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HomeMy WebLinkAbout06-30-2020 IPM MinutesMINUTES OF REGULAR MEETING INTEGRATED PEST MANAGEMENT SUB -COMMITTEE COUNCIL CHAMBERS 1225 MAIN STREET, SEBASTIAN, FL JUNE 30, 2020 Call to Order The meeting was called to order by Mr. Benton at 3:00 p.m. It. Roll call Present: Dr. Graham Cox (Zoom) Christine Kelly-Begazo (Zoom) Ruth Callaghan (Zoom) Thomas Carrano Also Present: Brian Benton, Leisure Services Director Kim Haigler, Environmental Technician Ken Griffin, Engineering Director of Sebastian Public Works and Stormwaler Janet Graham, Technical Writer (Zoom) Absent: Kathy Brothers -- Excused Brian O'Neill III. ADDroval of Minutes — June 8. 2020 Mr. Benton called for a motion to accept the Minutes as presented. A motion to accept the Minutes of the June 8, 2020 meeting was made by Ms. Haigler, seconded by Mr. Carrano, and approved unanimously via voice vote. IV. Announcements: A. Hometown News Article Ms. Haigler stated on June 18th there was a great article in the "Hometown News." The article was titled "Park Pest Plan Would Limit Chemicals." It has a thorough summary of the Plan to date and provides a link for future agendas. B. Native Pollinator Garden Installation INTEGRATED PEST MANAGEMENT SUB -COMMITTEE PAGE 2 MINUTES OF JUNE 30, 2020 Ms. Haigler stated the garden was installed this past Sunday. There were seven volunteers from the Sebastian Garden Club. Dr. Baker from the Audubon Society came by as well. She thanked the Audubon Society for providing the native plants and the City staff for clearing the area, installing the border, and setting up a water truck. All the plants were installed. Native wildflower and coreopsis seeds were used to fill in the excess spaces. In the future, the garden will feature a pathway through the middle with a bench. C. Air Potato Beetle Release Ms. Haigler has been in contact with Emily Kraus from the University of Florida Biological Control Department. The beetle requests are on back order; however, Ms. Haigler will submit a map and estimate coverage of the City sites that are invaded by the air potato vine. Ms. Kraus's department is eager for these sites to become part of their research on the spread of the invasive vine and the beneficial beetles. Once that information is gotten to Ms. Kraus, the City staff can begin doing a large-scale release. V. Public Input Dr. Cox asked if Ms. Haigler would share the "Hometown News" article. Ms. Haigler stated she would send the link out to everyone. VI. New Business A. Non -Chemical Control Spreadsheet Use within the document Mr. Benton reviewed that this was a request from the Sub -Committee to include within the IPM Plan. He described that it is a collaboration with what is included in the Plan. It also includes some of the biological, cultural, and mechanical recommendations. He asked if anyone has input or feedback on the chart and how that should be addressed before it goes into the Plan. Ms. Callaghan proposed a possible addition and inclusion In the chart. It is known that fire ants are an issue in general. The Avian product that is used for fire ants lists conditions that ants like in general. It lists among items that attract fire ants, besides its product, are pet food and oily, greasy food. She suggested adding that after events that occur in Riverview Park and anywhere else where there is food served and/or consumed, it may be worth discussion of, after such events, going through and wiping surfaces where attendees may tend to sit and eat. Mr. Benton thought that was a good suggestion. INTEGRATED PEST MANAGEMENT SUB -COMMITTEE PAGE 3 MINUTES OF JUNE 30, 2020 He will see that it is added along with trash removal, pressure cleaning, and wiping down of surfaces in the parks. Dr. Cox stated that he likes it overall and thanked Mr. Benton for doing it. Ms. Haigler suggested taking how it is listed in the paper, remove that, and put the table in instead. Ms. Callaghan agreed. Mr. Benton suggested that in the document where it says, "Further Non -Chemical Recommendations," he would include the recommendations as the individual parks are listed. He would include this chart following Page 18, right before the chemical methodology portion of the Plan. Once the Plan is reviewed for final approval, if the verbiage on Page 18 seems too much, it can be edited. Mr. Benton stated this verbiage regarding the fire ants will be included for the Sports Complex, Riverview Park, and all of the pavilions as well as the boat ramp location — anywhere where food and greasy items are utilized. B. Field Use Environmental Impact Quotient (EIQ) i. Explanation of formula if. Pros/cons Ill. Approval for IPM Plan Ms. Haigler explained that the environmental impact quotient was developed by Cornell University, and it has been perfected over the years. It is pretty thorough on the environmental effects of these chemicals. Ms. Haigler explained how the EIQ rating is arrived at. She stated the EIQ data have been added into the chemical spreadsheet. Ms. Callaghan inquired regarding the application rates. There is some field EIQ information listed without stating how the application rate was arrived at. She asked if previous applications are being used for products in this list. Ms. Haigler stated yes. She reviewed that this is not a complete table, and some editing may need to be done before the final Plan. Mr. Benton explained how he arrived at the EIQ rate on products that staff has used. Ms. Callaghan asked if there is any historical Information that points to why the application rates were used on the products that are used in the City. Mr. Benton stated he will speak with the City's applicators and see why they have used those application rates. He will include the current application rates used by the applicators. Ms. Callaghan inquired whether this IPM Plan is going to be very prescriptive for the City, or will options be given. Ms. Haigler reviewed that the restricted chemicals are listed. For INTEGRATED PEST MANAGEMENT SUB -COMMITTEE PAGE 4 MINUTES OF JUNE 30, 2020 anything that is on this list but is restricted, there will have to be a form submitted by staff and submitted to the IPM Coordinator and City Manager for signed approval. As far as the EIQ, she sees it as a great way to quantify and be able to report on the IPM program as a whole. It allows for comparison between seasons and years. She also stated there is a great PowerPoint online, and she will send a link to it. It is on YouTube, and it really explains it well. Mr. Benton explained that an EIQ is assigned to the active ingredient. Then the application rates are taken, and that is how the field use EIQ is arrived at, which actually shows a better version of the toxicity and all the factors that go into the EIQ on the field use level that is currently being used or is proposed to be used on products that have not been used. He stated the field use EIQ is a way to showcase everything staff was trying to gather, such as the input from all the Sub -Committee members. The City wants to reduce the toxicity and reduce the runoff, the impact on birds, insects, bee toxicity, etc. This captures all those items, and he thinks it will be seen that the field use EIQ numbers are even less than was thought once a full year report of what was used is produced. As new products become available, that is when a shift will be started where it can be shown that this year this amount of product was used, and this is the total field use EIQ for the year. As the transition is made to begin using different products that come online that are found to be even better, it shows that the numbers are going down in the field use EIQ. Mr. Benton stated the natural products are not listed in the EIQ information. That is going to be a challenge to show how those products compare. A lot of the natural products do have toxicity concerns themselves. He stated it will be seen if Cornell starts to include these natural products in their EIQ documentation. But that information is not available presently. Ms. Haigler stated there is a great deal of research related to the EIQ. She did not want to go any further with the calculations on this until the Sub -Committee found that this seems like a good valuation system. Mr. Benton called on the Sub -Committee members to approve the investigation on natural products with EIQs in this Plan. Ms. Callaghan recommended to proceed with its inclusion. She recommended that it be done with inserting asterisks in the EIQ fields, mentioning that current numbers are not available at this time but will be updated when that Information Is obtained. She also recommended that in the text section that goes along with this table it be specified that current application rates were used in this table for what has been used in the past for these products. She would like additional text to be added to explain the application rate part that feeds into that field EIQ. She stated her initial question to the group was to see if these were going to be factors in initial selection of products if the Plan is supposed to be used to look at these field EIQs and determine which has the lowest number and worked for fire ants, and that this is going to used as INTEGRATED PEST MANAGEMENT SUB -COMMITTEE PAGE 5 MINUTES OF JUNE 30, 2020 the recommended product, or if it is just one of many criteria. She recommends text on how it is compared from season to season and year to year and to watch the improvement. Relative to initial selection of products, she thinks it is worth mentioning what the goal is. A motion to move forward with the investigation, with some addition to text, was made by Ms. Callaghan, seconded by Dr. Cox, and approved unanimously via voice vote. VII. Old Business A. Revised Chemical Spreadsheet Use of EIQ for comparison Mr. Benton stated that the Sub -Committee has approved the use of the field use EIQ within this chart. ii. Cost comparison method Mr. Benton reviewed that there was a recommendation by the Sub -Committee two meetings ago to develop a cost rating per thousand square feet with dollar signs to make it correlate to each other better as opposed to the costs that are shown which can be per 25 pounds, per gallon, or per 32 ounces. That does not show any correlation, so it was put together as per thousand square feet. It is stated in the chart that one dollar sign ($) is less than $1.00; $1.00 to $1.99 per thousand square feet is two dollar signs ($$); it goes all the way up to more than $4.00 per thousand square is five dollar signs ($$$$$). Ms. Callaghan asked if the cost rating just includes the cost for the product, or does it include equipment and personnel used added onto that. Mr. Benton stated it only includes the product per thousand square feet. No labor costs, machine costs, etc. were included. Ms. Callaghan suggested that a footnote for that column be included slating howthe costs were derived and what they include. Mr. Benton stated he will add it as a note to that chart. Vill. Sub -Committee Member Matters Ms. Kelly-Begazo commended Mr. Benton and Ms. Haigler on the amount of work that was put into this. Dr. Cox staled that at the last meeting he offered to produce a section on available non- toxic and natural -based chemicals, both the pros and cons. He sent to Ms. Haigler links INTEGRATED PEST MANAGEMENT SUB -COMMITTEE PAGE 6 MINUTES OF JUNE 30, 2020 on this subject. He has listed a summary of properties and primary uses for the whole list of 30 biopesticides. He wondered if this something that should be considered as an appendix so that the Plan is immunized, so to speak, from public criticism that the Sub - Committee did not consider all the other natural organic biopesticides. He thinks it might be a useful appendix. Mr. Benton stated he and Ms. Haigler have reviewed the information Dr. Cox had provided. That subject will be up for discussion at the next meeting. He also stated that an Integrated Pest Management website is going to be developed, and a lot of that information will be included on the website. Ms. Callaghan stated she does have some comments for the June version of the document, and she will pass those along. She can also hold them if there is already a plan for what is next. Ms. Haigler stated it was voted to approve Sections 1 through 5 as they are. That does not mean staff is not open to editing. It just means it will not be reviewed at every meeting. She would like to have Ms. Callaghan's comments. Ms. Callaghan suggested that things like exceeding thresholds, going and inspecting, and considerations for making sure that there is effectiveness of application of product be done. She recommends that some text be added that, if a product is used effectively in getting rid of ants, did it cause any problems to the natural habitat and other things that are wanted to be not affected by this product. It might be good to have a frequency specification as to how often inspections are going to be done. She will send her written comments to Ms. Haigler. IX. Staff Matters Mr. Benton went over the timeline on getting this Plan for the parks completed so that the Sub -Committee can move forward to an Integrated Pest Management Plan for canals. X. Items for Next Acenda Mr. Benton stated the next meeting will be Tuesday, July 7th at 3:00 p.m. At that meeting the recommendations of Dr. Cox will be discussed and a few other things that were brought up today with adding verbiage for the chemical methodology chart recommended by Ms. Callaghan and a few other items. He would hopefully have another meeting on July 14th, Tuesday. That will be the day that the plan for the final draft of the IPM Plan will be presented. He would like to have this finalized either on the 14th of July or at a meeting sometime the third week of July so that he can present the Plan to the Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee on July 27th for their approval. Then it will be presented to the Natural Resources Board at their meeting in August. It would then go to City Council at their last meeting in August. That would be all the stages of approval for this Plan. INTEGRATED PEST MANAGEMENT SUB -COMMITTEE PAGE 7 MINUTES OF JUNE 30, 2020 Dr. Cox inquired about the program for the canals and waterways. Mr. Benton stated there have been some quotes for some mechanical removal. Mr. Griffin is here, and he can provide the Sub -Committee and staff with a quick update. Mr. Ken Griffin, Engineering Director of Public Works and Stormwater stated that multiple quotes for mechanical removal from the Hardee Park area were received. Five firms were solicited. Three quotes were received. The City accepted the best quote, and an agenda item has been prepared for the Council to consider next week on Wednesday evening. He stated if the City Council approves, this will be complete mechanical removal of all the excess vegetation, which is truly excessive, in the Hardee Park area of the canal. Dr. Cox asked if there will be an advisory committee for the canal IPM Plan. Mr. Benton stated there will be. XI. Adiournment There being no further business, Mr. Benton adjourned the meeting at 3:50 p.m. By: /� �� Date: %/j y/et d d a jg