Fall Creek Watershed Committee Minutes
December 6, 2001
Community Fly Fisher Education Center, Ithaca, NY

PRESENT: Joyce Gerbasi, Pat Reidy, Yvette DeBoer, Steve Penningroth, Roxy Johnston, Sharon Anderson, Phil Koons

Report on Water Monitoring of Fall Creek on Nov. 10

• All went well but it took longer than expected.
• Probably not necessary to re-calibrate each time in the future, although it was good exercise for first time out.
• Steve said results were all good ; nothing unusual, except DO value reported by Phil and Yvette, which was probably a mistake in calculation.

Plan for next Monitoring

• Will be done on Jan. 5, 2002 (later changed to Jan. 12 )
• Phil and Yvette will start at 8:00 at Ithaca Falls then hand off to Heather at 10:30
• Heather will sample at Flat Rock and will hand off to Joyce at 1:00.
• Joyce will sample upstream near Freeville and will take kits and results to Steve at 3:30.

Sharon reported that Kate Hackett would like comments from FCWC on Fall Creek Monitoring Proposal to get it back to Pat Reidy by end of year.

Pat asked when we were likely to be able to start monitoring.

Report from Joyce on Small Hydrolab calibration

• Joyce went to Waste water Treatment Plant and went through training on calibrating small (hand held and portable) hyrolab unit.
• Says that use of a GPS unit would be good when using lab in the field. Roxy says there is one that's available.
• Roxy says workshop in the use of the Hydrolab can be done again if we'd like.

Discussion of Brochure / Mission Statement

• Joyce presented work she's done on text for brochure. Suggested changes include; bulleted text, phrases instead of paragraphs.
• Mary is working on Mission Statement.
• Sharon read some possible mission statements from past notes. The group considered them and after discussion arrived at a statement we all liked.
• Sharon will send out what we came up with for comments.

Budget and Finance

• Don't know for sure if we must spend our $ by end of year.
• Sharon is working on a plan to get hold of funds so we can spend the $ later. Craig Schutt administers funds.
• Heather looked into cost of Lamott Kits for FCWC. Five kits (one full set), pH meter, and conductivity meter would be $367.
• Roxy suggests looking at quality and accuracy of meters so DEC will accept data.
• Yvette will follow up and place order.

Future Programs / Projects

• Sharon presented plan for Well Testing Seminar; FCWC will be official co-sponsor. Will be held sometime in March, probably at Fire Hall in Freeville. It was suggested that announcements go in the Cortland Standard free weekly supplement.

• Discussion of Fall Creek stream cleanup. Date for cleanup: May 4, 2002. Plan to do similar cleanup as last year. Funding unsure but possibly some available from Trout Unlimited. May try to get more supplies donated from local businesses.

• Discussion of possible plans for Water Week. Roxy reported on some ideas for setups and participants. Big displays and activities would be best on weekend. Tentative date: May 11, 2002, possibly at Farmer's Market.

Next meeting : Jan. 10, 5:30 - 7:30 at Dryden Town Hall