all right okay um this is the meeting of the grand marray Public Utilities Commission on uh February 5th at 3:30 p.m. a late start and I'll call the meeting to order in attendance is acting chair Bill Hansen that's me uh Scott Watson Warner Warner sorry senior moment whatever that guy's name is whatever he is Charles Hathaway we have a guest and
uh Patrick Knight is on the on the electronics over there um Jeff's our featured guest as a matter of fact yes featured guest line worker Jeff Eliz okay great welcome Jeff um so the first item on the agenda is the approval of the agenda do I hear a motion to approve I move that we approve the agenda I'll second that all in favor I I and that
takes us right into the meat of our agenda which is we don't have the approval of the minutes do we need that does that just go with the agenda automatically I move that we approve the minutes okay I'll second that and by acclamation the minutes are approved and we'll go right into our first agenda item which is the recent uh outage report in your packet we've included a memo that summarizes a little bit of what
happened and what we intend to do about it by a Jeff to come to the meeting to maybe provide you with just a little more detail about how things went Jeff you're on oh all right um yeah so we got called in uh roughly 9:30 in the morning and the circuit was completely out and we have two circuits in our sub station so we have two circuit breakers and the circuit breaker
was blown so we have no idea what it is a fault or um we had reason to believe that it was loaded cuz it was the coldest day of the year but we isolated two parts of the uh circuit and found out the one held the the OCR came on the circuit breaker so now we know roughly half of where the
the half that the problem is on so we just uh started eliminating pieces and it takes takes time to isolate all the parts and we have this uh fault wizard that we purchased a couple years ago which was huge we always relied on Arrowhead electric to borrow theirs when uh and a crew to come and run it for them so we have our own
and it worked out great and but it takes time so how does that work exactly do you can you you have to drive around to certain spots and plug it in to each of the green boxes which are junction boxes for our underground cables where they all come up so they obviously go from one to the other so you have to isolate them to find out you can't go through so you just start at the circuit breaker basically and work your way out yeah yes yeah it it called why is it called a thumper well it because it it's actually
called a fault wizard yeah um but you it has a mode on it that once you do find the problem say it's between this box and this box you it has a mode that you can push and it thumps so it sends uh I believe it's 10,000 some of them do 50,000 I think ours is 10 10,000 volts through the line and wherever the fault is it goes to ground and it comes up and you can hear it in the ground thumping
wow so it also has a distance a rough um sometimes accurate but it'll get you in the vicinity so 300 ft between boxes it'll say 240 ft you walk out roughly 240 ft you know where the line is yeah but this was above ground it was a an elbow um that you put that's what you plug into these modules when you have an underground
terminated underground cable so it's save so but you have to yeah it just takes time sometimes you can jump ahead and eliminate you know you have a we locked out we had a spot over on eth Avenue we could um join the two circuits together and it's a fusible link so now when we were plugging in elbows we'd test but
sometimes we'd Jump Ahead a little more otherwise we would have been there for 30 hours you know you just got to take a chance that it's not because there's radials that go off so getting a little ahead of myself there but it just took a lot of time luckily we had Arrowhead electric there to help how how long was the outage and and what big of an or how big of an area um it started out I
believe at 400 500 customers we pretty quickly got it down to 100 so it was mostly west of uh our shop up at uh oh by the power plant there by the time probably within 2 hours so most people that by the hospital Cop Shop all the way out to devil track River they were back on I think within an
hour and then some were were offline for out of power for um I believe 13 hours oh okay so kind of a lot for those guys for a cold day cold day it was a long time I was chatting with a plumber and he mentioned that he did have some calls on frozen pipes after that and I was like really people's pipes don't last that long and he's like well older houses or they have heat tape on them and you know but
wasn't a lot but unfortunately had one of those too at about 9:00 at night and Scott happened to be downn one of his water guys were helping us all day Al awesome so that was huge he's a big help running stuff well on behalf of the Public Utilities Commission thank you for your hard work and cold work is well yeah of course it's bound to happen on the coldest day of the year but always so 400 of how
many customers do we have I don't know roughly it was about 500 of 1100 it's almost half yeah yeah we have two circuits and one of them was out so that's it's a lot it's it's uh one of the reasons why we're talking about changing things up a little bit rather than having the guys search an entire 500
customer system and really they did a great job limiting that to just a 100 pretty quickly yeah um but they've got some ideas about ways we can do things different and and be able to break the system into more pieces um first of all just literally have more than two circuits with that have Breakers in the substation but then also install a few more places in where we can sectionalize and disconnect things and and work at
slightly smaller pieces to try and limit the space they have to search it detail for where the problem is so there's not much information we can offer on that yet it's going to take a little bit of planning and sure and particularly the idea of splitting our two circuits into more than that uh it's going to take a lot of planning we're need to bring in some engineering assistance to make sure that that's thought through correct ly so that we'll be coming back to you with some Concepts
proposals to look at at Future meetings but that's kind of a goal for the year to about that you don't need anything from us now not today just we want you to know what's going on what what we intend to do about it appreciate that yeah and then uh we'll be bringing you the when there are steps to take that require decisions and resources we'll be bringing that information to you how often are there out of gance seem like it's very often of that scale extremely rare yeah think you know how
many outages the year do we have maybe a couple dozen but most of them are a squirrel and it's not very many customers and it's really quick that they can find it and fix it and yeah it's the underground is a a huge you know you can't just drive and find it yeah but it's generally less susceptible to way more reliable underground yes
defeats the squirrels anyway defeats the squirrels and then the trees and those are the two things that are probably the most common mhm to take the lines out so as long as the golfers don't decide to chew on the lines yeah so far I don't think we have many Gophers here not gone with they're not far away but so there was a bit in here about uh redistributing uh the load across circuits how how how concerned are you or should we be about
the generally increasing load uh throughout the area throughout the community well I think it's pretty uh we we definitely have to start thinking about it yeah because it's it's only getting bigger right in terms of the capacity of the substation to handle more load there really isn't one that we have to worry about in terms of of the um you know our power plant that we have to run the city is a 6 megawatt
plant when all three engines are running at full capacity and will Peak above 5 megaw right now so that's of concern but that is I mean arrowhead's been in that position for a long long time with their system where they have 18 megaw of pack backup generation capacity potentially right operate their system if it was isolated but their their load is much bigger than that in a on a cold
day in January so you know we we uh work in cooperation with them and with the transmission line operators to do planning on those issues I think the this idea of re-engineering the load distribution is more about how do we um make it so that if an entire circuit go that it's not half our customers right but then also thinking about where the new growth is going to
occur so that they're balanced you know all the four if we end up with four circuits are balanced that we do think about where the new load is going to grow MH and that uh we're ready for it do we have how many circuits now two circuits just two yeah and we have room for two more in our substation but that would require burying line out out to those areas yeah to the new areas or bigger line more than likely you know
nowadays yeah yeah so that's not a that's not going to start tomorrow right that we want to have some planning done this year on that great so that's something you get we get a consultant in to say okay let's think about how this how how the overall system could be re designed right and and it's not I mean
most of the system isn't going to be touched right to do that work right it so that's part of what we want somebody to help us think through is what's the best way to redistribute this that requires the least amount of new equipment right you put it side by side rather than pulling out the old stuff or something yeah something like that yeahh so I'd like to talk a little bit about um how the public gets notified when outages happen MH and I don't I
don't want this to sound like a criticism of you I I had my own power system at saw Bill you know my whole life and when the power went down I didn't wait or call that was me so I'm very sympathetic extremely sympathetic and I didn't I couldn't hang around to say to people well I think this is what the problem is but I don't know I mean I was off to dive in and find out what the heck was going going on and get the power back on right and um but for a public entity like
us um I think it's important that we do get information out to people in a timely way of course it does always happens on a weekend I recognize that and can't really expect Patrick for instance to be on call for this kind of thing 247 through the weekend but is there a way we can set up a tree I mean I'd be willing to I can't speak for Charles or Craig but I'd be willing to be part of that of a some kind of a system where the line people could
quickly you know call I mean even if it's so from my point of view sitting at my house power went out it's out for 10 minutes you know and we're and my wife is asking me don't they have a backup generator grmay and I said well apparently you know that's not the problem that's not the problem and uh and then of course the next question we have for each other is are we the only ones out is it just our house and are we going to freeze while because they don't notice that we're out so that's the next thing so then we go out and look around the the neighborhood see that the
neighborhood's out and she's like well you should call and I'm like well you know I'm sure some people have called you know I'm sure they're aware but we didn't hear anything until it came back on other than people on Facebook saying I'm out of power are you out of power you know that went around but but is there a way we could set up a system I mean even if it was we're aware there's an outage we don't know what's wrong we're working on it you know I think would be really assuring to reassuring to people if we could make that and have
some kind of a nowadays with texting you know maybe we could just have a text group and then an order so if it you could put out a that statement saying we're on it we'll let you know when we know something you'd be the first one to call the radio station and post on the community Facebook pages if you're not around if you don't respond then it would fall to you you if you don't respond then it would fall to me and I don't respond it would fall to Charles um and we confirm on the you
know something like that I don't know yeah but it would be nice to have that I think to yeah we well I mean first of all we don't have uh on call yeah administrative staff right which we don't meaning we don't pay people to be available for times that are outside and we can't expect them to be on call if we're not well I mean I do you know expect I'm certainly available most of the time at a holiday weekend where we didn't coordinate beforehand and um
somebody's on their way out of town and somebody is out of town and somebody you know it's it's uh we it's not it's a not big office so I I and I'm not going to just set aside your offer of assistance before before we go on I have a unique perspective on this because I also sit on The wtip Advisory Board and we've talked about this and and wtip gets get criticized they're like why weren't you on that you know well I mean not this particularly but any breaking news
basically well it's the weekend nobody works at wtip on the weekend and they're not expected to be on call no if they're in town they'll go out you know the goodness of their heart and cover something um there is usually someone at the station but in this case it was somebody who was just a basically a DJ you know doesn't yeah know any of the procedures or know what to do and they they did their best but and then I also it on the Housing and Redevelopment Authority board and when the information went out that it that it was potentially
an overload there was a huge thread that developed about well why are we building new housing we shouldn't build any more new housing if we don't have the capacity for it in our electrical system and I was just like no tearing my hair out because we already have plenty of headwinds to building new housing without creating ones that don't exist you know so um so that's what's got me kind of thinking about this yeah again I don't I don't mean it as a criticism I understand where you guys not requires um we need that our
professional staff that's in the field to tell us what the situation is but they can't be the ones that are spending a lot of their time doing that because we need them to be looking for the problem and fixing it real busy primarily and so that means we need to be um when there's a an a significant outage like this we need to have a system ready to also spool up our ad administrative staff that we didn't have now there's almost I don't think we've ever had a situation where there was no
one available if law enforcement or if the guys need help and they call you know so I don't not sure we need to build an on call system yet but we're definitely talking about what's the best way to do this and communicate with each other about the possibility of hey this happens who's going to come in and then I think the other issue we have is um we need to make sure that there's two or maybe three people that are capable of every one of those tasks too and that's
true of a lot of the tasks we do administratively but not all of them so we we also want to be able to just regardless of who's around send out that simple message um it wouldn't have been if if we would have had three people in the office that day it wouldn't have necessarily been a different message than we sent though you know the best that we knew at the time was that load could have been a factor and so in an effort to fix the problem immediately we took
that risk and and understood the consequences and probably would still do it again and and uh we've tried to tell people a few times afterwards that that wasn't it uh but that message is harder the damage has travel yeah I mean even qualified a little bit like it would be helpful to our line men if people tried to to reduce power yeah instead of saying it's a load issue cuz then you know that trigger that whole but I think
that's a good conversation to have too I mean you asked the questions as well then like okay is it an issue and now the question's out there and I think we owe a better more thorough answer than we've offered which you know our offer now was oh it wasn't a load issue but people are curious about what does the load what what does that mean and um how do we know it's not and how do we know that it's okay to build all this stuff and and I'm confident that it's okay to build all this stuff that's not good
enough we need to be able to demonstrate why we know that and we we did discuss it at a pu meeting when I was early one of the early meetings when I joined the Pu uh was when the Gunflint view was just sort of moving toward and I think I asked the question like 51 Apartments is that going to tax our our sewage and water and electrical system and and your answer was no it'll be fine I mean it's a it's a big customer yeah for sure um
but it's a single digit percentage in growth and we've got a significantly more capacity than that in growth uh on all of our systems than just a single digit uh it's not even uh let's not leave it as a question about just the system though right because when a big customer shows up it's individ ual parts of the system too that we think about and okay well where where are they going to get their water pressure from and is
that adequate or what are the sewer lines from there to the plant and are those adequate and um the there's no project that's been proposed or that's being constructed right now that in and of itself is going to be an issue all of them together aren't going to be an issue it's still a good conversation for us to dig into just a little bit more than we have and I think with water and and Wastewater we've done a lot more work on that than we have with electric because it just hasn't been a concern at all with electric but now uh we're going
to do some work on that too and so we talk about uh creating four circuits instead of two what comes with that is a better description of what each load is on those circuits where we expect growth to be how much it can be how our systems capable of handling it just a lot more depth of information that we can offer you as a board but also the public so that they can be a little more shared about it but what's the what's the current setup for communication like for instance when
there's a power outage communication with the customers with I guess the city in general and then what's what's sort of follow up because it seems like part of the thing at least in this particular case would be uh we initially suspected this however it wasn't that we made these repairs and um we are going to follow up um in the future with a new a new design which will help us accommodate new loads and help us solve these problems faster
I me seems like there's two components like one is the alert kind of like here's what's going on if you want to know if your Power's Out here's here we can tell you about why and where and then in the second would like to follow up well first of all just mainly to reassure people it's not just you you know I mean cuz that's the fear everybody has right away as well it's my house they're not going to notice I'm going to slowly freeze to or everybody it's just my house I don't need to call anybody cuz they know it
and they'll fix it and it's no big deal that too yeah it there is no system right what we offer to any customer course is that let us know please if you have an outage we probably already know but don't rely on that you can let us know directly how do we communicate with customers when there's an outage it depends how many are out and we're trying to make that a little more formal ized and have a maybe a slightly better communication plan that we can show you
yeah like could it go to the could it go to the city website or could it go to the the Facebook page or WTF it does all that already we do all that already um oh so there is that's a kind of a system right I mean we have tools in the first 15 or 20 minutes you know what that we maybe didn't know like so um that that's part of the issue is okay if the guys are alerted to an outage are they going to call us in the first 15 or 20 minutes like that's the part of the system that we need to figure out how do we get notified because my power wasn't out and
I didn't know until I was called by a city official who power was out and said hey what's going on which is well more than an hour into the into the outage um yeah we so we're trying to figure out how do we make sure that there's some administrative support that also gets notified right away it can be there to assist and particularly to do what you're asking for which is to communicate and then secondarily to make sure that they have everything they need to get the job done yeah or like if people knew
hey my power goes out I can go to this website or Facebook page or whatever call up WTV I don't know how that would work but yeah and and I can find out why well you don't you don't you don't get to necessarily know anything right not the diagnostic part but I mean uh you can find out that there there was an outage experienced in most of the west side or something and we were working at it I mean that much I think much better to go to the broadcast route than that because most people aren't
going to remember no there are lots of people don't use computers or smartphones you know they're they're listening to the radio so uh they U I think a broadcast you know if the if the lineman if you can do it just to text so quick you know just to text saying we've been called out we understand there's an outage we're working on it well that that problem that's what mostly what people need to know I think they don't care what the what the problem is you'd be surprised how
many people care about well maybe they do care more and and whatever we know we want people to be able to get access to let's not let's not sacrifice the the good for the perfect though you know let's let's get people out just that reassurance like that the city knows they're working on it that would me as a consumer sitting at home if we had gotten that message you know if the if the radio had come on we were listening to the radio and said there's a power routage in Grand marray they're on it they're working line and are R hold them in your
hearts it's a cold day right so we we have um I mean a press release is one of our tools that we'll use right away it'll definitely go to the radio station into Boreal and other places the um the new tool that we're adding soon is text mygov where people if they want to know this right away then sign up for that service and the first way we're going to be using it is not not for them to text us but for us to text them and to tell people this is an outage is occurring we're on it just exactly what you said a
very short simple message as kind of a first I mean attempt even a press release isn't going if you send a press release to boreo and wtip they won't see it till Monday morning when if it's on the weekend when Matthew you can you can post we can post stuff to online right away I mean the radio station may not be able to broadcast it right away but we we can get the word out right away to people they could broadcast it but they the guy who's playing records isn't looking at the incoming email or text to the station he's only going to get it if
if you call well unfortunately we took their power out too yeah but they have a backup they do they were on the air is useful that they have one yeah they're also a great tool for us to get the word out afterwards too yes yeah in fact I would suggest I would suggest that you go on in person did talk about this I already did did that oh that's right I did hear
that or maybe talk more in more depth about the improvements or just you know if if if you do agree to have a a little bit more robust initial uh notification system then maybe you could go talk about that a little bit like M we know people are worried we're going to really we put a little system in place that will sort of ad hoc but it will get the word out so and I don't I don't want to take the whole meeting with this but I just
what's um so if if if I were sitting at home and the power goes out what would you suggest would be my first move to try to find out what's going on first move call us at at city call City yeah but on a Sunday you're going to get a voicemail you're not going to yeah there will not be someone there we we have uh you can always contact law enforcement if there's 500 outages
that's not going to work very well right so um that's how our staff are dispatched is through law enforcement so off outside of our regular office hours if someone reports an outage then that's who will alert our staff to come so if I went to the city website that would be of no help no but could it be I mean could there be a like a two sentence posting there if you find out what's within the hour there was there was
there was a posting on the website City website City website the Facebook page and a message sent to boreo and bal's list serve and wtfu is in contact with us and that's pretty good right and I think it's just closing getting that loop as tight as we can closing yeah because there there's no um you know you're asking the question and I think with the hopes that whatever information I provide will help people get but
everybody has their own way they want to do it too want to do and there isn't a single medium that reaches more than yeah you know 10 15% of people reliably but I was thinking if if if I knew that something happens I should go to the city website and there's GNA if there's information it'll be there yeah that would be helpful that well that is the case uh not though within two minutes right it might take an hour yeah but even so
that's not to me that's not horrible I don't I I mean you want to know right away is there a reason why we can't just have a text that goes to somebody that immediately calls wtip well we don't necessarily know what the issue is the extent of it all the people want to know is we know the power's out our crew is working on it yeah people understand they have to be patient just wait and see I think until we've got a slightly more developed communication plan written down for you to look at I
think there's more issues than you're considering um when it comes to the types of outages that we have and when we should do that what you're asking for and when we probably shouldn't so yeah stay tuned on this and and uh we'll try to get a better explanation of what we want to do and see what you think just a suggestion but I and I do I am hearing from the community a lot of frustration about the communication just just so you're aware people are frustrated I was frustrated yeah I was like what the
heck's going on and I was checking everywhere nothing nothing nothing yeah but that I mean there wasn't it wasn't nothing nothing nothing right so it wasn't that there wasn't communication happening it was that wasn't getting to the you didn't see it and yeah so wasn't getting to the person the people that need it yeah so we're definitely going to adjust and try to figure out if there's other ways we can do knew that and it did do some some damage unfortunately from a PR point of view
which was frustrating to me it's like as an H board member I was like oh Lord we don't need this you know so I I would also ask that you be careful in those Communications to you know I know it's hindsight's 2020 easy for me to say I tell you again that with the same information we had at the time we would have said the same thing would have been better to say it would help us if in this situation if you tried to shed power I understand something like
that rather than just like we the system can't handle it you know that's how I read it is the system can't handle it we're dead in the water um that's how other people interpreted it too so it was what we wanted people to hear at the time what if it was true all right well it did a lot of damage just so you know that's that's uh frustrating to me I hear frustration I get it and um unforced error and a and a and you know did some serious some
serious damage to a really important effort in the community when it could have been avoided with three more words in that statement you know but but if if you can't put those three words in you can't put those three words in I just don't think that's true I'm saying well I do we disagree then yeah it was unfortunate and it's it's ongoing I'm still here hearing it so but me it could have been avoided by not
bringing the issue up Al together but I don't think that would have been that's not what I'm asking I'm just asking for a slightly slightly more clear communication but if that's Beyond Your Capacity it's Beyond Your Capacity well I don't think that's what he's saying it's beyond his capacity I think I think he's what he's saying is in the moment when the communication was was put out this was this this was what we thought yeah that's like um I see cop lights down by the highway
could be a mass murder no that's true but that's not what you want to put out vwise you want to say there's an incident the police are working on it we'll get you more information as soon as we know yeah this is you see what I mean the difference I think we've moved Beyond a productive well I'm it's obviously an extreme example but but I am I am frustrated with it so but let's move on next item on the thanks for coming in and again thanks for your work again no no criticism of you I'm I'm uh just just a
it was just a frustration with the with the overall communication but let's move on to uh agenda item e water plant improvements is that you Scott I guess it is so the first memo we have is uh regarding the water treatment plant roof it's uh 30 some years old uh it's leaking um it's we've gotten our money's
worth out of that roof and uh it's about time to replace it and so I got uh two prices uh they were almost identical in price uh Kettle is uh I I think I pronounced that right is uh $100 cheaper um it appears to be an Apples to Apples comparison so I suggesting we look at kettle's proposal take
that I'm just curious how do you like how do you distinguish between these companies I mean do there's not Yelp ratings or something like how do you know which of these companies is like well qualified to do the work has experience in this area is uh knows what they're doing they're bigger roofing companies commercial roofing companies they're both well known both of them okay yeah that helps a lot they're Statewide I mean these are big big companies both of them mhm yeah with great reputations I'm just I'm I'm a
little bit singed from being up at the Y and having the Leaky Roof up there after 10 years it's like so uh it's definitely important to have a good company with a good reputation and knows what they're doing I don't really know what the problem is with the why but I feel like we got burned in a public entity there so this is a should be relatively simple project it should be yes it's just one roof one just one roof do you need us to pass a
resolution authorizing this please do I hear resolution authorizing the acceptance of aw kettle's bid for yeah I move that I move that we accept the accept the proposal accept the bid all right I'll second that and by ACC acclamation it passes unanimously thank you all right now I got to turn a few
pages okay the sand filter the water the water plant sand filter media is dirty after many years of use and it can't flow the water anymore it's just like an air filter in your car I mean you can blow it out so many times and then you uh in this case there's a a way that we can chemically treat it to uh remove a lot of that debris that's accumulated and then we're not we're a ways away from having to replace the media so
that's that's a non-issue and so uh this is an intermediate step that will gain us will definitely gain us time before we need to uh change out the media now in this one it looks like there was only there's only one outfit that I was able to find that does that and these guys come well recommended from communities around around the state okay that's nice both of these first two projects were when there was Co money
available and the water plant was one of the eligible places to spend it we thought these were both two areas we would want to invest in the roof which we knew needed to be replaced and then the filter media which we considered replacing and this company here came in to look at what it would take to replace it and their analysis says you don't need to and instead just do this cleaning what what's the replacement cost approximately we didn't get a quote for that no we did not but it would be significantly more than like double or
more double or more yes yeah probably a lot a lot more than double yeah so this is great this and that the company came in and didn't try to oversell us and that was I mean they're clearly a reputable company as well and then very knowledgeable about how to operate these systems it's great this media was I mean it's mid 90s I think when we added that second filter so it's been there for for 30 years yeah and there's a I mean we're regularly cleaning it it's when we
backwash that means we're trying to get the dirt out of the the sand filter and so that there's a regular cleaning Cur all the time and then this now is something we might add to do you know every 5 to 10 years or something try to keep the life of it as long as we can yeah so what what is what is it the clog that filter is it algae or it's it's debris little bit of sediment think of a a a uh a sponge that uh the sediment the debris sometimes it scale gets into that
sponge and you can't get it out by just physically agitating things this is this is the filter between the lake and the drinking water yes I'm just thinking of the sand filters up at the Y which I see and those get clogged with it's like grease hair SK Supply is a little cleaner well well I mean it it gets filtered out but it's just I'm just thinking it's a different kind of debris that would be collecting in those filters I'm guessing it's whatever comes in from the lake
this is mostly physical things you know just little tiny particulates that buing out sediment yeah sand silt fish saliva clay yeah fish salives fishing lures y vasal paddle border so you so it's going to be uh treated with strong acid and then the acid is going to be neutralized with strong base yes and then I'm was water plant all gets flushed out at some point though you're going to start pumping water through it again yes and you hope
by that time all that acid and base is out of the system the acid and base neutralize each other very quickly yeah as part of physics chemistry and so that that helps us that way and we will definitely be running water through the filter sending it directly to the Wastewater Plant so that way we're not sending partially weird water system yeah yeah how do you know when you're done how do you know when it's flushed enough you can test it you can
for take a drink yeah to his house yeah I'm I'm just curious about how that how that whole operation Works my best estimation would be that once the pH gets back up to what the lake water is that things are neutralized yeah and diluted and uh flushed through so yeah and then at that point I would be comfortable yeah sending it back seems reasonable you're matching the incoming water right yeah right well
good work on saving the taxpayers money it's great yeah I got to I got to give uh both Neil and Tom credit for getting a lot of this leg work done set up ahead of time and it was just a matter of putting every pieces together and continuing on what's the What's the total here 8100 8,100 okay I entertain a motion to approve this work I move that we approve the work and go forward what's the schedule on it uh can we
cover the schedule when we get to the filter me so all one package kind of one package yes I see okay yeah anyway I move that we approve the proposal I'll second that by acclamation it passes unanimously okay so the next next thing we have is the water filter plant repairs and some there's engineering costs to this as well um the Department of Health has
required us to uh repair some cracks in the concrete of the structure of both of the water filters and so we got pricing uh the three prices are listed in the uh uh memo and then there's some engineering that the state is requiring us to do so we had we brought an a2s to do the engineering that is a tentative number they did a little bit more work than that so we I haven't heard what the
official number is going to be as far as what a2s will be charging and maybe that's in there I I simply don't know yet that answer yet what's a2s is role a2s is a professional engineering outfit that uh works with the Water and Wastewater Plant yeah what I meant was what's on plans for the Department of Health to thank you they have to send sign off on plans PL for the repair yes yeah that Department of Health requires us to do engineering approved memo plans drawings you know as
as necessary for the particular project ours just takes a memo to uh to get this project going why do you suppose those bids were so different from each other they're they were using um THS and MMS were using a similar process of sand blasting the concrete uh grinding out the cracks as needed and
then coating it with various products to uh provide a barrier that water can't get through into the the concrete and then um Magny had a process where they would drill holes in the concrete and inject Under Pressure a chemical that would react with water to seal the cracks W from the inside From the Inside Yes wow we have spots on the outside that you cannot get to you can see them
but there's no way that an adult can uh get inside of those areas to uh to drill to to drill the holes and and do that process are you making a recommendation to us on which bid to accept we I we're recommending the THU proposal because of that because of the issue it seems to be the most economical and the and a good way of going okay but they can they can solve that unreachable yes problem okay
yes they they will be doing all the work from inside the intake of the uh sand filter oh gosh that sounds like fun it's it's actually there's a it's it's probably about 2 and 1 12 3 ft wide about 10 or 12 ft long and about 4T deep so it it's totally accessible to do the uh things from the inside but that means we have you have to take the filter out of service you pull the sand out the sand stays in so this is before it gets to the sand so it comes into comes into
a channel and then there's two troughs that go above the sand proper and then water flows out of the troughs and then down through the sand and then sand and so the cracks are in that structure the sand this the cracks are in the area before it gets to the the sand and the troughs so it's just filled with water yes it it's just filled with water and that's what leaking yes oh I was thinking it was the
sand filter the walls of the sand filter itself there's there's a a couple of spots it's it's all one big concrete structure yeah and so but the the cracks are in the intake side of things yeah and we haven't we have not noticed anything where the the sand is it's not to say that in the future it couldn't have happen but let's not go there right and and again I'm always a little
nervous about accepting the low bid because it's like yeah maybe that's cuz they do they don't have experience or they do sloppy work or they're these guys are a reputable outfit they've been doing work for for 30 or 40 years it's I assume I didn't ask that question I mean there's sort of an implied warranty I think on work like this I would think there would be at least a your warranty yeah but that would be good to get nailed down before yes yeah ask him that for
sure but I'm sure I bet you they do and the cracks on the inside aren't big enough I mean they must be small cracks you're just they're going to spray on a coating and that should be most of them are going to be small cracks you know with less than a 16th of an inch thick yeah uh there's some of them there's one crack at the top that's not quite an eth but the a2s is proposing that if there's a crack that's an eighth of an inch thick that it be opened up with a grinder and
then put in a chemical called zyex that expands when it comes into contact with water and then they can they can uh seal put the cing over on the top of that back it up yep all right well sounds good um again thank you for saving money on behalf of the taxpayers sure and um would entertain a motion to uh authorize Scott to accept the bit bit from duel uh contingent on getting the war getting
warranty information to his satisfaction and I noticed there was a schedule listed for this and this work was scheduled to start February 3rd right and that has been updated the work will start on the 11th of February wow and then the uh the coding should be applied by the 14th so we've already got the tank out of service and it's drying so the intake channel is drying out now and then
there's there's no cost to doing that so we knew we were safe doing that yeah that's what started February 3rd yes so are does that mean the filters out of service CU you don't have an intake one filter is out of service they're separate intakes I see then we'll do both we'll do both right one at a time right yeah and it's a good time of year to do it right demand's down yes best time here to do it yep there is a warranty here actually at the very back and very small
print from the from the paint or the the liner yeah it's the just warranty that the materials are are warranteed to do the job they say they're going to do so but you could ask them about their Workman workmanship too but I'm sure they're willing to back it up or if it starts leaking in 5 years do we have recourse I don't think we're going to get a warranty that's going to last that long anyway no not five years but I mean the
fear is of course that they do it they go home and a couple days later but I'm sure they would make good on that because they want to protect their reputation but but ask them yeah yep well how long is it supposed to last do we have any sense of that I'm sorry how long is it supposed to last the fix I would anticipate 5 to 10 years easy and so I normally you know I've seen these types of cod put on Wastewater tanks that that don't leak at all yeah in in in decades of service so that's the best answer I can give you
mhm mhm yeah I guess five years to me doesn't seem like much but but if it the last 30 years great mhm exactly okay oh one more thing then again with the taste this is a um uh I didn't exactly understand what the material is but is this going to get into the water and in
you know will this be offer at least for a while a taste uh in in the water that comes the best when we do the the media clean so that'll be run there'll be clean water running through that that freshly coated intake channels yes so that's good that's good yeah and then that water will go to the Wastewater Plant until we're ID that that we don't have any issues with the water you'll be there with the glass sure you should go you should go I
don't have a good sense of t i uh I've lost track of the motion did you make the motion uh we started on a kind of a motion and you did make the ment on the warranty okay oh you're right and I'll second that and by acclamation it passes unanimously what else you got okay I got to get there there's a hey you can see all the pictures of the oh yeah that's the leaking and years ago there was a patch
that was tried to put on but the water pressure just pushed it out on the outside on the outside yes chunk yeah I'd still love to get a tour the last picture on there is one area that we cannot get to underneath next page yeah so that's that's about 8 in between the bottom of the concrete and the top of the pipe but you don't need to get to it right correct we do not need to get to
it but that I'm glad we don't need to get to that CU that would be a really hard job to do yeah all righty okay I and then the very last memo was just a few pages from the end uh keep
going my last one this a so it's probably five or six pieces of paper from the very end oh yeah okay okay so now that's think too far part of it too far see you want to go back a little further if you can find that Hawkins page right before the Hawkins yeah there we go right there so this next one is as part of the same these two chemicals
when they react would release a cloud of chlorine gas and we do not want that to happen so what is it it's chlorine and sodium hydroxide those are the two there's there's a chemical that causes the the clumping of the particles so catch them in the sandfield yep cul flocculent this and so uh uh we need to put a containment area for that one and then the uh sodium hydroxide we need contain we've got two tanks for sodium
hydroxide one that we we pump out of into a much smaller tank and so we need we need three uh containment uh vessels for that area Okay and then one of the one of the tanks that we're using now is actually a 55 Gall drum and so we would actually get a tank and and remove the 55 gallon drum the other two tanks will stay the other two tanks would stay yes but a containment vessel or containment box basically put underneath them yep
yep that's exactly what you have to lift them up so they can't mix yeah they would actually be think of just a cardboard box and the tank would be set inside of right but you have to somehow lift up this tank yeah cardboard would be a bad thing yes yeah they're chemically resistant PL sounds like a good idea and then as also part of this the chlorine injection system is obsolete we can't we can't run it in automatic anymore uh it's just on or it's off but it's been out for a while
right yes how long I I don't know that answer but years I I simply don't know that answer and so I don't know that answer either the state is saying we need to fix it how often does the state come look at the plan every year or two yeah so I mean I think they've seen all these things numerous times without saying that we needed to do anything about them yeah so I wouldn't say that there's been a problem Weighing on us for a long time the Department of Health would have weighed in before now yeah I I'm just curious like if this
thing failed five years ago we've been just doing it manually since then I mean that kind of works but still you would want to address it sooner than that I would think and not wait for the health department to come and it's bang on you it's not uh I mean it works right it's just it's not a great way to operate it well and it's possible that it was more of a we're not sure how we want all these controls to work together that was slowing down the decision to just get this fixed we're just not letting that be a problem right now we're just going
to get this fixed yeah which seems like a great idea you get it fixed it just it's I mean when I was looking through this and seeing that mdh kind of reports it sort of paints a picture of sort of some long-standing neglect of keeping the thing in good shape keeping the whole operation in good and I don't think that's particularly Fair of them considering they were there a year ago and didn't say the same thing so but uh
new eyes new new opinions and it's okay we agree with them we want to fix these things yeah yeah again great work do I hear a motion to approve yeah I mean $2,50 doesn't seem like there's any question this needs to needs to happen so yeah so moved I'll second by e it passes unanimously is that it yes that is it for my portion well done thank a serious
reinvestment in the water treatment PL yeah it's good but it it I mean as I say it seems like these problems should have been obvious to us as well as the Department of Health right even the containment is like well I mean you can you see the bottom of that tank and you see the the thing corroding at the bottom the the and that happens very fast in this environment that chlorine chlorine gas does nasty things to metal yeah yeah yeah but I
mean it's probably not a surprise that it would be a bad idea to mix those two chemicals right so it's a little I mean sometimes it does take somebody to point this out that you have a problem here you need to fix it but I don't know I I I guess the main main point is it would be nice if we were uh in a situation or in a position where when people start seeing these
problems like the chlorine injector is out of service like well let's fix it let's let's replace it and it isn't even that expensive I don't think but apparently we were just sort of running it on manual for some time I don't know sometime I I don't know how long right being new here right yeah and again this colored a little bit by my experience uh up at the YMCA I like you know if there's a problem we should address it and fix it and get the system back running like it
should be run at so well I commend you for taking the bowl by the horns here good work uh last item on the agenda is other items anybody seems like we had a pretty good list already so uh do I hear a motion for adjournment I mov to