00;00;00;00 – 00;00;33;02
Unknown
Well. Welcome, everybody. Grace, you want to, live in? Sure. yeah. So we’re going to go through a lot of content fairly quickly. I’m going to talk a bit about what uns are and then hand it over to Anita, who is going to talk more about the permitting aspect of things. And then Tim’s going to talk through the various connections to land use and give some examples.

00;00;33;04 – 00;01;00;10
Unknown
What we’ve done through our work, and I feel very nervous talking about wetlands in front of the public. So what is this awesome provision of you professionally, by the way? with that, is that the vernal pool? I think this is a vernal pool. And yeah, that’s what I was thinking. You know, it looks like it. yes.

00;01;00;18 – 00;01;25;13
Unknown
I needed to feel free to feel free to jump in if I get anything wrong. And also say, I obviously did that wetland delineation course two months ago now, which is part of the impetus for this relaying that information. so wetlands are particularly important here in Winter Brook because they are federally regulated through the Clean Water Act.

00;01;25;13 – 00;02;00;07
Unknown
And so you need to protect wetlands. And there’s this federal definition. And basically they’re places that are wet or regularly wet or at least part of the year. there needs to be relative permanence. And often this is sustained by rain or groundwater or runoff. And it creates areas that are vegetated with wet adapted plants. And there’s a lot of different kinds of wetlands and meadows.

00;02;00;07 – 00;02;12;09
Unknown
Just go to the next slide to talk through some of those kinds of wetlands.

00;02;12;11 – 00;02;43;12
Unknown
And here’s some illustrations of those different kinds. We have this is the cowered and classification system. And it has five major systems that are listed up there. There’s estuarine wetlands, connected to estuaries, which usually means, freshwater and ocean water and upland areas all connected. And then the lack of stream wetlands, which are wetlands associated with lakes, riverine.

00;02;43;14 – 00;03;16;00
Unknown
Pretty self-explanatory. Marine wetlands, which are often related to the ebb and flow, ebb and flow of tides. And then how strain is that? How we say that colostrum wetlands also blends? which is kind of everything else. And that includes swamps, marshes, obs vernal pools and bottom lands. So I think a lot of what Anita and Jim deal with is those power stream wetlands, but also lack of strain.

00;03;16;00 – 00;03;43;00
Unknown
But I can talk more about that. I go over that slide here, clearly identifiable as any of those kinds. Yeah. What’s on the slide? so the bottom left of this line, that slide, that would be a riverine wetland. And I think the other two would be considered. I was less last and riverine. Plus this basically just means marshy.

00;03;43;02 – 00;04;08;20
Unknown
And they can be forested. They can be forested like the one on top. And or they can be or business or shrubby. so it just this just refers to, you know, if you think marshy, that’s going to be the category that you’re looking at. Lacustrine is just lake edges. Oh. What’s that? Yeah. at the end of this, I’m to.

00;04;08;22 – 00;04;43;14
Unknown
I don’t see anybody taking note. this is I’m taking notes. There’s a field test to. Yes, I’ve done test and a written test as part of my course. so, because here’s federal regulated and, you know, regulated, there’s a lot, detailed methodology and how to determine what is a wetland, what is not a wetland. And so that basis comes from this Army Corps of Engineers wetland delineation manual.

00;04;43;19 – 00;05;07;05
Unknown
And then there’s also regional supplements for the different areas of the US. And we typically use the western mountains, valleys and coast subregion supplement. And that gives more specific information on vegetation, soils and hydrology or this region. And moving a lot.

00;05;07;07 – 00;05;33;23
Unknown
So to do that delineation, what we typically see is data collection through the use of sample plots. And then you would go around and flank the boundary of the wetland and compile the report is the two second inversion of what is involved in a wetland delineation. Now I’ll go into a little bit more detail on that. So you can go to the next slide.

00;05;33;26 – 00;06;06;07
Unknown
So pretty field research which is conveniently also some of the tools that we as planners have available to us to look at where there might be likely to be wetlands or not would be you would want to have your study area. And in that study area you can use, one the National Wetland Inventory and the statewide wetland inventory that we have here in Oregon that shows where there are already official wetlands.

00;06;06;10 – 00;06;37;04
Unknown
And another good thing to look at is just detailed aerials that can show otter and other patterns, and just very good at finding vegetation patterns, that sort of thing. Historic aerials and be very informative. And then soil types. And in Oregon we have maps, hydraulic soils and partially hydro soils which are indicators of wetland likelihood and then aggregates another major aspect.

00;06;37;04 – 00;06;59;09
Unknown
And so I think Anita and so whenever they go to wetland area, they’ll look into all of these things extensively before going out into the field to get a good idea of what’s going on. And I’ll just say we can point out one exception. I was just going to add one extra tool that I just learned about what was lidar.

00;06;59;12 – 00;07;27;04
Unknown
The government has LiDAR that enables you to get more detailed micro topographic information, and that’s been real handy in a few cases, especially for, scoping. Right. Yes. Yeah. And I was going to say we use Google Earth has a good historic imagery function. And then Oregon Explorer is a great way to look at I drink soils very quickly, but we can also download those things in GIS.

00;07;27;06 – 00;08;00;20
Unknown
And if you’re in urban areas you will have some a local weapon inventory, which indeed aren’t on the statewide inventory. And the national in addition to the National Weather. Next slide. So out in the field actually delineating wetlands, this is kind of the fun part where you get to tromp around, fields and forests and look at soils.

00;08;00;23 – 00;08;34;15
Unknown
There’s three parameters that you’re looking at. And I don’t know, Tim, did you bring the data sheets? I mean, it’s very exciting. it was interesting to me to go to this course and, and learn how everything about delineating a wetland, at least to me, seemed very fine grained, very technical, like it seems like there’s specific methods that you have to use and you have to set specific parameters.

00;08;34;15 – 00;08;57;16
Unknown
And of course there’s going to be gray areas within that. But it comes down to very specific ways of determining whether or not you have a wetland. And so there’s three parameters that you’re looking at are soils hydraulic indicators and vegetation. So with soils this means digging pits. You dig a pit under where you think a wetland might be the lowland area.

00;08;57;16 – 00;09;15;21
Unknown
And then you take a pit on the upland area where you think. So in between that wetland boundary that you think is there, you’ll dig a pit on either side, and then you look at that soil and you’ll look at the different horizons of the soil, the different layers that you’re seeing. And you look at soil color and soil texture.

00;09;15;23 – 00;09;39;25
Unknown
And then you’ll use these color books also determine the soil color. And you get these different combinations of soil that are either wetland soils or not. And often that’s based on yes, color, texture, combination where the different layers are, how deep the different layers are. And so it’s very, very, very technical. and it seems like there’s a lot to learn from it.

00;09;39;25 – 00;10;07;24
Unknown
But one of the most important things is that gray soils often have this redact some more perfect features, which means that iron has leached from them and sometimes concentrated like you can see in this picture. And that’s a very indicative of a wetland soil. And then for Heidrich indicators, that just means is there a hydrology in the area that indicates a wetland.

00;10;07;24 – 00;10;36;01
Unknown
So you’re looking for signs of water or you’re looking for saturation? you’re early in the wet season and or surface water or inundation and also you’re looking at like the topography of the area. Does it make sense that water like, can be cool in this area? And then for vegetation, you’re looking for a certain predominance of plants that do well in wet conditions.

00;10;36;03 – 00;11;06;25
Unknown
And there’s you have to kind of list out all the plants and then look up whether or not those are wetland plants. And you can compare the relative cover of wetland type plants to non wetland type plants. And it’s there’s some interesting there’s something called a dominance test that helps you determine that. So and ultimately you need to meet two of the three finance parameters to say something as a wetland.

00;11;06;27 – 00;11;33;04
Unknown
And yeah, you need to meet what you need to meet two, the three parameters. Right. You have to meet all you want to meet all three. All three. Yeah. There’s a just to clarify that a little bit. You do have to meet all three, but they don’t all have to be present at the same time. And we can do wetland delineations in the off season for say, a river situation.

00;11;33;06 – 00;11;55;02
Unknown
And there’s over backflow during the early part of the growing season with this spring runoff. And so there may not be a hydrology indicator present there, but we can start looking at I think you’re thinking of indirect indicators because you don’t have to have the primary in hydrology, but you can have secondary ones. And that’s like things like, geo morphic position.

00;11;55;03 – 00;12;12;14
Unknown
So in that in our example of the river situation, there is a depression and there’s a water source. So we know water collects there. So that would meet you in morphic position. And then if you look at the the residual vegetation might be things like water parsley or ash trees. And so that is neat maps. But you need two of those.

00;12;12;17 – 00;12;34;12
Unknown
If you have direct observation in hydrology you only need one. So you can sort of if you if you’re in the off season, there’s a way with there’s to make it happen where there’s one or more of those indicators can be absent at the time, but they do. All they do also need to be met. That I think that the we’re talking about was something that was considered in the 89 manual that was adopted, and then they they let it go.

00;12;34;15 – 00;13;09;07
Unknown
So that might be where that idea came from. Yeah. Well that’s what happens with a one year old is great. Well why. Well and maybe they’ll probably start doing it in 90. I don’t think they’ll. Schools are stuck anywhere. But guys I think this is the profession is teaching this class. So I think question about what if there’s a colorblind person, third eye color blind person, be a wetland scientist.

00;13;09;10 – 00;13;35;19
Unknown
It seems like they would have a hard time with the soils, because you’re trying to find a good match and you have to go on hue, chroma and value. You know, one of those things is chroma. So it might be tough, but, and, you know, you get say like I’ve known one, and, but but his color blindness did not extend to being unable to differentiate soil color.

00;13;36;19 – 00;13;54;24
Unknown
but I’ll bet your money that if something really came down to soils is the only thing, and it was a big deal that he’d probably call for an assist. I know surveyors that are too. And so I’ve made adjustments in the flagging that I buy so that they can find the flags in the field. Excellent. Just not just pink or red flag.

00;13;54;25 – 00;14;14;15
Unknown
Yeah, yeah. Red. Green. It’s a red. Really not. Help me. Yeah. All right. Thanks. Oh. Thanks, Grace. You.

00;14;14;17 – 00;14;45;29
Unknown
Oh, this is me. Yeah. sorry, I just, I it just took me a minute. so, so far, we’ve talked about wetlands, and they’re generally the focus of what we do because usually the upper extent of any jurisdictional resource is going to be the wetland edge, where more concentrated water sort of disperses into the landscape. but there are other the actual rule pertains to wetlands and other waters of the state.

00;14;46;00 – 00;15;04;06
Unknown
And the waters of the state include some things that I’m middle of. This is going to be pretty obvious, but these do have different regulatory boundaries. Like the river in the first picture, you’ve got an ordinary high water line. That’s going to be the regulatory boundary. That’s a regulatory boundary of the river component. And there may be a wetland boundary outside of it as well.

00;15;04;10 – 00;15;28;02
Unknown
The both of those need to be delineated. So that’s a field budget. Consider ation is well you don’t just do the outer extent. You have to get both. And so that’s two trips or one extra slow one. the territorial sea is a is also listed as a jurisdictional water. Both of those are also affected by another federal law called the Rivers and Harbors Act.

00;15;28;02 – 00;15;46;17
Unknown
And that goes all the way back to 1910. The focus of that law is navigable. So if you’re going to build a pier out into the river on top, you do need to comply with section 404 of the Clean Water Act. But you’ll also be writing a permit for the for the Rivers and Harbors Act to protect navigable and go.

00;15;46;20 – 00;16;12;08
Unknown
Yeah, that’s about obstructions. there are some artificial structures like irrigation canals that are also jurisdictional. The way the, the way the laws are written, I believe they’re still exempt under state law, but under federal law, an irrigation canal that collects return water and distributes it back to a natural waterway is jurisdictional because the the potential pollutant flow can go into a regular waterway.

00;16;12;10 – 00;16;36;17
Unknown
But where you take the water out of the of the river and put it into an irrigation canal that then disperses out into the landscape that is not jurisdictional for that same reason. So there’s a little bit complicated. but anyway, so there’s different boundaries. and the, the upper the jurisdictional boundary for the, the ocean is actually highest measured tide.

00;16;37;09 – 00;17;00;14
Unknown
and so there are those are, there are tide charts that contain that information. And the only the real caveat on that one is they’re a pain in the butt to rectify to other datums, but you need to make sure the datums match or the information doesn’t work. I usually make surveyors do that because they know how. Big we are there and then we have territorial sea.

00;17;00;14 – 00;17;26;19
Unknown
Where was it? A seaside? There’s some project where you it would have come into play on that, that sanitary facility that we were looking at that I took pictures of. All right. Okay. So, and some of these, this can get really complicated, like on, say, the river for them is, this it’s the Santiam. I think I know Siuslaw to say slow river.

00;17;26;21 – 00;17;44;14
Unknown
But when you get in the Lower East, the lower parts of those rivers, you may have tidal action in those rivers as well. So you’re, you’re trying to figure out where the the regulatory boundary is. And you may have 3 or 4 of them coming into play with, you’ve got the wetland boundary, you’ve got the, you know, the tidal fluctuation, the tidal limit.

00;17;44;14 – 00;18;08;01
Unknown
And then you’ve also got, the ordinary high water line. So some of these systems where they’re interfaces with different systems, the regulatory picture becomes more complex. So that’s why you get some of like a need to help you out. someone like me to to call the agencies and say, okay, help me to kind of show this.

00;18;08;27 – 00;18;35;19
Unknown
so I think we’re done with this slide. Unless anyone has any questions about other waters planning, we move here. Here we go. Okay. So there. Yeah. This is just kind of getting into the overview of permitting when, you know, when you have a project and the client’s asking me okay. Well we need we need wetland permits. And they just think of it as one sort of omnibus thing.

00;18;36;21 – 00;19;00;14
Unknown
but it’s there’s a lot of, sort of they’re more like production nesting dolls. And, you know, the federal you know, we all know about the Corps, clean Water Act has two sections that generally apply. the core regulates under 400 for and they’ve devolved authority for 401 for water quality to the two. and then you’ve got the river sometimes as well.

00;19;00;17 – 00;19;29;10
Unknown
Yes. Yeah. you, you may be and I don’t want to zoom, but, there, there are people here who may not know these acronyms or, you know, be clear about how the Corps actually regulates anything. Okay. the course authority derives from the Clean Water Act, which I a brief does CW a in the interest of preserving font size, section 404 under the clean Water Act regulates wetlands.

00;19;29;10 – 00;19;54;26
Unknown
That’s the what what grace has been discussing. And then section 401 comes into play with like stormwater management plans and things like that. We don’t usually get directly involved in those, but we’re involved in the compliance with the act. So usually they’re it’s an appendage to it. permit application where that would connect. is that what you were thinking, Jesse?

00;19;54;28 – 00;20;22;15
Unknown
Well, yes. When you say, you know, the core, the CWA, they do. Those are things I take a day off for this audience. This, each one of those acronyms as you introduce them. Okay. I okay. And the EC was the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality. the Rivers and Harbors Act is also regulated through the Corps of Engineers as well.

00;20;23;13 – 00;20;58;23
Unknown
the state regulatory bodies, the Department of State Lands, they regulate public land usage. And the part that we care about is that they also regulate wetlands and waterways under the removal field law. this and then there’s and then below that is the goal. Five resources through local agencies such as metros and the cities, where there’s a requirement to the local wetland inventory that we use comes from a requirement that cities map all wetlands greater than a half an acre in size.

00;20;59;11 – 00;21;19;07
Unknown
and that’s an important point, because obviously they don’t regulate them less than a half an acre in size. And those are abundantly distributed in the landscape. So when it’s, you know, scoping projects, things like that, it’s important to recognize that you’ll catch the big ones through some of our due diligence that Grace mentioned the in office research.

00;21;19;10 – 00;21;48;14
Unknown
But having a sense of the landscape might help you to where other ones might be present, like the, the soil inventory, or the, you know, the, the, of the soil surveys and their mapping of hydraulic soils and soils with inclusions. But also that documenting is handy because it will show you where micro depressions are, and those would be places that you definitely want to check in or budget for, to do that sort of thing, to investigate those and not rule them out artificially.

00;21;50;17 – 00;22;15;08
Unknown
so when in the permit process, DSL and the Department of State Lands and the Army Corps of Engineers have a joint process for their their large project permit called a joint permit application, which is handy. There are some nuances where one wants information about something than the other, and there may be a few situations where something is jurisdictional under one agency and not the other.

00;22;15;08 – 00;22;46;29
Unknown
But for the most part, it’s it’s a nice process that you can use to comply with both at the same time. Can you think of anything else on that? Tim. No, I think you got it. Okay, so Burger Joint are there you said there are some instances where one or the other is the regulatory body. what says scenario where DSL is for body and, and the court doesn’t get involved.

00;22;47;02 – 00;23;13;03
Unknown
Isolated wetlands. If wetlands, the Clean Water Act derives its authority from connectivity. So if you think of something where you have a water body and goring as part of motor oil, and it would end up in the, you know, in a, a reasonable sized river, they’re going to take jurisdiction. But if you have something that’s a basin, a closed basin that doesn’t have a reasonable connection to anything, the court would not take jurisdiction.

00;23;13;03 – 00;23;42;03
Unknown
But, DSL would you help me understand that the two different state agencies that have their fingers in this pie that you does what and DSL does what, like what a how the parcel regulates the resource, specifically the, the, the, the impact to a wetland or a stream do you think defends water quality? and water quality impacts could be something like this.

00;23;42;05 – 00;24;16;19
Unknown
Pardon or sorry. Oh yes. the water quality impacts can be some can be varied and sometimes and occasionally unintuitive. But most of the obvious pollutants would be, a point source discharge, you know, a pipe outfall from a factory would be regulated under 401 is a point source discharge, but it also regulates things like, impervious surface runoff from vehicular traffic or, sediment migration during construction.

00;24;16;21 – 00;24;43;01
Unknown
Those would those things would also be considered, things that they would pay attention to in issuing their 404 permit for your activity and very large projects. some of the some of the discharges are regulated by other by other, like MPD is a national. Oh, shoot, I forgot what that stands for, but it’s basically major air pollutant discharge potential as regulated under different laws.

00;24;43;03 – 00;25;11;10
Unknown
And that’s things like, sanitary outfalls from a treatment facility that would be under MPD is so yes, if there is a resource listed, local five resource and somebody is following the local regulations related that resource, do they still have to go through DSL and core and actually BQ, I’m so glad you asked that. absolutely.

00;25;12;06 – 00;25;38;25
Unknown
especially for small developers and our single family homeowners or other people who don’t wade in these waters very frequently. Most of the time, their first contact with, hey, you got to do something about that is going to be through the planning counter at the local, planning entity. It’s, you county or city? often times that person will say, hey, you need a wetland delineation, but they don’t necessarily go into how you do that.

00;25;38;25 – 00;26;09;21
Unknown
And some of those less sophisticated clients don’t realize that there are these other layers of regulation behind it that they need to comply with. And so that’s when dealing with, especially single family homeowners and small developers, it’s important to give them what I call the nickel tour of permitting, so they understand that there are layers of compliance to this and that the onramp you get at the city may not be complete.

00;26;09;23 – 00;26;34;28
Unknown
So, yes, getting out of one does not get you out of any of the others. Then none of them speak for each other. Right. So what kind of permit do we need? the Clean Water Act has provisions for two different kinds of permits. The default permit is an individual permit that has, a high level of a high rate, a high preparatory burden.

00;26;35;18 – 00;27;00;20
Unknown
it’s it’s just flat. More work to do them. If you have a project, though, that has is small, repeatable, then culvert replacements or very small impacts or think of some examples. linear transportation projects is a common one where you’re, you’re repairing a stretch of Broadway and there’s small impacts related to road widening or things like that.

00;27;01;08 – 00;27;32;10
Unknown
pipelines, like the water bureau. We’re doing a nationwide, I think it’s 56. And that one has to do with non petroleum pipeline projects. So we have a small impact related to that. We’re able to use the simplified permit. there are something like 58 nationwide permits for a variety of different activities, very specific activities that might be things like soil sampling or replacing a Bui or maintenance on water control structures, those sorts of things.

00;27;32;10 – 00;27;59;05
Unknown
But there’s a ton of them, and it’s worth looking to see if you qualify. they all have acreage limits and they have, impact limits, linear impact limits, acreage limits, and then a whole host of requirements like in those general conditions, the general conditions, one of them that hits us all the time is you have to you have to document whether there are impacts on endangered species.

00;27;59;05 – 00;28;23;04
Unknown
So if you have if you’re doing in water work, you may need a biological assessment from a fish biologist. If you’re on a public project, you might have to have someone looked at birds or, plants, endangered plants, things like that. The plant one usually only comes in when there’s federal funding, and then the other one that is very common is cultural, historical, and along any major waterway.

00;28;23;04 – 00;28;58;02
Unknown
But there’s the possibility for cultural and historical, cultural usage because those were the movement corridors. they were transportation. There were there were fishing villages, things like that. There’s a high likelihood of those being there now up in the higher parts of the watershed, it’s less likely. so yeah, that’s an important review to do. and then one thing that Tim and I do a lot of, like on the Water Bureau project is writing occurred on the on the project managers to make sure they understand the implications of design changes, because for them, it’s not a big deal if you switch from boring to an open trench.

00;28;58;05 – 00;29;22;02
Unknown
But for us, it means the difference between a wetland impact avoided and one that needs to be accounted for in mitigation or restoration. Or it might kick you into an individual permit instead of the nationwide. And Tim has had a full time job with that, I think, on the water purely just don’t don’t do that. Don’t do that, don’t do that.

00;29;23;03 – 00;29;41;20
Unknown
I have a slide just on you. Like you can do that, but how much pain can you tolerate? and on the state level, this is always the this is generally done parallel to the federal process. So you’re sort of kind of keeping them both in mind at the same time. But there’s there are different. This permit process is set up differently.

00;29;43;06 – 00;30;05;17
Unknown
in this case that there is an individual permit. Then that’s the joint JPA is joint permit application that goes to the Corps of Engineers and the Department of State Lands simultaneously. on large projects, there’s a lot of coordination that happens between those two agencies. And so oftentimes the bigger issues get ironed out along the way. they also have something that’s a bit like a nationwide permit.

00;30;07;11 – 00;30;36;00
Unknown
that it’s but they have much fewer options. I think there’s like eight and they’re revamping them. So I don’t know what that will turn into. But there are things like for restoration projects or transfer transportation is one for that as well. But they’re they’re much, much fewer. DSL, unlike the Corps, has a 50 cubic yard limit where, hey, you can you can fill or remove combined 50yd³ of material from inside the jurisdictional boundary.

00;30;36;02 – 00;31;14;25
Unknown
However, the corps does not have this limit. That’s important to recognize. but it’s the important thing. But the other thing is, if you’re next to a salmon stream and that exemption goes down to the one, you get a wheelbarrow load of material. So when you’re in Oregon, yes, there’s lots of people know about that 50 cubic yard exemption, but they have to understand that it’s combined fill in removal, not a net cut or fill, and that it only works in streams and wetlands where salmon and impacts to salmon is will not, or other endangered species will not be affected so that weeds a lot of them out and that kicks that will kick

00;31;14;25 – 00;31;43;17
Unknown
you into an individual permit. So and the corps really doesn’t have a lower limit. They say they have a like if it’s a de minimis impact you don’t need a permit. I haven’t found that limit. So the Clean Water Act, regardless of what DSL says, if the Corps is involved, that 50yd³ doesn’t matter for them. So you have to apply to the Corps on itself, even if it says they’re not going to regulate it.

00;31;43;20 – 00;32;06;00
Unknown
Yes, you’d still feel a lot of JPA or the nationwide if you qualify, and it would be submitted just to the one agency. And then from DSL you would get a letter that just says, we don’t require a permit, which is nice to have in your pocket. Actually. So but on someone else’s going on along with what you said, you get that from DSL, so you contact DSL.

00;32;06;01 – 00;32;31;03
Unknown
They say they’re not going to regulate it, but you’re not necessarily safe. If you need to get a permit with the Corps to correct. but that’s so and there are, there are, it’s worth checking with your local agency on something in a situation like that, because sometimes of DSL, most of them go with DSL. DSL service is it’s not regulated.

00;32;31;03 – 00;32;59;22
Unknown
They don’t. They rely on the DSL interpretation. But there are few places that will regulate. Well, if DSL or the Or the Corps take jurisdiction and they do so, it’s worth taking it. Just looking closely to see where the local agency falls on that. So, so, right. Okay. So what makes permitting suck less? so there’s some questions.

00;32;59;24 – 00;33;27;16
Unknown
I like them better. I’ll review. That’s the PowerPoints for posterity. So, the one of the biggest things is just making sure everybody understands everything the same way ever. A lot of people have experience with this from other projects. and some people may have some, some significant expertise. But there are things like the recent, their recent court cases that can change jurisdiction.

00;33;27;16 – 00;33;56;10
Unknown
The recent circuit case and the removal. So law, when it came into effect a while back, increased jurisdiction to include what’s called ephemeral streams, which are ones that simply run when it’s raining. There’s no groundwater support there. Think of a roadside ditch or somebody’s gutter, you know, has cut a channel. The Clean Water rule extended jurisdiction to include ephemeral waterways, which was a massive increase in permitting load for the agencies.

00;33;56;12 – 00;34;25;20
Unknown
And then recent changes. Revoke that. And the second decision that the Supreme Court last year reinforced that, that you cannot increase the regulatory extent by fiat. It has to it has to be a legislative change. And that didn’t happen. And so the second case reaffirmed that. And now ephemeral streams aren’t regulated anymore. But you have to be kind of in the weeds to know kind of where that regulatory, that real time regulatory interpretation is.

00;34;25;20 – 00;34;48;23
Unknown
And some of them can be consequential. the project manager also needs to understand what’s the study area. It’s not just where we’re doing the project. It includes everything like staging areas, ingress, egress, temporary impacts, account, those sorts, you know, they need to understand the difference. Be like we care a lot more about permanent impact than temporary.

00;34;49;05 – 00;35;17;14
Unknown
it’s not all the same. And some things are extremely hard to mitigate and need to be avoided. they’re called, aquatic resources of special concern. DSL is has increased their focus on the quality and rarity of wetlands. So forested wetland impacts are much harder now because it takes 30 years to put one back. if you like, if you find a bog, a real stagnant bog in Oregon, you will never be allowed to impact it.

00;35;17;14 – 00;35;45;06
Unknown
I don’t care if it’s the only place to put a hospital. They will not let you do that. so it’s important to know what some of these are. And, and vernal pools were one, the big one that we’ll see is going to be, forested wetlands. And if you work on the coast, the international zone. So those wetlands that form in between sand dunes, if you if you look at a topographic map of the Oregon, the north coast, you’ll see these linear lakes, those are all introduced to lakes.

00;35;45;06 – 00;36;13;19
Unknown
And they they receive a higher level of protection. the client needs to understand what’s going to trip different levels of permitting. So. Hey, you, if you stay in this box, this is much simpler. If you can comply with there’s another sort of it. It’s to comply with Endangered Species Act without the heavy consultation. If you can stay in that in the slopes box, then you can use that’s your endangered species compliance.

00;36;13;19 – 00;36;52;06
Unknown
So if they understand where these thresholds for more involved permitting are, it helps them avoid where it’s possible to do so. and then the other one is especially on big projects, is being present in those meetings to inform the team of permitting implications of their design decisions and changes. like I referenced, I mentioned before, you know, for some, for an engineer, it might not be a big deal to move a road over, but if it’s if it means an increase in hitting in an a forested wetland, impact that has major implications for permitting, and in some places, it’s very difficult to mitigate if there’s no we all rely on banks, but banks

00;36;52;06 – 00;37;19;07
Unknown
are getting consumed and new ones are not being built. going forward, clients are probably going to be more reliant on doing their own mitigation, which is it’s difficult, it’s expensive, it’s risky. so the smaller the impact, the, you know, the slower those risk, the banking resources will be consumed. other things are the in the time sensitivities and what the what impacts the schedule.

00;37;20;08 – 00;37;45;13
Unknown
if you for still that you know, when Tim and I jump up and down and say we really need to get out somewhere, even though the client doesn’t want to, there can be major implications for wetland delineation. as, like Grace mentioned, having to do wetlands when, when the water is not there is highly consequential in some, in some situations where if that’s the thing you’re relying on to find the boundary and it’s not there, you have to wait.

00;37;45;15 – 00;38;14;02
Unknown
And the engineers are the engineers. The agencies are not afraid to say, hey, nice work. Why don’t you go back and check the hydrology part? in the Willamette Valley, the sweet spot is generally, 1st of February through March. You know, it’s a two out, two month window, roughly, for things like pasture. maybe because pastures, pastures are so disturbed that you absolutely have to see the water when it’s there.

00;38;14;28 – 00;38;36;10
Unknown
and farmland in general, because you don’t have topography here, other things to go with and the vegetation is gone. to review a wetland delineation, they have 140 days. So by statute, and there is no expedite the process for that. So that is not compressible. And they’re using every day of it. They have been understaffed here for a long time.

00;38;37;06 – 00;38;56;23
Unknown
the nationwide permits and the general authorizations. And then there’s a general permit that I didn’t talk about, but it’s basically AG, they have shorter reviews. They read about, I think it’s about 45 days between the completeness review and the regular and then the formal review of the actual thing that can be extended if they have questions.

00;38;57;18 – 00;39;10;15
Unknown
the individual JPA is much longer. I think I have it written down in the notes that I can’t see what those are. So if Tim, if you’re manning the slide, you can I think I put those in there.

00;39;11;24 – 00;39;40;15
Unknown
I’m not sure I want to jump to notes. probably never again. But I think, you know, it’s roughly four months is what I’m thinking. individual joint permit application review can be massively affected by coordination with other agencies. ESA is the Endangered Species Act is the big one. the NOAA can be extremely slow and they do not have any sort of statutory response time where they’re required to give you an answer.

00;39;41;25 – 00;39;57;17
Unknown
and, and then the other one is sort of, national. What is it? National Oceanic, the people who regulate the fish.

00;39;57;19 – 00;40;29;06
Unknown
Issue ocean moving atmosphere. it used to be National fishery service, and that was nips and MFS. yes. Generally it’s the it’s it’s the national Oceanic, Oceanic and Atmospheric, you know, association or association agency, that regulates fish. U.S. Fish and Wildlife can also be involved for terrestrial species and non ocean going fish. So both of those agencies can be involved at the federal level in your EASA review.

00;40;29;24 – 00;40;53;08
Unknown
at the state level, it’s ODF and Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife is involved in advising the ISO but does not necessarily have a higher number. But DSA listens to what they say and they’re very interested in your permit in your, culvert designs. they will push you to, open natural bottom situations like an open bottom box culvert or bridge.

00;40;53;10 – 00;41;18;24
Unknown
And the ASL listens to them. the other piece put factors into this is your 401 water quality certification, which is, as we mentioned, managed by the the Department of the Department of Environmental Quality. And that used to be a fairly simple review where you sent everything to the Corps, and they notified the EC and you reviewed your stuff and told the, told the Corps what they thought and approved or didn’t.

00;41;18;26 – 00;41;50;20
Unknown
And it was done. And now there’s an incredibly arcane and involved esoteric thing where you have to make appointments, to make appointments for meetings, and it takes forever. That review can take about six months. Now, and that request and it’s haven’t been through the whole process yet. It’s incredibly complicated. And I don’t understand why. So that’s one to watch out for in your permitting, just to make sure that you that you are, a bird dogging that so that you can get it, get it started as quick as possible.

00;41;50;20 – 00;42;16;00
Unknown
But it’s hard because you also need design decisions that they have to respond to. So you can only go so early. But that used to be easy. Know now it’s a critical path item. All right. What is head desk clean hitting. That means you clear space on your desk and whack it to relieve the stress. Okay. You anything?

00;42;16;03 – 00;42;54;10
Unknown
Tim, what’s your estimate on once you’re done with the delineation work, how long a local wetland inventory would take to E concurred with asking for a plan. Oh, that’s rough years. You’re not you’re not delineating everything necessarily in a local wetland in sorry, but that does take a while. Yeah, it could take six months or more depending on it really comes down to what the feedback is in the first round and what the staffing level is.

00;42;54;13 – 00;43;35;22
Unknown
And long term took a year. And yeah, we only we finished it several years later. Yeah. Right. So that’s a different yeah. And and why don’t we go there. we are down 15 minutes. So I’m going to speed things up a little bit. the, the real Allen key and what Anita has been talking about is if you can avoid impacts, you do not even need a permit.

00;43;35;25 – 00;44;18;05
Unknown
So this is the Holy Grail. Sometimes we find it. Yes. money. So we work for five years to get the big wrong project. Dial down to the impact. The size of a queen size bed. And here’s the bad. And then it’s right. It’s along a little green canary grass, roadside ditch where there’s temporary impacts. So it has a DSL general authorization for temporary impacts and a nationwide permit for for utilities.

00;44;18;07 – 00;44;49;12
Unknown
What was that pipeline’s. A problem pipelines. There’s a specific one for petroleum. So here’s our impact. And these these are all the pipelines and the all the red circles are places where wetland impacts had been proposed. In one form or another and including, you know, these are alignments. That one went up here and this way and one went down this road.

00;44;49;12 – 00;45;22;19
Unknown
And and then this is, this is in the south is the Clackamas County pipeline, which eventually got pulled from the project. So those went away. And the only impact in the decision is bad. It’s not an impact. But this circle that I’m, I got my cursor on, we are boring under a pond at that location, which is part of a wetland complex, but it’s a manmade pond, basically.

00;45;22;21 – 00;45;40;10
Unknown
So, yeah, all of these impacts avoided over time took a lot of what was the word. Yes, I was exasperated, I.

00;45;40;13 – 00;45;59;06
Unknown
Wrangle with people a lot to get them to take all that seriously. That the without getting into how you do permitting avoidance and minimization is the core of the alternatives analysis. And, Tim did a lot of work to make sure they understood that. And the it’s a this is a great reduction. And in fact, it’s impressive. Yeah.

00;45;59;07 – 00;46;27;25
Unknown
And then for most clients, they may not care about the permitting, but they care about timelines. And if you’re starting to talk about, if you have endangered species issues, that could happen here, then they’ll start to listen. So that’s one way we got that some response. this so let’s see how am I going to finish up here.

00;46;28;22 – 00;46;53;13
Unknown
so I’m just curious. We’ve heard a lot about delineation. These are some of the, the public works farms and and private projects we do. Here’s Anita, on the water bureau project delineating and then most of my shots, Anita in the mask because this was Covid times. we have, at least five local wetland inventories.

00;46;53;28 – 00;47;28;04
Unknown
and then there’s some comments. There’s a kind of a miscellaneous category which I just called conservation plans. But there’s a bunch of projects we do that have wetlands in them that we’re either protecting or restoring or things like that. And these were two examples. okay. And a local wetland inventory. it’s a broad, broader brush, approach to identifying all of your wetlands in your community.

00;47;28;06 – 00;47;51;24
Unknown
Very handy to have and referring to and for planners to look up, if they have a project at a certain site. This is Corvallis, which we did, I want to say 15 years ago. you know, that I you’re not actually, are you actually delineating every single wetland inside of the jurisdiction? We we’re there’s some middle ground.

00;47;51;27 – 00;48;21;29
Unknown
We are doing a broad brush delineation. So if this were delineation, there would be paired plots all around each of these wetlands. And in some cases, you’ll see there’s only 1 or 2 plots. So we’re projecting a little bit and it’s often so there may be cases where you don’t have access to the property. So it’s offsite.

00;48;22;14 – 00;48;53;26
Unknown
and this one I just highlighted this little red property is the MLK Park site. So I’ll come back to that in a minute. But so accuracy is plus or -25ft, I think if it’s below a half acre you don’t need to necessarily document. And often those get a kind of in of possible wetland. And those dots the like individual plots that you’re talking about.

00;48;53;29 – 00;49;21;11
Unknown
These bars are wearing in places they can farms. Each of those is a data plot with a valuation of all three parameters, and where you get from a cluster of dots to a actual shape of something is just interpolation based on topography. And I don’t know. Yeah, it’s whatever you have been there for one of those parameters.

00;49;21;11 – 00;49;50;00
Unknown
It’s that driving factor. Some topography sometimes is very like you can almost pick a contour and just chase it, but it creates the shape. Yeah. Creates a shape in other places, the soil. So then you’re, you’re kind of you got to do samples kind of as you walk along the point, even if you’re not doing a full scale data plot, you’re checking periodically for soils.

00;49;50;00 – 00;50;22;12
Unknown
Or you can see the vegetation pattern and often that’ll just tell you, what are the boundaries, at least at this scale for delineation, you’re going to take a lot more points, for example, on this. Okay. you 24 wetland. yeah. So ten signatures a lot too on those. Yeah, yeah. And so this the green light green is significant.

00;50;22;14 – 00;51;04;19
Unknown
And I’ll touch on that in a second. Here. The darker green just means mosaic, which is a combination of, wetland and when. So for significance for Iowa, there’s a number of key, wetland functions that are evaluated. This is is urban freshwater wetlands assessment methodology and the team functions. If you mean any one of those, you’re a significant, and I don’t want to get into too much detail, but you can see the each of these has like three answers and provides the impact.

00;51;04;21 – 00;51;42;00
Unknown
If if you meet certain, decision on each of these, then you, you basically come out significant and are significant. The only the bottom one in this particular study was not significant. All the rest are significant. so, yeah, mandatory criteria. You’re significant if you’re if the wetland is not significant, you don’t protect it. For at the local level, it still required DSL or core review.

00;51;42;09 – 00;52;11;06
Unknown
but that’s kind of a key kind of goal five thing. You have to protect it. You have to map it. And you also it also needs to be significant at the local level. And of course, the locality has some say in defining it. I think wetlands is the one place where the state prescribes the the criteria. And then you have some optional criteria.

00;52;11;08 – 00;53;07;02
Unknown
But for many weapon resources, you need that kind of developed your own significance. determination. and then also understand the. Yeah. And then go ahead buffers. you have comment on buffers. I would just, local agencies oftentimes getting back to goal five resources. There may be related protection. Does that apply outside of wetlands directly? in Washington County with clean water services jurisdiction, they, they apply what’s called a vegetated corridor, which usually encompasses the goal five resource of wildlife habitat and riparian resources.

00;53;07;28 – 00;53;28;25
Unknown
and so even the wetland is not the ultimate extent of of the nexus, with planning and impacts within those related resources can also require permits or avoidance and minimization or fixing them. If you have to go through there, that sort of thing.

00;53;28;27 – 00;53;59;28
Unknown
Yeah. And there’s also, you know, safe harbor. Is there some automatic buffers if you use a straight safe harbor? I didn’t want to get into this pre-COVID time, but 50 for typically for smaller streams and communities would be a buffer prescribed by if you use the safe harbor approach. okay. And the last one, all of their level of significance can inform level of protection.

00;54;00;02 – 00;54;19;20
Unknown
So highly significant wetland might get like, Portland. actually Portland tends to that, wetlands. And that’s a little bit of my, my fault.

00;54;25;07 – 00;55;05;29
Unknown
okay. We’ve covered the limitations. I just wanted to point out that here’s Corvallis MLK Park. This matches up pretty well with the Oregon UI, which was done 18 years prior to it. there was one point that and he himself went out to field check during. They were asked to go back like months later because the plot was kind of marginal, markedly, when they went back, figured out that it was actually wet instead of what it had been in May when they originally, looked at it.

00;55;06;01 – 00;55;36;28
Unknown
And so this whole area down below where my cursor is running, all of this area was and based on one plot that was taking a little bit out of season and then came back in April, it’s in. And then they started going around to another plant and sure enough, in addition.

00;55;37;00 – 00;56;06;21
Unknown
And I think that we’ve already covered, the timing, does that mean with this timing thing that it was like a super busy season and then none of the other ten months or even reliable? Not necessarily. if andrology is a determining factor, as it was, in Corvallis, also to some extent the Forest Park trail and project.

00;56;06;21 – 00;56;36;22
Unknown
We good delineation there. then you have to go back in. Yeah. And I think Forest Park, by the time everything got contracted and we got out there was August, which was a terrible time to choose them. So sure enough, we have the exact the following spring. but in many cases, soils are determined that they or the, the vegetation will change.

00;56;36;25 – 00;56;59;05
Unknown
And, you know, you’re already hydrology is already there or assume for whatever, you know, you’ve got high water mark. So you’ve got other indications and then that can factor in as intermittent streams if you need to. If you intermittent streams sometimes get less protection. And in order to make that determination you have to see it at the end of the summer.

00;56;59;07 – 00;57;36;02
Unknown
So that’s another place timing concern. The big one is what Thompson. All right. Remember, I ran two sites, some of them maybe wetlands, a comprehensive natural resource plan. This was the C in our P. What was a new code? chapter developed by Portland in around 2012. We did the first review ever, and it was for Smith and Barry, which is 2000 acres, kind of a broad wetland complex.

00;57;36;04 – 00;58;05;00
Unknown
Fascinating place. If you haven’t been there. just you can kayak and it’s just spectacular. And there were this was for Metro. There were ten recreational projects that got approved through that process. There were no impacts. I think there were all basically trail impacts. and then years earlier we had, local five planning for some of that, area.

00;58;05;02 – 00;58;38;20
Unknown
So that basically resulted in environmental zoning for parts of the site. And this was my mentor, James Davis, who may he rest in peace. But, that’s where I learned most of my first. And this is the last one so often Hills, for clean water services. It was planned to be, one of their base, headquarters for their a restoration work that they do along streams and floodplains.

00;58;40;12 – 00;59;15;07
Unknown
it’s probably hard to see, but there’s this little plan, has a bunch of different restoration pieces with, lot of these large woody debris. so that was restored. Wetland complex. There’s habitat enhancement for frogs, and then Finian’s, the whole floodplain down the whole lower half is all floodplain. And that was restored. And and there’s some demonstration projects, a little stream bank.

00;59;15;09 – 00;59;52;27
Unknown
This is the 12 two river stream bank sloughed off. So this was, a, restoration work, like a bio technical rebuild it using, you know, willow plantings and other natural, materials. Sorry, we don’t have time for questions after that. Any questions? I have a question. might be very basic. What’s the basic difference between inventory and and delineation?

00;59;52;29 – 01;00;32;24
Unknown
It’s it’s kind of the same thing. I mean, it’s an inventory can take an inventory. local wetland inventory is kind inventory all wetlands and then community and delineation is in summary of maybe the wetlands on your site or within your study area. the other a couple other differences are the accuracy that’s required. you I think it’s Tim slide said 25ft for local wetland inventory and for wetland delineation.

01;00;32;24 – 01;00;57;08
Unknown
If you’re going to construction, you want to get under a foot. you can use sub meter, but for construction it’s recommended using a real surveyor. the other one is the level of data required to make that boundary is higher for a delineation. It’s much more specific. You can’t do it to that level. in an LWR, in a reasonable budget.

01;00;57;10 – 01;01;23;01
Unknown
So with an inventory, there’s presumed to be some error in the boundary. Right. And would any construction on the ground, a boundary that is at the inventory level in precision, automatically trigger that you have to go do a delineation to get more precise? Or does that usually work that way? I just need to. The coast needs to have some flexibility.

01;01;23;01 – 01;01;42;20
Unknown
There are very few municipalities on the coast anymore that will say, hey, you’re outside our LWR, you don’t have to do anything there. They’re all going to a more, cautious stance of their use. They use the LWR to say, hey, that looks like there’s a wetland on your property. Why don’t you go find out where it really is?

01;01;43;08 – 01;01;58;22
Unknown
and that’s how it’s generally used at the by the plant, by the planning staff. So if you’ve got one on or like clean water services requires a, a determination for a property that has wetlands mapped within 200ft.

01;01;58;24 – 01;02;29;17
Unknown
200ft of the property or 200ft of the development, 200ft of the property. Because what they’re looking for is their maximum potential buffer is 200ft wide. They’re making sure that that buffer, the property, doesn’t have buffers being thrown on it from off site. So if you have a 40 acre property and you’re doing some work on the west side, and there’s a wetland within 200ft on the east side of it, you still have to do a delineation.

01;02;29;19 – 01;02;48;06
Unknown
Possibly. If it’s an if it’s probably an upland site, then you would do it. You do a determination, which is, Hey, prove that there’s no wetlands here. And it’s it’s much simpler. but in a situation like that, my first question would be, are there any slopes greater than 25ft anywhere near the property? And the answer is no.

01;02;48;06 – 01;03;06;28
Unknown
I’ve been able to talk them into saying, I don’t think we need to do this because there’s no possibility of that buffer getting thrown on. So there’s some room for negotiation.

01;03;07;00 – 01;03;14;13
Unknown
Right. Well, so it’s very, very important. And I and thank you guys.