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BWSR Meeting Minutes January 23, 2002 Page Three Chair Coe, Darrell Bruggman and Paul Krabbenhoft attended a meeting on January 11, at the BWSR office in Brainerd to review the Stearns County Water Plan. He was very impressed with the progress they made. They elected Paul Krabbenhoft as Chair and he did a very good job of conducting the review. The Stearns County water plan is on the agenda today and we will hear more about their plan later. Chair Coe participated in a conference call with the Administrative Advisory Committee on January 15. The primary focus was the budget, 'on the agenda today, which Ron Harnack will be covering in detail later in the meeting. Executive Director's Report -Ron Harnack reported that BWSR is laying out. a framework for the next several months. Discussions will continue on streamlining the way we do business and our involvement with other agencies. Next month we will start with a history lesson on local water planning which provides a base umbrella for everything we do. Future expectations include consolidation of the water management authorities into one authority that can be more streamlined and- flexible in terms of its utilization by local units of government. We will do the same thing for WCA as we move forward. We will have to make the program much more efficient and effective and the best way to do that is in an integrated discussion with the other agencies. Ron stated that budgets have been a hot issue the last month and a half. BWSR went in before the House and Senate and things went as well as could be expected. We tried to give them a good understanding of the Governor's recommendations and to a great extent, why the agencies are putting certain programs on the table. The second aspect of the budget is the Capital Budget and the Governor has come out with recommendations for the Capital Budget. We had three initiatives initially that were proposed, RIM reserve at $20 million and the Governor is recommending $7 million, the Lake and Streams Initiative was not recommended for any dollars. We've come off a pilot initiative that's been utilized, and new programs were looked at very critically, with a lot of demands out there, this is not one that we would move forward. The Wetland Road Replacement initiative under WCA, which has been an annual issue, is again not in the Governor's recommendation. We will have to look to the counties and townships to carry the water like they have in the past. There is no interest in changing the policy to give any relief in that arena. It still maintains itself as a state mandate without funding. In your packet of information, under Board Member Update, there are two court. cases that have come back from the Court of Appeals; both have affirmed the state's position. One is the Rice Greek wetland issue that you've had before you on appeal several times. The second in Big Stone County, involved a DNR protected waters, wetland, and