ORDER-2020-9 : Authorizing a Bond under the Water Enterprise System through MWRA Local Water System Assistance Program bonds for FY2020 in the amount of One Million, Four Hundred Forty Thousand Dollars ($1,440,000)

Transcript (~1 h 5 min @ 2:09:30)

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▶ 2:09:16 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: motion to join Alderman Mortimer any discussion on that motion all in favor any opposed okay so we'll combine our order the first order that I've just just read which relates to the sewer enterprise account with order number two zero two zero dash nine authorizing a bond under the water enterprise system through MWRA local water system assistance program bonds for fiscal year 2020 in the amount of one million four hundred forty thousand dollars we do have a presentation and so we'd be happy to hear from you good evening I'm John

▶ 2:10:17 Speaker 2: I'm the Director of Public Works, and this evening it's my pleasure to request authorization for the last time to borrow funds that will continue to invest in our infrastructure. We have, and I'll keep my comments very brief because we have a very competent engineering group with us tonight that will present the technical aspects of these projects, but we have always the last decade and a half invested in our infrastructure through the support and the cooperation of the sport of alderman and former administration on the mandolin current administration the mayor inferno we've we've solved problems that decades ago people thought could never be solved you cannot ignore your infrastructure infrastructure has to be aggressively repaired maintained and upgraded to meet current needs

▶ 2:11:18 Speaker 2: the projects before you tonight I'm focused on water and sewer but it's very important to realize what goes into the decision-making process of what creates capital projects and Melrose today we have like I said we have competent engineering group that looks at really four different things we have a water capital improvement program a sewer capital improvement program we have a road a road program that which looks at road conditions existing road conditions updates those every three years we've now supplemented complete streets which is a different way of approaching different aspects of road construction we've now incorporated that into our road program and then we've worked very closely with the gas company and looking at where their needs are and trying to match all four of those needs together to create a project when you do that you end up with a master schedule like this which you really can't read but about three-quarters of this list is complete as we go into next week this is the capital improvement program which we see throughout the community over the course of the year and you will going into the fall as well the projects tonight really

▶ 2:12:31 Speaker 2: focus on water and sewer we are requesting funding from the MW IRA programs the MW IRA water program is a zero percent interest program and the one point four four million dollar authorization to borrow request will upgrade water main on First Street which would be a continuation of a block we did in front of the Winthrop school from Ashcroft to Waverly the gas company The company's currently upgrading the gas main on that segment of street right now. It will look to upgrade water main in front of the Harvest Man School on Damon Ave and a section of Glendale. Those are recommended fire flow and distribution improvements in front of the school. The gas main in front of the Harvest Man was replaced this summer. it will look to replace the gas sorry the water on Echo Street we're working with the gas company to get them to replace their their system in that area of Ward 7 and we also hopefully will

▶ 2:13:50 Speaker 2: be applying for complete streets a complete street grant which will add sidewalks in that in that neighborhood, this way kids can more safely approach the Hoover School and walk to the Hoover School. And then the last piece of it is recommended improvements in the top part of Brown Street in Wyoming Heights. That's way up Mount Vernon. At the top there, there are some circulation and distribution issues there. On the sewer side, we're requesting $375,000 authorization to borrow. That will allow us to access grants from the MWRA that will net $1.5 million in project funds. That will allow us to go back into areas we've worked in for sewer. It will allow us to move forward into new areas investigating sewer issues and cleaning and lining and investigation. And when this part of the project is done, we would have completed 60% of the system, of our sewer system with our I&I program. In addition to those two bullets, I've also expressed interest in having this team look at a maintenance program that we could put in place within Public Works that will allow us to accelerate the other 40% of this community that we haven't investigated with the I&I program so that we will have put eyes on the entire system and then we know how to properly maintain that entire system moving forward. We applied for an asset grant with DEP as an aside to this capital project, and hopefully with that asset grant and these funds, we can look at creating a maintenance program to address the rest of the system. John Potts from Western and Sampson has been a project engineer working on our sewer system for several years. Christine Carol's been with Melrose for about four years, she's from Tater and Howard. She's our lead project engineer, both certified engineers, both excellent at what they do. And then we have our own city engineer, Alanna Poe-Casellas, who's really elevated our capital programs in the last few years to new levels. The rest of the presentation is for them to make, and we look for hopeful passage. These projects will be worked on over the winter. gonna the designs have to be further matured we'll bid it in the winter when bidding season is really most advantageous to communities because all the contractors are home looking for work and we'll start work either an early spring or at some point next spring and summer so you know as John

▶ 2:16:58 Speaker 5: said I'm with Kate and Howard we've been working with the city I think it's gone by a little bit faster but I think it was actually 2013 so we're going on six years now that I've been working with the city of Melrose helping with their water system we created we developed basically a water system capital improvement plan that we finalized in 2017 it was kind of ongoing before then as we were collecting data on the water mains in the system and that's kind of been your roadmap for the last few years of what what water infrastructure improvements that you have done when we have looked at the prioritized recommendations in the report with also looking at what your needs are with roads and sewer that kind of allows it to be a movable document to kind of address the areas that come up we a tan Howard have our capital efficiency plan approach where basically we're not just looking at one thing we're looking at basically these three different we call them it's a three circles approach so we look at the hydraulics of the system which that means that we're looking at the size of your water mains and are they big enough to be conveying water from one end of the city to the other and providing adequate water supply water pressure and water flows for fire protection and for just your normal everyday usage so we looked at the pipes in the system we've done unit direction flushing every year and we've collected that data to camera up with where there restrictions in the pipe sizes in your system and we track which pipes those are we also look at the critical components in your system which would be your critical users your schools your hospitals where if you have a disruption in service because of a water main failure it is a large impact on the community the public being public safety and everything like that and then we also look at asset management so we've looked at pretty much data on every single stick of pipe in your system where we've looked at the installation year we've looked at the soil conditions to figure out which pipes are in your most vulnerable of having a potential failure in the future and so we take the pipes identified in each one of those circles and we look at them layered on top of each other and areas that hit all three so it's a hydraulic improvement it's a critical user and it's a poor pipe we're kind of your first level of of priority for water mains in the list to address first. And then if it falls into two of the circles, those would be the next priority, and then the final level would be the ones that just fall within one circle. And over the last few years, we have started to design and then construct and aid in the bidding process and the construction oversight for numerous projects off of that list.

▶ 2:19:52 Speaker 5: So again, so this kind of just summarizes what I had said. So the highest priority recommendations that were on our original list with the completion the the Damon Street work and some other minor little things that we are planning to do in this current package that we're working on will address all of those first level of improvements that we identified in the 2017 report so then we kind of done some in the other phases in the other levels just as road work or it makes sense to group projects together in neighboring streets so that once a contractor is mobilized in one area if you can do two streets as opposed to packing up and having another contractor the next year so again this is just a

▶ 2:20:31 Speaker 5: summary of these are the what we have worked on between last fall well I guess last last year we designed them and then the contract came on board at the beginning of last fall we started the project I think we did Ashmont I'm heard in Florence in the fall it's Carly I think Ash my you also did some sewer work at the same time and then we finished up the other streets this past spring to kind of complete that that last year's construction project as we prepare to get ready for the next construction season I mean it's gonna talk a little bit more about what the city is also done okay thanks so this

▶ 2:21:06 Speaker 4: next slide just shows in addition to all the capital programs that we've been doing using the MWRA capital funds we've also been trying to attack these smaller projects so Sherman Road we go Park Hunts Terrace and Grove Place are all streets that we've replaced the water mains on in-house on three of the four based on the size that we upsize to we were able to put a hydrant at the end of the street where there formerly was no hydrant on the fourth it didn't make sense based on there were only two homes and it was a very short stretch but we're I just wanted to emphasize that in addition to all the work we're doing with the NMWRA funding we're also doing work when we can using operating funds using retained earnings when we have opportunities even beyond what we're

▶ 2:22:00 Speaker 4: funding with the MWRA and this slide just shows some of the huge improvements that we've seen so you probably know right now we're in the midst of our biennial water main flushing program and so we've just now flushed the streets that Justine just mentioned that we just constructed last in the fall and in the

▶ 2:22:21 Speaker 4: spring so these are the brand new results and you can see the flows you

▶ 2:22:33 Speaker 4: can see the flows here from the 2017 flushing and some of these streets were only flowing 300 400 gallons per minute and now we're seeing about a thousand gallons per minute or more on every one of those same streets and this is using the same hydrant we we follow Tiden Howard has developed our flushing plan and we follow the same sequences every other year and this is flowing the exact same hydrant with the exact same valves closed and everything and so we see a huge improvement there which impacts both the residents using that water and the the fire flows and this just shows what we've been doing the slide is not in the presentation you had took a little bit more work to get it together other so but this just shows everything we've been doing since 2000 it shows the streets in red are the ones we've done most recently since 2016 and in the five-year period before that is in blue and then the ten years before that are in purple so we've been slowly working our way through the whole water system doing replacements and I had figured at one point if we have approximately 90 miles of pipe and we have let's say a hundred year lifespan on these pipes we need to be replacing a mile a year to keep pace with with the deterioration and that would assume that we had been replacing a mile a year before now or before the last two decades which perhaps we hadn't been so there's a little bit of a catch-up game but at least we should be doing at least a mile of a year a mile a year and this program that we're proposing tonight accommodates

▶ 2:24:14 Speaker 4: about that amount just over so this just runs through each of the streets that we're proposing to work in the length there is this one minor item Justine alluded to it that's doing some testing on the pipe on Wyoming because we have some break history that doesn't make a lot of sense based on the age of the pipe so we just want to cut out a section of it and do some testing that was one of our high priority recommendations and Damon and Glendale were one of the high priority recommendations and then all the others were recommendations within this plan just lower than that first level but once we do these last two projects of level one we will be done with the high priority and then we'll be into the next level then we have a component of construction oversight which would be assistance from Tate and Howard and then police details and then we have 65,000 shown here as staff time we currently staff in the engineering division we have one staff member who the majority of his time is paid through the INI grant loan program and this will be proposing to have a position staff within the engineering division both existing and potentially new staff funded partially using these grant

▶ 2:25:34 Speaker 4: funds so John mentioned it's a 10-year payback so it's a it's a zero percent loan so it's 144 thousand dollars a year straight payments throughout the 10-year period beginning in 2021 fiscal 2021 and right now we do have one point six to eight million available through the MWI program but we've just selected this one point four four million as the program that makes sense to do right now with that I'm gonna turn it over to John to discuss are there any questions on the

▶ 2:26:02 Speaker 2: water piece before we move on or should we just move on why don't we let's i don't see any well

▶ 2:26:10 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: can i we said we were going to combine them okay so i think we should just keep going and then we'll have people ask questions during their 10 minutes thank you for your time tonight i'm just

▶ 2:26:20 Speaker 1: going to speak briefly before i give it back to elena on the sewer infiltration and info program

▶ 2:26:30 Speaker 1: or ii quick definition of we've been before you guys before we talked about it just quickly infiltration is basically groundwater and clean water that's getting into the pipes through cracks in it holes in the in the pipes holes and manholes and inflow is basically rainfall that gets directly into the pipes through a catch basin that might be connected directly a house's roof leader or sump pump which as everyone knows it is illegal to have some pumps connected to your sewer system but it does happen but what it doesn't say is all this flow goes to the mwra and there's no separation between wastewater and clean water so the city gets built basically for the combined flow which we've i know we've seen this chart before but what it shows is and this goes through i just want to say it goes to 2016. it doesn't have more updated data mwra hasn't seemed to have updated their data in a little while so this shows in red is what wastewater yellow is infiltration and blue is inflow so between now it's been 50 to 60 percent of all the city's flow is combined of inflow and infiltration which is what we've been aggressively attacking over the last few years and the investment i've personally been working

▶ 2:27:48 Speaker 1: with the city probably about 15 years now i think i go back to about 2003 and in that time we've accessed about 7.2 million dollars from the MWA's different phases currently we're into phase 11 money now which at which point now I will pass

▶ 2:28:10 Speaker 4: back to Elena so similar to the to the water program we are requesting one point excuse me we're requesting 1.5 million which is 75% grant 25% loan but We have 1.619 million available to us right at the moment in that grant loan program. The MWRA has also recently allocated a portion of funding to every community that is loan only, and that's for communities who've spent all their grant loan money and wanna spend a little more. And so there's another 1.35 million in the next phase, in phase 13, but that, we're not choosing to access that right now because it is fully loan funded and we want to keep going on the grant loan program. And we do anticipate that phase 14 will be right back to the grant loan program. And based on how the MWA is working right now, they do expect us to be able to skip that phase 13. It's not like we have to use that money. That's just there in case we need it. So just a note for the future. So the loan repayment is, it's 375,000 over 10 years. So 37,500 each year, again a flat payment for the 10 years.

▶ 2:29:30 Speaker 4: So our INI reduction plan is mainly focused on taking this flow metering data that we did in 2016 and tackling the worst areas and then working our way through them. So Weston Sampson developed a five-phase approach to working through the whole city with these investigations followed by rehabilitation. And the purpose of this is to target the areas with the worst infiltration and inflow first. And so I just want to stress that this is different than preventative maintenance, than sewer cleaning and root control treatments and cleaning out grease and all the other things that the city does as part of our maintenance program, which John mentioned we did apply for this asset management grant to be able to up our game a little bit on the maintenance program. This is specifically targeting this major cost issue of infiltration and inflow that, like John said, we're paying the MWRA for this flow. So this shows all the phases. There is a little note at the bottom that phases 20 and 21 have an A and B that are not broken out separately on here. But this basically shows in purple are the areas where we've already done our rehabilitation. There's a little bit more work to be done in those areas, but we've done the vast majority of that work. this pinkish area in the middle is where we've just finished all of our investigations and so this new money will pay for the first phase of rehabilitation in that area the phase two area and then it will pay for the investigations in the blue areas so in the phase three areas so when we're done with that John mentioned we will be done investigating 60% of our system and we'll be done with rehab or not done but at least a good ways along with rehab of 40% of the system so just running through quickly the phases phase one is the area that we're almost complete in we've done manual rehabilitation pipelining open cuts your replacement and we're doing a little bit of additional flow metering to fight try to find some last problems phase two we

▶ 2:31:39 Speaker 4: just finished our investigations this spring this contract will allow us to do some manhole rehabilitation and some sewer lining in phase two and then in phase three it will allow us to just do the investigation piece so we'll get a camera through all those lines we'll clean them and we'll TV them and so then we'll have data really good data on 60% of our system and then just mentions

▶ 2:32:10 Speaker 4: here about the asset management grant this you've seen before but this was some of the results of our phase one just to show how effective this is the red is the worst areas on this map the orange or second worst and the yellow were in good shape and then after the lining program these are the results so

▶ 2:32:28 Speaker 4: if something is colored on this map and then is not shown at all on this map we haven't touched it it still potentially requires some attention or their private property issues that we can't address with our capital program but all of these pipes that the ones on here that are yellow that used to be red on here or orange that's all flow reduction that we've seen in nighttime flows that's all infiltration a little bit of inflow but mainly infiltration so we've had huge benefits we did a little cost-benefit analysis that we've presented before but we're showing that because it's 75% grant funded we're paying back into two four years the money we've spent is we've had a complete return on it in the in the impact it will have on the rate it takes a little time because the mwi assesses our rate on a three-year average cycle so it'll take some time before we really realize those savings but it's it's coming and it'll be very helpful for stabilizing our sewer rates and this just runs through in a lot of

▶ 2:33:31 Speaker 4: detail exactly what we're doing in each of the phases and when we're proposing to do it I'm not going to go through this now you have it in your presentation so if you're interested in that level of detail and then we just

▶ 2:33:49 Speaker 4: have two graphs showing the existing debt and the proposed debt so you can see on the water side we do see a little jump from fiscal 20 to 21 this is the hundred forty four thousand plus a payment on the the reason the green comes up the existing debt is payments on the recent bonds that we've done both through the MWRA and the restoration bond the general obligation bond that we got last year for restoring the roads where we did water main work so there was a little jump there and then we would have another little jump to fiscal 21 but then in 22 we come back down even with where we were and then we start dropping back down obviously as other debt gets added on that would likely level out but other than that little spike in the first year it's not adding anything really to the current fiscal 20 financial situation and then on the sewer again there's the little jump for fiscal 21 but it's actually in fiscal 19 we were actually higher than where we'll be even with that that new loan money so we're in uh in good shape on the sewer side in terms of rate impacts so that is all

▶ 2:35:10 Robert A. Boisselle: great thanks chair Boisselle in one of the gis maps you mentioned that you had 90 miles i think it was 2010 to 2019 you made a phrase that there's 90 miles of pipe under the streets and how much of

▶ 2:35:28 Speaker 4: those have been taken care of so i didn't actually do the calculation with the um in the gis that's actually a really easy number to come up with from this data right but um you know just looking at it anecdotally i would say maybe if that covers about a quarter of the system so about 25 to 30 percent

▶ 2:35:49 Speaker 4: that's been lined or fixed replaced this place the vast majority of this is dig and replace

▶ 2:35:58 Speaker 5: yeah so it's kind of um in the um about 30 percent of the pipes in the system are ductile iron pipe which is the material that we started seeing most heavily probably in the 80s so since at least the 80s 30 but just knowing from what the past history of um what you guys had been doing in the 80s and 90s the majority of that work was done probably late 90s into the 2000s um for the rehab work so okay i noticed the most in your presentations the old pipes are six inches and you're moving them to eight inches is that the standard i mean it's probably not standard for across the board for like the hospitals and others but the standard for regular homes with streets on are going to eight inches yes the the state has guidelines for for designing and constructing water distribution system and that basically states that if you have a pipe that is going to have a fire hydrant on it to provide fire protection the minimum size is eight inches now because of i noticed in some of the pressure you're talking about 350 and some of the numbers were almost triple that is that the eight inch uh or was it was contamination in the pipes themselves that was reducing the flow yeah the combination so i don't if you that the picture that that we had shown that was the pipe that came out of the ground um oh right there yeah that's pretty that's actually not bad some of the pipes that we've seen come out of here um some of the pipes in some of the neighborhoods would be like a garden hose right going through that six inch pipe so now you're going from basically a two inch pipe to an eight inch pipe and it's just making it and not only that that stuff is on there if there's any large you know something changes in the use there's a surge of flow going through because the fire hydrant was opened or somebody just you know leaves there has a leak or there's a water main break that gets stirred up based on those older pipes because they don't have a lining on them and it gets and that's why in some neighborhoods you have more dirty water complaints which through the flushing program and the main replacement has decreased over time but you just have to continually to kind of

▶ 2:38:01 Robert A. Boisselle: replace that and that's the reason for the flushing that's going on now until October 15th or at that point and you're trying to clean the pipes out at that point by rushing the water through and out and if I could just follow follow up

▶ 2:38:12 Speaker 2: on Justine's comment we Tater and Howard created a a model on the computer and And sometimes that six-inch pipe, general rule, at least for the last couple of decades, has been six becomes eight. But sometimes six could become 12-inch. And the model on the computer runs a hydraulic analysis of the entire system. And sometimes taking what could be a six-inch pipe on First Street and turning it into a 12-inch pipe on First Street has all kinds of sideline benefits. So that's why with flushing, the water main project on Warwick and Perkins that we just completed, it improved the fire flow on Warwick and Perkins, but it also helped a lot of those neighboring side streets because that main line branches out onto several side streets. The hydraulic model that they created that we used to make these decisions really helps that as well, And I think that's what also helps increase the fire flow capacity out of these hydrants from these projects.

▶ 2:39:22 Robert A. Boisselle: Now, when you're going down the street, you're also changing the sewer lines at the same time from six to eight inches? Or is that different? Not always. Not always.

▶ 2:39:33 Speaker 4: No, so most of the time on the sewer system, the capacity issues that exist aren't because the pipes are undersized for the flow, for the residential the actual sanitary wastewater flow when we have capacity issues it tends to be because of I and I like an area with high inflow and a big rainstorm you'll actually get so much clean water into the pipes that that it presents a capacity problem so by fixing the I and I issues you're also freeing up a whole lot of capacity in those pipes so a six inch pipe in a small residential neighborhood especially on the you know if it's a dead end or anything that's that's the right size that's an adequate size for that neighborhood when we're putting in new pipes we tend to go with 8-inch just because you know if you're putting a new it's a nominal cost difference but with

▶ 2:40:24 Robert A. Boisselle: an I and I that you're doing and you're sending cameras through the pipelines and so forth are you finding that it's too it's easier to line the pipes or complete reconstruction most most can be lined John yeah I mean it's it's

▶ 2:40:40 Speaker 1: obviously it's a much more it's cheaper to line the pipe and it gives you a good quality in the lab and it'll last excuse me for a good number of years so I mean to get it's it's a lot less invasive till to line the pipe then to open cut I mean but there are situations where lining isn't going to do it if you have a hole in a pipe or a collapsed section of the pipe you obviously can't line it that's gonna require a dig repair.

▶ 2:41:07 Robert A. Boisselle: Well, that's an example I wanna look at. You did Main Street about a week ago or two weeks ago, and about three days after you finished, you had a crew of about 15 in trucks everywhere. Was that a break in the line itself that you people found?

▶ 2:41:25 Speaker 2: Yes, Main Street was an unexpected repair. There was a blockage in that line, we went to clear it, and the hose on the truck actually got stuck in the cavity of the pipe. So at first we were trying to excavate it, then we found all kinds of utilities in the way. There was an NSTAR 345 kilowatt duct bank that ran along parallel with it. National Grid had another duct bank right over the sewer. The sewer was down 12 feet. The more these utility conflicts became known to us the more cost effective lining the pipe became. And that's why we decided to line it.

▶ 2:42:09 Robert A. Boisselle: And of course you kept records and updated your GIS systems, right?

▶ 2:42:15 Speaker 5: I turned it all over to engineering. Thank you very much for coming. Thank you, Madam Chair.

▶ 2:42:19 Speaker 4: Alderman Mortimer.

▶ 2:42:21 Peter D. Mortimer: Thank you very much, Chairman Lipper-Garabedian. what is the lineup made from that you line these water pipes with the water

▶ 2:42:33 Speaker 5: pipes are the sewer pipes water pipes do you have a line you can do a cleaning and lining project with water main where you would basically send a machine in to scrape all that off and then you come back in and you can either do cement or a cured in place liner the Melrose the way that we have been been doing because it's an older system because a lot of it is six inch which is undersized we're predominantly all replacement not doing a cleaning and lining program the lining

▶ 2:42:58 Peter D. Mortimer: is strictly a sewer so those those are water pipes in the pictures there that is in them so you clean those out because one of the things that we replace those replace those right you don't just flush those up to that the

▶ 2:43:10 Speaker 5: flushing plan the flushing will get out anything that's sitting in the pipe but some of that is just so it's basically like a layer of cement that's rusted on there and even flushing all the water through that is never going to get that off you'd have to go in with the machine and basically cut a pit in the amount of pits that you would have to do in a city because anytime you have a hydrant anytime you have a branch and anytime you have a side street you're digging a pit to do it to cut open the pipe and clean and line it the sewer you can go in through manholes you already have those openings to clean in line so the cleaning lining in a water main it becomes a balance of is it economical to do that and have to have all those cuts and still pave them and still compact them or do you just it's usually more cost effective to just replace the whole thing and be able to put in

▶ 2:44:00 Peter D. Mortimer: a bigger size main all right because one of the things that melrose is well known for is that the water quality here is exemplary we get regular water reports as alderman and the water here is fantastic it's pretty good in the whole coven system as of course you're well aware but i just want to make sure if anything does get used to line the pipes that again if it doesn't happen to melrose it seems to be a moot point but i just want to make sure that there's nothing toxic or nothing untoward that would diminish the water quality yes no and again um the what you would

▶ 2:44:35 Speaker 5: use to line water mains is likely different than what you would use to line sewer mains just because it is a potable water anything that goes into a water main um it has to be uh it's nsf approved which is the um i don't know i don't know the the acronyms but it's like the um and i think it's nfs so it's not the food and safety so it has to meet those a specific standard in order to put it in but again it's not been something that at this time with the with the improvements that we have in place um that we've looked into um some of the exceptions would be that the testing that we're planning to do on wyoming if once we get to look inside that main if that seems like it's because that's a bigger main that's a 16 inch line it's basically your main corridor of water moving from the mwra meters across so if when we get to see sections of that pipe it looks like it has some of that on it and the pipe integrity when we do the testing if that's still in a good shape pipe the cleaning lining could be an option that came up in the future right now we We don't see any need to do anything with that street, but those would be maybe you may consider lining versus replacement because they're already larger in the system.

▶ 2:45:47 Peter D. Mortimer: Because one of the things in Melrose is you really don't even need to buy bottled water in Melrose. The water is just as clean as bottled water, which is kind of a shame that we have to use that for showers and for toilets, the water that's so excellent. There should be a way that eventually maybe you engineers could design to use roof water for the toilets and for the showers or something like that.

▶ 2:46:10 Speaker 5: Well you can't, I mean New England is not as predominant to do that, but out in desert areas they have systems where you have two lines in the street. One would be like a reclaimed water that would be used for that, but here it's just the usage and the availability of water isn't practical at this time.

▶ 2:46:29 Peter D. Mortimer: They do that in Caribbean islands too. People have a swimming pool in their basement that they use the water for.

▶ 2:46:34 Speaker 5: Yeah, and what the DBW has been doing for the, we came in, the unidirectional flushing plan has been in place, you've been doing it every two years since 2002. We recently did an update to it because of all the improvements that you've made to the system, the plan needed to be adjusted to match that. But you have this data that other communities that we have worked with don't have. I mean, we have done unidirectional flushing plans, I don't even know, I think we're working on like eight right now. They don't get done every two years. The manpower that you guys commit to do that program is invaluable to the water quality that you have.

▶ 2:47:10 Peter D. Mortimer: And even code in New Hampshire, but in the house supply pipes is different. They can use plastic in New Hampshire and in Massachusetts you can't. So you can get the cleanest water in the world, but then if you're running it through your own plastic supply pipes, that may not be best for your digestive system and your whole system. And I'm glad to hear that in Melrose, at least, no line is going to water supply pipes. It's all replacement.

▶ 2:47:39 Speaker 5: Rita now, you may have done some lining in the past, I don't remember if you have. But we would consider it on a case by case basis if it was.

▶ 2:47:47 Peter D. Mortimer: And what would that line, what is the material that is that liner?

▶ 2:47:51 Speaker 5: The typical what you're using is a cement, because the pipe that goes into the ground right now, ductile iron pipe has a lining interior on it so because metal pipe if it hits water is going to rot that's what has happened to that historical pipe um so the ductile iron pipe that's the national standard has a cement lining in it that's tested you know it meets all standards it's that similar material you would then just reline a pipe that doesn't have a lining with

▶ 2:48:22 Peter D. Mortimer: So it's limestone cement, but mostly based in limestone?

▶ 2:48:25 Speaker 5: I'm not 100% sure.

▶ 2:48:27 Peter D. Mortimer: All right. That's usually what you get, right, John? Yeah. Usually cement concrete is based in limestone. And then another question I had is, in the 1980s we had about 58 miles of roads in Melrose. Then last time I checked in about 2005 or 2006 with another survey, Somebody said we had 84, somebody from the engineering said we had 84 miles of roads. And now we have 90 miles of roads in Melrose? Have we increased with things like Norway Road and Regan Drive and Patriot Way? Have we increased six more miles of roads in Melrose? I've always quoted 90 plus. Okay.

▶ 2:49:11 Speaker 2: For at least the last ten plus years. Yeah, last time I checked. We have added developments, but they're very small.

▶ 2:49:18 Speaker 4: Some of it may relate to better data. Yeah. Because ever since we've had the GIS system, you have a system in which you can just do one simple click of the mouse and it will tell you the total length of everything in that category. Rita. So some of the fact that if 20 years ago someone was saying we had 60 miles of roads and saying we have 90 it might just be that we didn't have as good information as we have now right but the but the water mains are going to be longer than the public ways because we have water mains on all of our private ways that the city maintains so also in easements there are a few easements

▶ 2:49:57 Speaker 4: that have water yeah so that so it's not surprising that the water main number is a little

▶ 2:50:02 Peter D. Mortimer: bit higher than the road number so some of that increase can be attributed possibly as you mentioned to the method of measurement but it's possible that even in the last 30 years we've had a 30 increase places like angela circle where roads are always getting built in where there used to be stands of woods or forest and that we may have increased the um the amount of roads and the incursion upon green space uh by up to 33 percent uh chipping away at the green space in melrose

▶ 2:50:35 Peter D. Mortimer: which it seems to be a big attribute to Melrose and I hope we're going to start limiting the amount of chip erosion and chipping away at these these green spaces as much as possible and while I have the floor I will make a motion for passage of the joined orders at this time second okay

▶ 2:50:57 Speaker 4: the motion for passage made by Alderman Mortimer and seconded by Vice Chair Boisselle did are you done

▶ 2:51:02 Peter D. Mortimer: on the memorandum yes yes i am that's it i made the motion thank you okay ottoman forbes thank

▶ 2:51:06 Scott M. Forbes: you and i will be brief um in the memorandum in terms of water it says that there's one million six hundred twenty eight thousand five hundred dollars that's presently available is that in addition to the 1.4 4 million dollar request or is that the net amount inclusive of the one point inclusive so we have 188 5 as available funds that we haven't tapped into yet and i'm assuming the same's for sewer so that's 119 000. so together we have a little bit over three hundred thousand dollars that we haven't tapped into is there any plans to maximize that

▶ 2:51:41 Speaker 4: through this fiscal year or no so no because these would um these two orders would carry us through this fiscal year in terms of work to be executed okay um but at the same time that money stays with melrose it doesn't it doesn't go back into the into the pool for everybody else mwra keeps carrying that over so it would be available to us whenever we decide that we want it okay so

▶ 2:52:03 Scott M. Forbes: we don't have the there's no risk of losing those funds they will carry over in in terms of playing chess with other projects absolutely you have flexibility in that absolutely and it's a little

▶ 2:52:11 Speaker 4: buffer if a project comes in over budget and we wanted to come back and you know ask for a little bit more money we traditionally haven't had to do that but sure you know it's nice having a little

▶ 2:52:21 Scott M. Forbes: buffer yeah i think i always say the same thing when we talk about projects like this so i just just wanted to make sure that we're able to spend to the to what we have that's available and obviously the more aggressive that we are uh with other communities our percentage of that pie for our mwira assessment goes down so if and when there is an opportunity to do that i i honestly feel like our infrastructure is one of the most high priority things that we can invest in our city so if we can stay ahead of our community partners we see a direct benefit in terms of costs when our water bills come out on a quarterly basis so thank you for your time thank you

▶ 2:52:58 Monica C. Medeiros: thank you very much I just want to say I'm very pleased with the work that's been done so far could you talk again just reiterate those numbers that we're seeing a return on investment of the funds within 2.3 to 3.4 years is that

▶ 2:53:17 Speaker 4: saw so that's that would be the payback if we were paying the MWRA based on just

▶ 2:53:30 Speaker 4: the previous year's sewer usage amount of flow that we sent to the MWRA but they do calculate so the way we calculated this we looked at how much estimated I&I removal we had and then we looked at how much we spent on the on the project that resulted in that removal inclusive of design construction bidding all of that and it cost us about 1.55 million for that first phase for the the investigations and rehabilitation we estimated that we removed between 200 and 300 000 gallons per day on an annualized average basis these numbers are very hard to come up with because every year is different it depends on groundwater conditions it depends on rain conditions so you know that that's why i'm giving such a big range you don't want to say you know we're removing 238 000 gallons per year you just can't do that so um so this is a very realistic range based on the data that we have pre and post construction and then dividing that by the amount we spent um and looking at how the MWRI assesses our costs because half of our costs the way they assess them half of the sewer fee is related to population and so that's not going to change and then the other half is related to flow and then there's a little extra piece for max month flow so I factored all that in and came up with the payback being nine to thirteen years but then when you consider that we don't have to pay back three-quarters of that money it brings that payback timeframe down to that 2.3 to 3.4 years but again if given the way the MWRI actually assesses us it's going to be on this rolling basis where you know this year we get the benefit of last year's construction but then we also have the previous two years factored in so it won't be until we're a few years out that we really can realize those savings and also just to stress infiltration and flow I always like to refer to them as infiltration and flow reduction programs because you never eliminate I&I it always comes back not in the same places you remove it here it puts more pressure in the groundwater system to push it in over here you're constantly chasing it and in you know really really tight system you probably have 25% I&I we have 50 to 60 percent so we are not a tight system but our ultimate goal is never zero it's it's not possible or practical

▶ 2:56:04 Monica C. Medeiros: thank you that's that's helpful to to set the standards of you know what we're really looking at looking at getting ideally more to something like 25% than to zero which is a big difference I think this I support this order I think this will help get us closer to where we want to be I would like to see us be more aggressive if we can I also wanted to ask I don't want to belabor this too much because it's getting late but we when we decide the areas that we're going to go in and work on are we talking to you know National Grid and what kind of power do we have I know there's a lot of leaks in their their system some of them are sort of allowable and how much cooperation are we getting from them and is there a way to push that National Grid's been an

▶ 2:56:51 Speaker 2: excellent partner and if anything over recent years that partnership has increased even higher they're required to um upgrade a percentage of their system every year i don't remember what the exact number is but they're required to do that and they have their own ideas of where they like to go but then when um when you know we try to marry the programs our programs with them we always have compromise and it's created it's created a lot of benefit to melrose and you know they may be they may want to replace gas in a street where we're not doing anything um and but yet we're doing we're doing a project on neighboring street and so they may come and replace that gas and because we're already there they save paving costs and then they're repaving the entire street of the street that we're not working on so at the end of the day we're getting two streets paved it's worked really well um and with water work especially open cut excavation water work we encroach a lot upon the gas company so we kind of force them to have to work just with the encroachment laws so it's worked out really well it's a good partnership we already have plans for next year plans that we may be tweaking well i mean the group will be tweaking in in the fall um as we approach next year and and leak history is great we our engineering staff tracks all their leaks we have a permit of every excavation And, you know, Rick Antone will tell you every leak they've had on every street, and that always comes into play in the decisions. Thank you.

▶ 2:58:28 Monica C. Medeiros: And I guess I have just one last question. I get a lot of—we touched upon this a couple of weeks ago, but I get a lot of people sort of talking about the quality and the issue of the sewer pipe in Brazil Street. Can you talk on this, the sub-area map, about where does Brazil Street fall on that?

▶ 2:58:47 Speaker 2: Yes, that's my fault. i should have mentioned it at the beginning i was supposed to but brazil street's currently under contract for additional re inspection work we have a executed contract with western and samson we hope to have them back in there in september to do a full video assessment cleaning of of that pipe and then they will make a recommendation on how to proceed with a permanent repair of the system the repair is not funded their design work and their investigatory work is funded within the budget the sewer operating budget whatever they recommend this group will probably come back before you for funding that if it's an open-cut repair you may look at that entire corridor of water sewer and gas not certain but there are other funds available I spoke with with the auditor about this at length we anticipate retained earnings being replenished once fiscal 19 is closed and certified and in the books and that free cash becomes available in the fall there's also ini mitigation fees a lot of which were generated with development in ward 5 that could be applicable towards a construction project on brazil street we just don't know what the construction project is going to be yet um atlanta can speak to when will i the ini program could be in that sub area but brazil street itself like i like i spoke to six weeks ago whenever it was last time we were here um we we carved that and made it its own um design project for western sampson i guess i i hope september um i think that's reasonable you'll see the camera crews back in there cleaning televising inspecting looking at laterals and and then they'll take that information from the field bring it back into the office and make a recommendation on how best to permanently repair that infrastructure that's good but that did not show up in the

▶ 3:01:06 Speaker 4: i and i um no as a poor flow area no so it was it's um section 9a is phase four it's right here um and so that would mean that it wasn't identified for the capital program for ini purposes which is what's driving our capital program which i think is the the appropriate thing to be driving the capital program um preventative maintenance

▶ 3:01:28 Speaker 4: is a different issue where you know if we're looking for areas that have the worst roots and the worst grease those aren't necessarily the same pipes that are the worst that are the ones we should be lining or the ones we should be digging and replacing those are pipes that we should be looking at root control treatment we should be looking at perhaps more frequent cleaning better tracking of how frequently we are cleaning them so that's where this preventative maintenance an asset management piece comes in to address and prevent those issues

▶ 3:02:03 Speaker 4: occurring here or elsewhere in the future so that's you know kind of a separate piece from the I&I capital program an equally important piece but just something that would be looked at through a little bit of a different lens and funded through a different source because the MWRA is funding I&I

▶ 3:02:19 Monica C. Medeiros: capital work so when we do the ini work and say we go in we investigate a pipe and we're putting a camera down to see if there's there's inflow or infiltration sometimes those cameras must see roots and grease and stuff like that all the time so are we cleaning those pipes so and we must have to clean them before we line them i would imagine also there's all every everything has

▶ 3:02:42 Speaker 1: has to be cleaned first before they do anything as far as a repair and it's like we identify roots and the line will send in a root control treatment and take out all the roots before they do any of that as well so those kinds of

▶ 3:02:54 Monica C. Medeiros: issues are being addressed through this program even though that's not the

▶ 3:03:00 Speaker 4: purpose of the being identified and then they're being addressed where we're appropriate but it also gives us that information if we wanted to address them in another way so you have a pipe that's where you've TV'd it you've seen a ton of roots but when you do the nighttime flow isolation you hardly see any flow in that pipe so it's not necessarily going to be targeted for lining and you don't see cracks and you don't see you know other issues that would drive it towards lining but now we have that information that there are roots in that pipe and this is again where that preventative maintenance asset management piece comes in where if we have a system that allows us to better track that information with the GIS we can then say well these are the pipes that we saw roots but we didn't line because they didn't you know warrant lining but we know there's a root problem now so those should be targeted for root control treatment or those should be targeted for more frequent cleaning just from the city forces and that's the kind of thing that we want to move into on our own preventative maintenance side so this gives us the The INI program gives us a ton of data, but we don't currently have the systems in place to be able to really use that data for decision making the way we'd like to.

▶ 3:04:15 Speaker 1: Thank you. Can I just add one thing? When we look at segment of pipe, when we get the TV tape, when we bring it in, we'll look at everything to find out if there's leaks in it, if there's cracks in it, if there's roots in it. And we'll go through and do a whole cost-effective analysis, but once we do the cost-effective recommend is we also do a value effective analysis too to make sure that it may not be necessarily cost effective but the value that the city would get out of it if we do repair this line also comes into the benefit as to whether or not what we do for uh recommended rehabilitation thank

▶ 3:04:49 Shawn M. MacMaster: you thank you alderman mcmaster thank you madam chair thank you for your presentation uh just a couple quick questions mr shenny you talked about the circulation and distribution issues on brown street and uh wyoming heights and i see it looks like the estimated cost for that project is about two hundred and twenty thousand or is two hundred and twenty thousand dollars um what specifically is scheduled to happen uh on both of those streets that's a replacement it's a full replacement pipe

▶ 3:05:13 Speaker 2: will be replaced and um presumably i'm going to make the assumption it's going to be connected to mount vernon and is there a chance we're going to loop it through probably we're not that far along not that far along the design we just added that one in the pipe will be replaced and and um the pipe will be branched off of um a most high most likely mount vernon that we had replaced mount vernon about five six years ago but it'll be branched off an area that has some adequate flow to bring it down brown street and up wyoming heights that neighborhood was just recently added

▶ 3:05:45 Speaker 4: it into the water program as we were putting together this program based on the street condition on Wyoming Heights we identified that that is one of the worst streets in terms of roadway condition and once we looked into it further and I was actually speaking with one of the residents and I said you know we really want to look at we want to address any water issues first and it's an area where we suspect you might have some pressure issues and they confirmed yes we have very low water pressure in our neighborhood our neighbors all complain about it and so then it it rose it up to the top because we can't pave it until we address the water issue so that's being actually added to tate and howard's contract via amendment we've already

▶ 3:06:33 Shawn M. MacMaster: signed the contract for the other streets is there a chance that sewer and gas work might be done at

▶ 3:06:37 Speaker 4: that time before repave happens the sewer work we tend when we do sewer work we tend to try to do trenchless work so but we do inspect separately from our i i program we inspect the sewers and drains on all the streets before we pave them because we don't want to pave over an issue so if we identified anything there we that had to be open cut repaired we would do that before we paved

▶ 3:06:59 Shawn M. MacMaster: okay and mr shen you said the bidding would be in the winter so the work on brown and west excuse me in wyoming heights would likely be sometime in the spring spring summer yeah and for the

▶ 3:07:10 Shawn M. MacMaster: west wyoming uh water main testing where exactly will that occur in west wyoming just you know

▶ 3:07:17 Speaker 5: pick a location yeah we haven't um looked we're gonna drive the street kind of try to figure out

▶ 3:07:25 Speaker 2: the the least obstructive way to do that the purpose of that testing is to literally dig a trench they'll take out a piece of pipe about this big and replace it but that piece of pipe they'll take out they'll bring it and send it off to the laboratories to get tested and they do strength tents and tensile tuts they look at the integrity of that pipe to see um how susceptible it could be to leakage or tuberculation issues in the future so we just literally just need a sample of the pipe at a location that the engineers select yeah i mean it's the there has there had

▶ 3:07:56 Speaker 5: been historically back um i think some of the the distribution system personnel had identified that there may have been some breaks before it was just unclear if the brakes were caused by the actual pipe conditions or if it could have been something because there was a contractor doing work in the street and it could have disturbed the the pipe so we want to kind of go to one of those areas where we think there could be an issue um and maybe look there we're going to look at the soil conditions to see if there's high groundwater anywhere that could be causing anything on the outside to figure out the best spot to kind of just take a representative sample so we can kind of get an

▶ 3:08:34 Shawn M. MacMaster: idea of what the pipe looks like so you have a general sense in west wyoming considering that i mean it runs as you know from main street to the stoneman line so so i mean is there a chance you may have multiple samples from multiple areas of the the street or do you have a right right now

▶ 3:08:46 Speaker 5: i think your idea is just to kind of let's look at one um and then if that sends any red flags maybe at a later time go go somewhere else um again we're going to try to do it you know it's it's probably a couple hours to dig a trench and take the stuff to cut the piece out put a repair on it and then um you know refill everything and then they'll come back and pave it you know after a certain amount of time but right now the idea is let's just get a piece that we can look at um and see sometimes depending on when the pipe went in the ground pipe can be really thick so then it's in really good shape it could be really thin um depending on the class of the pipe that they wouldn't so we're just trying to get an idea of what that is um and the pipe went in pretty much at the same time so these you know if we discover it's this class of pipe then it's likely that class the whole way and then determine if a further recommendation would be needed

▶ 3:09:37 Shawn M. MacMaster: okay great thank you and then just as a follow-up to alderman Medeiros i appreciate that mr shanna had proactively reached out to me to brief me on the brazil street situation and what the plan is both in the long term and the potential long term the the short term and the potential uh long term uh plan and i've communicated that to the residents they appreciate uh you reaching out to me um i i did have one question though for miss persakis ellis um related to that the pipe as you know on main street is from 1906 is it unusual that a pipe of that age wouldn't have the inflow and infiltration problems um that some of the other pipes in the rest of the city that have been prioritized would have on main street or any of any of the pipes that have been identified elsewhere in the city brazil relatively yeah so if that so you're

▶ 3:10:30 Speaker 4: saying the pipe on brazil street is 1906 vintage so we have a lot of pipes in our system that are that vintage and whether they're really susceptible to infiltration and flow a lot of it has to do with the groundwater table in that neighborhood and the depth of the installation so one thing about a pipe that's on a dead end like brazil street is it's going to tend to be more shallow because with the system flowing by gravity the further downstream you get in the system the deeper those pipes get so the more likely they are to be submerged in groundwater at least for the spring season when water might be dumping in all the you know loose joints or places where their cracks or anything else so it's not simply a factor of age and material it's it's a factor of depth of installation and gravel conditions that makes sense i guess i just would have

▶ 3:11:27 Shawn M. MacMaster: thought that it might be i guess i didn't expect to see it in phase four considering that you also have all of the runoff from the fels so when you're driving up the street on the right hand side i mean you know it's hilly and cliffy and there's a lot of water that that comes down onto the street so i would have assumed that that would have an impact in terms of uh that would be almost

▶ 3:11:46 Speaker 4: more of like an inflow type impact so like a rain water induced when it's actively raining or it's just been raining and that water's flowing down but if there aren't weak points in the system like manhole covers with holes or you know if that water's coming into people's basements and they're pumping it to the sewer with sump pumps those are the types of things where that type of runoff might create an issue but if we didn't see that area 9a is a fairly small area when you look at

▶ 3:12:19 Speaker 4: you know there's not a ton of roads in that area and so we would have had a meter right at the downstream end of that area as it comes out to whatever the downstream main is from that little tributary area so we have very detailed data if you look you know some of the areas are very large like look at area 15 that picks up this entire neighborhood and we had one meter at the downstream end of that but nine is a pretty small neighborhood so if we and and everything is prorated based on the total length and size of the pipes too it's not like a bigger area we're going to say it has more infiltration it's all divided by the diameter and size so if it ended up in phase four it really didn't show up as a high infiltration and flow area which is a good thing for other reasons it might mean that the pipe even though it has grease and root problems maybe it doesn't have other more major problems maybe lining does become an option which is you know less costly and can be done

▶ 3:13:28 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: more quickly so um thank you okay thank you madam chair i just have one question about the water plan so of the four um projects that have been identified three are really close to schools which makes sense in light of the presentation you've given but i'm wondering given school commutes and the use of those roads by families to get the kids to school and they're heavily trafficked what's the plan for how long this type of work takes and when it will be scheduled to

▶ 3:13:53 Speaker 2: occur um so echo street and damon ave will not happen during school uh the school year it'll probably happen in the summer time if it is during the school year it won't be during drop off and pickup times especially on echo street where it's the main road into school right as far as first street it's for it's you know i think we can work first street and work around drop off times but um i've already articulated that the damon project and the echo project should not be done during

▶ 3:14:24 Speaker 4: school okay and there's also school vacation weeks that you could look at as well yeah it

▶ 3:14:27 Speaker 2: probably won't give us enough time to complete that okay you never know okay thank you all right

▶ 3:14:34 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: we have a motion to recommend both of these orders for passage made and duly seconded all in favor any opposed we'll make those recommendations to the full board thank you so much for being here so late tonight thank you thank you our next order on our agenda is order number two zero two zero dash two two a resolution honoring john shena this is sponsored by the president yes president