Wastewater Treatment Board

CITY OF CORTLAND WASTEWATER TREATMENT FACILITY Meeting Minutes Members: Da te : 2/ 24 /14 Ti me : 5 :30 p m Chairman John Troy – Present C on fe r en ce R o om , C or t la nd Wa st e wa t e r Vice Chair William Starr – Present Commissioner Sally Horak – Present Commissioner Todd Morris – Present Commissioner Paul Lorenzo – Absent Village of McGraw Mayor Allan Stauber – Present Village of Homer Trustee Michael Berry – Absent Bruce Adams, Chief Operator – Absent Edward Poole, Plant Representative Tom McCall, CPWOA President – Absent Meeting called to order at 5:28 p.m. Minutes from January 27, 2014, meeting for approval. Motion to approve the minutes from January 27, 2014, meeting by Sally Horak. Seconded by Bill Starr. UNANIMOUS Plant Manager’s Report: Plant Managers Report for February 24, 2014 (as written by Chief Adams) Edward Poole, Grade 4A Operator, presented the Plant Manager's Report to the board, on behalf of Bruce Adams, Chief Operator, who was unable to attend the meeting. Administration– Cortland Common Council has approved the steps necessary to pursue the $30,000 EFC grant towards an engineering study on the Clinton Avenue sewer lines. The results of the study can then be used to make a case for funding for sewer rehabilitation. Street repairs would be a part of any major sewer work, which meshes well with Cortland’s Gateway initiative. We finally received the DEC report on our March 2013 annual inspection. The report found the plant well- operated and well-maintained. Last Thursday our inspector conducted the annual inspection for this year. The report may well be as long in coming as last year’s, but she said everything looked good and nothing stood out as needing to be addressed. Over the last 6 months or so, in order to focus on the administrative tasks associated with the upgrade and other projects, I have transitioned day-to-day process control decisions to Ed Poole. Mr. Poole has been doing an excellent job with it. I will also be training Mr. Poole in DMR preparation and other aspects of servicing the City’s permit as schedules allow. We have started doing the safety training for this year and expect to be able to complete the annual requirements in March. We are working with Cedarwood on final details and logistics planning for Phase 2 of the upgrade. I have issued an Industrial User discharge permit for Byrne Dairy’s C’ville Yoghurt facility. We are finalizing the agreement for accepting Byrne’s waste whey at no cost in consideration of the monetary value of the electricity generated by digesting that waste. The agreement is being carefully crafted to assure that rate-payers will not be stuck with the expense of equipment installed specifically to service C’ville Yoghurt. Operations- Variable weather and associated temperature swings have been a bit of a challenge in maintaining optimal process conditions. Nevertheless, we are getting very good results with removal percentages in the mid-90s. We are already seeing improvements in downstream processes from the new bar screen. We have been able to reduce the frequency of RAS pump cleaning from weekly to every three weeks and anticipate going to monthly or even longer. There is much less material floating on the primary clarifiers. I plan to re-install the Lightnin’ mixers in the primary scum pits since we won’t need to worry about ragging. WWAB Minutes 24 February 2014 Page 2 of 3  Maintenance- The bar screen installation has been completed. Under John O’Connell’s expert leadership, facility staff did an amazing job. It is an impressive-looking installation, which is not always the case for a retrofit. The GBT project is substantially complete. The tank cover is installed. Electrical work should be complete in 1 to 2 weeks. Tank mixing air piping will be installed concurrently with this work. We still anticipate being operational by mid to late March. We have been struggling with software faults on our alarm computer since September of last year. I finally was able to track it down to some issue with the software accessing the voice modem. I reconfigured the software temporarily and have ordered a different type of modem at the recommendation of the software maker. We are very, very, very much looking forward to installing a new SCADA system with all new ancillary software. Bruce Adams Chief Operator Motion to approve the Plant Manager’s Report by Sally Horak. Seconded by Bill Starr. UNANIMOUS Finance: Financial statements and abstracts dated 1/31/14 and 2/15/14, were submitted for approval. Motion to approve financial statements and abstracts by Bill Starr. Seconded by Todd Morris. UNANIMOUS Sewer Grievance: No new sewer grievances were submitted. Outcome grievance letters from January 2014 were submitted. New Business: No new business. Old Business: No old business. Motion to Adjourn at 5:40 p.m by Bill Starr. Seconded by Todd Morris. UNANIMOUS Respectfully submitted by: City of Cortland WWTF WWAB Minutes 24 February 2014 Page 3 of 3