APPRO-2024-6 : Authorization to Borrow MWRA LLP Request for Authorization to borrow from the MWRA LLP for lead water service identification and removal.

Transcript (~15 min @ 5:52)

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▶ 5:52 Robb Stewart: Madam Chair, I'll make a motion to suspend the rules.

▶ 5:54 Speaker 1: Second

▶ 5:57 Leila Migliorelli: Motion is suspend the rules made by Councillor Stewart, seconded by Councillor Carrum Shady. Um, Mr. Cler, will you please call the role

▶ 6:04 Speaker 7: Vice Chair Jamine? Yes. Councillor Ella? Yes.

▶ 6:10 Speaker 4: Councillor Eccles? Yes. Councillor gpe? Yes. Councilor Stewart?

▶ 6:15 Speaker 2: Yes. Councillor Carrum. Shetty. Yes. Cremsky? Yes.

▶ 6:18 Speaker 4: Councillor Williams.

▶ 6:27 Speaker 8: Sorry about that. Yes. Um, president Greg?

▶ 6:33 Speaker 6: Yes.

▶ 6:35 Speaker 2: And Chair Elli? Yes. That's unanimous.

▶ 6:40 Speaker 9: Okay.

▶ 6:42 Leila Migliorelli: The item on our agenda night is appropriation 2024 dash six authorization to borrow the M W R A L L P request for authorization to borrow from the M W R A L P for lead water service identification and removal. We have the city engine speak on this.

▶ 7:05 Speaker 1: Welcome.

▶ 7:11 Speaker 10: Thank you. Good evening. Um, this request for appropriation is for our lead water service

▶ 7:20 Speaker 9: removal program. Uh, the M W R A has received federal,

▶ 7:24 Speaker 11: federal funding of a hundred million dollars to provide to the communities in the M W R A system for identification and removal of lead water services. It is a first come, first serve, uh, program. And so we are going to be asking for

▶ 7:46 Speaker 9: 1,000,300, uh, sorry,

▶ 7:47 Speaker 11: $1,035,000 to put towards,

▶ 7:53 Speaker 11: um, the program. It will, in the work that we'll be doing with that money will include, uh, finalizing our inventory of lead services, doing building inspections and test pits to confirm material in areas where our records show unknown or we're not quite sure what, what the material of the lead services is, um, outreach to property owners. And also, we are currently providing a $1,000 incentive to private property owners who have lead services to remove their service. It's a, it's a refund program. So once they remove their lead service, we refund them a thousand dollars towards the cost of that. So this funding from the M W R A, we will help us to continue this program that we're doing right now,

▶ 8:47 Speaker 11: and I'm happy to answer any questions.

▶ 8:54 Speaker 3: Okay. Any questions? I see Councillor Repe.

▶ 9:00 Mark Garipay: Thank you. Uh, thank you Madam Chair. Thank you, uh, Ms. RA for being here. Um, you answered my one question on what the incentive would be. Is that, um, is there a, is there a cap on how much, um, is it like a $50,000 cap or is it just, uh, unlimited depending on how many people take advantage or

▶ 9:19 Speaker 10: There? So with these new funds, we have not set a cap.

▶ 9:27 Speaker 11: It will depend on finding a balance between actually, uh, completing our inventory, determining where we have LED services, and then going after them. Um, you know, with over a million dollars,

▶ 9:42 Speaker 11: I think we'll have a, a large sum of money to put towards, um, the residential reimbursements. Um, but that, that number has not been determined yet.

▶ 9:54 Mark Garipay: And is it from, is a reimbursement from the connection in the street to the house or a, anything like if they have lead inside the house, but the connection from the house outside to the street is not lead, is that possible, uh, that, that would happen? Um, and we give an incentive incentive inside the house. Is it more for work outside, I guess from the house to the street?

▶ 10:18 Speaker 10: It's for,

▶ 10:20 Speaker 11: it's for the portion of the line that is from the curb stop or the property line into the meter. Uh, e p a so far has not provided any guidance or funding for, for residents who have lead pipes in their house, uh, after the meter.

▶ 10:37 Mark Garipay: Okay. And then on, um, I see that this is gonna be paid through, uh, the debt will be paid through the water enterprise fund. Um, we have a pretty health healthy balance in that fund. I know. Did I, forgive me, but did we raise water rates, uh, or sewer rates this year as a result of, um, as a result of, uh, we, we, um, we're a little lower than we thought, I think, in the, in those funds. Right.

▶ 11:03 Speaker 10: Uh, so we did raise water rates this year.

▶ 11:08 Speaker 9: Um,

▶ 11:10 Speaker 10: I know that Catherine Armada took a look at the debt schedule for this.

▶ 11:15 Speaker 11: We do have a couple of debts coming off the books in the next couple of years.

▶ 11:22 Speaker 11: The first payment on this loan would not be due until a year from

▶ 11:25 Speaker 9: now. Um, and so she, uh,

▶ 11:31 Speaker 11: she looked at the debt schedule and how that all works together, and she feels very comfortable with us going after this. It's a 0% loan.

▶ 11:38 Speaker 9: Um, and so the payments,

▶ 11:41 Speaker 11: the annual payments would be $103,500.

▶ 11:48 Mark Garipay: Okay. Thank you. Um, I mean, I support this order. I just had one other question and, um, I think it's probably more for, um, Andrew, if, uh, if, um, the clerk, if he can maybe get some clarification from the city solicitor on the order. The last sentence on the order says in that the mayor is authorized to take any other action necessary to carry out this project. That just seems a little vague to me on that. Can we just get a little clarification before the final vote on this? But, uh, I do support this order. Thank you.

▶ 12:28 Speaker 2: I will, uh, get that clarification and, uh, send It to the council.

▶ 12:39 Leila Migliorelli: I lost internet connection for a second there. Councillor. Gar, are you finished with your questions? Okay. Councillor Williams.

▶ 12:48 Speaker 8: Thank you. Um,

▶ 12:50 Ryan Williams: I wondered about whether there was any kind of prioritization of households by any criteria, whether it's justice criteria like, um, you know, age or a, uh, presence of small children or, uh, income or anything else. Is there any way that we're structuring the outreach to kind of reach the folks who might have the most need first? Or is this a first come, first serve? Is it street by street? How does it actually roll out?

▶ 13:22 Speaker 10: So right now, this is a voluntary program in terms of the people on the private side

▶ 13:28 Speaker 11: replacing their services. And, um, believe it or not, we have run into residents who have no interest in replacing their lead service. So, um, it is a first come, first serve. Uh,

▶ 13:43 Speaker 9: we will be, um,

▶ 13:48 Speaker 11: letting people know that the program exists. And, um, there, once the inventory is done, I believe that we also are going to be required to notify people that they do have a lead service, so that they know that, um, if they, if they want to move forward with doing something, um, that they can.

▶ 14:07 Speaker 11: So that's, that's how we're structuring it at this point.

▶ 14:11 Ryan Williams: Okay. Um, help me understand the order of operations. Um, in the memo that's attached here, there are a series of bullet points, which feel to me like they're chronological. So, uh, correct me if I am wrong, but as part of this funding, the city is going to verify the lead service line locations via the inspections and test pits, and then send that information to the E P A so that they can build out their database of homes with lead service lines. Is this right?

▶ 14:44 Speaker 10: Um, that is roughly correct. We, uh, you know,

▶ 14:49 Speaker 11: we have our water tie cards and our, you, you know, vault full of plans. And we, we started this, um,

▶ 14:57 Speaker 11: probably close to two years ago going through, we scanned all our watertight cards at this point. Um,

▶ 15:05 Speaker 11: and we have been working with Tada and Howard for about a year now

▶ 15:10 Speaker 9: to confirm, uh,

▶ 15:12 Speaker 11: lead on the private side and also lead on the public side. So the public side is from the main to the curb stop at the property line, and the city is responsible for replacing any lead services there. Um,

▶ 15:27 Speaker 11: so we've been working and, and just so you're aware, the E P A doesn't consider the lead service fully removed unless both

▶ 15:35 Speaker 9: sides are done. Mm-hmm. So, um,

▶ 15:38 Speaker 11: we have been working with residents that where we've identified lead services. So we've been working with our operations people where we know there's lead on

▶ 15:48 Speaker 11: the city side, but there's copper on the private side, so then we can get credit for full removal. Um,

▶ 15:56 Speaker 11: we are under an administrative consent order right now with d e p.

▶ 16:01 Speaker 11: We have to remove 25 services a year at a minimum. Um, and so we've been working towards that. We also do, uh, e p a mandated sampling. We're in the middle of our sampling program right now.

▶ 16:15 Speaker 9: Um, and since, uh, may of 2022,

▶ 16:21 Speaker 11: we have had 24 full replacements. Um, so either both sides were replaced or one, one or the other side was replaced.

▶ 16:34 Speaker 10: Um, so yes, you are. So it is kind of a, a stepwise process.

▶ 16:37 Speaker 11: To go back to your question, to answer your question, um,

▶ 16:42 Speaker 11: we look through our record documents and then if we're not sure if the records are accurate or if there's a reason to believe that we need to do further investigation, we'll go up and do building inspections. We see, we look at what the material is at the meter, um,

▶ 17:01 Speaker 11: and if we're still not sure, or there's still some question, we will do test pits at the curb stop, which will show us what the material is on both sides of the curb stop. Um, and the outreach to property owners is something that's ongoing through all of these activities. Um, and then obviously if we find a lead service, we make the homeowner aware that there is a financial incentive to replacing their side.

▶ 17:29 Ryan Williams: So with regard to the timing of outreach, is it conducted kind of in a, in a sequential order, like down a list of streets? Is it, you know, like how do you, where do you start and how do you choose what direction you go in? Do you start north to south, you know, how do you, how do you do it?

▶ 17:46 Speaker 9: Um, well, right now we're,

▶ 17:50 Speaker 11: because we're working on the inventory as soon as we verify the locations of lead services. So again, we, you know, we've got this mandate. We have to do so many per year. We, um, we're trying to, we're kind of looking for the low hanging fruit right now. Um,

▶ 18:07 Speaker 9: and so it is,

▶ 18:10 Speaker 11: we're not doing a street by street approach, although there are streets where we know that, um, most of because of the age of the houses, when the street was built, all of that, that, um, there's a high probability that there are lead services. Um,

▶ 18:28 Speaker 11: but, you know, sometimes we run into a situation where a, an old lead service was replaced at some point down the line, but it just never got documented. So, um, we're, we're still very much in the early stages of verifying things. Um,

▶ 18:45 Speaker 11: for, in terms of low hanging fruit, an example would be all of the streets where we've done water Maine in the last 10 years, we replaced the public side service with copper. So we know that's copper. So we're looking at the records for those houses on those streets to see if we can find lead services on the private side that can be removed.

▶ 19:08 Ryan Williams: So in terms of outreach, I guess what I would, what I would say, what I would suggest is you might want to coordinate with Melrose Public Schools to do some kind of an, an outreach announcement to parents of children, because I'm thinking about, you know, you might do just the, the time constraints of how long it takes to stage to research and to plan this stuff, and the fact that, right, obviously the little kiddos are the most susceptible to the effects of lead in their water. And so it, you know, if you had a big outreach to parents that said, Hey, we had this incentive program call today. Or, you know, email this address and ask, you might get a really quick, um, uh, group of folks who have small kids who wanna be put in the program that could be prioritized given their more vulnerable status.

▶ 19:58 Ryan Williams: I know when we moved in, it was the first thing we did was ask about the lead service line and had it removed. So I think the schools might be a good partner in terms of outreach. I appreciate the, the information. This is a great project. Um, and thank you for answering all the questions and, and speaking to us today.

▶ 20:16 Speaker 3: Any other questions?

▶ 20:22 Leila Migliorelli: Seeing none. What is the will of the committee? Councillor Stewart?

▶ 20:25 Speaker 5: Uh, Madam Chair, I'll make a motion to recommend to the full council. Second

▶ 20:30 Leila Migliorelli: Motion recommend made by Councillor Stewart, seconded by Councillor Eccles. Mr. Clerk, will you please call the role

▶ 20:36 Speaker 7: Vice Chair Aldine?

▶ 20:40 Speaker 6: Yes.

▶ 20:42 Speaker 2: Councillor Sun? Yes. Councilor Eccles? Yes. Yes.

▶ 20:48 Speaker 4: Councillor Repe. Yes. Councillor Stewart? Yes.

▶ 20:53 Speaker 2: Councillor Carcetti?

▶ 20:55 Speaker 6: Yes.

▶ 20:56 Speaker 2: Councilor Reky?

▶ 20:57 Speaker 4: Yes. Councillor Williams? Yes. President Greg? Yes.

▶ 21:06 Speaker 2: And Chair Elli?

▶ 21:09 Speaker 11: Yes.

▶ 21:11 Speaker 2: That's unanimous with 10 yeses.

▶ 21:14 Leila Migliorelli: Okay, great. This order will be brought to the next full council meeting with a

▶ 21:19 Speaker 11: recommendation for passage. Thank you very much. Thank you.