I'm Sarah Haggerty. I'm a conservation biologist with Maine Audubon. We are a non-profit conservation organization that works to conserve Maine's native fish and wildlife species and their habitats through education, advocacy, outreach, and programming just like this. Panny Young and Nick Lund, who are also with me from Maine Audubon, are online with us as well, and they are taking care of all the technical issues and all the Zoom issues for us. So again, use the chat to communicate with them if you are having any problems. Now, I want to know who you guys are. We have more than 100 people on this Zoom, which is fantastic. This is our biggest StreamSmart program ever, and we like to know how much experience you have with StreamSmart and where you're coming from. So Hannah, if we can pop up that first survey question, we'll get a feel for how much experience folks have with StreamSmart. Actually, we've got two questions here. The first, they're both very, very simple. Have you been to a StreamSmart workshop before? And the second one is, who are you? Are you from a town? Are you a contractor? Are you a government agency, a landowner, a private landowner? And this is pretty cool. We are seeing a lot of activity. Just give folks just a couple more seconds. It's slowing down. It's great. Everybody had their coffee. They jumped right in. All right, we've got over 90% voted. I'm going to end the polling. And this is what we are seeing. Most of you have not attended a StreamSmart workshop before. And most of you have at least heard of StreamSmart, hopefully. So that's fantastic. A few of you have a little bit of experience with it. So I think that our program today will work for everyone. But I'm really excited to see that a lot of folks who have not been to a training before are here with us. And today we have a lot of government agencies. But we also have consultants and folks from the forestry industry. That's fantastic. We have a little bit of everybody here today. So that is fantastic. That's really exciting. That's really great to see that we're sort of touching all sorts of the stream crossing world out there. So let me get my tongue going. And okay. So we heard about StreamSmart this morning. And main Audubon coordinates the StreamSmart program. But the StreamSmart program is more than just a main Audubon program. It's really a partnership.  We've got government agencies from the federal level, the state level, the local level. We have other NGOs like main Audubon. We have individuals. We have industry representatives. We have towns. All these folks are working together to get more StreamSmart on the landscape, get more aquatic habitats connected. And there's, I just want to call out at the very beginning, there is a lot of information on our StreamSmart website, which is StreamSmart main.org.  We will send a link around afterwards as well. Contact information for all the folks here today as well. And tons of additional information. It's a great resource to check out. And I want to thank the partners who are here with us today. This is the most unusual StreamSmart workshop we have ever done. And these folks are giving us their sharing, their time and their expertise with us. And I really want to thank them because we could, like I said, we can't do StreamSmart without these partners. So really take advantage of this. These guys are really knowledgeable, really experienced on this topic. So use that Q&A box to post your questions. We will monitor it throughout the morning. If you have questions for these folks, just post it in there and we will make sure that we get some answers. You can always email us afterwards as well if we don't get something covered during the presentation today. I want to run quickly through the agenda. Again, it is in the chat. We're going to start with a conversation about the value of StreamSmart crossings and the importance of free flowing streams. Then we're going to run through the legal requirements, the regulatory oversight of stream crossings. Then we have a small break and we will come back and share a video of the stream table. If you've been with us to an actual live StreamSmart workshop, you may have seen the stream table, which is the most exciting part of the day and everyone gets to gather around and play in the sand. We cannot replicate that experience, but we've done our best with the COVID rules and our limitations to at least create a video of that experience and hopefully we'll be able to share the concepts that we are trying to with that. Then we'll go into the technical pieces of how you create StreamSmart crossing and then we will round out with the cost and benefits and some information on some possible opportunities to receive financial assistance to create StreamSmart crossings. As I say, hopefully we'll end that part of it around 1130 for a good chunk of time for Q&A and for discussion and again we will provide an additional link for another Zoom meeting room to go into if we want to continue that discussion. Folks are still interested in that. So with that, let's get started and I'm going to stop sharing and we are going to bring on Mary Gallagher and she's going to walk us through the Valley of StreamSmart Crossings. Mary is the Native Fish Conservation Biologist for the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife and Mary can share your screen. Excellent. Thank you, Sarah. Can you see my screen? Yep. Excellent. Well, thanks for joining us all today. It's wonderful to see this many people logged on and interested in this topic because it's something that's very near and dear to my heart. And what we're talking about with StreamSmart Crossings is we're trying for the ultimate and win-win. We're trying to maintain fish and wildlife habitat across our landscape. We have bountiful resources here in Maine that we want to protect for moving forward into our future. As well as protecting our roads and public safety, everybody needs to continue to move around. We recognize that and we want to encourage that actually. So welcome. And this is what we're trying to avoid, blowouts. And nobody likes to see a crossing blown out because of a severe rain event or storm event. It's a nuisance to our everyday life and travel and not to mention it's incredibly costly on town and state budgets, not and quite dangerous for people who happen to be in the vicinity at the time. Why are we within inland fish and wildlife? And I will say DMR, Department of Marine Resources, are also highly motivated to see more of these types of crossings on our landscape. Well, we have bountiful recreational in inland as well as coastal fishery resources. And most of us who are Maine residents are well aware of this, but we support a huge angling contingent within our state. It's the number one outdoor recreational activity that most people tend to partake in at least at some point during their annual year. We, of course, provide resident and non-resident fishing licenses to quite a few anglers, greater than 80,000 non-resident licenses sold each year. Now these can range from single day licenses to sea whole season, but we support many, many anglers in the state, and we welcome them with open arms and want them to fish our bountiful resources. We have world-class inland fisheries in the state of Maine, mostly for cold water salmon, it's like landlock salmon, brook trout, and some other species as well, but people come from all over the world to fish in Maine. And again, we welcome them with open arms and want them to enjoy our bountiful resources. And one of the things that we can use to kind of pat ourselves on the back for the job well done over the years is we have 583 designated heritage trout waters within the state. These are high quality brook trout waters where stocking, these are entirely supported by natural reproduction in these waters. Stocking has never occurred or it's been at least 25 years since any brook trout stocking has occurred in those waters. Something to be very proud of. And of course our recreational fishing and coastal fisheries support wages in a broad part of the Maine economy in general, whether we're talking about people like me who are biologists and paid directly to help manage the resources for us here in Maine, but as well as supporting our tourist industry because a lot of people come here to fish in Maine. What are we talking about as far as the fish? The fish is that we have here in Maine that rely on river networks to be transported and move around our landscape. Well the primary focus for me is eastern brook trout and this is a native species to the state of Maine, historically occurred statewide, still has a major presence across wide swaths of our state and of course we want to encourage that and keep them as present and ubiquitous on our landscape as possible because not only are they a beautiful fish, but they are fun to fish for. And if you're a brook trout, a brook trout aficionado in the United States, the state of Maine is really kind of the bull's eye for where we still have the best resources on our landscape. Now the native distribution of brook trout in the United States extends from Maine, believe it or not, down to Georgia, but you go further south in the distribution and it's you're really talking about a species that occurs at high elevation in the Appalachian Mountains. We have them from sea to the highest levels of elevation in the state of Maine. And on the map on the right, this is the state of Maine resource everywhere you see kind of the dark blue. We know we have wild trout across our landscape and in those blank areas we either don't know because we don't have evidence or records to survey evidence to show that or we know there's problems that are currently existing in those habitats that are preventing robust brook trout populations. Now on the left hand map, this is the distribution of eastern brook trout for the east coast and one thing I want to kind of key in on are the cooler colors, the purples and the blues are the better quality cold water habitat for brook trout and the reds and the yellows and the oranges are to be avoided and we're trying and as you can see for Maine we have very little of the red and yellow. Let's keep it that way. It's not just about brook trout. We also have a federally listed endangered species occurring in the state Atlantic salmon. Most of us on the session here today are probably aware of this but for the United States and Atlantic salmon is it for Maine. We are again the bullseye state for maintaining this species presence not only in the state of Maine but for the United States as a whole. And historically Atlantic salmon did occur down as far south as about Connecticut, the Connecticut River for sure but currently this Atlantic salmon is listed as critically or endangered in the pink areas in the state of Maine and those cross hatched areas are considered critical habitat for the species in the state so a primary focus area for restoration work for that species. Now both of these species brook trout and Atlantic salmon need to move around freely on their landscape and no evidence is better for this. I'm going to show you a couple maps here in a minute but this fish this map is for Atlantic salmon that live the first couple years of their life in our riverine systems in inland areas while they're growing and getting ready to prepare to move out to sea and through that period through across the span of a year or even a day they're moving freely around within the river network among and between the various areas to get enough food to find safe places to hide and to you know avoid extreme flow events you name it they have to juke and jive throughout their system before they head out to sea and then when they're in Atlantic salmon of course at some point you get that that motivational trigger to head out to sea for a couple more years grow really big. Now the story is a little bit different with brook trout but it is also a highly mobile species that has to move around the landscape and we know this from a lot of tagging studies that we have done within fish and wildlife and one of the things I want to show you is a terrible map we admit that I've got to make it better one one of these days but this is the movement patterns of a single tagged adult brook trout in the western main area this is the border with New Hampshire this line right here but fish was tagged right here at station number one red dot number one in in late spring one summer season and then it quickly moved around to position number two up in New Hampshire heading upstream into New Hampshire a little further and then the next observational period just a few days later it's back in the Mcgallery River in Maine crossing the border coming back to say hi to us and then it went all the way up to about just below Azizka Haas Lake this blue blob is Azizka Haas Lake hung out there for a good chunk of the summer in a series of pools that exist in that area and then it kind of meandered around and at one point was all the way up in the Dead Diamond River in New Hampshire at station number 13 and moving around and it did this all season long as as conditions change flows change you name it looking for food and then in the fall coming back to where the party is in the fall for brook trout that are false spawners ending up in kind of the mid drainage area in this kind of center blob and then still moved around a little bit through the season and then as winter is approaching after spawning it headed down to a bag of lake to spend the winter these are movements on the order about 75 total miles across the season and this is not unusual this is common for brook trout to move around it within a river drainage this much landlock salmon had a similar situation our sabago lake population of landlock salmon is a native population to the state of Maine they evolved here and our landlock salmon of sabago lake spawn in the Crooked River which is a tributary into sabago but some individuals will go all the way up to Sango pond and to dig their reds and lay their eggs in the fall that's a distance of about 62 miles and this is an open river network now wasn't always but it's one of the reasons why our native landlock salmon and sabago are now a pretty robust population and it's not just fish when we're talking about stream smart other creatures on our landscape also use river networks as as transportation corridors to move up and downstream of course we're macro invertebrates aquatic individuals this is fish food in my world but other people think of insects a little differently we have freshwater mussels a few species in the state that are threatened and endangered trying to maintain their presence of course we have some mammals like otters and nank that are heavily reliant on aquatic resources for their food and trapping is a still a popular activity for those species in Maine and of course our turtles and one of the things we don't want to see is this is a smashed turtle or any sort of wildlife on the landscape if it can be avoided by keeping the animal in the stream versus having them have to cross the road of course rivers and streams provide other additional beneficial services for us and they are the primary conduits for movement of water and materials from upstream areas to downstream areas i.e. from high elevation to low elevation so streams and rivers that are free flowing regulate the flow of water on our landscape they also contribute greatly to distribution and movement of water temperature across their landscape and of course creatures and organisms and physical material like organic matter so for brook trout in the world of brook trout headwater streams and the connections of headwater streams even these small systems at the tippy top of our drainages are highly important and influential for cold water fish habitat in general and of course we're talking brook trout and Atlantic salmon here in these systems not only do the fish live in these little systems often but they're highly important for maintaining the water quality and food resources for the fish wherever they may be now what is the problem well we have a lot of barriers across a landscape these things called culverts and bridges and dams not bridges aren't barriers but we have a lot of them across the landscape and they aren't always in the best condition for organisms or creatures or fish to be able to move freely through it and there's many reasons for that but they're you know common in ubiquitous across our landscape we are humans are a species that does like to move around a bit and we also need to move around a bit to move us as well as our goods and services around as well so there's lots of road crossings in our state and the problem is widespread it is statewide and about one of the things that we are very proud of here in Maine is we kind of have a lot of information on our road stream crossings across the state and we know based on our survey efforts over the past few years that a greater than 7 000 individual sites on our state landscape are severe barriers on all road types whether we're talking state roads towns or private roads and another about 8 000 are potential or barriers at certain conditions or certain times of the year so and on average each site blocks about a mile of river network or stream network and again we want our fish to be able to often move greater distances than that and about 15 000 miles of miles of our streams are blocked from access entirely now so how to culvert block fish passage well there's a variety of ways and it's often contingent upon the flow conditions at the time but often the flow can be too fast and if a culvert pipe is kind of acting more like a water cannon than a culvert a fish simply cannot move through that the velocity of water can be way too fast for them at low flow periods and if poorly conditioned placement of culverts the water can be just too shallow to allow the body of a fish or an organism to pass through it freely and of course we often have the ubiquitous perched culverts that it just makes it difficult for fish to jump up into and in reality in most cases it's a combination of these factors that make it very difficult for fish to transport and swim through these freely and we see these conditions across our landscape when we're assessing and surveying culverts often at high flow periods and things are just moving too fast and this is common especially in spring because we have a lot of snow and ice to melt move off the landscape and also that's a time of the year for brook trout that they need to move around within the river network so sometimes the timing is bad perched culverts everybody sees these on our landscape it's just incredibly difficult for a fish to jump up in there and to get moving forward or too shallow the water across the the width of the crossing is just not deep enough for a body a thick-bodied animal to move upstream through that and then of course we have the combo combinations other conditions can be blockages to movement for for fish as well as other organisms you can have physical blockages some culverts especially undersized ones are an open invitation for often for beavers to come in and do their thing that's not only bad for fish movement it's bad for the people responsible for the crossings the beavers don't seem to care but some of these impoundments are also become thermal barriers and they're just a deterrent for fish to be able or to want to go up further into that system and of course when we're all about managing for cold water fish species like salmon and trout the last thing we want is to accelerate or increase water temperatures temperature is key to maintaining trout and salmon on our landscape these species rely and need access to cold colder water especially in the summer season and one of the things you can see on this graph is in a free flowing stream the blue line here the period of water temperature exceeding the tolerance or the the comfort level of brook trout is pretty small is reasonably small in this at this particular site in an impoundments impounded stream the red line here you just have a longer period of time that trout in this area would be exposed to those higher temperatures that are not always the best for them and actually can be lethal if they can't escape it and get away from it so that's the point that we're trying to make with improving culverts and barrier conditions within the state is twofold to limit the time that these thermal thresholds are experienced by these fish but the other aspect is reopening our river networks to free movement of our salmon it's across the landscape allows for them to move someplace else until the temperatures are reduced down to something that's more conducive to their biology so we also have other issues associated with some culvert crossings on our landscape and I'm sure we've all seen some of these examples the classic multiple culvert system if at first it doesn't work with one then just flap a few more in and see if we can still get the response that we want rarely works and often contributes to additional problems especially blockages and there and clogging on the upstream side and another aspect that we see more often on our landscape is slip lining invert lining and smooth bore plastic pipes being installed these are usually cost conserving measures might extend a little time element before crossing is lifespan is fully done but none of these options are good for fish they all have their own difficulties in the first and foremost is if you're slip lining or invert lining you're already reducing the the size of the bore of your culvert right off the bat but that new structure inside the existing one not a good condition for fish and it's not just inland rivers and streams we many of our species need to freely access and move between saltwater and freshwater habitats so salt marshes are a big part of this process as well um and are submit in some cases of our coast salt marshes are shrinking because of title constrictions we got a cold culvert or a poorly conditioned culvert right here at this roadway here salt marsh heading out to sea down here and the upstream side is greatly reduced and it limits the the tidal influence which is not always a good condition for our salt marshes in fact it's not a good condition at all and as we're in an era of climate change sea level rise is occurring and that also provides contributes to complications associated with some of these tidal constrictions coming soon a new or an a sister program to stream smart where we're talking about basically non tidal conditions in culverts but coast wise is going to tackle the the information and how to move forward with doing a better job on our coastal systems climate change is occurring and one of the things that is greatly at risk because of climate change and this is some of some of the stuff that we are pretty well aware of is our road infrastructure in the state of Maine right now is highly vulnerable to those blowouts and things like that that I showed you a little bit earlier mentioned a little bit earlier because basically our precipitation patterns are changing we're getting bigger storms and they're becoming more frequent and this is a pattern that we've known about for quite a few years now already we're able to to document increase the the frequency of increased of extreme storms is increasing by about 74 percent and the overall size or power contributed to these larger more frequent storms is about 23 percent so we're getting more of them and they're getting more powerful and bigger so this is just a little video to just sit and watch and let's see what happens here this is a crossing in Freeport a few years ago this is what failure is and this is not a condition that you want to be around when it's happening this is a bad day for the residents who rely on the road this is a bad day for the fish and the creatures that live in these habitats and it's a very bad day for the town to have to replace and find the budget on short notice to fix this and this was real time that's how quick it can happen and that's all far from the only example of these types of events in Maine we have many examples of these similar types of blowouts happening and here's an example of one that was in Acadia National Park a few years ago one of the other phenomena that can happen with these this is a gravel road that blew out and basically what happened at this site is the stream diverted around the undersized culvert and blew out the road blew out the gravel road here's the cost to repair that blowout just to maintain access and be in use of the road and the undersized culvert is still there because it didn't blow out they had to rebuild the road instead so failures are bad for habitat for the creatures that rely on these environments for survival and and to persist into the future um seller salmonets of course trout and salmon often are spawning in our streams and just having blowout failure failed culverts blowouts or just influx of extreme sediment from these types of events can be very detrimental to the spawning success of our salmonets our young juvenile fish fry young of the year need to find and be able to work their way into the interstitial spaces among the gravels to hide so they're not eaten by somebody larger than them common common scenario and aquatic in the aquatic realm so maintaining riverbeds that are free of extreme sediment and gravel inputs is very important and also with that is an important part of maintaining a macro invertebrate production within our river systems which is a food resource for everybody involved so there are solutions to these types of preventing these types of events on our landscape and that's called stream smart crossings where we're actively maintaining fish and wildlife habitat while protecting our roads and public safety at the same time and a couple more examples here of what failure is like um machias river in 2010 i don't know off the top of my head the diameter of this culvert but it's a big one a very large one blew out in a heartbeat and this is would be what a stream smart crossing would look like as the water comes up and the crossing size is large enough to handle and accommodate an extreme flow event water rises in height but continues to filter through the crossing just fine and the road is not damaged um vermont was a wonderful learning experience in the northeast in New England for all of us back in the event of hurricane Irene a few years ago greater than a thousand culverts and bridges were damaged or destroyed by that storm many many millions in monetary damages to fix the problems and replace the state was in you know dire straits for quite a while after this but what had happened is just before that storm event the green mountain national forest had replaced a lot of crossings in their ownership to stream smart standards much larger open bottom structures like you see here and none of them blew out it was very much a an experiment in action and a great learning experience not so much for the state of Vermont but for those of us who have an interest in connectivity issues and how to do a better job it was basically an incredible learning experience to see the difference in success and failure with the conditions of these sites so we have examples of this from Maine as well so this is a site of a big culvert the site in western Maine that also blew out during hurricane Irene this was the previous site before the storm this is the culvert getting blown out not of course the culverts there but it basically the the flows were so high and so much water to be handled at the site at the time it just basically blew out around it and expanded the size of the stream itself had to be replaced with a bridge but now it's a fully functioning and great example of a stream smart crossing these happen on town roads as well before example not this site didn't necessarily get blown out in a storm event but the town replaced this site with a stream smart crossing afterward and now it can handle an extreme event if one should come along and also private forestry roads similar example of replacing a greatly undersized round pipe probably on the order of about a three foot diameter pipe with which is probably something on the order of an eight or 12 foot wide bridge small timber brick bridge there are many options and and varieties of ways to go to do a better job with our fishing wildlife habitat so what makes a solution stream smart enables the passage of fish and other organisms both upstream and downstream you're almost and or entirely all flows and conditions when they need to move passes the sediment and debris and other material that need that the stream needs to move from upstream to downstream areas and it name maintains natural flow characteristics as well as maintaining road infrastructure and use for whenever we as humans need to move around so stream smart crossings maintain our habitats right while protecting our roads in public safety they allow the stream to act like a stream streams need to be variable and handle flows differently as as conditions change and we need to allow them to do that and fish and wildlife need to move around when they need to move and higher higher flows that come with larger more frequent storms allowed our animals to move or compensate as needed so with that i hope i hit i maintain the time you did mary you did a fantastic job i pushed us over low and you gracefully got us right back up without without with it seeming effortless um thank you very much that's fantastic that lays a great foundation for the rest of the um the morning here we're now going to dive into the regulatory portion of this because we are talking about working in streams working in water and so there's some regulatory oversight and there are a number of different agencies that that that may have oversight over some of these crossings and so it may not be every single regulator that you're going to hear from today is going to be have oversight for your crossing but we want you to know all of the possibilities depending on where you are and what your crossing is so we're actually going to run through five presentations they're pre-recorded so that we don't have to jump back and forth between different people sharing their screens um and we're going to run through those presentations but all of the speakers are here as panelists and so we're going to take some time at the end of that to ask questions i see a couple of folks have already thrown some some great questions into the q&a keep doing that that's fantastic i may take those couple of first questions um a little bit later because i think we're going to address some of them but we're going to dive into regulations now and um we're going to start with luchin lengua with the he's an environmental specialist three with the main department of environmental protection then we'll move on to tim car who's a senior planner with the land use planning commission then we're going to jump up to the federal agencies and hear from collin greenan who's a project manager with the army corps of engineers and then wendy mahaney who's an engine species biologist with us fish and wildlife finally we're going to hear from eric ham who's with main department of transportation now they're not really regulatory agency in terms of regulating your your stream smart or your stream crossing project but they do have oversight for some crossings in the state and he's going to explain what that is and then show us some examples of their stream smart crossings again post your questions in the q&a we're starting to get some great questions in there and let me just pull up the next presentation oh hang on a second i always forget to put the body on with the main dep in the bureau of land resources the dep has four regional offices in this state and serves as the environmental regulatory agency for the organized areas of main i work out of the southern main regional office located in portland which serves just over 80 towns the dep is responsible for managing protecting and enhancing the quality of man's water resources the bureau of land resources is responsible for the licensing enforcement and oversight of many land development activities we do this with the help of the natural resources protection act the natural resources protection act nrpa or nerba focuses on protecting natural resources protected natural resources include coastal water resources freshwater wetlands rivers streams brooks lakes and certain wildlife for the purposes of the nrpa river streams and brooks are interchangeable terms with the same meaning it is obvious to most people when an activity involves a river or trout stream but there can be some confusion over some smaller streams and brooks so it is important to know that a river streamer brook is a term solely defined in the nrpa not shorelands owning laws or other laws to qualify as a river streamer brook the water feature must have a defined channel in addition the feature must have two or more characteristics that are described in our definition we also have a guidance document for the identification of nrpa regulated streams on our website a permit is required when an activity will be located in on over or adjacent to a stream adjacent just means within 75 feet measured horizontally of the normal high waterline of a stream an activity that requires a permit would include filling dredging bulldozing removing or displacing soil sand vegetation or other materials or the construction repair or alteration of a permanent structure most stream crossing projects will involve earthwork such as filling activities and construction of a permanent structure all located in on over an adjacent to a stream therefore this results in the requirement of an nrpa permit so how do we permit a new stream crossing permit by rule or pbr can be used for certain classes of activities pbr is our easiest and fastest permit available it's a streamline process so there's a short 14-day review period and it's really just a notification to the dp you're telling us that you intend to comply with a set of standards the standards for acceptable projects are listed in chapter 305 of the nrpa chapter 305 contains around 20 different sections with each section related to a particular activity for example section 10 is for stream crossings a crossing that will not meet pbr standards may require an individual nrpa permit a higher level of permitting a stream crossing structure must provide an opening with a cross sectional area at least equal to three times the cross sectional area of the stream channel or to accommodate a 25 year storm a cross sectional area is calculated by multiplying the stream channel width by the average channel depth remember you can obtain pbr information including help with sizing by contacting the dhp land bureau in your region or by going online to our website we also have an in-stream work window of july 15th to october 1st this is the ideal time to work within a stream as it minimizes the work's effect on fish and wildlife species especially during critical life history stages and spawning migrations remember temporary erosion control devices must always be installed on a project site prior to construction and maintained throughout the project's duration depending on the stream conditions certain techniques can include cofferdams pumping and water diversion ensuring that your work area is stable before during and after the work and having the right size crossing to handle the water flow is key to a successful long lasting crossing pbr limits the total length of culverts to 75 feet proper alignment and placement of the culvert in the stream bed ensures proper fish passage this means setting below the stream bed elevation stabilized banks and proper compaction will ensure the crossing will last for many years an added benefit of proper installation techniques is a reduction in maintenance costs during the lifetime of the culvert the permit is not required from the dhp to replace a existing stream crossing provided that erosion control measures are taken to prevent the sedimentation of the water crossings cannot block fish passage crossings must be designed installed and maintained to match natural stream grade to avoid perching and drops crossings that are not open bottom must be embedded a minimum of one foot or at least 25 percent of the culverts diameter but not to exceed two feet thank you for listening if you have any questions on the presentation or would like more information please contact your nearest regional dhp office please see the contacts listed on the slide or go to our website www main.gov slash dp slash land again thank you for listening and for your dedication to protecting mains reverse streams and brooks this is tim kar planner with the land use planning commission based in the commission's augusta office in this video i'll briefly discuss the land use planning commission or lupc the lupc's policy goals for our water crossing standards what those standards are when permits are and are not required and how to obtain additional information and assistance from commission staff the lupc serves as the planning and zoning authority for the unorganized and deorganized areas of the state which include townships and most plantations in addition a few towns contract for our services these areas either have no local government or have chosen not to administer local land use controls prior to the creation of the lupc in 2012 the land use regulation commission lurk had regulatory authority within the unorganized and deorganized areas our service area is shown in the shaded portions of the map each of the colors representing one of our five regions each with its own regional office indicated by a red star basic information about the extent of the unorganized and deorganized areas is also shown the lupc stream crossing standards are found in chapter 10 of our rules section 10 27 d these standards were updated in 2019 to better incorporate stream smart principles and to better align with d e p regulations our stream crossing rules have a number of goals listed here and generally encompassing maintaining stream and water quality maintaining habitat connectivity and designing for larger and more frequent floods to help achieve these goals the lupc has general work standards for all water crossing these include standards designed to minimize stream impact such as a low flow work window or requirement to minimize in-stream work and requirements for water diversion and sediment control barriers in certain situations these goals are further achieved through requirements for the type of water crossing that can be used in certain situations and requirements for the sizing of crossings if a stream to be crossed as a perennial water course and has a sustained slope of more than 2% or if the water course is used for navigation a bridge or open bottom arch must be used to maintain the natural stream bed otherwise culverts are allowed water crossings must be sized for the 25 year flood or have sizing based on three times the cross sectional area of the stream in addition they must also be at least 1.2 times channel width at normal high water however different or additional sizing requirements apply in areas of special flood hazard and unnavigable water standards for installation and maintenance also help to achieve policy goals for water crossing the lupc has requirements for culvert installation shown here please contact your local lupc office for specifics on how deeply below stream bed elevation different types of culverts must be embedded also note that while stream bed substrate must be added to culverts greater than 60 inches in diameter bed development through natural deposition is allowed for smaller diameter culverts lupc rules also require that water crossings be maintained to continue to meet standards and facilitate the passage of fish and wildlife culverts that develop hanging inlets or outlets experience bed washout or do not match the characteristics of the natural stream channel must be repaired in certain circumstances installation of a water crossing requires a permit water crossing is not in conformance with the previously described standards may be allowed by permit from the commission to obtain a permit however an applicant must show that a non-conforming water crossing will produce no undue adverse impact upon the resources and uses in the area crossings of major waters also require a permit a major water is defined as a flowing water downstream from the point where such water drains 50 square miles or more crossings in certain lupc protection zones also require permits these include the aquifer protection flood prone area protection mountain area protection soil and geology protection and unusual area protection sub districts otherwise no permit is needed for crossings of minor flowing waters and other sub districts if the standards described previously are met however written notification of the installation must be sent to both the lupc and the army corps of engineers before work is begun this slide contains a link to our website as well as a link to contact information for our regional offices we encourage anyone with questions about a specific project to contact the applicable regional office general inquiries however may also be made through our main phone line to our to our augusta office noted here along with that office's address lastly lupc staff have created a brochure to help the public meet the sizing and installation standards for culverts the brochure may be downloaded from our reports page linked here and covers topics such as identifying the normal high watermark and measuring stream width and depth once the measurements of stream width and depth have been obtained users can refer to sizing tables in the brochure to determine the diameter of culvert to use thanks for listening and for installing stream smart water crossings good morning on behalf of the corps of engineers new england district we'd like to thank you for taking the time today to attend the stream smart workshop my name is collin greenin and i am a project manager in the main project office located in augusta a permit from the army corps of engineers is required prior to the placement of fill material into waters the united states waters the united states include streams and adjacent wetlands many stream smart crossings will require a core permit there are several types of permits that the corps uses in the state of main the first are the main general permits these permits have an abbreviated process approximately 30 to 60 days and there are two categories of review sv and pcn which some of you remember as cat wanting cat too most stream smart projects that we see can be authorized by these general permits there are rare cases when individual permits may be required generally this is when work will adversely affect the federally endangered atlantic salmon these require a full public interest review and decisions are generally made in 120 days please note that dp l upc and local permits are not a substitute for a core permit there may be some cases where you need a core permit and a dp permit and possibly a local permit under the main general permit the following requirements are required for sv you cannot substantially disrupt species movement and high and low flows you have to use stream smart crossing principles including crossings with 1.2 bank full width crossings with a natural bottom substrate stream banks within those structures closed bottom culverts shall be embedded at least 25 percent and in-stream work shall be conducted between July 15th and September 30th under sv there can be no effect to Atlantic salmon or its designated critical habitat please note that slip and invert liners and culver extensions which are not stream smart are not allowed under sv recognizing that the requirements of sv are not always able to be achieved these projects can be reviewed under pcn in which case the requirements are now recommendations you still cannot substantially disrupt species movement and high and low flows however we strongly recommend stream smart to include structures with 1.2 bank full width structures with a natural bottom substrate stream banks within these structures closed bottom culverts embedded 25 percent we encourage the work to be done between July 15th and September 30th however there can be no adverse effects to Atlantic salmon or its critical habitat after careful consideration slip lines and culvert extensions may be permitted under pcn in the rare case that an individual permit is required and this is typically when there's an adverse effect to Atlantic salmon an individual permit is required the need for an individual permit is made on a case-by-case determination we strongly encourage pre-application coordination to discuss the details of your project we'll coordinate your application with our state and federal fisheries partners there will be a strong emphasis on avoidance minimization and compensatory mitigation may be required for unavoidable impacts to waters the united states our new programmatic approach with us fish and wildlife service has greatly streamlined the general permit and individual permit processes for Atlantic salmon if you need a core permit here is the process you'll need to fill out an application and provide the following materials ideally 60 days before you need your permit we will accept dep and lupc application forms you'll need to provide the core detailed and legible plans you'll need to provide an official species list notify mhpc in the five indian tribes of Maine you'll need to define purpose and need discuss avoidance and minimization measures and you must document all unavoidable impacts to waters the united states we generally correspond with our federal partners for agency review which includes endangered species consultation lastly the core will make its permit decision if affirmative construction may begin in which case you'll need to be in compliance with your core permit please contact any one of our seven project managers in the state of Maine if you have any questions about your stream smart crossing thank you good morning my name is wendy mahani and i'm a biologist with the us fish and wildlife services main field office located in east orland main today i'm going to give a very brief overview of the interaction between the federal endangered species act and stream crossing projects in certain areas of main in the year 2000 the sea run or an adrimous atlantic salmon was listed as an endangered species under the federal endangered species act this listed population is referred to as the gulf of main distinct population segment the gulf of main dps is not listed at the state level and is a different strain or life form that means landlocked atlantic salmon the pink area on this map shows the historic range of the gulf of main dps which includes many rivers in the mid-coast region of main the down east region and some of the main's major watersheds including the penobscot kennebecke and andrew scoggin rivers the smaller area shown with cross hatching is designated critical habitat for atlantic salmon watersheds designated as critical habitat are places where endangered atlantic salmon are most likely to occur in main today main does still have a very small number of sea run atlantic salmon occurring in rivers outside of the area shown in pink like the saco river but these salmon are not listed under the federal endangered species act some stream crossing projects like replacing a culvert may involve an action by one or more federal agencies for example a project may need a permit from the core of engineers or a project may be getting federal funding or technical assistance from an agency like the federal emergency management agency for those projects with an intersection between endangered atlantic salmon and a federal agency the fission wildlife service will work with you and the federal agency through an esa section seven consultation to assess the effects of the proposed project on salmon for those projects not involving a federal agency the esa still provides some protections for endangered salmon so please talk to the fission wildlife services main field office about how this works if this is the case for your project recognizing the benefits for encouraging stream smart projects in areas where endangered atlantic salmon may occur the fission wildlife service worked with the core and fema to streamline the federal permitting and esa consultation process this streamline process was completed in september of 2017 and is based on stream smart principles including don't pinch the stream set the crossing structures elevation slope and alignment to match the stream and have a natural stream bottom inside the structure this streamline process focuses mostly on atlantic salmon but for some projects there may be other federally listed species to address such as the canada lynx perhaps most importantly i want to emphasize that the streamline process dramatically speeds up the federal approval process once you submit an application for a core permit or for federal funding using this streamline process the project will go through a technical review of the stream crossing design to ensure that it meets all of the program requirements such as being at least 1.2 timespan for width after the project design is approved the federal agency will then complete esa consultation with the fission wildlife service with a maximum timeline of 14 to 30 days again i want to emphasize that the streamline consultation process is much faster than before where consultation often could take several months to complete in closing if you have any questions about federal permitting and esa consultation including the streamline process please feel free to reach out to me and if you have technical questions about designing stream smart crossing projects please feel free to reach out to my colleagues bill bett or scott craig finally thank you and the fission wildlife service looks forward to working with you on stream smart projects in main thank you hello my name is eric ham and i'm the division manager of the natural resources division in the main duty environmental office yes main duty has an environmental office with folks from multiple disciplines including our some fish passage design experts and other folks that help gather resources and help get permits and authorizations to do stream crossing replacements around the state uh you know main duty has you know policies and there some laws on the books about kind of responsibilities with bridges and stream crossings and spans some of this most folks will be familiar with but you know anything over a 10 foot span is considered a bridge and then we have some other you know criteria other than that you know a minor span is a bridge that has a span between 10 and 20 feet and then a true bridge is something that is over 20 foot in span now all of these all these crossings that are over 10 feet actually get inspected every two years by this part of our inspection program so if you're working on upgrading one crossing that might be getting over 10 feet then there's some kind of interaction you know with how main duties inspection program and some of these responsibilities may work there is a relatively new fact sheet that's been circulated around that I have a link for later in the presentation that also explains this this little table was put together by our local road center I think that's a pretty good job kind of trying to explain responsibility of of each of the structures and on what type of road they fall on obviously structures on state highways are going to be responsibility of the state unless it comes into some of those issues with urban compact areas and and state aid roads obviously found ways which would be the focus of a lot of folks here you know the the minor spans still live within the responsibility of the municipalities as well as the culverts and then the bridges themselves if they're kind of built to certain standards DOT can end up maintaining the the responsibility for maintenance and future capital work you know main DOT regularly institutes stream smart principles we do a lot of work around the state on an annual basis a lot of crossings need to be upgraded and a lot more need to be upgraded um we regularly use stream smart principles when we're working we're in the Atlantic salmon distinct population segment of Ohio in the Army Corps we have a large programmatic agreement that helps us process a lot of projects very quickly as long as we kind of follow stream smart principles in our in our design in our construction and it's been a great program we're also implementing stream smart um when we're working with our primarily our state resource agencies with some of our other important state resources that's per cow and other other sea rock fish you know and you know we have a lot of these projects out on the landscape now and so we've had a bunch of years that that we've been able to kind of work through designing and constructing and then the monitoring programs on these structures following that you know and I can say that some of the major challenges that we run and do are you know and are you know stream bed recreation and the picture you see here that's a four-sided box pulver so the stream on the inside of the box has to be completely reconstructed and trying to get the right material a stable material a material that simulates kind of some natural material in there and having specifications and specification review in the field and constructability requirements is a real challenge it's not a not an easy process um so also bank lines you see in this product there's some bank lines in there you end up going using structures that are larger than 1.2 bank full width or one or even larger the bank full width you know banks are necessary you know part of the stream function and keeping the channel defined with different flows and variability and roughness and lots of other things that we made but constructing them inside of structures and hitting the right heights and keeping them stable also becomes a real challenge here at main duty you we're a real big organization you see we have five regions there across the state you know the different colors we have offices and all of those five five regions that can be contacted we also have a bridge maintenance office here in the Augusta office and the bridge maintenance folks would be the first folks to contact if you're talking about potentially constructing a bridge especially anything that's bigger than 20 feet you want to contact those folks early and talk to them a bunch of plans and they can help guide you and give you some advice the the fact sheet I mentioned earlier is that that link I just pulled the bridge maintenance contact information we also have a main local road center here if you've ever seen any talks have been involved with Pete Coughlin and his group they're fantastic folks so I would encourage you if you have questions to reach out either the bridge maintenance office or the local road center or even the region on that slide so again stream as far as and their principal's been very handy for folks here at main duty and I'll be happy to take some questions later thank you all that was fantastic I hope you all noticed some themes in all of these regulators mentioning that to meet the regulatory requirements the easiest thing to do is meet stream smart principals notice some of those timing windows were were the same for the different agencies and the overarching theme here really is reach out early to the regulators they want to help you get these stream smart crossings on the landscape they're there to help they really are and so reaching out early can can help make things go smoother so let me check our q&a and I don't know if the the five panelists want to turn on your video so that folks can see that you're still here and let's see if we have okay we have a question I will check the questions in the the q&a the q&a is where to put your questions and we have a question that looks like it's for DEP for allusion do exempt projects need a PBR filing so I don't know if you can turn on your thanks yeah yeah thank you Sarah um so an exempt project through DEP just remember that this is really exempt through the natural resources protection act or NERPA so it doesn't need a permit by rule however you still need to get in contact with the army corps of engineers for instance um as your project it may still require review by them um so with that exemption just think of that for DEP's rules and of course make sure you follow that criteria within the exemption and you can always reach out to us we'll give you the full language or any type of application requirements that you need uh just feel free to go to our website or you know you see my name right here you can also mention that if you give us a call too as well and I can keep going Sarah I saw there were a few DEP questions here honestly um so there was one from Ted um Ted you had a question about kind of there was this uh owner he's unwilling to replace a undersized chrome and if it fails you know what what happens at that point basically if it fails they need to replace that it's possible it may meet the exemption for DEP of course there's that criteria that they have to run through um and then again you got to make sure you go through the army corps of engineers as well and throughout going through us and the army corps engineers you know I can say that that crossing will be improved at the very least um you know we're always looking to improve a crossing when it is replaced uh Mike you had a question also about undersized crossings and what do we do um this was like a town owned crossing it sounded like in water borough uh in this situation you know we can always do site visits with the town um calling green and myself we met with water borough a little while ago to go over a culvert replacement uh we can do technical assistance permitting guidance in that situation right there the exemption may reply for replacing a culvert and again I don't want to speak for calling but army corps has their own set of requirements just please remember that um and of course we want to make sure that that replacement is more fish friendly um so DEP when you when you look at that exemption you know we're talking about embedding that culvert matching the natural stream grade when we go through that exemption criteria we're improving that that crossing you know we're not going to put something similar that was there um back okay moving forward John you had a question about stormwater um and PBR so permit by rule it's this expedited form of permitting that we have for the natural resources protection act the what as well as stormwater um if you've dealt with DEP our storm water management law is separate from the natural resources protection act and that's for developments that are over one acre in size so completely different law just still has an abbreviated form of permitting um and none of this substitutes for the army corps of engineers process the exemptions are just for DEP and one comment I had on this this forestry and agricultural question that's a great question um and just remember this is like the bare bones we went through with DEP regulations today so there's a lot of exemptions and a lot of things that we can discuss you know um directly or through another staff person but forestry and agriculture may have their own exemptions however if you remember um you know some of the things that require DEP permits one of them was a permanent structure um in my experience I see a lot of forestry crossings with a temporary bridge so there's no in-water work and they span that channel in that case they don't need a crossing because it's a permit because that crossing is temporary and there's no in-stream work um a culvert is not a temporary activity even if they plan to remove it that doesn't that's not the way our rules work so that would require some army corps approval as well as us um agriculture would need would probably need a permit too as well um it all depends on the crossing that's being crossed I see a lot of uh with agriculture there's a lot of fords so they'll put down rock and actually just drive right over that so that's a whole another thing too as well. Thank you Lucian and I'll actually um take that question and um slide it over to Colin as well the question is specifically our army corps permits required for forestry and agricultural um projects. Yeah thanks for that question we also have our own set of agricultural and forestry exemptions um again the devils and the details um something we could we could talk to you um offline about but there certainly are exemptions just thank you Lucian for giving the corps a shout out again DEP has a lot of exemptions in their rules the corps does not have those same exemptions so if you're going to do a stream crossing you can almost assume you're going to need a corps permit um and possibly need a DEP permit um one of the questions on the chat is uh you know regarding water depth you know when should we be pumping around our work site um I'll give a shout out to the uh the main erosion control sedimentation training which John McLean puts on and um really it doesn't really matter what the water depth is when you're doing stream work um you should always be pumping water around and maintaining downstream flow as Mary talked today um you know when you get out there in July and August September you may have real low flow maybe less than three feet as the question is um downstream you may have some brook trout you know in a little cold water spot um and you don't want to dry up your downstream so damning you know cofferdam upstream and not pumping water downstream is not not really a good idea um so we're we're always going to tell you to pump around or at least do some kind of downstream maintenance of water flow thanks Collin um and sticking with agriculture and forestry um I'm not sure who wants to jump in on this one there's a question about basically a forest road do you need a permit from the main forest service nobody's um nobody's touching that um and it's my understanding and please folks correct me oh thanks Tim it relates it relates to Daniel's follow-up question there um and so this is a great point that that should have been clarified in the presentation but at least in the lupc jurisdiction land management roads are regulated by the main forest service and so they're they're the regulatory uh agency thank you Tim we have one for Wendy and Mel is the streamlined section seven consultation process a programmatic consultation or opinion yes it is so that streamlined process is based on a programmatic consultation that Fish and Wildlife Service did with the Corps of Engineers and FEMA and the National Park Service and if if folks want I can put in the chat a link to where that those documents can be found if that would be useful that would be great thank you thank you Wendy um I'll take like two more minutes and just try and hit a couple more we did have um a question for Eric um can you briefly clarify I want to call the replacement on a town-owned road involves DOT just very very quickly easy easy easy easy I should have had a I should have had that on my slide there thank you Matt for the question so anytime there's over a 10 foot span on a public road um that's not private you know even if DOT maybe has you know kind of a lesser role in review in those 10 to 20 foot structures DOT still needs to be notified it goes into our inspection system and our database so anytime you're doing anything over 10 feet on a public way DOT is involved in some way great thank you um not sure who wants to jump in on this one can we use StreamSmart techniques in regards to impoundments does anybody want to touch fishways and ladders maybe Mary well I'll tackle it in the long story or actually it's a short story short answer on this one is just contact IF&W or DMR um for any fishway related issues um and we will help figure out what the issues may be and resolve the solution uh fishways operate very differently than StreamSmart crossings and what we're talking about with StreamSmart crossings is maintaining natural stream flows in stream habitats fishways and impoundments are very different habitat types thanks Mary and I'm just going to wrap up with one last DOT question actually um does DOT inspect town owned pedestrian bridges with a span greater than 10 feet I saw that and I was hoping you weren't going to answer that sorry no that's okay um I don't I obviously don't know I don't believe we do if it's pedestrian bridge and it's not a you know it's not a vehicular bridge but I'll have to I'll find your contact information and I'll provide you an answer on on whether we inspect those I don't believe you so but let me make sure fantastic there are still a few questions we will keep them um in our Q&A box but I do want to um take a little bit of break of a break we are a little bit over our time but not too bad so let's take a five minute break instead of a 10 minute break we will and that will get us right back on track so let's take a break until 9 at 55 see you all back here and thank you


Hello and welcome to yet another episode of Angry Rans that will make me no friends whatsoever. Today we'll talk about the Hyperland project and how the developer's account has been removed from the free desktop GitLab instance and related IRC channels. The reason behind it is quite complex and it requires going back a couple of years to have full context over this story. But wait, you might say, what's the Hyperland project? And sure I could tell you all about how it's a dynamic tiling Wayland compositor based on WL roots that has explicit goal of having a super good looking design. But firstly, I don't know anything about Wayland compositors and secondly, I actually actually doesn't matter at all for this story because the reason for the ban has nothing to do with the project itself, but rather with the behavior of the lead developer as we're gonna see. So let's take a step back. And yes, factory, I know that you hate when people bring this up, but it's context, we just have to do it. So on September of 2022, an user on the Hyperland Discord changed their username to include their pronouns. This was done to have the same username as on Matrix, since Matrix did not have an about section for that. They were quickly made fun by some random user, got told that they shouldn't care about it and misgendered by a moderator within minutes. And then their username was changed again by moderator to replace them with who cares and the user couldn't change it back either. The whole thing was handled as unprofessionally as could be. Generally speaking, back then the Discord community had very light moderation and allowed even hateful content. One year later, September 2023, a user suggested to add a code of conduct to the project. The initial reaction from Backstreet main developer was... So first of all, why would I pledge to uphold any values? Seems like just inconveniencing myself. I am not able to enforce the code of conduct, neither do I want to. I just write code. If I'd want to moderate, I would spend 90% of my time reading kids arguing about bullshitting instead of coding. Generally speaking, we can see that Backstreet is very much not taking this suggestion seriously at all and even calling the master on post talking about the pronoun thing feces of a post. Eventually, Backstreet closed the issues as of topic. As a result of all of this, developer Drew Devold decides to privately contact Backstreet to talk about all of the above. Thus, Backstreet decided to run a poll on the Discord server, asking whether users felt they have experienced harassment within the community. And 40% answered they did. Let me repeat that. 40% of the people who voted in the poll claimed to have been harassed within the hyperland community, which is something. Because of that, Backstreet has since implemented a new changes in moderation of the Discord channel, and it seems like the situation is better now. He says that it's way less of a toxic hellhole, which I've checked this discussion multiple times over the past few months and I can confirm that it's okay, with multiple queer folks being able to be part of the community without issue. I still wouldn't recommend it to join it though, especially because firstly, it's still quite toxic. Here's somebody saying that developer Lüde has brain damaged, and also this new change in moderation included a complete ban over the discussion of politics and the inclusion of LGBT entrance topics into the politics label. This means that if you start talking about LGBT, you might get banned for it. However, this rule is sparingly enforced, with many people being able to discuss it even in a positive manner, which is great, but without any moderation. Do you stay away, however, from the subreddit, which even nowadays is not a place I would like to be in, so to say the least. On top of all of that, Backstreet joined the podcast Attack Over Tea by Brody Robertson. This is how he addressed the pronoun incident from a year earlier. A trans person joined the Discord server and made a big deal out of their pronouns, because they put their pronouns in their nickname and made a big deal out of them, because people were referring to them as he, which on the internet, let's be real, is the default. And so on, one of the moderators changed the pronouns in their nicknames to who curse. That was very unprofessional, but let's be real, this isn't like calling someone the n-word or something. Now, this is the worst apology you can say. First of all, they didn't make a big deal out of their pronouns, they just added them to their username and that was enough to be made fun of. And secondly, yes, being misgendered is a big deal and no calling people he is not the default on the internet, whatever that means. And finally, and this is the most important part, seeing that, yes, it was unprofessional, but it's not like I said the n-word or something is not an apology. It's right there with, I'm sorry, you got offended. There's also another apology, which by my mistake, I'm really sorry, I don't have right now on the screen, that was made in the blog post as a response to the default. And there might be the blog post hints about it, more apologies from earlier on. However, all apologies that I was able to find were in the middle of actually minimizing the thing and saying that Drew default was wrong, so I'm not totally sold on them. Overall, I think it's clear that Vaxry doesn't really understand some key points about the trans community. He actually said it himself. He used a very derogatory term for them and more recently he said that he just didn't know that you weren't supposed to use that because it doesn't keep up with the LGBT community or something.  His opinions haven't changed that much though, like he more recently published a blog post minimizing this whole idea of harassment through messages. He says, I am definitely not a fan of how seemingly weak people online, especially teenagers, have become.  Ultimately, without a strong mentality, you will most likely not be very successful in life, end quote. All of the above really started to become a common talk point around September of the last year when Drid of World published an article with the findings that I mentioned above. During the last few months, the story and Vaxry's very weak apologies, I think, have started circulating more and more. This brought us to the more recent events. But before we get to them, I would like to remind everybody's of today's sponsors, which is nobody actually, I don't have any sponsors. I'm only able to do all of this, which actually includes, yes, I'm not kidding, three hours of research at least, and then editing and then setting up all of the technological part of, believe me, text time. Thanks to the patrons and Libra payers and co-fires and paypollers. So if you want to chip in something to help the channel running, you're probably all screaming at me in the comments, but let's continue with the video. The Cut of Conduct group of the Free Desktop Foundation most likely heard about all of the above and after discussion decided to send an email to Vaxry. The developer that was representing the group was like, oh, I don't know how to pronounce that. I'm going to say Lyude and I'm really sorry if I get this wrong. The developer that was representing the group was Lyude Paul, though she made it clear from the email, the email was from the entire group. They warned Vaxry that the past behavior goes against the Cut of Conduct of the Free Desktop project and that if it were to continue, they would have to revoke Vaxry's access to the Free Desktop infrastructure. She does say, however, that the recent moderation changes seem to have improved the situation. The whole email actually is very kind, I think, in depth and explains really well why it's important not to see that sort of behavior in the community in the future. Now, it's worth having a discussion about this Cut of Conduct thing. The Cut of Conduct of Free Desktop cannot dictate how people should behave in the hyperland community, even the email says so, which of course has its own rules. Free Desktop is not trying to regulate that or to be an internet cop, the email is very clear on this. However, they are very much free to choose who they work with. If your actions have been violating their Cut of Conduct, even in the hyperland community they can choose not to collaborate with you. You will still be able to join the hyperland community, which has its own rules. The thing is, your actions define you, regardless of where you are. If you act in a rude and disrespectful manner, enabling or participating transphobic behavior, that's gonna define you, even in communities outside of those where you took those actions. This is especially true if you're the leader of a pretty big project, thus having a lot of attention on you and extra responsibilities. It's far for Free Desktop to say, hey, if that behavior continues, then we don't really want to collaborate with you anymore, because we do not want to associate with such behaviors. And this applies to pretty much any community or product. If I were to say something very offensive and transphobic or discriminatory on my channel, even though to be clear, I don't think that Vaxry is transphobic, this is an example. But if I were to say something offensive or transphobic or discriminatory on my channel, thus publicly and in front of thousands of people, that's gonna define who I am. And I might lose my job to that, because maybe my job doesn't want to have an employee like that. I might get thrown out of KDE, because there's a code of conduct there too. And I might even get removed from YouTube, which has its own terms of services. I would still be able to say offensive and transphobic stuff on myself, hosted space, my free speech isn't put at risk, but other projects and communities might not want to have anything to do with me. Welcome to episode one of How the World Works. Of course, Vaxry paints this in a completely different way. He talks about Red Hat wanting to be the internet police and applying the code of conduct outside their project, and that they are threatening him. By the way, this has nothing to do with Red Hat, except that Lüde uses redhat.com email address. It closes off this section with I respect everybody, everyone's rights to moderate, sorry, I respect everyone's right to freedom, to moderate their community however they want. What I don't respect is people going outside of their communities trying to enforce their own moderation rules on others, especially when it's based on outdated information and hearsay, like we're seeing in this email. And again, that's not what they're doing. It's actually very well explained in the first email. You are the leader of a somewhat known project. You're indulged in offensive behavior in the past.  You can still do that. You just lose access to the free desktop infrastructure because they don't want to work with you. And on top of that, I would like to remind everybody that as much as Vaxry constantly tries to downplay the past issues and incidents, seeing outdated information and hearsay, we've seen multiple examples of discriminatory or insulting behavior in the community or from himself. And it's very much not hearsay, as he admitted the whole pronoun incident to you before, yet again downplaying it. I don't think he understands that yes, that was a serious issue that has happened. And sure, Yudez is at least monthly, or sorry, the whole kind of conduct team is at least monthly compared to when the Drudevolts article was out, which is when the change in moderation happened. But she even pointed this out by saying that the situation improved. She just said this happened in the past and it did. Please don't make it happen again. I particularly love your country that it's too small. I'm sorry about that. I particularly, particularly love how a random hacker news users under the name of Akerl underscore put it. Well, it seems pretty straightforward to me. The free desktop foundation isn't acting as internet police. They're exercising control over their own community membership and taking the behavior of the participants in and outside their community as representative of whether they want to permit that participant. Vaxry said the ban hammer is wielded by people who seemingly only wielded to silence people whom they disagree with. And if this is what it looks like to be silenced, it seems pretty loud. After their original post, Yudez sent another email to inform that the language in the post was unacceptable and that Vaxry's account would be suspended from free desktop infrastructure, which has happened. She seems to be somewhat worried about receiving harassment as results of publishing her email and attributing it specifically to her rather than the code of conduct team of free desktop, which is not completely unreasonable if you recall that just today somebody has said that she's brain damaged on Vaxry's or rather, sorry, hyperlance discord without any repercussions so far. And on top of that, she was misgendered on hyperlance discord yet again with no consequences that I could see. Finally, the emails from Vaxry include some of the dumbest talking points of the right-wing community, even if Vaxry himself is not right-wing as a person, such as as per your own values or at least the ones you preach, diversity and inclusivity, so people with different beliefs should not be marginalized. Although according to the leaked internal documents, it seems that only that only includes non-white, non-right-wing, non-religious people. Everyone else is not invited. This refers to the leaked documents by Lunduk and, hey, I've done a one hour long video about how Lunduk's content is very often misleading or straight up incorrect and about how is a far right-wing person who holds conspiratory beliefs such as vaccines that are auks or climate changes and tappening. The specific leak in question was about an optional diversity training happening in Red Hat about privilege. It's very common and yet again, Red Hat doesn't have anything to do with this. It's pre-desk. It's very common and very clueless to say that by excluding those who discriminate against marginalized groups, you're actually not being inclusive towards poor white, right-wing, religious people. To make sure this whole thing makes sense, let me conclude by saying that Hyperland is a good, maybe even great project led by a clearly skilled developer. However, having great development skills does not mean that you're also knowledgeable about political issues and how to approach them, how to handle communities and respond to criticism, how to respectfully deal with others and so on. Personally, I think that Baxary is currently learning about all of this and there's clear improvement signs such as the better moderation and learning more about the trans issues and so on. But at the same time, I kind of understand that Free Desktop might not want to be associated with him at the current time. I really hope that we can change that in the future and that Baxary can get back to being able to use the Free Desktop infrastructure, especially because it was doing some very cool work in there with Cursors and KD. That was everything for this segment. Thanks for watching. I'll be back reading the comments if you're still there. Are you still there? Oh my god, there's a lot of people still watching.