POSTER PRESENTER #7 TITLE: Best practices for avoiding and minimizing wetland impacts for trunk sewer projects ABSTRACT: Every municipality manages its wastewater in a specific and unique way, dependent upon its population, rate of growth, and topography. Why should the everyday citizen care about this information? As the nationwide trend of people moving toward urban centers continues, larger municipal wastewater management systems will be needed to serve growing populations. Trunk sewers designed to transport wastewater are gravity driven infrastructure commonly constructed in low landscape areas, often coinciding with riparian corridors and floodplains. Designed to service specific developments while also maintaining a degree of cost efficiency, trunk sewer construction is often restricted to narrow corridors of land. As a result, avoiding and minimizing wetland impacts caused by trunk sewer projects can be challenging due to the restricted construction corridors. The majority of trunk sewer infrastructure is constructed underground using best practices and minimizing ground disturbance where reasonably possible. However, wetland hydrology may still be altered and restoring wetland conditions to pre-disturbance conditions is not always feasible when factoring for future sewer infrastructure maintenance needs and updates. Accounting for specific project needs, restrictions, and the type of potential wetland impacts posed by a trunk sewer project are important when determining how to move the project forward. In this presentation, I will draw from personal experience delineating and permitting wetlands impacts as part of trunk sewer projects within eastern and central Iowa and share best practices used to determine possible methods to avoid or minimize wetland impacts as part of the trunk sewer design process. BIO: Tyler Dursky is a certified Minnesota Wetland Professional and environmental scientist with a focus on wetland delineation and mitigation projects, invasive species management, threatened and endangered species surveys, and habitat restoration practices. He earned Bachelor’s degrees in Environmental and Earth Science from the University of Northern Iowa.