City Council — 2019-03-18
Transcript
▶ 31:55 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: Order 2019-47, Petition of National Grid for Multiple Pole and Conduit Relocations Throughout Melrose as set forth herein as part of Electrical Transmission Line Upgrade Project. We have a motion to open the public hearing. So moved. Second. We have a motion to open the public hearing made by Alderman Mortimer, seconded by Alderman Boycelle. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? that opens our public hearing i do see that we have representatives from dpw as well as national grid here before us i would entertain a motion to suspend the rules so moved second motion to suspend the rules made by alderman mortimer seconded by alderman forbes all in favor any opposed we are now under suspension of rules we are joined by mr shenna good evening good
▶ 32:37 evening everyone we've been working with representatives from national grid on a project that will last the better part of a few years. These orders that are before you, these grant of locations, are a piece of an overall project that ultimately will result in the decommissioning of the substation on Upham Street right across the street. Our National Grid has planned a series of improvements, mainly above ground that will refeed and refeed the network in a different manner and that substation the work of that substation is no longer going to be required my correspondence from last Thursday is requesting that no action be taken tonight by this board because we have some more work we still need to do in the upcoming weeks with national grid
▶ 33:36 it's part of our initial conditions when we met with them a few months ago we are requiring a joint meeting of national grid with Public Works Comcast Verizon one phase of the project that you're going to hear about includes the upgrade and replacement of existing poles and we want we want to clearly map out how that process is going to work and how long that's going to take another thing we want to do is visit visit each of these seven sites and for those of you who haven't read it in great detail the seven sites that they're requesting the grant of location at our line Street that's near Linwood Del Ave near Grove Rock View which about halfway in between Mount Vernon and Maine West Wyoming and
▶ 34:27 this one is on the southerly side right before Pleasant by the bus stop there's a poll there that they're looking to add Woodruff on the Main Street and Washington Street near Brazil right before if you're coming down Washington Street heading towards Malden it's before Brazil Street and Ashmont Street closer to Pleasant so those are the seven locations for the grant to look location we still have to visit those sites our engineering staff and their engineering staff to come up with individual conditions to maybe change a location here or there in order to get we like to put poles on property lines not in front of people's front doors we haven't vetted that process out yet so because of those two items that joint coordination meeting we're looking to do
▶ 35:18 in these site visits we're hoping that we can use tonight to bring National Grid forward have them give you an overview of this project that they're looking to do and then we can place it on hold until we can vet out these locations and have this meeting the meeting has been scheduled it's next Wednesday when we'll be meeting with Verizon Comcast Melrose fire Melrose Public Works and National Grid to talk about the transfer of existing poles but I'm gonna I just want to introduce Jack Webb he's with National Grid and he can give you an overview of why they're doing this why these grant of locations why these poll replacements and ultimately where National Grid is headed in the next 12 to 18 months and then we can answer any questions that you may
▶ 36:06 have welcome good evening ladies and gentlemen good evening Jack Webb I'm the project manager for this project I'm an employee of national grid I appreciate you see me this evening I brought a map to show the area which I'll discuss briefly in a moment but like was stated the purpose the project is ultimately stems from our company's decision to decommission the indoor substation located right around the corner on upham street basically that substation has reached the end of its serviceable life it's been in service since the early 1900s and a lot of the equipment inside is original it's still operating just fine but ultimately it is reaching the end of its serviceable life and we've made the decision that it's just a little too
▶ 37:01 unsafe to rebuild it in its current location especially given that the building is historic and that the size constraints inside just pose a safety to our internal workforce to do it safely while also maintaining reliable service to the city so the decision was to decommission that and then basically transfer all of its load to the area to other surrounding substations located in Malden Everett and other areas substations so right now the Upham substation has eight distribution feeders that come out of it and it's 4,000 kilovolts is the service voltage to all the area but the other substations we're going to transfer the load to they service or they they feed at 13 000 volts so in order to transfer all that load we need to do some certain upgrades to the the distribution feeders on this
▶ 38:00 network to make them ready and capable to take on that added voltage so that means bigger wire different types of transformers and also includes a significant number of pole replacements as was stated rough number off the top of my head for a number of pole replacements here in the city is upwards of I think a little over 300 mainly because of asset condition they are old they are narrow and skinny and with the added weight of thicker conductor different types of transformers they're just not strong enough to hold what what is it will be doing so we plan to replace them in in place uh they will be roughly about the same size probably a little bit taller but the overhead service will remain the same throughout the whole project we anticipate no disruption to service
▶ 38:58 at all except for very minor areas where we actually have to take it take a small area out of service for a very short period of time approximately one to two hours in order to actually flip switches on transformers to then be able to take on the the new higher voltage that's what we call conversions you can't do that live it has to be de-energized in order to do that and we usually plan those overnight to disrupt any type of need for power during the day for personal or commercial reasons and so most of our work is is considered overhead we do have some little bit of underground work most of which is just completely reconductoring using the existing manhole and duct systems already located in the city but one of our petitions before you
▶ 39:52 is to install a new very small approximately third less than 50 feet length of new conduit into a public private property but it has to come from the public side where our duck bank is so if you if you'd like I can just show you basically the overview map you can see all of our work basically covers almost a good portion of the city what I tried to do is plan the work to keep concentrated in specific areas and not just be roaming around the city aimlessly to just do work so the work approach that we've created is to basically start from the north and work south so we plant all of these different colors are different work packages that have been developed and then will be can be completed individually converted like
▶ 40:48 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: I talked about and we move on to the next one so again we work work north to south and then go over to the east and they continue down and then there's one which as you can see here this long dotted line that is all underground cable replacement and that will probably go concurrently with most of the overhead work just to take advantage of time so questions about the overview before we proceed to questions from the board I'd like to ask if there are we are still in the public comment portion of the public hearing and if we have any members of the public who are here to comment on this proposal if we could allow the the member of the public just come forward sorry sirs if you could sir introduce yourself okay that's okay name and address Donald Stone I live at 16
▶ 41:47 Woodruff Ave I want to know how many polls you're gonna add there since it's a small Street and you already replaced both ones because the boat poles went down last winter and I was out of let's go power for like 12 days so you're gonna replace you're gonna put more so we will have sir I'm sorry the the rules of the board around the public comment don't allow for back and forth but we've taken note of your question and we'll get to them and we'll make sure it can be later for you yeah it'll be in about two minutes okay I apologize no no no me pose they're gonna add absolutely I mean I moved out of Boston they get away from polls good evening I'm Tim Williamson representing National Grid as well and on Woodruff Ave would just be adding one poll which would act as a
▶ 42:56 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: support structure to prevent any other polls from leaning over as well so there'll be a poll in an acre and I can show the gentleman a sketch here to ease any concerns thank you sign it here as well thank you very much are there any other members of the public wishing to speak on this proposal this evening motion to end the public portion of the public hearing second motion made by alderman Forbes seconded by alderman Mortimer to end the public comment portion of the public hearing all in favor any opposed we will now return to questions from members of the board I have alderman McMaster first in queue thank you madam president good evening mr. Webb thank you for being here superintendent Shanna thank you for being here five of the seven projects
▶ 44:01 Shawn M. MacMaster: are in Ward five which is the ward that I represent so I have some questions about the work I understand mr. Shanna that it seems like there's still some outstanding discussions that will happen so I'm just trying to get a general sense of the impact that this will have on the ward I wanted to start first with the proposal for west wyoming my understanding is that will be a center line so that would involve underground work on west wyoming is that correct i would like to defer to tim who's here he's the one the designer feel free to pull up a chair sir if you want to join the table um yeah so on west wyoming what we have is we have an existing pole right on the property line with an existing pad
▶ 44:50 mounted transformer that feeds an apartment building and right now the wire that feeds that transformer just runs it's direct buried so there's no conduit in the ground so we can't replace that cable if it fails without digging up the sidewalk and the private property and if the cable failed we would have to do that under an emergency situation and it would take a really long time so now that we're planning to do this work um what were the the five feet of conduit crossing the sidewalk is just there to get from the pole to the transformer so we can replace the cable as needed without having to dig up the sidewalk in the future so that area of of the ward is very close to the Lincoln School which is in Ward yes maybe a few hundred feet from the school I think where we
▶ 45:38 Shawn M. MacMaster: work is correct and as some of the aldermen at large know with whom I've been communicating we've had a significant amount of outreach from parents at the lincoln school about traffic and congestion generally in that area and we also have the um the train tracks there so i'm wondering uh even though plans have yet to be determined and it sounds like in terms of the timing when would a project like this typically occur this would be a typical workday work week project you know middle of the week project but we could definitely um limit the hours for digging up the sidewalk to be you know starting after nine and ending at you know two or three whatever whatever works for the for the school rush to avoid having you
▶ 46:24 know construction out there right when you know a bunch of kids and parents have to be walking around i would appreciate that maybe mr shenna we could stay in touch about that no that would be one of the things that we'd condition if if in fact we had to do this while school was in session we would avoid the drop off and pick up times which we do typically in that area with national grid on even their um regular maintenance work yeah we try to do that even if it's not something we have to petition for anyway whenever possible and this would be something that we could easily schedule for over a weekend so we can easily work with the city to make that happen thank you for that um four of the locations at least from my reading of this seem like the work is relatively
▶ 47:07 similar so rock view woodruff washington and ashmont that all involves actual pole work correct yeah the the rest other than west wyoming with the conduit the rest of them are are all just individual new one single new pole for each one so in those areas there are poles that are close by are are these poles replacing those poles or they're in addition usually they're in addition so generally what it is is almost all of them there is some existing infrastructure where it was built so many years ago and it might not have all the proper guy and anchor structures so if there's a pole that has a line running you know off tangent and there's no guy support the pole can lean over especially in a storm or a situation so most of the poles are at just to to kind of beef up the system and
▶ 48:04 prevent other poles from falling over uh thank you for that could you talk a little bit about the one in ashmont there are actually two that are already very close to each other so it would seem rather incommodious to have a third one there right i understand so that's exactly the situation i'm talking about was we have an existing pole that pole line that runs along pleasant street and the tap that runs up ashmont street right now there's no guy structure so the pole on pleasant street is you know bound to lean over after we do all this work so the new pole on ashmont street provides a shorter span and a guy structure that can shore up all the overhead lines and prevent the pole on pleasant street from leaning over and you know like um like we mentioned earlier
▶ 48:53 we try to place the poles on property lines and you know in most of these cases where the new poles are going if they're not on property lines they're on the the sides of the houses not not right out in front i always try to avoid putting on a pole right in front of someone's door driveway or sidewalk you know anything like that so i think i'm clear on the similarities with respect to woodruff ashmont washington and rockview are there any significant differences perhaps other than the one that you just mentioned on for the poll relative to ashmond difference would be on um washington street is um a new a new poll where we're going to be slightly rerouting the lines um i don't know how familiar you are with that section but right now um
▶ 49:41 Shawn M. MacMaster: the the conductors cross the street right at this new pole location and they're they're so heavy and there's so many lines both electric and communications lines that the the conductors are are hanging off the poles and they're they really are about to pull the poles over so the new pole location allows us to reroute the lines in a in in a way that the the construction won't be hanging out into the street and the poles won't won't lean over so it's really just to shore up the existing configuration okay my final question is for mr shenna mr shenna as you know we've had conversations about the sidewalk and the the road work that's been scheduled for some time on ashmont um are you do you feel as if you can work within this project and that this isn't going
▶ 50:30 Manisha Bewtra: to impact the what the plans for sidewalk work on that street no no we we work very collaboratively with national grid and i mean again our conditions haven't come out yet that's going to be a condition that that poll go in earlier part of the summer so that we then we can proceed with our sidewalk work um so i i feel comfortable moving forward with that project and with that pole installation thank you all for being here and for answering my questions thank you madam president alderman butra thank you um if this question is a little off uh the agenda forgive me and just just let me know but you mentioned that I think you said decommissioning of the site on Upham Street can you speak to that a little bit more and and what that
▶ 51:17 Manisha Bewtra: process will look like and also I know that building is really interesting and it's just kind of like in a prime location in our in our downtown what is that process involved is there you know what kind of potential does it have for reuse does National Grid typically hang on to those buildings I know it's early in that process but if either um director shen or if you could speak to that so our um so the process of decommissioning the the indoor substation is very simple once all of those feeders have been cut over and converted to the new ones basically we just de-energize all the lines entering and leaving the substation by opening disconnect switches and then one is once it is de-energized we are then going to remove as much as the equipment as we
▶ 52:07 can that's to include anything that's oil filled to prevent any type of potential spills in the future as well as recover type of types of precious metals that we can for the future of the building it's going to remain unoccupied we are going to do work to the building to shore it up and make it more structurally sound it is obviously old uh we're going to do play plan to do work to the roof replace the roof as there are uh significant uh structural issues with uh holes and what have you so we plan to redo that as well as repairing the uh the parapet that completely surrounds the roof um and then it basically like i said it will remain vacant and unoccupied the The long-term plan is, it provides National Grid an opportunity that if the load were
▶ 53:07 to continue to grow, which is far beyond what our load forecasts right now predict, but if they were to continue to grow, it gives us an opportunity to add an indoor metal-clad substation to then introduce new feeders into the area. obviously real estate is prime in this area so finding an area to be able to build a substation is extremely difficult and then if we weren't in the area then bringing power via underground overhead lines into the area if that need arose would be again be difficult so having this up available to us just gives us available uh flexibility down the road in the future so we don't plan to get rid of the building we plan to maintain it we plan to make sure that it's not a
▶ 53:58 know eyesore anything to the community um but i hope that answers um just to further uh elaborate we as part of our initial discussions we've also brought the director of planning community development into the project discussions so that national grid is very aware of the um the process that they have to go through in terms of repair and maintenance i mean they made it uh they told this one up front that they intend to maintain it they intend to maintain ownership and then provide maintenance and repair the building so we've already looped in um planning and planning office this way they can follow the correct process there as well great um i guess one another thing i'd be curious about and maybe your further exploration is is that lawn right in front
▶ 54:48 Manisha Bewtra: of the building as well um it looks like it just has potential for some community use but i don't KNOW IF THERE'S YOU KNOW CONTAMINATION CONCERNS AND THINGS LIKE THAT AS WE FURTHER EXPLORE YOU KNOW IF NATIONAL GRID WOULD BE OPEN TO THAT USE WHILE IT'S THE BUILDING IS STILL VACANT FOR COMMUNITY GATHERINGS AND THINGS LIKE THAT THOSE ARE THAT'S I DON'T HAVE ANY QUESTIONS ABOUT THE POLLS Rita NOW THANK YOU THANK YOU ALDERMAN BOYCE THAT MESSAGE FOR JOHN BASICALLY in your presentation you mentioned you're getting all the players together to discuss this upcoming project so with all these players being notified we're not going to have any double poles out there are we well i wish i could say no but the reason we have to have this well can we have
▶ 55:40 a limit a time limit with this and that's the purpose of this meeting with all the entities involved to at least define what the period of double pole is going to be obviously there's a group that installs the new pole then we have to transfer power first and then we transfer cable and Verizon and if there's fire alarm what we have what we want to try to do is identify all the players involved and determine collectively okay what are we going to represent as the time period when you're gonna see that double pole in place and the way National Grid is now presenting the project they're going by sub area so the intent is finish a sub area before you go start a new one and hopefully by the next meeting we'll
▶ 56:29 have that outlined a little further and we can offer a little more detail in that regard again it's the we're here before you with the grant of locations the double pole is a maintenance item they don't have to come before you for that but we've kind of looped it all together because it's part of a larger project that they're going to embark upon and we just felt it right both Public Works and National Grid to present this to the community and this was a good venue to get everything out okay now did I hear this correctly that the entire project is going to be about 300 poles being replaced just about so next year I won't see 600 out there thank you very much gentlemen thank you alderman looker Garipay Bedian thank you thank you madam president and three for
▶ 57:21 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: being here so how long will this entire project take right now we my our schedule if everything runs smoothly take almost about two years and this board when we were approving a petition from National Grid related to servicing and building that's going online downtown we discussed the need to sort of revisit the infrastructure for the downtown corridor that the needs there are quite different from probably what was anticipated and what's the service availability is currently I'm probably not using the terminology totally correctly but I understand that National Grid was going to take that project on and be looking at ways to better serve downtown without lots of additional wires going up overhead and I'm just wondering if you are included in those
▶ 58:17 conversations because it strikes me that there's some potential overlap here that it's important for folks to be talking to each other so mr. Webb runs the project gentleman who just walked in Dan Cameron is a representative he had perfect timing he's been working with us on the demand study okay do you like to join us sir we've been working with that we've taken initial steps on the demand study but I don't I don't think they're related right Pam no did you come forward just a little so the mic picks you up please I did a national grid yeah the down sound study that is all fed off the underground system which the supply is being updated but the but it's not tied to the project that's being fed off the off
▶ 59:19 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: the substation itself so that really you know we don't really plan any changes in the street we are working with the Planning Department to address you know the changes that are coming with the real estate they have bigger buildings bigger loads and so forth trying to feed them maybe from the back of the buildings with transformers and switch gears and so forth so right now is those the location up on the substation that's going to be decommissioned is that what's servicing downtown as well or no yes and no okay without going into more more in-depth study you know part of those feeders come out of that station but now we're refeeding the downtown from another substation okay so I guess it sounds like you know people are talking to each other to the degree
▶ 1:00:09 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: there's any overlap and there may not be on these two things but it's nice to hear that there's attention being paid to both of the projects that's great and then just for my own clarification in terms of where these these seven locations which I guess are the first ones before us are actually sort of in the southern part of the city and you'd mentioned going north to south I'm wondering is that right or is it actually south to north just for Melrose to sort of anticipate how this is going to flow over the next two years yeah the work will start north to south okay so some of the work on these petitions when won't be the first things to go I see so you know we need to get them all sorted out and approved so we can get the project going but these won't the most
▶ 1:00:54 of these petitions won't be the first thing we do that's helpful and I guess once after you have your meeting next week you'll probably have a better sense of sort of the big project plan and the order of things yeah we will and and these these seven locations are new poles where there isn't one within two or three feet of it so a lot of that work north to south a lot of the 300 locations they made reference to is where there is an existing pole and that pole may not have enough girth that pole may not have enough height and the vast majority of them are like that but these seven locations are these seven locations do not have an existing pole and they're adding a pole for mainly for structural purposes to make sure the tension from one side
▶ 1:01:40 Michael P. Zwirko: balances tension on another and and not for redirecting why is there okay thank you that's all I had Thank You Alderman's workup Thank You madam president just had really one comment slash request with respect to the Woodruff Street the gentleman that was here earlier is a neighbor of mine and last winter tree that was in the front of his house the reason he didn't have power for 12 days is the tree came down during a really harsh winter storm and thankfully there was minimal damage to his family's home but it was certainly quite impactful for them so the reason I bring this up is the tree that came down was a quite quite a large tree and their their front yard is very bare now so when you're reviewing and I did not see the information you gave to him but the
▶ 1:02:34 Michael P. Zwirko: when you're looking at Woodruff I just asked that you work with that homeowner instead of there is no tree currently there and I don't know if they necessarily would want to pull in place of the tree so I've just asked that care be considered for the stone family yep I talked to the gentleman outside and we reviewed the location and I explained to him how this is just support structure for the existing poles that are there so we'll be replacing a few some wires on the street but the routing of the all the wires and the transformers everything will remain the same as it is we'll just be adding one support structure to help keep the last pole in the street from leaning over thank you for that thank you thank you very much and I'm not sure maybe mr.
▶ 1:03:23 Monica C. Medeiros: Shana may be able to answer this I'm not sure so you said there would be about 300 polls over the course of two years do you have any idea of how many of these would require us to hold public hearings none so these are the only ones so right now these are the only seven or any field conditions that they find once they get into the subset subset and if and if there is we just come back we'll handle the message but it's not expected that we're going to have you know public hearings every other week I mean they've been great they came to us a couple of months ago they said this is what we're looking to do we offered some suggestions they took all of them and and that's why we've packaged these
▶ 1:04:09 Monica C. Medeiros: together so we don't we're not constantly coming in and out you know the next two years regarding this project I think that's helpful for a variety variety of reasons including cost because obviously it cost for us to publish the public hearing notice and so on so we definitely appreciate that as well as time so in terms of the other projects we you know we're likely going to see a lot of work being done throughout the city without sort of a public hearing notice will that work be coordinated through DPW and mr. Shana yeah yeah whenever we're digging or replacing poles or we have to convey a notice of excavation and we notify the water and sewer departments of any work that's happening so we keep good coordination and we're able to try to
▶ 1:05:09 hopefully coordinate that with any kind of existing work that we may be doing in terms of our own water and sewer infrastructure or other utility work yeah I think they're a standalone project I'm not going to dictate this schedule they need to go but if we're working in those areas and we coordinate all the time they're very good to work with they have a great team Dan the project team and even the maintenance staff they're very good and very supportive of what we need to do in exchange we try to support what they need thank you very much thank you thank you are there further questions from members of the board just a quick one I'll take up too much of more of your time thank you for being here the project where
▶ 1:05:54 Scott M. Forbes: it's on line Street on the five-way intersection where Malvern lined and Linwood Ave all meet that one pole it looks like we're removing one and we're placing a new one directly across the street from it just reason being what is it out of terms of convenience or efficiency no this is we have one existing pole that will remain the new one across the street is another it's a support structure okay because as the road goes around a curve there's there's no support line holding up the pole from leaning in understood this will this will prevent the poles from leaning towards the houses in the event of a storm or a major ice event very good I also see during these projects I also see all the lists of the butters that are already here which is great I'm
▶ 1:06:39 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: assuming they will be notified when the project starts to take shape right am I correct in saying that I believe they've already been they've already been notified even better all right thank you very much thank you thank you any further questions seeing none this order will be sent to the committee on appropriations thank you very much thank you thank you before we move to the balance of our agenda this evening for the full board meeting if I could just take one moment of personal privilege as you all know 50 people lost their lives and more than 40 were injured last Friday and at mass shooting in Christchurch New Zealand those who are attacked were in a mosque at the time praying peacefully when their lives were either taken or forever altered more than 90