Water & Wastewater Commission

FITCHBURG WATER & WASTEWATER COMMISSION MINUTES May 10th, 2017 J.A. Provencial Building 1200 Rindge Rd. Fitchburg, MA 01420 A meeting for the City of Fitchburg Water/Wastewater Commission was held on Wednesday May 10, 2017 at the J.A. Provencial Water Treatment Facility Building 1200 Rindge Rd, Fitchburg MA, 01420. The meeting commenced at 4:37 pm Members present: Lenny Laakso, Commissioner DPW Rick Healey George Siener Mike Mclaughlin Others present: John Deline Jr., Deputy Commissioner of Water Jeff Murawski, Deputy Commissioner of Wastewater Jennifer Lambert Principal Clerk Water Office Janet Morrison, Land Conservation Consultant Members absent: Joshua Champagne Item #1 Approval of last meetings minutes: Motion to approve minutes from last month’s April 12th, 2017 meeting was granted by unanimous vote. Item #2 Public Forum: None Item #3 Water Division:  Janet Morrison first presented the Commission with the approx. 31.4 acre Conservation Restriction on the Krashes property in the Town of Princeton that we are getting ready to close on. Motion to approve the Conservation Restriction was granted and accepted by unanimous vote.  Motion was raised to accept the $162,500 MA Drinking Water Supply Protection Grant that the City was awarded. That also was granted and accepted by unanimous vote.  The 2017 Water Main Improvement Project bid went out this week. Approx. 10 contractors have already taken out plans and seem interested in the project. We are hoping to get at least seven to eight bids on it. Bid date is May 25th. We hope to start the construction phase of the project sometime in July.  John gave an update on the list of items we are still working on and working with MA DEP regarding the Sanitary Survey. We have been going back and forth with them to try and avoid a Consent Order. We are trying to get list down as much as possible, but a few of the items are larger and will take a little longer to fix. MA DEP will I assume, want some type of list with specific dates as to when they will be finished. Still waiting to hear back from MA DEP.  Engineers Weston and Sampson have been conducting a Water Audit through a MA DEP grant. This Audit will go through everything including the use of fire hydrants by the fire dept., no charge accounts, general billing, and the meters themselves to help keep track of our unaccounted for water. We are hoping to have a report from them sometime in June.  Hydrant flushing is still ongoing, we are near complete on the low system with just a few hydrants left in that section. It’s a slow process as we are only flushing two to three hydrants per day. We would like to flush 7 or eight a day but it pushes the plant to the limit. We hope to start flushing the high system sometime around the first or second week of June. Item #4 Wastewater Division:  Updates on the current Construction Projects were given to the Commission, most notably the Beech/Hazel St Project. We are anticipating the final closure of the Laurel St. CSO regulator by the end of May. This was one of the main drivers behind this project, being that we were not able to close it previously. A look ahead schedule was passed out on both the SSU Project and the Beech/Hazel St. Project. No schedule on the CMH’s Separation Project, but it looks like they will be working in the area of Westminster St. at Princeton Rd starting sometime next week or the week after.  The Westminster/Fitchburg IMA is still in progress, pending the CWMP & Hydraulic Model. After reviewing the proposals received, Jeff recommended “subject to budget appropriation” that the Commission approves and awards the assignment to Tighe & Bond for a service fee of $181,000. Mr. Healey suggested waiting until budget approval since the Commission has already approved the Wastewater Division’s FY18 budget with this appropriation included and recommended it to City Council. The only problem will be if City Council does not approve the budget, then we will deal with it then.  Work with the City Solicitor on the City Code Chapter 147 & “Rules and Regulations”, along with “Infiltration & Inflow” provisions are still in progress and are ongoing at this point.  The “On-Call Wastewater Collection Engineering Services” Contract expired on May 4, 2017. Purchasing has issued and RFQ for a new 5 yr. on-call contract. Six firms submitted responses. Of the six, four firms were short listed and were interviewed on Monday May 1, 2017. References are still being checked on the four firms that were interviewed. Item #5 Other Business:  Jeff gave a final update on the issue of the Sewer Services Repayment Agreement between the City and the residents that reside at 111 Highview St. Mr. & Mrs. Aldrich. They have signed and agreed to pay 8 monthly installments, the last which will be in Dec of 2017 to avoid interest and penalties. Also, Jeff passed out a draft for review on a new policy regarding the repayment of past due sewer  service charges. John agreed to look over the draft and see if it is something in which the water division will follow also.  Lenny Laakso, DPW Commissioner informed the Commission of the e-mail that was received by the Mayor’s Office regarding the resignation of Joshua Champagne from the Water/Wastewater Commission. Unfortunately, Mr. Champagne is stepping down as a commission member due to personal reasons.  Next Water/Wastewater Commission Meeting scheduled for Wednesday June 14th, 2017 at 4:30pm. Meeting adjourned at 5:36 P.M.