Water & Wastewater Commission

Water/Wastewater Commission Meeting Minutes January 17th, 2024 Legislative Building, City Hall Campus 700 Main St, Fitchburg MA 01420 ______________________________________________________________________________ A meeting for the City of Fitchburg Water/Wastewater Commission was held on Wednesday January 17th, 2024 at the Legislative Building, City Hall Campus, 700 Main St. Fitchburg, MA 01420 The meeting commenced at 5:01 PM Members present: Rick Healey, Chairman Nicholas Erickson, Commissioner of Public Works Michael McLaughlin, Commission Member George Seiner, Commission Member Colby O’Brien, Commission Member Others present: Mark McNamara, Deputy Commissioner Wastewater Division John M. Deline Jr, Deputy Commissioner Water Division Absent: Stephen Bodurtha, Commission Member Item #1 Approval of meeting minutes: Motion to approve minutes from September 20, 2023 along with the minutes from October 18, 2023 meeting were granted by unanimous vote. Item #2 Public Forum: None Item #3 Water Division  SCADA Upgrade Project – We are at a standstill right now with some of our equipment having to be returned for manufacturing glitches. We had ordered new processers, and cards for the panels and some of the parts that were manufactured on certain dates had to be returned to the  manufacturer to be redone. We had noticed that things were not running correctly, and were having issues. There was a total of 17 that had to be returned. This will delay the project once again. The good thing is that we completed all of the pump stations and can be monitored remotely by FWD personnel.  Regional Water Treatment Plant – NPDES Permit –Our Regional Treatment Plants discharge goes into the environment from a stream down to Wyman’s pond. Unlike our Falulah Plant where the discharge goes right to the wastewater plant. Because of this, we need to meet new guidelines on our Aluminum discharge. We have two years to meet the new stricter guidelines. We are looking to file an extension for approx. 6 months to a year. There will be a lot of work to meet these guidelines. Now that we know the discharge limits, we may need to come with a whole new design on how we get rid of our aluminum discharge.  Boulder Dr/Main St Water Main upgrade – Boulder Dr. Water Main project is all designed and is out to bid. Pre-bid conference next week, and then two weeks later we have the bid opening. This will be phase one of the project. Boulder Dr. will have a whole new water main, as well as the side streets which will facilitate in doing the Main St. project. The Main St. side is being designed now, and will be done separately. There would be too much disruption traffic wise.  Meetinghouse Gatehouse & Mare Meadow Pump Station rehabilitation project – 4.4 Million for this project, Meetinghouse Gatehouse is the last reservoir before the Treatment Plant. This is also one of the projects that is on our consent order from MA DEP. The gatehouse is approx... 130- 140 yrs. old. It still uses traveling screens, which have been replaced multiple times and just cannot be replaced any longer. Everything at the bottom of the reservoir will have to be brought up and redone. We have a lot of power outages, heat problems and many others. The new gatehouse will have a portable generator to cover these issues. Project is set to go out to bid late spring. In addition to this, we also have our Mare Meadow pump station. This is our largest reservoir, and the facility is in dire need of repairs. It was originally constructed in the 1950’s. We will be doing the entire pump station, with new pumps, proper insulation along with a new roof.  Motion raised to recommend to the City Council to approve borrowing 4.4MIL for the Meetinghouse Gatehouse & Mare Meadow Pump Station Project. Motion was granted by unanimous consent. Item #4 Wastewater Division:  SSO event at Birch Brook – October 30th, a call came in from a resident at 148 Heywood St. about an odor issue. The odor was determined to be coming from the brook in the back of the house. We went upstream and found that a raised manhole with a hole in its chimney was the cause. This caused approx... 1000 gallons a minute to seep onto the brook. MA DEP, EPA, along with Fitchburg and Leominster’s BOH’s were notified. Blue Diamond was called to assist us in trying to locate the blockage. National Water Main was called to help us locate and figure out what caused this. A rock was found around 13ft down sticking out of the pipe. Repairs were completed by November 7th. Total cost for this was around $240,000  NPDES Permit – Our NPDES permit came in. We have been operating on our 2010 permit which is good for 5 years and expired in 2015. We had reapplied for this back in 2015 when it expired, and we received our draft permit in December. We have until January 28th for public comment. Changes we have noted is that Westminster has been added as a co-committee for wastewater sewer system. Big item noted was the lowering of our phosphorous limits. We have a consent decree limit of .5 milligrams per liter, and they want to lower that limit down to .16. This is a  major concern, which would require more construction at the plant. We will try to extend this at least until all the sewer separation projects are through.  CSO 10 – Polito Construction has ceased work through the winter and will pick back up in the spring as soon as the weather allows. Final completion of this project is December 2024.  X-Cel Education – Nine minute video on how one company is training future water/wastewater operators. They are located in Boston and come out to our treatment plant and train and teach potential candidates.  Staffing update- Two positions, GIS engineer, and Sr. Wastewater Treatment Operator we have interviewed candidates for. Waiting on HR to do what they do, so we can fill theses open positions. Item #5 Other Business:  We currently have an open position on the Water/Wastewater Commission if anyone is interested. Stephen Bodurtha has recently resigned.  The Water/Wastewater Commission will next meet at 5:00 pm on Wednesday February 21, 2024 at the Legislative Building, City Hall Campus 700 Main St. Fitchburg, MA. Meeting adjourned at 6:00 pm