ORDER-2019-23 : Petition of National Grid and Verizon New England to install one Pole in the municipal parking lot behind 419-429 Main St. and to install one JO pole on Grove St. in accordance with Plan # 26150795

Transcript (~18 min @ 6:23)

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▶ 6:22 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: You're welcome. The next item on our agenda is order 2019-23 petition of National Grid and Verizon New England to install one pole in the municipal parking lot behind 419 to 429 Main Street and to install one JO pole on Grove Street in accordance with plan number 26150795. This was previously discussed in the Appropriations Committee and was placed and was placed on hold we still under

▶ 6:46 Peter D. Mortimer: suspension I would request that we hear from city engineer John Shana and the representative from National Grid gentleman from National Grid I apologize

▶ 6:56 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: if you could tell us your name one more time right how you doing my name is

▶ 7:04 Speaker 5: Brendan Powell I'm an engineer with National Grid electric 170 Medford

▶ 7:20 Speaker 5: street in malden they know you right yeah good evening everyone uh so the building at 419 429 main street per request of the city we went back and and dug through tried to explore other options three of those options one was to be putting a vault underground on main street and that was determined to be um fiscally out of the question and then we were left with two final options both of which involve running wires from grove street from the overhead pole line one would be either siphoning underground crossing the street and crossing the parking lot underground and rising up to an overhead bank of transformers on a pole and then hitting the side of the building overhead and the other option would be to place the bank of transformers on grove street on a pole and then run the secondary voltage the low voltage wires overhead across the parking lot to a pole right behind the building and then hit the building from there

▶ 8:22 Speaker 5: the costs for each would be the underground options was estimated to be roughly 85 000 dollars and the overhead option was estimated to be about thirty five thousand dollars still at this point national grade recommends going with the overhead option

▶ 8:40 Speaker 5: we believe it's the lowest cost to serve to the customer it's the easiest to build and it is the most reliable way to maintain service to that building

▶ 8:51 Speaker 5: there's still the size of the service entrance to the building doesn't leave much room to serve other properties um with either option regardless of this um so i guess future development from this

▶ 9:03 Speaker 5: is is still uh we'd have to wait a while to see what the actual load will be um any other thoughts

▶ 9:18 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: i feel like i'm rambling we can move to questions if you're ready sure mr senator do you have

▶ 9:22 Speaker 6: anything to add no i i think the memo that we forwarded has eight conditions in it the last paragraph that memo technically could become a ninth condition we've worked closely with with national grids project team on this there's a capacity issue in downtown melrose in terms of power with the newer developments and newer buildings that are coming they just don't have enough power to serve these these locations it'd be great to come in through main street it just can't happen without easements and heavy costs and transformers and upgrades so we have to come in through the back to serve this building um and at this point you know we we ultimately decided to support both either b or c option b or c the underground option still requires the pole to be

▶ 10:23 Speaker 5: installed so and the underground option requires the transformers to be on the same pole that we rise up we transition from underground to overhead we'd rise up that pole make terminations at the top of the pole and then install the bank of transformers on that pole that's a lot of equipment on the same pole and i talked to my overhead foreman about it they're not necessarily comfortable with doing that if there's other options they said they would much rather go with an overhead way it makes for a congested pole and it makes it difficult to change and a good point that he made to me was you need to think two o'clock in the morning in a blizzard two feet of snow on the ground there's a guy in a bucket truck trying to figure out where this is fed from where the feed is where the fuses are it's dark you get to think with a with a reliability perspective it's not good construction to double up poles like that but i mean ultimately

▶ 11:22 Speaker 6: i think the prudent thing to do right now is to make sure that ninth condition gets gets approved with this decision because national grid has committed to us to come in and do a capacity study of the downtown district so that we're not stuck here with the next development trying to feed it from another pole and or this pole doesn't become a string of poles from grove street to foster street running through the parking lot i think that's what we want to avoid

▶ 11:55 Speaker 5: at all costs dan cameron and i are happy to sit down with the city and go over all the areas that we think are uh potential concern uh there's certainly some areas i can think of right off the bat that have plenty of capacity and some others that are definitely right at

▶ 12:14 Speaker 5: that limit and the way I would describe Main Street is kind of like a Honda Civic you know probably it's a little better looking but the engine that's in the car is sized to power that car and these are all a lot of these are just one-story buildings with 400 amp services as they get turned over and become three-story and four-story buildings with two commercial spaces underneath that'd be like your honda civic trying to tow a boat trailer or a camper trailer so it's that's the way i would kind of describe it it's not that that downtown area is struggling to stay lit it's just sized for the existing buildings that were built there that may be 50 years old um if that helps i guess

▶ 13:00 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: thank you on discussion we have president's work go first thank you madam chair and thank you for

▶ 13:04 Michael P. Zwirko: being here tonight and coming back i know it's close to the holidays and also we had to place this on hold because we wanted you to do more work with our department so we appreciate you taking the time and the diligence to do that it means a lot to us because um you know we take our downtown very seriously because it's a very nice section of our town so thank you um before i i did write some language down um i wanted to include that last paragraph as a number nine so i'll get to that in a moment i just had two quick questions um so with with option c between the time that you were before us on november 26th and now has option c changed at all

▶ 13:46 Michael P. Zwirko: um no it has not so it's the same it's the same plan that was before us a month ago and after exhausting other avenues this is still what you would think is not only the best from a feasibility standpoint and financial but uh for what what we're dealing with with the culvert and everything this probably makes the most logistical sense that's correct okay and then another question that because i didn't see this in the memo and i don't know about kind of like the work hours or the length of time that this you think would take if if we were and i figured that's because that an option wasn't chosen so uh let's say that this board or this committee rather decides to move forward with option c what do you think the time frame of the work would be and and the hours and and i say that before you answer because um just for commuting purposes especially with saint mary's school being right nearby i would really appreciate it if maybe work could begin you know 8 30 9 o'clock in the morning and you know maybe be um have some amenable hours for given traffic because that is an mbta bus route there as well and there's also some senior housing so just in terms of the work hours and then also the length of time could you speak to

▶ 14:50 Speaker 5: that for option c for option c that would be approximately two days 8 30 to maybe 2 30 2 o'clock uh be two working days that'd be pretty quick to for those guys to knock that out okay thank you

▶ 15:06 Speaker 5: for that information so um maybe one day in actual grove street one day with a truck and then behind the building in the second day would be in the parking lot right right okay so it the it would

▶ 15:13 Michael P. Zwirko: only be an obstruction for the growth street area for potentially one day that's correct gotcha gotcha so when i read this memo i did call the engineer's office and um given what you had told us last time with respect to the capacity issues and where we want to be because we don't know where we'll be in terms of downtown development to you know 20 30 years from now i think it does make sense to make a contingency upon the permit that will be granted hopefully granted this evening and um i'm taking a lot of language from the paragraph but essentially it will read as follows number nine national grid shall by january 1st 2020 conduct a build out analysis study and produce a plan that addresses and identifies the known capacity issues and citing concerns of the main street corridor from grove street to upham said report shall be furnished to the DPW directed director for additional guidance please see the

▶ 16:17 Speaker 5: paragraph below I can take care of that for you that wouldn't be a problem

▶ 16:21 Michael P. Zwirko: wouldn't be a problem okay so then with that being said I would move to amend the memo to include the ninth container condition that I just read as well as removing options a and B second the motion to amend motion to amend the

▶ 16:38 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: order and the memo within as was just outlined by President's work oh on

▶ 16:49 Speaker 7: discussion those are all the questions that I had any post we still have

▶ 16:55 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: discussion on the order up next we have Alderman Mortimer I raised my hand for

▶ 17:00 Peter D. Mortimer: purpose of making that same motion um and i will hold off on making a motion to recommend for passage at this time in case uh any other alderman may have amendments they will want to make i don't want to foreclose them thank you so thank you i yield the floor at this time alderman medeiros

▶ 17:22 Monica C. Medeiros: thank you i just wanted to make a couple comments and and thank you uh both for looking into this and further and going the extra mile i know you contacted the planning department as well and i appreciate that and i think it's you know the right thing this this condition to to really be looking forward and in looking at our capacity moving forward so that we can you know determine how to handle things um i did since our last meeting have a chance to speak to a master electrician who had reached out to me after watching our meeting and you know he really felt that in his experience that this option c to do the overhead the overhead lines was actually the safest way to go forward and explain to me about dropping down the capacity of electricity through the transformer and into the building and maybe you could just speak to to that aspect of it and and i think it i think you have already touched upon this in some ways of saying it's not good to double up that pole and it's it's probably safer to have less voltage coming through overhead than it is to have such high voltage underground in that area

▶ 18:40 Speaker 5: and that's right i mean when we think about putting transformers on a pole right behind that building there and then you look at the parking lot if if the pole even with ballage around if it gets backed into that's going to go one way and it's going to fall probably towards the building now if you have a pole that just has secondary voltage on it house voltage 120 same thing in your wall outlet that's not necessarily lethal to humans i mean it might spark and trip or whatever but 15 000 volts definitely is lethal to humans so having that fall onto the side of the building and i'd rather keep those on the street where a truck can access

▶ 19:19 Speaker 5: them and away from necessarily you know where people walk and such like that um yeah primary

▶ 19:29 Speaker 5: bulge is dangerous very dangerous stuff so thank you thank you much thank you alderman butreff

▶ 19:35 Manisha Bewtra: thank you chairman um can you explain a little more about what the impact would be if you're walking in this area and also um you may have touched on it but the impact like on

▶ 19:52 Speaker 5: on parking or just circulation so during construction or after it's complete after it's complete there should be no impact on walking at all the pole is going to go in an existing

▶ 20:06 Speaker 5: grass island okay where the uh city light pole is going to go replace the light pole with a light fixture on the pole so there should be no pedestrian impacts at all including on the

▶ 20:14 Manisha Bewtra: sidewalk that's on the south side of grove street that's correct okay it's already a bit of a narrow

▶ 20:23 Speaker 6: sidewalk so it's coming from an existing pole on grove street that was my understanding i just wanted to they'll replace an existing pole to make it more structurally sound they'll replace that existing pole i think it's by the hairdresser and then they'll remove a street light that's currently in the parking lot and replace that with a pole and then run the wire from those two poles

▶ 20:49 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: thank you thank you madam chair and thank you both for being here um this has been really helpful to hear about the safety aspects and i'm wondering also about the underground culvert and if that also potentially could create some problems with the option of running things

▶ 21:03 Speaker 6: under the ground yeah if we if we ran underground it would be um to just before the culvert we wouldn't we couldn't cross the culvert he asked that he needs what three feet of cover i need

▶ 21:14 Speaker 5: three feet of cover and concrete encasement so trench three feet down and that's just at the top of the pipe so it's really like 36 inches and there's like probably eight inches of fill over the top of the culvert and it goes about 12 feet down so this property is boxed in from behind you know ideally you know maybe we could trench the whole way there if the culvert wasn't there but the thing is a 12-foot wall and it's not it's not a secondary culvert it's the

▶ 21:46 Speaker 6: Elk Pond drain culvert it drains Elk Pond through downtown into Malden eventually into Malden so I mean it's a significant part of our drainage infrastructure and it's not something that we'd want to cross well could to

▶ 22:07 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: get power over building okay and once you know assuming that the board approves option c the one that we've been discussing both today and last time will the installation of that infrastructure on grow be have any capacity to serve other buildings or will this building sort

▶ 22:27 Speaker 6: of uh tap it out we looked at that but i'll let brendan speak to it so right now we estimate that

▶ 22:31 Speaker 5: they're going to use all the capacity of the transformers that we give them that may change over time i think it's best to give a building about a year of usage before we can really look back at the meter data and see how much they've been using our estimates are pretty good but they're not always perfect sometimes we're under

▶ 22:59 Speaker 5: sometimes they're over so i think i think we'll just have to wait and see but our estimates basically put them around like 145 kva and the largest we can really hang on a pole is 150 kva

▶ 23:12 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: okay so they're kind of right there i guess and why wouldn't we go with the most right now when

▶ 23:20 Speaker 5: you're doing all the work with the most uh what 150 and oh we would we would oh okay but we uh size that we estimate that they will use 145 kva out of 150. got it okay that's helpful and then

▶ 23:28 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: my final question is i'm appreciate that you think that um the infrastructure study that we've moved to include in the order is something that you all are willing to take on i'm wondering is that something who bears the cost of doing that type of analysis national group okay great thank you no

▶ 23:48 Peter D. Mortimer: further questions thank you motion to recommend for passage madam chair as amended we have a

▶ 23:52 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: motion to recommend as amended for passage to the full board made by alderman mortimer second second by President Search any further discussion all in favor aye any opposed the motion will be recommended for full passage to our full board meeting which is on January 7th you don't need to be there for that unless we call you back with more questions but I anticipate it should go fine okay