Okay, good afternoon, everybody. Welcome to today's EAB taskforce meeting. And Patrick Sieng, the coordinator for the invasive species Council helping to keep us moving along today. Obviously, you all got the new link to join the meeting. So thank you for putting up with our technological changes and challenges, I think we have, we're continuing to, you know, find people to add on to our list here. So, again, if you have not been receiving our invites, or know of a colleague that needs to be getting the invites and is not on, please shoot an email to me, I'll make sure they get on. We've we've been working. Our steering committee has a pretty big list of stakeholders, all those folks should have been uploaded. But I know that even though we did that some folks have not been getting their invites. So and I know what canceling the invites, and then starting a new one, it's been a little confusing. So thank you, everybody for your patience and putting up with all that. And hopefully, we'll be able to have it organized. Moving forward, I am trying out a new tool here called otter, which some of you may already be using, but it's a AI note taking system. We're going to use that to take minutes and I can go back and and edit the notes. So we'll be able to push out kind of written meeting notes a little quicker, I put a link to that in the chat in case you want to see it in action. It's pretty neat. It's not 100%, as you would guess, with some of this technology, but it is I would say it's pretty good. And it's not too expensive either. So we'll be able to kind of use that as our chat system. And then after the meeting, I can go through it will identify different speakers. And I can go through and find different people who speak and it'll populate everybody's names. So kind of a neat tool, you will see that we have decided to shrink our meetings down to an hour. I think we're at that point now where we've gotten over the hump of that beginning. Organizational stuff, and our committees are really doing a bulk of the work. So our regular EAB taskforce meetings, this meeting will be mostly a report out of those items, as well, as you know, any other significant items that come up that we need to address with the whole group. Mariah, do you have a question? Yeah, I
don't know if it's just me, but I don't see a chat option. Same here,
is anybody else have an issue with not seeing chat?
Yeah, I believe that we don't issue at the last meeting as well, Patrick's that we were kind of limited in that fashion. But if that hasn't been resolved, I think we can still use the embracing function.
Yes, let's do that for this meeting. What I'll do is, after this meeting, I'll email out the link to this honor system. So folks can see it. And we'll use that as our kind of minutes. And I'll keep looking at this chat. Open ability. I know it's a little different because our team's account is not on the state network. So still trying to figure all that out. Okay, any other housekeeping items? Chris, did I miss anything?
No, I think that covers it.
Perfect. Okay, we're gonna go right into our committee report outs, starting with survey and monitoring. And Cody, hello.
Hey, yeah, I can get us started there on our survey side of things. If we're aiming for an hour, I'm gonna do my best to try to shorten it up a little bit from last time. If any of my committee members see me droning on, feel free to cut me off. But I think we've gotten quite a bit on the ground the last few weeks. And so a large part of that would be coming out of the OTAs side of things, we were able to work with APHIS. And organizing a training, several folks from all over the country, were able to join us for an actual field tour of several sites and Forest Grove, we toured about five properties that were all kind of natural riparian areas, and looking for EAB. And also assessing these properties for potential use as EAB bio control release sites. And we were able to, I think there was probably roughly 20 people a day, that's a rough number. But we had kind of a revolving door of a couple of different groups coming through, but primarily Oda staff, taught by some of these USDA APHIS, teachers, and going through everything from detecting the insect to assessing a standard wild ash for, you know, acceptable uses about control site. So two of the sites of the fire that we looked at actually did have EAB in trees that we didn't actually expect to find it in that being Fern Hill wetlands and Gail's Forest Grove, which are just south of town within that one mile buffer zone. And, yeah, it was a successful training and the fact that those two sites we know for sure, we're going to be able to use for bio control release next spring. And the other sites that we looked at are pretty close by and have similar composition a lot of ways. And we imagined that they'll be great areas to survey for the insect and possible use for release of bio control. And, yeah, we had all kinds of people there. But in a large way, Clean Water Services represented a lot of the landmass there as well as Portland Metro. And both Robert Emanuel and Jeff Merrill were instrumental in allowing that to go on as well as Rob Hamrick. Big thank you to all of those people, and the many others, Jake Bodard, helping us organize most of the event as well. So appreciate that. That was, in my opinion, and I think many others that were involved really, really helpful. And I think most people came away with a new sense of motivation and a sense of where we need to focus on and expand our efforts. So we have continued to do surveying here at the ODA at the ODF. And those through cleaning services, people at the soil water conservation groups, large group of us in our subcommittee that are working on the survey, 123 app and continuing to catalog where Ash are being detected with EAB in the Forest Grove area, and surrounding areas within Washington County. And I won't share the dashboard today. But if we get the chance to share stuff in the chat or some other forum today, we can give you a reminder where that dashboard lives. If not, please feel free to reach out to me or anyone else on the committee listed there. And we can get that to you. But yeah, we're updating that all the time. Right now, we're working together with Clean Water Services, Oda and Clean Water Services on creating a survey protocol, we want to have a uniform procedure and how we are looking on the ground for a B. And we're also creating a protocol for selecting trees for the bio control release program. So Max is starting that protocol. And Robert Emanuel is starting the survey protocol. And we're going to be working on that with him. So that's something that if you find yourself in the ground zero area around Forest Grove, we're actively working on that. So living document. Just for Alex Gorman sake, the training committee is probably wondering, why are you creating materials? And my answer would be, this is for Applied use for the next month or two. And we really want to refine this document so that we can make it more robust and share it with the larger group, the spring when we're really going to hit the ground running. So that's kind of the idea there. So that'll be shared. I think it probably goes without saying maybe others here have already been informed, but I just want to make sure everyone knew that Oda has received our eboard funding.
And if I had a chat, I'd share a picture of Chris Benjamin slide of where that eboard funding is going. It's a total of $550,000 of which Oda plans to have for seasonal technicians deployed here in the fall. That will work on surveying efforts this winter and into spring. And I have four of those seasonal technicians lined up. We just need to create some of their onboarding details. We're still looking at a coordinator the personnel responsible for organizing that team and kind of leading some of the daily logistics there. We have funding, we need to need to procure personnel. And then we're working on, you know, building up on, we have funding for treatments as well. And that's that's a larger conversation. Our subcommittee right now is insecticide treatments of trees. It's a big conversation, and I think the ball is still just starting to get rolling there. I wanted to also mention to that Karen Ripley, if she's here, I haven't responded to you yet, Karen. But we do want to use your 75k here in the survey committee, and I think it right now we have in mind use that for more treatments of systemics. So I will respond to you with more details there. But that's a desire of our committee as well. And yeah, I like I said, I have the four seasonals lined up. So through ODA, we hope to do some riparian areas surveying, looking at areas either to the north or west of some of Forest Grove area more. So trying to make more organized, kind of transects, or grid searches of some of those riparian areas, we get a more comprehensive search. As far as APHIS goes, it sounds like they're continuing to do what they've been doing the last few weeks, they didn't have a ton of updates for us, besides all their efforts of trapping and, you know, educating us. No, no major updates, Clean Water Services, wanted to let us know we've got training lined up, they're working on several different guest speakers for next spring. I think they're working on that with odf. They are working with us on deleting that survey core protocol, like I mentioned already. What else do I have for them? Yeah, Jeff Merrill is supportive of all of our bio control efforts and is offered to be a part of that. I've got Robert Emanuel raising his hand, feel free to speak up, Robert.
Sure. Thanks, Cody, I just wanted to let you know, we're in the very infantile stages of organizing a couple of local efforts. One will be spring trainings along the lines of what we've done before. And hopefully we can align those with the survey protocol, in its final form. And then the second piece is we're just beginning to have conversations about how to get the communities of different sorts of audiences together to discuss response to EAP locally, and hopefully, that will be done, you know, sometime this fall or winter. So it's early, early, early stuff, but we're working along the lines of what will be local management responses for land managers, community arborists, foresters, parks, districts, etc. So cities. So we'll, we'll be in touch with the task force at some point soon to solicit probably feedback and help.
And I will also put in a plug there too. For you, Robert, you might have already said it. And I might have missed it. But sounds like with those trainings, you're looking for guest speakers, and you welcome. Anybody adding some suggestions of who you might invite to some of those trainings?
Yeah, yeah, we'll definitely be in touch with the with the taskforce, folks that we could bring in. I think, at this point, part of our effort will be to figure out what the community of folks who manage ash populations, beads and then understand, you know, what kind of spring or what kind of speakers to bring in, but definitely this crowd will be the main pool we speak to about recruiting. Right.
We had quite a few other discussions with Metro about a variety of other topics. I don't know that I'll go into them here. I did have Rob Hamrick mentioned that he has a link to the best draw knife that's recommended by Nate Siegert who was part of our education process. So if you'd like to buy some tools, please reach out to us and we probably have some good recommendations there. Wyatt.
You have thanks, Cody for the update. And I was wondering, you mentioned developing a new survey that the seasonal technicians are going to be using this fall is that how is that different than the survey 123 that's being employed right now. And then the second question I have is I did you mentioned systemic insecticides? And I'm, maybe I misheard that. And so can you explain more about that? Yeah,
no, both great points, I think with a protocol or idea there is, Rob is going to be working with quite a few different people on the ground. And so having, you know, we'll have the survey in hand. But I think we also want to have a document that could kind of detail, you know, what tools you might need to procure, or, you know, trainings that you want to look into it when you're in the field, certain practices that are best for, you know, either safety or most effective search. So it's maybe a more macroscopic view than what the survey dashboard has, when you interact with it. But I think it should complement that and help you be more effective in that data collection. That's the hope there. And this is talking to people who are, you know, being recruited in our seasonal staff, whether it be Rob seasonal staff that maybe haven't been to as many of these meetings and are not as familiar?
Yeah, I think I think why we'd be, we'd still be using the dashboard. I think Max's dashboard is still the still the place where all the data, I don't, the the difference would be to make sure data that's funneled into that system is the highest quality we can get. So we're aiming at, at kind of a professional class of surveyors versus the general public, which will be for community so they had space that would go to where you can invasive species quality.
Yeah. So when Max developed that survey, 123 form that's being used right now to funnel the data into the dashboard. That's the target audience works for natural resource professional. So I'm just wondering if there was going to be a second survey 123 form? Because once you start making new forms and the data, it gets hard on the back end to manage?
No, no, we just I think we should stick with stick with the ODA data platform all the way through. And if there's things that we need to change in that, then we we figure out a way to communicate and agree on those changes as a group, rather than reinvent this thing. He's, he's already got a perfectly acceptable platform,
ya know, happy to hear that we're using it odf across the state right now, when we're out monitoring for other ash projects. So we tied in with Oda. And I just wanted to make sure there was a two forms that are going to be built, like one for bio control survey sites or something like that. So that's good. But then the second question is about the systemic insecticides.
Yes, yeah. No, for sure. I'm glad you mentioned that. That's something that I haven't had a chance to really make a hard and fast plan with the committee yet, we're still working out what that looks like we found out last week, or maybe a week and a half ago about the funding going through. So yeah, we'll have to work with you on that. And I think it ties in a lot with your committee as well, as far as the wood waste disposal kind of conversation. So something that we'll need to be working with you more on which reminds me too, that we've done a bad job at getting you and Christine into our conversations. So and I think that's because Christine has just been really busy. And we've been meeting when the majority of the group can and I think we've had bad luck. But it'd be great to get some more odf representation in the survey committee. I think we could use it a lot. We're finding ourselves double dipping on land permissions and efforts sometimes with you guys. So
thanks. keep inviting us sorry for the backlog of work. Blame. Yeah, Christine, right now is signed within odf to that committee, but please, yeah, keep doing that. We were definitely interested in want to do the best we can to cooperate on that, and can contribute ideas and also personnel and supplies and stuff like that, too. So part of our and one of our federal grants, were buying for demo purposes. The triage injection system, not for any like treatments, but for landowners, like demo projects and stuff like that for the future, but just mentioned that we'll have an arsenal of equipment to that could be potentially used, if needed. So yeah, please do keep us in the conversation. Thanks. Yeah,
no, my idea there. And again, this is more just pie in the sky right now. But I think, you know, the Oda has from the beginning been excited to if we're going to make a stand with a larger scale insecticide treatment of systemics going after Ground Zero pretty hard and trying to get it organized about how we're going to do that. And whether that is a, you know, some kind of delimitation grid where we choose a certain number of trees within that Forest Grove area, and then maybe working to the peripheral creating trap trees and riparian areas treating around the trap trees. But we do want to make a stand this next spring. So that's something that think over this one Winter, our committee and your committee really need to work together on.
And I think my only other update too is that, you know, a variety of other people on the ground are helping us out. But Laura trunk from Jackson bottom, it gets a larger reserved Wildlife Area, has been collecting a lot of data as well and will be contributing that to our data pool. So just thank you to Laura trunk and her people, while as well as I think Tyler Anderson and a few other people that are integrally involved with the work that Robert Emanuel is heading up out there on the ground. So just again, big, big thank you to Clean Water Services, and Metro and all the other groups that are doing a lot of the hard work. So thank you.
Thank you very much, Cody. Good update lots of good information there. We're going to move on. And just so we can make sure we get all the committee updates, we're going to ask that everybody try to keep within three to five minutes. I know not everybody will take up that time. And maybe some committees like this important one will, will go a little over. But just so we can end on time at two o'clock. Communications. Jim, thanks for being here. And I owe you some time this week to go over our website as well, too. So thanks for your patience with that.
Sure. Well, appreciate that, Patrick. So I did pass around today a tracking tool for all of these different outreach efforts and trainings that people are doing, as we've talked about earlier. So if you get that if you have anything that you've done that's public oriented, or with a stakeholder group, please try and fill that out. And the communications group will take on responsibility to just keep that master list as it were, and you can in future just send me as they're happening are being planned, just kind of like Cody what you were talking about, or Robert, we want to be able to just track which audiences have had outreach by which agencies so very simple tool, we don't need a lot of detail. Other than you know, is it in person virtual, what's the location, how many people attended and who, you know, basically, what kind of people were there. So, so that's in existence. The next out public outreach per our schedule was the eboard. Funding and I'm going to defer to Andrea Kent to show Miss Oda had volunteered to take the lead on getting the next big news release out, which was on the eboard funding. So maybe after I get done here, Andrew, if you've got an update on that, the big things that have happened of late have been the Oregon Community trees in Oregon Department of Forestry put on a big annual urban forestry conference every June this year is going to be June 1, and they've agreed to make EAP the focus of that conference. And there will be we're hoping to get the speaker that I think spoke to this group, Elizabeth McDonough as the keynoter and a number of people in this different committees may be asked to serve on panels, talking about things like wood waste utilization, chemical treatment, whether to treat or not, and then about what replacement trees would be good selections instead of you know, fraxinus the ash species and how them how as part of that, how nurseries, how communities may want to develop, group multi year grow contracts so that those species that are desirable replacements will be available in enough numbers for local communities to have something to replace the trees with. And so those will all be topics that you can expect at that at that conference. In June. There's a couple of tree walks coming up in Portland. Christine Bulow is going to co lead a talk at wheat arboretum for their folks up there and their ash collection. And I'm doing one trees for life. Oregon is doing one in St. John's in North Portland in an area that has a lot of street trees that are at risk. And part of that will be about trying to get people to focus on tree identification. Do you know you have an ash that kind of thing? The Yeah, I think those are the main highlights. odf is also contemplating doing a signs and symptoms of ash. Emerald Ash Borer How do you know if you're true? He's been impacted. The timing of that is something so that we can get people in, ready for that big spring emergence so that they're ready to start seeing when the trees leaf out next year, are they able to adequately report that and and be alert to that. So in case it has spread, we'll we'll have people trained, you know, have a resource tool they can go in and check against. So those are kind of the major things. The timeline, as I said, Does pre stage this, this emergency board funding is sort of the fall communication, and then a big push in the spring. And I'll try and get that out. After I see what what's happening with the fall thing, so that people have kind of a sense of where the touch points are. The only other thing was the US Forest Service's reported they did their dureena resources did their fall newsletter entirely on the whole ash project for saving ash and doing resistance testing. So that's kind of more long term communication. And they'll be
they've agreed to let let us post that on the centralized webpage. So as they get information on the long term stuff, they'll share that and we can then post that. And I'm thinking, Patrick, that what we want to do is kind of a another thing, there's been a lot of articles that I've been passing around, I think it would be helpful if we did a news you get like EAB, in the news in Oregon, so that there's sort of one place on your webpage that people can go and I don't have to keep, you know, emailing it, you know, to people, they can just sort of say, we'll post anything that we find that we get there. So I think that's my cue to then pass this off to Oda. Andrew, if you have an update for us, on the on the news release, you are contemplating.
Yeah, I actually sent a draft up to the group on the 29th of September and did not receive any feedback. So and then I went on to a conference that I just returned from so I can send that back out to the group. Jim, I think I forwarded you my last email, Chris Benjamin, and I did work together on putting together an update, including the emergency board funding, how that was going to be used and some information for the public on what they can do. So I can send that back out to the group. And we can send that out. Whenever since we've already received the funding. We can definitely do that at any time. So I will do that. I'll send that back out to the group because everyone can take a look at it. And then we can schedule a date to send that out.
Great. What do you think about Monday as a release date for that, that work? And are there spokespeople available at Oda? for that? That'd be my other question is like who's going to be the principal person if we get interest in it?
We'll have to work on who's available next Monday. So that'll be a conversation with Chris and Cody. And folks, so we'll have to work on that does. Chris Cody, does that sound like a good day for someone to be available next Monday?
The least speaking, excuse me, on my calendar, I
will
be available. Part of that is just going to depend on what the nature of the question is. So we'll have to kind of triage that to the appropriate person. But yeah, certainly.
Okay. Yeah. I'm just thinking if there was an overall question about the whole thing, Chris, if that would be appropriate, since it's kind of coming out. Like that. Okay. And then yeah, obviously, if it's a scientific or technical question that might get triaged to the, you know, to those experts. All right, well, let's, let's shoot for that, then I'll put that in the, in the in our timeline and such. And I think that's the end of report, other than Patrick and I will be working on seeing where we are in the URL, web page finish that design. So thank you. Thanks.
Thank you, Jim. Thank you, Andrea. Next is Research Committee. I know Dr. Shaw, Dave Shaw said he would not be joining us He sent us a written update, which I can forward out to the group. Is there anybody from the research committee that needs to supplement that report that we'll send out or can we move on to our next committee Okay, with that would utilization Dr. Williams? By Yeah,
thank you. So the wood waste would you realization committee hasn't met since our last taskforce meeting formally, but we did meet for a demo day. And that was a couple of weeks ago, want to give a big thanks to Jim Archuleta for organizing that, along with DEQ. A whole bunch of DEQ employees, Margaret Miller, who was on our EAB Task Force she on the woodwinds subcommittee. She also was instrumental in putting that together. So we demoed a burn boss, Eric curtain incinerator. And Patrick, is it okay to share my screen? Do I have permission to do that? Oh, you're muted, though, Patrick.
Yes, to Yes. Give it a try. And all right.
So I did share my screen. Hopefully you can see some pictures here.
Let's get okay.
Yeah. So this is a kind of a small unit. This is what's called a Aerocart incinerator. And it's for very, very low emissions. And it's used primarily in states where burning is prohibited or not prohibited, but it's hard to pull off. And so one state in particular is they have to do a lot of storm debris cleanup. And there's a lot of high density population centers. So you can't just burn that material, open field burnings, but you can't in one of these aircraft incinerators. And so air is blown over the fire right here on the sides of the unit. It's fully self contained. So Ryan from environmental services, or valley Valley environmental, he did the demo here. And it was on the grounds of a Portland Metro arborist. So he had a very large woodlot. As you can see here in the in the background, he is also using some of the trees that he removes in and making products out of a mike firewood, he can also bring in a portable mill and cut slabs and do stuff like that. But he also partners with Ryan from Valley environmental and does air curtain incineration around Portland metro area. So anyways, I took a picture of these logs right here, this is the volume that Ryan can handle in that little unit in eight hours. So in eight hours, that little unit, which I'll go back here, you can just pull by a pickup trailer as sets on the ground, and you load in firewood over or chunks of wood over eight hour period, and air is blown on that. And then you can lift this trailer up and pull it forward. And what's left is charcoal or biochar, which there's not a market for it yet, but in the future, there could be more of a market. So it was just demo that Jim Archer Letta put on and Margaret Miller and valley environmental and OD promote. Yep, it was Scott Altman off myself and Marcus coffin or biomass specialist, and Stephen Baker from the forest services there. So a lot of the members of our task force were I mean, of our subcommittee, were invited to watch this. So that's the latest news. We also had side conversations there at the demo. And one of the common themes was getting a grasp or working with the best management practices on firewood. So we know that there's going to be a lot of wood waste coming to Washington County in particular, and this aircard incinerator is just one tool that could be possibly used. DEQ is in the process of permitting it, and they would like to do a test burn. And so we're trying to connect the dots between DEQ and this contractor Valley environmental and then the EAB task force. So it is possible to do a test burn. And check this contractor off is kind of meeting that requirement, but also doing it in an EAP area. So we would like to introduce this to Oda and local landowners or land managers like Clean Water Services, that maybe we could form some unique partnerships here and get this thing permitted and tested and even do a media day and show how much volume can be can be, I guess dealt with in an eight hour shift. So what's the cost is $250 per hour, and so $2,000 per day to operate this thing. So we all talked about it that this is just one of the tools and the other tools also include promoting clean and preferably sanitized firewood. Again, the chipping requirements and also kiln drying. So those are our best practices moving forward for wood waste. There's also increased interest in the forest industry if potentially using Oregon ash as a timber species Moving Forward. There are some issues with that. One is transportation costs, it's always going to come down to how much does it cost to get the logs off of a land and to a mill and doesn't pencil out. So landowner is not going to harvest a bunch of logs unless it can pencil out for transportation costs. But also the mills need to have special mills to handle hardwood, but that's not totally prohibitive here in Oregon. And there are some mills that are having interest in buying Oregon ash logs. So Oregon Department of Forestry, we administer the Forest Practices Act, and we're gearing up to get ready for that. And that's something that the wood waste and utilization committee used to be aware of, as well. So we haven't met formally, but that burn boss was a very good demo. And we hope that we can pitch it to the UAV Task Force and Oda and clean water services or other landowners in the area to test this in the spring. So that's the end of our my report. Check.
Hey, wait, did shake? That's a really cool technology for that burn box. Do you know if the permitting is a special use just for EAB? Or is it going to be a general permit? Because we could always use that at like the ports and other areas? I'd have materials that would be burned out a few million?
I don't think Margaret is on here to answer that
I am on do you want? Oh, perfect. Yeah, that's a good question. So just to clarify, in terms of, you know, there's two parts. So it is there already is a general permit available for this, this unit. And that's why they are already able to operate in Oregon. The test that we're talking about is currently the way we've modelled for the permits that are in place is using surrogate data because the data wasn't available for these particular units. So the test that we're talking about is to collect emissions factors specifically for these units. Because we think if we improve the emissions factors by using factors that are, you know, for the unit itself, and not using open burn, and boy would file fire boilers that will actually be able to use these it closer to communities, and in a more expansive way. But in order for us to do that, we would need to have those emissions factors. And so we have funding as actually part of Senate Bill 762 to do this emissions test. And it just happened to be that it all kind of lines up. But yes, they already there already is an existing general permit was actually our very first title five general permit that we did here in Oregon.
Thanks, Margaret, for that. Okay, thank you,
Wyatt. IPM is Chris Hedstrom. I'm not seeing him on our list here. So we can circle back if any other committee members have anything to report from IPM. Otherwise, we'll have Chris Hedstrom. Send out maybe a written report. But let's go to training. Since we do have Alex.
Yeah, thanks, Patrick.
So we decided at our last taskforce meeting was that the or our steering committee meetings last week, was that the training and technical assistance subcommittee would no longer really try to build material from scratch or kind of, you know, stressed about how are we going to do this do that what
we're going to do instead is wait through all the other subcommittees to develop language to develop materials, send that to communication, get that all nice or over to OSU. So we can put our stamp on it and get anyone else's stamps on it. Either way, we'll end up with the finished product. And then we can take that and then create trainings based off those finished products, and then disseminate it to whoever or just be like, hey, Herb and salt will Association, here's a PDF on would use the utilization.
So really just trying to keep it more streamlined and simple. And I think it makes a lot more sense. What we're also trying to do and we're moving along quite well is building these EAB field kits. So we're we're just waiting for the Go ahead. Once Forest Grove chops down that tree and Joseph Gale Park will collect about three pickup truck beds full and then take that over to a local Stimson mill which has a kiln and will will treat all that wood and get that all. All good to go. We're also getting some blood samples from the University of University Minnesota, the Minnesota Department of Agriculture, which Oda will will inspect and give us their stamp of approval. And then should hopefully be getting Some
EAB samples depend from odf. That's exciting. Other than that we talked about at our last subcommittee meeting, about developing just quick FAQs and stuff. You know, it's
got on top, mentioned some FAQs, and just stuff that we can give out to like HOAs and neighborhood groups, those kind of groups that maybe are falling through the cracks a little bit as we're talking about these larger agencies, but nonetheless, still need information.
So we talked about just getting something together for that. They don't need anything super technical.
Yeah, that's, if any other committee members, I know Scott, you're on I saw Rick and brandy. So if I forgot anything, please chime in. If
If not, then that's our update.
And this is Tom from the city of force Grove, I just got a quick want to pop in here real quick. I've been waiting on direction I've got three trees now that are actually have emerald ash borer in them and the one over togail, I just been waiting for the word to take that down. So maybe you can reach out to me via email, we could set that up the time right and get it dropped. And we can get that taken care of.
Great, awesome. Perfect. Sounds good. Thank you. Thank you very much, Alex. Funding quarantine. Chris Benjamin.
Hi, good afternoon, everyone. I apologize that my camera off from having a little congestion situation. Two things I want to follow up on one Wyatt, on your update on the air curtain. Anything, I think that that does definitely sound promising as an avenue. So if there's anything that Oda can do to support that, to get that going, and I'd like it, to me, it seems I don't know a lot about it. But it seems a big limiting factor here is dq their requirements and their permits. So that's not going to be ot A's arena. But again, if there's anything that we can do to support that to, I don't know what that would look like having some conversations or whatnot. Yeah, just to just to point that out for everyone. And then the last time when we met, your group did a great job of presenting that waste wood waste utilization document. We met with the steering committee on Friday afternoon. And I brought that up again, that I think that that's pretty much something that was ready to go. So reminding us, we need to review these things as they come up to make sure that we're kind of giving them the go ahead to push them on to the communications group. So that we can get that information out because it seemed like that was produced and it kind of just ended up in the inbox. And we didn't take any action from that. So one, I wanted to apologize on that. And to just to reiterate that,
no problem actually. And it's a work in progress that list, we still actually need to get more contractors and resources added to that from Washington County from an LeFleur. So it's actually a work in progress. It's not a finished product.
But some of that information, I think could be adopted into like the FAQs that was mentioned earlier that we're still waiting to get out. So again, I'm just kind of plugging this for the greater group here. That when things like that come up, we got to kind of work together, talk together and make sure that we're sharing things amongst the different subcommittees so that we are getting things out the door, we're not waiting on any individual AI piece too long before we can share it with folks, because that might happen. So that's not to blame fingers. I think that's just a message for somebody.
I was wondering if like those documents, they could be posted that the Oregon EAB dot info or some something like that. So you say I agree with you like we need to have some more communication across the subcommittee's and with the steering committee and the Task Force as a whole that maybe I don't know, I'm just thinking outside the box here on the fly. But if that document or other documents like that could be on the EAB?
Yeah, I think I'll go ahead and on that, on that note, as Jim and I are kind of working on the on the website, any documents that folks want on there, feel free to shoot shoot them over and we can definitely get get some opt in and make an A as you set up. Why?
I just want yeah, I don't know who the gatekeeper is to for that. But if it's Oda says Yeah, put this document on there or if I could just send you stuff. But yeah, I just I won't abuse that. But the wood waste does have some pretty concrete, best management practices in there or how to deal with waste. Yeah, not necessarily specifics yet. That's what we're adding to it was like the specific contractors and land properties we can do. Use stuff like that. But the how to handle the wood waste? Yeah, is that's not gonna change very much.
Yeah, I think is getting that stuff on the website, I think that sort of maybe the role of the communications is they were kind of looking to kind of, for lack of a better we're prettify things, you know, kind of formally, you know, do some formatting kind of thing to have something that's shareable with the public. So that might be a good avenue. And I'll put a plug in. Robert Emanuel was going to do a little overview about kind of revisiting how the how we're kind of thinking that these committees could better function together in order to make sure that we're all communicating and working in a in a good way. But we'll get to that in a minute. Circling back to the EAB. Cody kind of already mentioned that. So with that funding was approved. So in addition to staffing, kind of the two bigger things, I think, are the funds that we received for treatments, I think that's going to be huge, in addition to funds that were allocated for waste collection sites, or for the marshalling yards. So I think the next step, at least for us is kind of reaching out, would we see utilization, figuring out who those folks are, that we can kind of contract with similar to what we've done with Japanese beetle. But again, kind of making the point that these are funds that we have for the rest of this biennium. So they need to be used by the end of June, but already have talked to Cody kind of thinking about next steps if we want to try to put in for some additional funds in the next board meeting. And that's something I'd like to connect with odf on at some point offline to kind of talk about it, their intent is also to put in a request for EAB. Because that's one thing we want to make sure, as partners, we're avoiding in both agencies going in at the same time asking for the same funds that could be used for the same thing. And then second point of bringing up is for a quarantine update. I understand that that is a very pressing concern with a lot of folks. And we did talk about that or last year in committee on Friday. Draft is kind of gone back to the table are some additional revisions I needed to be made on our end. So I have some folks reviewing that right now. But definitely, I think that we can get that out in the next couple of weeks. I know I keep saying that. But there's been some unforeseen hiccups on that end. Again, just kind of stressing that. quarantines, looking, again, as a precautionary measure the county at this point, yes, we've only found it in and around Forest Grove. But again, we don't know the full extent of what we're looking at right now. So it's kind of casting a net wider, just to keep are just to be safe about that. And the main restriction is just not moving any ash material or host material from those areas, which then again, kind of circles back to the idea and the need for marshaling, or we're going to be using air curtains or other ways that we can use the woods locally, rather than preventing that we're getting moved out. Okay, thank you very much, Chris.
Hope you feel better. Let's go ahead and go to rob on that discussion, discussion about kind of reviewing our committee's work and relationships in between the committee's to go ahead and Rob.
Amex actually having some technical difficulties presenting anything? I can't really see anybody else or anybody else on the call other than kind of a gallery view of everybody here. Oh, sorry. And then Can y'all hear me? Hello, we can hear you. Yep. Okay. Sorry about that. I'm having some technical difficulties. I may not be able to present this, Chris. I, I can't, I can't access the any, like why it's all presentation. I couldn't see.
Is there a way there? Can you just kind of verbally explain? Yeah, let me try to just verbally explain
it and I can send this out to Patrick later to distribute. The the thought we were discussing in steering was trying to explain kind of the major buckets of needs amongst the various entities that are going to be managing and dealing with emerald ash borer. And so trying to think about it, I have been trying to think about it from an end user perspective, because I am in an end user position here. And that is that The major threads that need to be addressed, and then trying to lump together some of those some of the tasks that we've given to subcommittees, so that we look at how those relate to the end product. So one big end product is going to be communications to various audiences, the public, the elected leaders, the professionals, and professionals who are dealing with wild ash and professionals dealing with ash in more landscaped cultivated settings. And so communications needs to sort of be fed some items that would be of use from those very various audiences, perspectives, and needs. And so the idea is that we funnel some of the technical knowledge into some communications products. And then once those are kind of massaged, and, and, and managed to some degree to meet the audience needs that we would work with Alex and others, Dave, or Chris, and the OSU community to try to get in some cases, some of these things put into OSU is pipeline so that they could have the stamp of approval of our orange and black neighbors, and generate some, you know, wide recognition amongst the all those different audiences that adding OSU to some of these will allow matters that are non regulatory to stay and look, non regulatory matters that are regulatory would need to stay with the state and to D or local entity that's managing that regulation. But if it's technical knowledge, for example, on how to do survey work, how to report findings, how to manage trees, in an urban setting, for example, those things could all get some kind of branding from either OSU Another possibility would be to look for other entities out there, that would also be kind of trusted sources of knowledge. The second piece is to take some of the technical pieces that we that are further upstream from that, like wood waste utilization, IPM survey and monitoring and see if we can put those into kind of an end users perspective and generate, again, products that are unified that the whole subcommittee buys into, like, for example, in mapping and survey, we're working on kind of a unified survey protocol for professional folks. So that would be something that we would generate, it would end up in communications hands, and eventually maybe published through through, you know, a trusted technical purveyor of knowledge, like OSU, or perhaps the soil water conservation districts who are local here. So that's the idea. I'm trying to put it into, into kind of a PowerPoint or a Visio document, to give this thing kind of a visual framework, so you all can see it, but unfortunately, I cannot access that and share it with you all with deepest apologies.
Thank you, Rob. Yeah, if you want to send that out to me, I can get that out to the group, along with any any other documents or reports or action items up folks want sent out to the group I can. I can distribute those. If you want to find all those to me, I'll send those along with kind of a recap of this meeting and minutes and notes and things like that.
Thanks, Patrick. Yeah, it'll be it'll be pretty basic, but it'll be something that kind of convey the basic idea of how do we organize the threads that we're working on.
Great, thank you. Thank you, Rob. Okay, with three minutes left, does anybody have any other questions or action items we need to think about? Before our next meeting, which will be November 8, election day at 1pm.
I might interject a clarification item here. It looks like during my talk, I talked about two protocols coming out of our survey of subcommittee where we stand by what I said on the actual visual survey supplemental protocols, but Max is building proto calls for destructive sampling that will be in addition to visual survey and actually can be used with the existing survey 123. app. So just wanted to clarify that.
Thank you, Cody. Jim.
Yeah, just wanted to clarify, I think what Chris Benjamin had said, I think I'm seconding that is for sending things to the hub, um, on the OASC webpage. I think it is helpful if it can go through the Communications Committee, because there may be so many different people creating different documents that will just basically serve to make sure that we know is this a replacement for something that's on the hub? Is this new item? Is it a duplicate of thing? Is there discrepancies between this and what we just got from another agency? So we just want to have that kind of serve as a clearing house to make sure that when it gets passed to Patrick, he's, he's got something clean to post that has? Yep, we're not duplicating we're not whatever? Or do I need to take something down? So that's the reason for coming in, I think to communications, first, we'll try and make that a very painless process of just a quick overview, look at it. If there's any questions, get back and say, Is this the same as you know, the feds are doing or that document that they just posted? And, and let people that way? Have the sense that Yep, once you give it to us, then it'll get posted in short order. And also, if you, if you if you notice something out there that should come down? Let us know that too. And then we can say, Okay, well, what's replacing it then? So that's, that's it.
Thanks, Jim. I appreciate you, helping them be the gatekeeper. There, you and the committee. So yes, if folks have things, they want to go on the website, maybe send those over to Jim, and the committee could take a look at it. And then they'll find a link over to me, Margaret Miller.
Yes, I just quickly wanted to jump on and let everybody know, cuz I know you're working on timelines and action items, that the DEQ funding that we have for this admissions test is tied to biennium funding. And so we we are moving forward with our in with the test, regardless, so hopefully, it can pan out that we can all collaborate. But, you know, that does mean that by end of June, that funding does have to be spent down. So our our contribution to anything would have to be sitting down. So I have connected with Wyatt on on, you know, creating some type of, you know, how we would move forward? If, and, and when. And I did want to just also chime in that in terms of like any limitations when it comes to permitting and all that. That's already all done in in place. So we and we've already, we currently have a request for proposal out for fabricating the hood that's going to be used in the test. So we're we're moving ahead, and I think it could align. But I just wanted to mention that we do have a kind of a tight timeline.
Thanks, Barbara. That's a good reminder, on the funding timelines there, Scott, you get the last word here.
I'll be very quick. I just wanted to riff off of what Margaret mentioned, I see a lot of potential here with the air curtain burners. And I would urge us to figure out ways that we could increase the number of units, and perhaps even pursue waivers for air quality permitting. The fact of the matter is a lot of the material is going into smoke that is unpermitted because it's in slash piles rather than an incineration unit. So really, this won't increase the amount of pollution going on. So I don't know how that would occur. I've definitely been speaking with Margaret and others, but let's put our collective heads together to see how we can get more of these units on the scene. And I do think there is a market for biochar. I know there is even if it's simply for sequestering carbon on site and then agriculturally and our Bora culturally and silver culturally there is great use so just wanted to plant that seed. Thanks.
Thank you very much, Scott. If anybody has any other items that pop up between now and our November 8, meeting of urgency, feel free to send those my way and we can get those out to folks and on the agenda for next meeting. Again, November 8, one o'clock, the election day hope everybody votes. We if there is somebody also There's somebody out there that is a team's Microsoft team's expert. I'd love to connect with you after the meeting as well. And maybe you can help me figure out how to turn on the chat and other functions here. So thank you very much, everybody for being here today. And we will see you and your committees over the next month or at our next task force meeting November 8. Also, we have a invasive species council meeting next week on the 18th and 19th. We'll be releasing the agenda here this afternoon. If anybody is interested in coming. We do have an agenda item on EAP there and so if anybody wants to provide support items there we would more than welcome you or if you just want to come to the meeting. It'll be at the O DFW building there in Salem today. 18th 19th. Thank you very much, everybody. Have a great afternoon. Thanks, everyone.
