City of Estacada

Infastructure Committee

Meeting Minutes

December 19, 2001 – 4:30PM to 6:00PM

q Call to Order – Bill Strawn

q Roll Call & Announcements

Present: Randy Ealy, Bill Strawn, Gary Warkentin, Jim Carey, Diedre Landon

Absent: Jerry Polzin, Richard Hartwig

q Rate Condition and Inventory Street System

q New Member Introduction~

q Randy: I appreciate your willingness to serve on this committee. We are trying to re-energize the group. I have been on the committee for about one year. While Bill, Jerry and Richard have been long standing members. We are trying to find ways to work with the City budget, or “lack thereof”. Our property taxes go directly to the Clackamas County Sheriff’s office, which makes it a wash. We need to do innovative things to offer services, such as: parks, quality of life, etc.

This committee should specifically take a look at two things we do as enterprise services to customers. We need to publicize the fact that the committee is energized about things such as the leak detection. We should work with the paper to energize the residents.

Bill: We have a new meter at the water treatment plant, which should increase the accuracy of the water loss report.

Randy: We can chart this along with the leak detection information in the Clackamas County News. We can show the improvements and how this is lessening the percentage of water lost every two months.

Bill: Currently we are producing water that is leaking, not selling. As a public sector, we do not have a profit margin. Innefficiencies in the system make us lost the water that we paid to produce.

Randy: We need something tangible to show the customers, this is in no way an attack on the past. We want to focus on the present, so after we perform the leak detection work, we should start providing quarterly updates to our water customers.

Gary: What is the cost of being efficient?

Bill: The water from the river comes at no cost to the City. However, we start to incur high costs with the treatment (chemicals, power, operators, equipment, etc.) Then the distribution also costs money. There is basically a fixed cost to provide our customers with water, the cost of treatment and delivery.

As a public water system we have a responsibility to our customers. We try to break even with no profit margin. Right now we are losing money, we sell it for less than the cost to treat it.

Randy: Waste water treatment is also an issue, infiltration. It costs money to treat the storm water that runs into the waste water system.

Gary: At this point, with the new reservoir, we have most of the stationary equipment in place. So now we just need to work on the distribution and collection system, work on improving it.

Bill: The leak detection service will help us with this. Many leaks never surface, up to 70% are undetected. The problem is that we only see 30% so that is what we have fixed.

For instance: Once a hydrant sprung a leak, underground and sprayed heavily onto the side of a concrete storm drain catch basin. It made a hold in the catch basin and began running directly into the wastewater collection system. We only found this leak because a resident was walking by and heard the water running and called the office to mention it.

Jim: How much does the leak detection cost?

Randy: About $3,000.

Jim: That price seems fairly steep.

Bill: Yes, it might. But it covers the entire 12 miles of distribution pipeline that runs through the City. 47% water loss is a major problem. Sandy has a 40% water loss right now, so there are other municipalities with the same concerns. So, while our loss is not acceptable, it also is not unusual. AWWA states that you should have no more than 10% to 15% water loss. You will never be able to account for all of the water. The City should be happy if they reach the AWWA recommendation.

We are currently fighting problems with our system… our reservoirs got low and in 3 days of pumping we still haven’t been able to fill the reservoirs. While we should never say that the residents bills or rates will go down, we can at least prevent and increase.

Jim: So what is the procedure that we are looking at? What steps need to be taken?

Bill: The first step is the leak detection. Then we can schedule the work to fix the patchable leaks. The challenge is to find funds for the long, old and deteriorated lines. Probably between ¼ to 1/3 of our current distribution system will need to be replaced.

We have four main types of lines running through our system:

q OD Steel, this is the oldest, but it is the best pipe on the market. It is steel that has been wrapped with tar and paper. Unless you have a really old system this is the best pipe available.

q Asbestos Concrete is older. Installed between the 60’s and early 80’s. There have been some leaks but usually they will surface.

q PVC Lines are all relatively new lines. Our lines are about 10-20 years old. They have a 50+ year expectancy.

q Wood lines, we have almost none left in our system. We found some behind John Bess’ property.

q As far as the new system goes, the new reservoir was detecting a few minor leaks; however, the leak test will be done soon. The contractor will be fixing these.

Materials and engineering costs are all a big part of the repair cost and the life expectancy of the lines. Good specifications and good inspections are necessary. The contractor will be gone by the time the problems surface, but we will still be held accountable to our customers.

Jim: Do we oversee and inspect these projects?

Bill: The Public Works Specialist inspects these jobs. He is responsible for code enforcement and inspection. He is onsite during the construction of various projects. You can’t count on the engineer that was hired by the developer or the contractor, and the city engineer has a fee for plan review and limited inspection but not inspections of that detail. So we must reply on our public works specialist. If something doesn’t look right he will contact the City engineers to come out and take a look at it.

He is excited that Randy recognized the problem. Public Works periodically sends a report to City Hall outlining the water distribution and treatment system, Randy recognized it. Now we struggle with the real problem: How do we fund it?

Jim: How does the leak detection work?

Bill: The Leak detection will be done the 2^nd week in January. It will take about 4 days. By the end of January we should have the report.

Most of our lines run about 3’ deep. They will use a truck with sensors and listening equipment. The will use points like valves, hydrants, etc. and they can tell by the sound where the leak is. The sound will also tell us approximately how large it is. We don’t have to be right on the pipe with their sensitive equipment.

Randy: In Wheeler we used earth phone type devices that allow you to listen to the leaks. Must be right on the pipeline to use these. Even a leak the size of a pen point sounds like a river running underground.

Jim: How accurate is the City Mapping System? The map was about 20’ off on a project that was covered in the paper about 10 years ago.

Bill: The state regulates that any non-metal pipe must have tracer wire installed, there wasn’t any in the pipe you mentioned. The old Public Works Superintendent claimed that since there was no locator purchased to find the line, no wire was necessary to locate the line.

The City mapping system is atrocious. It is all on paper. We want the information put into a CAD program so that we can create electronic maps that can easily be updated. We require new subdivisions to submit a disk with AS-BUILT drawings. At this point a majority of the maps are located in the minds of our long term employees, such as Ron Smith, Tom Seal and myself.

We will send our crew with the leak detection crew to expedite the process.

Randy: The first step is to prioritize the leaks. We want to give the list of leaks to this committee and then prepare a report for the council recommending certain projects.

Bill: We have depleted the water reserve account using it on the Water Treatment Plant Update. We have been diligent in saving money in the past.

We might be able to patch certain leaks. We can prioritize based on the size of the leak. For instance a 10-20 gallon per minute leak should be fixed, due to the size of the leak.

Jim: Where will the money come from?

Randy: We have many clamps in the shop already.

Bill: Labor costs and material costs are what I am concerned with. It could cost a few thousand dollars if the leak is in a paved street.

We can budget for it. We can take the committee’s recommendation to the City council and ask for a transfer from the general fund. It really depends on the location and the size of the problem. A bad leak in dirt should be fixed before a small leak n the street. We need to prioritize first.

We can possibly get grants, rate increase, etc. CDBG would be a good grant, they require a 20% match. I would be happy if we could cut the leaks in half or get it to 35% loss rather than 47%.

The state will soon pass regulations requiring municipalities to cut back on water loss. Mandate programs will require that Cities fix the problems. Currently the state mandates water but not waste water.

Randy: What do you think when you turn on your tap? I have milky white water.

Bill: We do get taste and odor complaints, mainly in the summer. When the algae dies off we can filter out the carcasses, but not the gases. Antrhricite coal helps filter the taste and odor problems. We follow up with the customers, giving them an explanation of the problem, taking samples, running tests and following up with the resident after receiving the test results.

Randy: Would the leak repairs help the turbidity in the water?

Bill: I hope not. You never want water coming into your distribution system, jut running out. When making repairs on the system, we try to keep pressure behind it at all times. Then we flush the hydrant from 2 different directions to clear the line after swabbing it with bleach.

Jim: I am really pleased with the quality of water at our house.

(Diedre gave Randy some Customer Information Sheets that could help with his milky white water. The hydrant flushing sheet also was shown to group.)

q Misc. Topics ~

q Post Office Traffic Control ~

Bill: I hate to use stop signs to control traffic flow. Like on Shafford Street, we need to use it for safety issues… not for traffic control issues. There were some issues with the post office from the beginning, which is why they opted to have some traffic exit through the US Bank parking lot. Not many people are aware of this option, and US Bank didn’t want ALL the traffic directed through their lot, so the City made a compromise.

Gary: Maybe we can advertise the different traffic options either in the paper or by installing signs on-site.

q Fire Hydrant Security~

q There are caps that you can purchase to place on the valves of the fire hydrant… they run about $100 each so that would be up to $300 per hydrant.

q There is also a valve that lock the hydrant from the on/off valve on the top. There is only one lock that you need to purchase per hydrant and these are running closer to $150-$200 per hydrant.

Bill: These would be used for increased security measures. We also have backflow and double check valves installed on most of the water services throughout the City. This would prevent people from trying to introduce something into our water system.

We can start slow, by asking developers to install these on the new hydrants. But then the City can work on slowly replacing the old hydrants as we get funding to support it.

q Agenda for Next Meeting

q Post Office, Traffic Control

q Hydrant Locks: Info into packet. Prices, etc.

q Leak Detection

If anyone comes up with additional topics that they would like to see brought up at the next meeting, they will contact Diedre Landon via phone, fax or e-mail. She will see that it is put on the agenda.

Phone: 503-630-8274

Fax: 503-630-8276

E-Mail: Landon@cityofestacada.org

q Adjournment

The meeting was adjourned at 6:00PM by Randy Ealy.