments, trying to pull out some floatables, things like that, you know. So that's something that we go through probably a couple times a year. Just, you know, do the visual inspection, we do vac those out, you know, annually, just get it clean, make sure the storage space is available in there for whatever, whatever kind of material is going to make it through the system. And you know, that's very, it's kind of the same that we always recommend back to the property owners for these underground ones is, you know, and again, it's like we try to work with the development on the front end again, to try to build a little bit of redundancy in there We'd like to ask for, you know, having some kind of pretreatment structure before it actually gets to the underground. It's like it's way easier again to you know to treat the sumped manhole than it is to like. Try to crawl in one of these undergrounds and that in the weir section in the front end to clean that out.

Marc Culver: 24:07

So it's like you know we try to work with them. So how do you back out that sump than it is to back out the chamber itself?

Ryan Johnson: 24:15

Yeah for sure. So it's like we always, you know, tell them it's like if you can get in there, if you can check it, you know again. It's like we tell them annually is kind of um, you know kind of the minimum if you can get in there a couple times a year. Usually, you know, you're just kind of looking for things to make sure that you know again you have capacity, nothing looks too odd, um, and you know kind of go from there. But again it's like it's it can kind of get tuned in once you kind of get the site to know that maybe you don't have to vac it out every year for these undergrounds, maybe you can get a couple years if your parking lot's relatively clean. Um, you know you don't use a lot of sediment or sand in the parking lot. Um, not a lot of places do anymore. Um, salt is a whole different issue here, which you you know you've had this podcast before too- so salt design Yep.

Ryan Johnson: 25:00

You bet. So yeah, it's again. It's like none of it is really rocket science and a lot of the times it's like we even tell people just to go to the Minnesota Stormwater Manual. It's like they have a lot of the maintenance techniques right there and, you know, as long as we can get people to, you know, get them educated to know where to go, I mean it's like half the time it's like we just try to get the property owners to call the city. You know we'll give them some recommendations on what they should do, how they should do it, things like that, but you know it's we don't get a lot of calls. I'll talk about water all day.

Ryan Johnson: 25:37

You can attest to that, as as others can too, and you know, just looking for somebody to talk to, I guess.

Marc Culver: 25:43

You know it's not like it's it's. It's not unlike anything else in this world there are, there are people who are passionate about certain topics. You're going to get your property. Some property owners, the Randy Knee, precious of the world.

Marc Culver: 25:57

You're going to get some property owners that are Roosevelt resident stormwater guru who are passionate about the environment or even certain elements in the environment, and stormwater and clean water is certainly one of those things that some people are very passionate about, you being one of those people, and you might even find some commercial property owners who are passionate about it and will very likely do a very good job of maintaining their storm sewer devices. But by and large, most business owners, most property owners and we're talking mostly commercial property owners who have these BMP devices don't even could care less. All right, they have other things that they are worried about. They have a business to run. They could care less about this mandatory device that somebody made them install on their property, and so you have to get past that.

Marc Culver: 26:57

Yet there's a lot of education and re-education, ongoing education, because those properties will exchange hands and and such um. So you're kind of dealing with that now. You've you've, uh, decided to take that on um, maybe not by um. Do you have any idea Like you must have a rough idea of how many private BMPs you have in Roswell, like what's the general number?

Ryan Johnson: 27:22

Uh, we have about 400. Okay, that's a smaller number than I thought, but yeah, but the problem is it grows, you know, by 10 every year and you know, I don't know if it's a problem, but uh, when it, when it comes to me looking at you know what, I kind of need to manage it, you know it.

Ryan Johnson: 27:40

at some point maybe we get more and then I can say I need another staff, you know right like right, um, but yeah, and it's like, and then the thing with a lot of ours is, it's like, you know, the private bmt side is 400. Only about 90 of those are the traditional ponds, you know. And even by traditional ponds, I mean, somebody still likely hooked up the storm, the storm pipe, to a wetland and now we have a stormwater wetland, which it's not the typical MS4 pond, did you say. Did you say stormwater wetland?

Marc Culver: 28:13

Right.

Ryan Johnson: 28:15

I sure did.

Marc Culver: 28:16

I sure did man, did man I know that's a private joke with ryan, and I, but anyway, oh my gosh.

Ryan Johnson: 28:20

Um, yeah, that's, uh, it's a conversation all within itself.

Marc Culver: 28:26

Um, but yeah, I mean it's like with a developer that we do not want to reload, but in any way, in any way yep, um, but now that we think back to that it's, you know, a nice kind of joke about it, and uh it always brings back, you know, kind of a smile to my face and now it actually ends up being one of the easier ones to work with.

Ryan Johnson: 28:41

So it's. But again, I digress already. But yeah, again, with having like 90 ponds, that means we have, you know, about 300 of them are special. I mean it's their underground, their they're. You know there's some kind of infiltration base. I mean it's like it's the complexity of these went up and that's kind of the problem where you know we can tell somebody to maintain their pond and you know they kind of get it. We start telling them it's an underground infiltration gallery of just perforated pipe and rock and everything else. And you know it's like people glaze over pretty quick when they talk to me. So, um, you know, that's kind of where it's like we took out kind of that simple pond aspect and now we have these ones that we really kind of have to, like you know we really have to do a lot of explanation for how they work, what they need to happen, and you know things like that. So it's, um, yeah, it's uh, uh, it gets to be a lot just to re-educate property owners on the, on this type of thing yeah um, but with that

Ryan Johnson: 29:41

too. It's just like you know. It's like, oh sorry, I was just gonna say it's like you know we do with our maintenance agreement. We also do like a maintenance plan. So it's like on the front end, we get basically a document that says what's on site, how it needs to be maintained, when it needs to be maintained, when it needs to be maintained. So it's like now we have a document that it's served me well many times since we started doing this back in 2018, 19, as new property owner comes and you know, or they have an issue, it's like I can give them a document and say this is part of your property. This is, you know, developed for for the development, to be able to give them this one document and for them to be able to look at it and essentially turn over to their consultant to kind of figure out. I mean, that has saved hours and hours of just kind of going through the motions with a lot of different property owners. So sorry, my plug on a, you know, on a private BMP maintenance plan.

Marc Culver: 30:36

Yeah, I think that's right. I think that's a very key component and it gets into that education and reeducation for the property owners so that they do know. I mean we, you don't want to just, you know, say, hey, you got to maintain this thing, go Google it, you know like, help them figure out what they need to do so they're so that they're doing the right thing. Um, so you, roseville, in my time there, um, and I'm going to ask some questions, like I don't know the answers to them when I do know the answers, but that's part of being a podcast. I was um.

Marc Culver: 31:13

So at some roosevelt decided, hey, we need to do something a little more proactive, this stuff. I think there was a, if I recall correctly and I don't always recall correctly um believe there was a gas station, like a super america or something, where there was an issue with a storm pond that wasn't functioning properly and it was like we need to make these guys do something. But what mechanism do we have? Maybe we'd even have a maintenance agreement with them, but we kind of figured, hey, this is a bigger problem than just this one property. So maybe just kind of talk about that genesis of how Roseville decided that the city needed to do something a little more holistic on this issue, versus just dealing with that one issue at a time.

Ryan Johnson: 32:02

Well, look at that, marc, your memory doesn't fail. You're spot on again. But yeah, so it's like you know, it all kind of started back again. 2018 was kind of the turning point where we kind of just figured out something bigger needs to happen. So, yeah, it's like it started off with a gas station. Basically, it's like it wasn't draining. It was, you know, they had a weir that they haven't been maintaining. It was actually letting obviously more water out than it should have, so then it was causing problems for the downstream property. So you know, that was kind of that first test of wow. It's like you know it's all the BMPs that are here haven't been touched since they were installed, you know. So it's like how do we really kind of go through the process of, you know, having them go through and do their maintenance? And you know, just with that one, you know it's like we didn't have a maintenance plan, we didn't have a maintenance agreement. You know it was part of the plan when the gas station went in. So you know, that kind of really started to put the pressure on. You know, staff and you know, include yourself into that too, where, you know, when you were here. It's like this one case is draining through two or three other properties and it's causing issue on two or three other properties. So you know, it makes it a little bit more regional, made it a little bit more. You know a little bit easier for us just to be able to go in and like, really start to kind of put the screws to them and really kind of, you know drive kind of change the screws to them and really kind of you know drive, drive kind of change. So you know, taking this one as an example, you know it was just the thought to start going through.

Ryan Johnson: 33:41

You know, looking at city code, it's like these are put in for a reason. These are put in for permit. You know whether they were going to be installed as part of something new or they have been installed. I mean, in the end it's like they all tie up to the public storm sewer, new or they have been installed. I mean, in the end it's like they all tie up to the public storm sewer. So how do we protect the public storm sewer? And, you know, start to rewrite the city code, just to, you know, make BMPs on properties, kind of, give them outlines that you know ponds, every five years they have to go through and do something prescriptive about just what they need to do with maintenance. It's like how do you document it? How do you make sure it's clean? You know the inspection process, start looking at you know the infiltration site and start making it something annual where it's like you know it's like you really need to go out and do this annually now to make sure that these ones that really kind of rely on you know some kind of media, you know to kind of scrub stormwater. You know what's going to, what kind of the end result is going to be.

Ryan Johnson: 34:38

So you know that one project really kind of drew, drove a lot of just, yeah, modifying city code, adding city code, that you know gives us a little bit more teeth and you know to be able to go to properties and say you know it's in city code. It's like this is kind of what we need. This was put in for a reason. You know whether it's rate, control, water quality, both. But just us modifying city code and getting that in there. I mean it really helped us kind of move everything forward in the city when it comes to, like the private B&P maintenance.

Ryan Johnson: 35:13

Because it's like, thankfully city council saw that too, because of, again, just our drainage issues. Council saw that too because of, again, just our drainage issues. Um, you know, it's like, uh, city council was always very proactive about wanting to, you know, try to keep storm water clean, you know, protect our lakes, it's. You know we always get calls about ponds and lakes and you know they're green. Um, you know, again, these bmps really kind of help that out, so if they're not maintained they're gonna stay green forever. Um, and it's still obviously hard to re, uh, to get a pond and everything back to a nice, healthy, healthy state, but especially since they're there to kind of capture the capture the pollutants. But but, yeah, it's like just the city code really kind of helped drive a lot of this forward. And yeah, without us really, you know, putting it in code to be able to do a lot of this, um, you know, we probably wouldn't be where we are today when it just comes to, like you know, pushing a lot of this BMP maintenance forward.

Marc Culver: 36:02

Yeah, and so so you took the effort of kind of researching it, figuring out what we needed to do. What did our code say now? And you know what, what should our code say? You know how long did that process take, do you remember?

Ryan Johnson: 36:18

The process actually, I thought went pretty quick. I mean, it's like by the time we started put everything together. I mean, I think I think staff had a pretty good sense within three, three to six months, just, you know, seeing, seeing how we do our own maintenance and how these should be maintained outside of the public realm. So yeah, I think we turned around our stuff relatively quick because again, it's like we did have things like you know, again kind of the. We had some maintenance agreements, we had, you know, the stormwater manual, we had, you know some other, some other good research done that you know we could kind of hang our hat on and really kind of look to how we wanted to set up our code to really, you know, move this forward, um, so yeah, I think we moved it forward pretty quick.

Ryan Johnson: 36:59

I think overall, by the time we got everything council and we did everything, I mean we're probably in the uh, probably in about a year or so, maybe a little over. Um, just by the time we got it vetted through public works commission, um, all the staff was, uh, I wrote it. So I was, I was obviously all for it the entire time. I thought it was perfect, um, um, but again kind of getting some other eyes on it.

Marc Culver: 37:22

Make sure everything looks good I don't recall it being real controversial. I think you know the one thing about roseville is we uh, at least my time there we, we had a very engaged city council that liked to micromanage some things, but they were also really supportive and they were also very, I mean, for Roseville it was a value of the city to be good environmental stewards environmental stewards, you know. So you know, talking about clean water and the impacts it has on the lakes and and and such um. It made it pretty easy to plead the case of why we need to do this, even though it's going to be, it's going to be a burden on the, on the property owners, on the businesses. Um, but I think the council was really supportive and understood why we were doing what we what we did, and it went through pretty quick.

Ryan Johnson: 38:14

Yeah, no, I agree, it's like council here has been very supportive of a lot of the stormwater things that we've been trying to push forward. And again, it's anytime you can start putting it back to you know it's like we're just trying to keep the responsible parties responsible, for you know what they were required to do. You know it's like council really really got behind that and you know it's like even with you know some of the other things we do. We have our stormwater impact fund. It's like you know council was very supportive of it, but at the same point in time there, you know, they were very cautious and just said you know we want to try to get property owners to do what they have to do on their property and not spread it out to be an entire city issue and on their property and not spread it out to be an entire city issue.

Ryan Johnson: 38:55

And again, this private B&B maintenance with development is kind of the same thing. So, yeah, it's like they've been very focused on what can the private property do that's going to trigger our rules? What do they need to do long term? So, yeah, I mean it's like they've been very helpful, kind of like setting this whole thing up the entire time. So I got very lucky because, yeah, it ended up making it relatively easy and, and yeah, just kind of a smooth process.

Marc Culver: 39:22

Yeah, so you, you, you, you went through, you modified, we modified a city.

Ryan Johnson: 39:29

Yeah, include yourself, mark.

Marc Culver: 39:31

I yeah, yeah, yeah, I was in there to make this change, to implement this new policy and and requirements for you know, kind of a recertification and inspections and general maintenance and things like that. Um, what did you do after that? I now you have, you know, at that time you probably had 350 or something um of these bMPs across the city. So how, what process did you go through to to educate the property owners?

Ryan Johnson: 40:02

um.

Ryan Johnson: 40:03

First one was we honestly, we just, you know, cities are really good at sending out letters, so we sent out a letter um, you know we went back to the wheelhouse and you know the big thing with us was, you know, to really kind of help move this forward, was just, you know, letting the property owners know that have the bmps on their sites, that you it's like city codes changed. You know we added this new component to it. It has a maintenance requirement. You have a BMP on your property. You know just kind of set the stage that you know more was going to be coming. You know we set up, obviously, you know, a web page for this, started to get some documentation and get some resources available that you know if somebody was interested, cared they could check out our website and, you know, find out a little bit more about it. So you know that first step was just get it out there, just so anybody that wants to be proactive could do something. And then, once you know you get through that first one, we just kind of started to go basically half section by half section across the city to, you know, really focus on.

Ryan Johnson: 41:09

You know, we know we had a lot of BMPs, like in that Northwest side of Roseville a little bit more. Well, very Northwest is residential. Get a little bit farther, south and East, you know, very commercial, very industrial. We know there's a lot of BMPs there, you know, and like these are treating the higher impervious, um, you know, and like these are treating the higher impervious, uh, impervious sites around the city. So, um, you know, getting those ones uh inspected and getting them maintained, you know, should have the biggest bang for the buck. Then, at the same point in time, you know that's they should also be able to handle a little bit more of that burden of just getting them maintained.

Ryan Johnson: 41:45

Um, you know, it's like they we never asked for them to do, obviously, anything like right away. You know, any of the letters like especially the follow-up ones we started to really look at half sections was you know, you have 18 months to come up with something. I mean, you know, within the letter that we send out, it's at least twice in there. It's just like hey, it's like you know, contact me at the city, we're happy to meet out here, talk about it, answer questions. You know, do anything.

Ryan Johnson: 42:10

The big thing was just trying to get the property owner to like, call you know. Again it's like if they wouldn't know what they're getting themselves into by calling me to talk about stormwater. But again, that's kind of beside the point and you know, but again it's like a big thing of it was just trying to get to them so they understand something's on the property. They need to do something with it and it's like, while we are requiring them to maintain it, we're also here to kind of get them over that hump of what is it? What do I need to do? We're trying to make this as easy as possible for the property owners to try to get them maintained, cause. Again it's like it should help them out. It'll definitely help the city out if all these operate and if they know the easiest, most efficient way to just go through, whether it's inspection or even maintaining it's like you know, that should actually help with just their facility. So, and just how? How to allocate time?

Marc Culver: 43:10

Did you get? Did you get any angry phone calls or?

Ryan Johnson: 43:11

like pushback You're asking me to do what man?

Ryan Johnson: 43:19

Um, I actually got less than I thought. But I mean, every time we send, you know, send one out, you get a couple um, and usually, again, it's like they're trying to protect their livelihood. They're trying to protect, you know, their business. And it's like I, you know, it's like they're trying to protect their livelihood, they're trying to protect their business and it's like the big thing was listen to what they have to say and by the time you kind of work through them and let them know where it's just like, hey, this doesn't need to happen today.

Ryan Johnson: 43:38

It's like let's work through this, let's figure out what you need to kind of get you to succeed here. But yeah, it's like I know there's a couple that you know you usually get the overpaid city worker, government worker, you know, doesn't know what he's talking about, stuff like that.

Marc Culver: 43:55

Government regulation.

Ryan Johnson: 44:00

Yep, or just squashing my American dream? Right, but you know it's a stormwater, bmp, I don't think it's going to squash your dream. But, yeah, it's an added expense.

Marc Culver: 44:11

It is, and it's something else that they're required to do. And I will also say that Roseville is the size of a community, even though you're talking about 350 to 400 BMPs at that time when you started this. You know you, roseville's the size of a community, where you're starting at a point where, okay, we've got to have a, we've got to have a hammer, we have to have the consequence established so that when they don't do it, we have, we can take action, and that's the threat. You know, that's the, that's the stick. Um, but you know you are a good, nice guy.

Marc Culver: 45:02

The city council is generally resident and business friendly. Right, you know, you're going to work with those businesses to figure out. The city council is generally resident and business friendly. You're going to work with those businesses to figure out. You know, if it really is a burden, if they don't have the resources to work on it, what have you? You're going to, you're going to work with them to to ultimately come to the conclusion or the state of where this BMP needs to be.

Marc Culver: 45:30

But if they're being real obstinate, then, yeah, we can do what we call abatement too. We can go in there and we've got the power by city code now the authority to go in and clean out that BMP or reset it and make it new again, make it functional again and then make that property owner pay for it. So talk about that, because I know you did that in at least one location. And, honestly, one thing I can't remember is what was the outcome of the gas station that started all this. And then, secondly, I know there was that former gym it's not a gym anymore where I think you guys actually did an abatement. Is that correct?

Ryan Johnson: 46:17

Yeah, yeah, so you know, happy story with the gas station. They were all for. I mean the gas station is a huge national chain so they had some deep pockets they could work with. But yeah, I mean the gas station is a huge national chain so they had some deep pockets they could work with. But yeah, I mean overall it's like the gas station one worked out well. They were actually very easy to work with. They made the changes.

Ryan Johnson: 46:36

Especially, like once you start to kind of say it's like you know, it's like you're other than just the public system. I mean you're affecting your two property owners to the west, you, I mean it's in, you know they obviously the store manager there you know didn't know and you know, but it's like. So in the end that one worked out well and you know it's pretty smooth and, um, they've been doing a a pretty good job since. Again, just with staff turnover there, it's like you end up sending a letter just to get something turned around, but um, but yeah, it's like we did have to go through the abatement process with, uh, one big site, um, where you know it's like I always chuckle when I look at this site because yeah, it's just, you know it was a um, basically a fitness place and a big building, big parking lot and within you know this parking lot, I think you had like seven different types of bmps installed. I mean it's like it's.

Ryan Johnson: 47:24

I really thought like the consultant who put this plan together just was wanted to be able to say they designed everything, um, or they really hated the client it's I don't know which one, maybe it's both, yeah, um, but yeah, I mean it's like they had, like you know, a wet pond. They had filtration basins. They had like, um, you know, underground storage. They had, you know, uh, basically a vault that had like media in it to, you know, to remove phosphorus as the underground storage you know kind of weep back into the system. I mean it's like they could have got by with like one big underground and you know the one treatment on the end. Um, but yeah, with that one, that one was, that one was our first abatement and that was kind of kind of the pilot project that really set up a lot of just our process with.

Ryan Johnson: 48:10

You know, it's like you're trying to work with these property owners to be like, hey, it's like we need to come to some kind of conclusion storm sewer issues that were actually like overtopping the street because we didn't have capacity and we couldn't figure out why it was going down MnDOT and Bankman into the right of way, into that 35, 36. So when MnDOT calls us and says, hey, you have a problem, we're like, yes, we will look into that, because you know it's MnDOT and Roseville plays nice with MnDOT and we want to keep it that way. But but you know, so that was the big one where it's like we, so we went through basically there were like five different parcels that all drained into this one area. Go down the line, figure out who's doing what and what's not working. And yeah, it's like we got a couple, a couple of the properties did maintenance right away and then, yeah, it's like this one parcel was just kind of the holdout, where it's like we're working with them. We met with them on site multiple times. We got everything to the point where it's just like all right, it's like this is kind of what you need to do, and just radio silence. And it's just like all right, well, we need action. We've given you a year or so at, you know. So now it's just like work with our building official and it's just like all right, it's like how do we abate a property? I haven't done it before, so worked with them and they were, you know, instrumental in helping us through that process. Just with all right, here's the forms. You know, send them these letters at this timing, you don't get action. Run it through council, council, you know, ended up approving the abatement and then, yeah, from that point on, send them a letter saying the abatement got approved.

Ryan Johnson: 49:52

It's uh, we're running uh kind of the bmp maintenance show at this point and you know, hired a consultant to go out and do like one big thorough investigation of the entire site. Um, look at everything from. You know all every one of these bms on the site you know got looked through, got graded, got you know kind of a write-up in this report. Basically and you know it's the way we kind of set it up is, once we got the report back from the consultant, we reviewed it, we shared it with the property owner and said, hey, this is what you need to do. We can stop the abatement here or kind of put it on pause and just let you run with it. You know it'll save you some money, because if I'm not running this with a consultant, you know it's like all these costs go back to you. So it's like you're going to maintain it one way or another. So if you maintain it, it should save you some money. This is what you need to do, and if you don't, we'll just keep doing it and in the end it's just like we we ended up having to maintain a couple of the BMPs that were more critical for just our the way everything was tied into our infrastructure, you know.

Ryan Johnson: 50:54

So it's like we did kind of the underground components, got things back to like where they need to be and it's like we left, you know, kind of those above ground ones as is for a while, ones as is for a while.

Ryan Johnson: 51:04

So you know, once we kind of got to the point, you know it's like once we started giving them some invoices on like what the actual costs were, you know they started to kind of, you know, figure out that and you know that point too.

Ryan Johnson: 51:16

It's like now they were looking at the above ground ones where it's like, okay, it's like we can work with a company to come in and clean this and, you know, maintain an outlet and things like that, whereas you know it's like these underground ones are again, it's like they're specialized. It's like you have to know that. You know the manhole cover that says storm sewer on the parking lot. You know means you know storm sewer in the parking lot until you open it up and see this big pipe gallery. You know that's 10 feet deep and rows and rows wide. So it's it obviously scales up pretty quick so but in the end I think we got most of everything we wanted to get done done. So that's been good. That was kind of the win for you know just kind of going through the abatement process and you know it hasn't gotten easier with that site going forward.

Marc Culver: 52:07

But you know again, I was going to ask that because it's a different property. It's not. It's not a fitness center anymore.

Ryan Johnson: 52:12

It is not a fitness center anymore. So and that's kind of again, it's like it just kind of comes back to the you know, just again, thankfully we had the report that the consultant did for all the BMPs, for all the BMPs. So we just, you know, we actually ended up working with the consultant again just to put together kind of like a little bit more of a maintenance plan, part of that, and just send it to them and just say, you know, this is kind of what you need to do. Just the cost for us to have the consultant redo it a little bit and provide that to the property owner, I mean, was cheaper than you know, staff taking phone calls and emails and everything else all the time. And you know, it's like we usually task interns with us in the summer and you know, just this one just it worked out well but you know it's still ongoing.

Marc Culver: 52:58

We'll say yeah Well, do you have any other examples of any other stories of working with property owners in Roseville since that one?

Ryan Johnson: 53:11

Like the good, bad or the ugly Mark. You want the shiny happy people story or you want the other doom and gloom.

Marc Culver: 53:18

Give me a shiny, happy one, because we kind of did an ugly. Yeah, we did an ugly.

Ryan Johnson: 53:25

No, there's another property like on, say, fairview. Basically it's like they have kind of like a pond that kind of overflows into an infiltration area, so a little bit more complex, not just the straight up pond, but it's one of those where it's like it's the property owner you always want right. It's like you send them a letter. The guy might've had it in his hand for 20 minutes before he calls and says, hey, I got a letter from you. And usually in that point in my head I'm like, oh crap.

Marc Culver: 53:59

Yeah.

Ryan Johnson: 54:00

What's coming? No-transcript. So you know, to get this letter and to know that I should be doing something with it, it's like I want to do it. It's like apparently this guy has been in kind of an area where it's like, you know, it's for anybody that knows our old, uh, retired street supervisor, steve's weber, I mean it's like apparently steve has helped this guy out in the past just with some brushing and clearing and some things.

Ryan Johnson: 54:33

You know, if, uh, if you knew steve, you knew that was kind of his, uh, his bailiwick is to go out and help property owners in roseville, um, but it's like he's, you know, he's like it's like I always remember ste Steve coming out and taking a look at this and you know telling me it's like I should really look into it and so, yeah, finally, now that I got this letter, it's like what do I need to do? So kind of talk him through the process, give him some info. He's like I'm going to get back to you in two weeks. So you know, naive me, I put a little calendar reminder in two weeks.

Marc Culver: 55:05

I'm going to hear from this property.

Ryan Johnson: 55:08

And sure enough, it was two weeks. He's back and he's like I hired a consultant. The consultant's going to reach out to you. They just really want to know where this pond and where this infiltration basin need to be set at. Wow, so it's like it went from. Basically the guy had action within two weeks and he's like you know by that time you know he's looking at the kind of the timing he's like, well, it's like shoot. It's like how much trouble am I going to be in if I uh, wait until spring to you know, get this inlet cleaned out a little bit and do some of this other stuff? And it's like I would give you until next summer if you really wanted to, because, man, you are just the gold star standard of of this. But no, it's like, in the end, it's like he got everything done faster than I think any other property owner in Roseville cleaned up any BMP. And yeah, it's like he he even calls now and then just remind me that he is. He is out there looking at it. That's great, so no.

Ryan Johnson: 56:08

And that's kind of you know it's like it's what you want. It's like you want to be able to build kind of some of this rapport with these property owners to be like. You know I don't want to force them to do it, they need to do it. You know we'll do what we have to do to get it done. But man, when the property owner comes in and he wants his business to look good, he wants to be right with city code and I think he also again kind of some of the benefit of actually having city staff on his property before just to clean up some brush and cut back a couple of limbs that were overhanging. It's like I think he saw kind of the benefit of city's been good to me. Let's kind of return that back and again.

Marc Culver: 56:46

so I guess most of the it's getting.

Ryan Johnson: 56:47

I think he saw kind of the benefit of you know city's been good to me. Let's kind of return that back. And again so I guess most of that ends up going back to our maintenance supervisor just our superintendent. He probably drove most of it just for being the nice guy that he was and trying to help out the property owners as much as he could and trying to help out the property owners as much as he could.

Marc Culver: 57:07

Yeah, you know, I think that that whole conversation of the follow-through and the ongoing follow-through to this issue and this program, you know, I mean if they didn't have a Ryan Johnson at Roseville, it wouldn't be possible to manage that, that follow through. It would have been very difficult to implement that, that policy and such to begin with, but then to just to manage all the follow through of hiring a consultant or responding to the calls or sending letters out or even, you know, every so often saying hey, we haven't heard from these property owners, we need to go check something out. And not every community has water resources. It's becoming more and more common, at least in Minnesota. Here and in the metro area At Brooklyn Park, we kind of have a water guy, we kind of don't, which is a different story and I'm working on it.

Marc Culver: 58:10

I'm working on it. I just promoted we have a water. Mitch Robinson is a great guy. He's almost as passionate about stormwater and water resources as you are, but I promoted him Almost. He's a city engineer and so now he's. Now I got to back them, I, and so now he's. Now I got to back them, I got to, because he's still doing some of that work, but he shouldn't be doing all of that work anymore.

Marc Culver: 58:30

But it, just it on the priority from your city council on some of these issues. Depending on some of the flooding issues like you're talking about, that Roseville experience, this may or may not be a priority for your community but ultimately somebody should be checking in on these required devices at some point and making sure that they are in an operable condition. So, given your experience on this, ryan, do you have any lessons learned or I wish we would have done this differently or anything on how you guys have implemented this program and just kind of the ongoing uh maintenance of the maintenance program uh, maintenance of the maintenance program.

Ryan Johnson: 59:34

I mean overall it's like everything's worked out well. I mean I always, you know, it's like I wish I would have known on the front end just how much time you can really put into it. I knew it was going to take time, I knew you're going to put effort towards it, um, but I mean it's like it. It takes a lot, um, and just kind of balancing kind of you know, the maintenance program like with just everything else that comes up working for a city, um, yeah, just having a nice handle on that on the front end, um, and just being able to kind of schedule out, maybe getting a little bit more of like the intern involvement, like especially during the summer, to kind of drive a lot of that to drive a lot of that forward.

Marc Culver: 1:00:14

I'm learning more and more every year that interns specifically, as I saw you do, you know really focused interns. Like you know, we hire interns and we say, oh, they're going to work on this, work on that. But to hire an intern specifically to do X or to work on Y is really valuable. I you know there's there's a few things in there. That one you get some busy work done to. You are mentoring that intern and they learn a lot and they determine what they like and don't like about the industry and things like that. There's a lot of value in that for our industry. But three, I think it also particularly long term if there's something that you need to get done, you can get it done with interns. But you can also then build the case of hey, look at all the cool things we're doing with this intern. At some point we need a full-time person doing this work, we need this ongoing and you can kind of build that case. You can build that momentum and that demand for that service or that whatever work that that intern is doing.

Marc Culver: 1:01:25

We're kind of talking about that a little bit in Brooklyn Park about sustainability, because we don't have a lot of. We don't have anybody dedicated to sustainability right now. Our council isn't really talking about it and so you know, we're kind of like, well, how do we build the case for having a dedicated staff person do sustainability? And we're thinking that maybe we get to bring in an intern, you know, green core member, like we did at roseville. We kind of went through that at roseville, you know, um, we brought noelle in and she did some awesome things. Um, not noelle is who is your sustainability specialist?

Ryan Johnson: 1:02:01

now, uh, noelle is a sustainability specialist. Now, yeah, yeah, I didn't get the name right.

Marc Culver: 1:02:05

I did get the name right. I did get the name right. Good, good. But yeah, we hired her as an intern and we like really were able to show what cool things we could do with this person dedicated to that task, and now she's a full-time staff member doing awesome things, I'm sure, and I think that's a really great case study for using interns in a variety of ways in in in many different aspects of public works, to to kind of build that. But yeah, so it's interesting. That just kind of triggered that thought in my mind when you mentioned using interns to help with with some of that work. So you know, well, great, anything else you want to add to that?

Ryan Johnson: 1:02:45

Let's see here. The only other thing, kind of getting back to like the maintenance of the maintenance program. I mean, the new thing that I'm going to probably try going, whether it's this year, next year, is I'm probably going to try getting you know we have a like a private hydrant program we have, you know, right now we have, I think we have a contractor go out and like you know, uh, work on private hydrants, you know, make sure they operate, make sure they're inspected. Um, gonna try to maybe set something up like to do the private bmp kind of like that too. Um, this year it's like I want to get a consultant come out, you know, and do, like you know, kind of a similar inspection kind of set up. You know, kind of a process.

Ryan Johnson: 1:03:24

If you go to a, this is how you're going to expect it, you know, inspect everything, you know kind of like this. So maybe use our private or public BMPs to kind of build that and then maybe offer this out, you know, maybe next year, to some of the ones that whether we're not getting responses on maybe part of it is just hey, we're you know it's like, and that might also actually kind of shorten like if we need to do some kind of like abatement or something where it's like, even if they're not inspecting it, hey, it's like we're going to use a consultant, we're going to spend five grand, they're going to come out and do this work, get you to this point and then you know we can either call it off or whatever. But it's like it'd be nice to kind of have somebody kind of um in step with us already to be like this is the work that we need, this is what we want out of it. Um, because we really want to push this out, to like the private bmp side, to really kind of drive some of these forward, because I think we got the low hanging fruit done.

Ryan Johnson: 1:04:15

Um, now it's like we're kind of to the point where it's like if we would probably just start needing to abate a lot more of these properties just to get a lot more done, so maybe by doing this next one of just like having something available, offering up like the consultant to come out and do the work, and they can you know whether they we go through again kind of the abatement side, or if they just you know they'll sign some agreement that they're going to pay the consultant up to this amount to do the inspection process for them and everything trying to just drive some more inspections. Trying to drive some more maintenance pay the consultant up to this amount to do the inspection process for them and everything trying to just drive some more inspections, trying to drive some more maintenance, try to make it a little easier for them.

Marc Culver: 1:04:52

And and the hydrant, the private hydrant program that you were talking about. There's another thing we started when I was there, uh, the utility staff, falcone, uh started this. We had all these private hydrants that we were kind of like aware of, and you know, maybe flushing and checking and some things like that.

Marc Culver: 1:05:09

But right, um, ultimately we sent out a letter and say, hey, uh, if you're not gonna flush and check your hydrants, we will, but we're gonna charge you for that. And I think that was a good program, just to one remind property owners that, oh yeah, we probably do something with these fire hydrants before we have a fire and the fire department can't turn the water on, um, or you know, or just you know, having the city take care of it for us at a cost. So I think that was that's a good model, um to to kind of offer that service easier. Because a lot of you know you're going to get those property owners like I don't, oh, I don't, I don't know what I need to do, just do it for me. You know pretty much, um.

Marc Culver: 1:05:54

So so, yeah, good, good, well hey um, we're a little over an hour now. Um, this has been great, I knew we would, we would have no problem. Uh, filling an hour of just talking. I just thought this was part one right, right.

Ryan Johnson: 1:06:06

We could go on for filling an hour of of just talking.

Marc Culver: 1:06:08

I just thought this was part one. Right, right, we could go on for another hour, of course, and maybe we will. Maybe we will record another episode on. On something else, there are lots of things water reuse, you know, some of those other fun projects that you've worked on over the years, that we've worked on over the years together. For sure, slow dip, oh.

Ryan Johnson: 1:06:31

I love slow dip.

Marc Culver: 1:06:34

South Lake Owasso drainage improvement program project yeah, no, very good.

Ryan Johnson: 1:06:41

And it looks fantastic too, so we can do a tour of that one if you want.

Marc Culver: 1:06:46

I would like to. But yeah, that was where we used permeable pavements to kind of do a pavement project on a private road, but also with some really good stormwater benefits to it as well. So cool, some fun stuff. Well, hey, ryan, thanks for joining us today. Joining me, I say us like there's more than me at one of me, but yeah, it sounds, it sounds better, it sounds more professional, I guess.

Ryan Johnson: 1:07:10

Um, it's people in the background.

Marc Culver: 1:07:12

Right, Right, my multiple personalities, I guess. Uh, but hey, thanks, this was. This was fun and seriously we'll nerd out about sometime in the near future. Thanks, Ryan.

Ryan Johnson: 1:07:26

Yeah, thank you very much, Mark, I loved it.

Marc Culver: 1:07:29

And one last thing before we go, as always, just going to make that plea for you to if you're listening, if you're enjoying this, you know, tell your friends, tell your family, tell strangers on the street how awesome this podcast is, Even if you don't think it's awesome. Tell them anyway. And you know we need to. We need to go viral. We just need that viral moment. I mean, maybe ryan johnson's our viral moment, uh. But you know, share on linkedin in particular, comment on it. I hear the algorithm loves comments. So if you comment on comments and people comment on the comment of the comment, maybe we'll go viral, but would love to really see this podcast grow. But for all of you regular listeners, thanks for listening and we will see you next time. Nerds out.