Water & Wastewater Commission

FITCHBURG WATER & WASTEWATER COMMISSION MINUTES September 13th, 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 September 13, 2017 at the J.A. Provencial Water Treatment Facility Building 1200 Rindge Rd, Fitchburg MA, 01420. The meeting commenced at 4:35 pm Members present: Lenny Laakso, Commissioner DPW George Siener Mike Mclaughlin Others present: John Deline Jr., Deputy Commissioner of Water Jeff Murawski, Deputy Commissioner of Wastewater Janet Morrison, Land Conservation Consultant Jennifer Lambert Principal Clerk Water Office Members absent: Rick Healey Item #1 Approval of last meetings minutes: Motion to approve minutes from July 12, 2017 meeting was granted by unanimous vote. Item #2 Public Forum: None Update: Mr. Murawski informed the Commission that the Aldrich’s of 111 Highview St. continue to make the $300.00 a month payment towards their past due sewer charges satisfactorily. Item #3 Water Division:  Janet Morrison our Land Conservation Consultant updated the Commission on the numerous projects regarding our Northern & Southern Watersheds. Regarding the Northern watershed, our deadline for the Water Supply Protection Grant is fast approaching and needs to be closed out by June 30, 2018. The city will purchase one of the tracts of land, (approx. 29 acres) from the Krapfs, and two other tracts will have conservation restrictions placed. The last tract which will  be a donation will not make the June 30th deadline. The Quabbin to Wachusett Project which is located in our Southern Watershed land areas, we have 1.5 million dollars (forest legacy funding) to spend in just over 11 months. Our Southern Watershed land is located in the Westminster/Princeton/Hubbardston areas. We are in the process of speaking to land owners about conservation restrictions, and getting evaluations also.  John informed the Commission that the 2017 Water Main Project is about half way done. Because we had such great pricing with the Contractor M.E. Smith, we have added a few more streets and may add a couple smaller streets to the list. No major issues have occurred during construction.  John also gave an update on the Water Meter/Electronic Register Replacement Project. We still need to select a company, we currently use Badger. Once we do this we will go to a fixed radio network system which will give us real time readings immediately. No need for the meter readers to go and get readings, which right now takes approx. 3-4 days of driving around city to get readings. We will be able to get reading right from the office. Also, we will know immediately if meter is tampered with. We’ve come across some water theft, where some customers are removing their meter heads and then reattaching when they know we are coming to read the meters. Last time around we only replaced the electronic registers, this time we will be replacing the whole meter. Weston & Sampson Engineers will be overseeing this project for us.  A status update was given by John regarding The MA DEP Sanitary Survey and the issues that were found. Spoke with the finance committee about using monies that may be left from the Water Main Project for some of the items that need to be fixed. We have 15 buildings plus our two plants that we have to take care of. The roofs of our buildings are in desperate need of being replaced which are parts of the items that need to be fixed per the Sanitary Survey. Our holding tanks, backflow surveys and also intrusion alarms are amongst other items that we need to take care of. We are expecting an ACO at some point for some of the larger projects that need to be taken care of, but we are working hard to knock off some of these items off the list.  Hydrant flushing of the high system is almost done. Summer help did an amazing job painting the hydrants and also greasing the ports. We have had very few issues considering we hadn’t flushed in quite some time. A few calls about discolored water came in but that’s all.  Lastly, John spoke about state grants for energy efficiency improvements that we are pursuing. We had energy audits done, and we are looking at replacing the lighting here, and also at the Regional Plant. We can get up to $200,000 for energy improvements. Spoke to MA DEP and they are very willing to help us. Item #4 Wastewater Division:  Jeff gave the Commission updates on the current construction projects. The first being the SSU project, which is s 2yr project. It commenced in March of this year and is not slated to be finished until the spring of 2019. The Beech St/Hazel St project has been completed. We have a few loose ends to tie up with the contractor. The CMH’s Separation project has gone well. We were not able to do approx. 6 manholes because of some confusion as to who owns the storm drains and catch basins on Lunenburg St which is Rte. 2A. We were not able to get the permits for street closings through Mass DOT. We believe that these drains were the cause of sewer backups in this area. We may come back and do this next year.  The drafting of the Fitchburg/Westminster IMA is still in progress pending the CWMP & Hydraulic Model Jeff informed the Commission. We had a follow up meeting with MassDEP &  EPA on the Hydraulic Model. Wright Pierce performed additional model runs to evaluate CSO regulator activations. Wright Pierce will submit a supplemental report to MassDEP & EPA. A kickoff meeting with Tighe & Bond was held on Aug 24th and another meeting will be held within the next month with Westminster & Lunenburg regarding the Fitchburg CWMP.  Status updates were given regarding the City Code Chapter 147 & Rules and Regulations, and Infiltration & Inflow. Service proposal requests were given to our On-Call Engineering Firm and are still pending. The “Right of Entry” form agreement where liability is waived for City (wastewater) when we agree to investigate and/or attempt to free an obstruction within private sewer service piping infrastructure. Input was received from City Solicitor and drafting of adapted “Right of Entry” form for this purpose is in progress.  Lastly Jeff informed the Commission that a contract with Weston & Sampson our “On-Call Wastewater Collection Engineering Services was executed and a kick off meeting was held on June 29th. Item #5 Other Business: Meeting adjourned at 6:16 P.M.