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HomeMy Public PortalAboutTri-Town Groundwater Protection District -- 2011-10-27 Minutes ORLEANS, BREWSTER, EASTHAM GROUNDWATER PROTECTION DISTRICT BOARD OF MANAGERS MEETING OCTOBER 27, 2011 Board of Managers Present: John Kelly,Chairman, Orleans; Charles Sumner, Brewster; Sheila Vanderhoef, Eastham. Others Present: Jay Burgess,Chief Operator; Cyndi Bachman,District Secretary; Martin F. McDonald, Eastham Selectman. 1. Meeting called to order at 10:05 a.m.. 2. A motion was made by Sheila Vanderhoef to approve the Board of Managers Minutes dated September 22, 2011. This motion was seconded by Charles Sumner and unanimously approved and passed. • Sheila Vanderhoef stated she brought her copy of the Segal Report to the meeting this morning. • Charles Sumner stated he brought his copy as well and stated they have not done a report for this plant. He stated the person who created the Segal Report sent him the e-mail address of her supervisor who he will work with to get a price. • John Kelly stated he spoke to Attorney Michael Ford yesterday morning and he reiterated back to the Special Act we did last time to correct all the 32B issues that were never done correctly, which provides for employee retiree insurance automatically. I told him the retirement component of it will be absorbed by Barnstable County,but we never had a situation with health insurance. His initial assumption is that this is going to fall back on the towns because they are the entity that created the District. He is going to put a draft together to create that mechanism for the towns to be able to fund this, making sure whatever obligations are there are accounted for. • Sheila Vanderhoef stated it needs Special Legislation to agree to pay the post retirement benefits. If the District disappears, who is responsible for the post retirement benefits that generally get billed by the retirement board to the entity? She also asked Jay if he has contacted the Pension Board to answer his questions regarding buy back issues that he had raised at the last meeting? • Jay stated he had everything resolved regarding his buy back issues. • John Kelly stated he should have more information next week, and if he gets a draft he will share it with the Board. • Charles Sumner stated he will follow up with his contact for a price. If we were to go to town meeting for Special Legislation, someone is going to ask what the liability is. • Sheila Vanderhoef stated we need the Segal piece. • John Kelly stated when it is a town, as employees retire you replace them. It's not quite the same situation that we are looking at. The monthly payment that we are making now is 75% District and the statutory minimum is 50%. I would assume at some point all District employees will be eligible for Medicare. I'm sure that the number you get from the report is applicable in the situation if the District ended and there are no employees going forward. The costs going forward are pretty staggering. • Sheila Vanderhoef stated whatever it is, the issue is there is nobody to pay it. • John Kelly stated what they are talking about is the difference between what we fund each year to keep the organization going and the piece that is not funded which is the post employment benefit on top of what we are now funding. That's the gap they are suggesting that we need to set aside. If the District is no more, that amount is going forward, and other than the inflationary increase on that, we don't have to double that amount because we are not replacing employees going forward. • Sheila Vanderhoef stated she doesn't understand it to be any different because the post employment retirement benefits piece is a federal piece of the Gasby 45 or whatever, and I am not sure that it would be any different. • John Kelly stated currently the District is paying 75%and the employee pays 25%. When the employees retire, the State will pay 50% and the employee will pay 50%, as well as whatever the inflationary factor is. • Charles Sumner stated he will follow up with Segal at least to get a price and bring it back to the next meeting for discussion. • John Kelly stated when he gets the information from Attorney Michael Ford he will sit down with him so that he understands that we need to frame it so our Selectmen understand it, as well as putting the Article together for the Special Act that we are all looking at. • Sheila Vanderhoef stated you need to frame the Article in such a way that the answer is Yes and not No. • John Kelly stated he thinks the point that Attorney Ford might say is that this might be the towns obligation regardless. That was the premise he was operating under because it was the three towns that created the District. If the District goes away, the three towns are still there. The reason the District was created was for insurance purposes. • Sheila Vanderhoef stated because it has never happened before, I am not sure that it automatically does. When I looked at this a couple of years ago there was nothing out there as an example. If we are going to make Special Legislation let's make it so we protect our employees. • Charles Sumner stated I'm just thinking as an employee and would want a sense of security. 3. Chief Operator Updates—Jay Burgess: • Process—All State required parameters are being met. As you know, we have had minor issues with Nitrate over the years. Currently it is running in the mid 20's . We have not had any excursions since last October when DEP ordered their non-compliance. We finished the testing for our return to compliance plan. I sent a brief explanation to Brian Dudley, Patty Kellogg, Mass DEP in Boston and a copy to the Board of Managers. DEP has not responded as of yet. • Maintenance— During the past month, we ran on emergency power for about ten hours due to a number of power failures. We are having an issue with one process when it throws back to street power. We are getting a default on a variable frequency drive and we are trying to figure out what is causing that. • Heating Coil—We replaced the heating coil that corroded. We found a company in upstate NY and purchased the heating coil and air conditioning coil for$4,000. We had prices ranging from $15,000 to $20,000, so we got a great deal. There should be no heating issues this winter. • Primary Clarifier No. 2 - We sent the gear box out and had all the gears and seals refaced, new seals, rims, and whatever else it needed. It has now been rebuilt. • Reminder to Pump Letters—The Orleans letters have all been sent out. We worked with Brewster early last month and received a list of 3,000 households who have not pumped in three years. We have already sent out 1,000 letters. As we discussed at the last Board meeting, I put together a letter for the towns outside of the District to see if we can encourage pumpings in their towns. I will e-mail the draft letter to the Board for your review. • John Kelly stated to send these letters to the Health Agent in each town as well as the Town Administrator asking them for their help in publishing the letter and a list of the licensed haulers in their towns. n.. • Power Failure— During one of the power failures, we thought the intermediate pump station had a completely failed variable frequency drive because for two days we could not get it to do anything but give me a blank screen. I took it apart and put fuses in even though the fuses that were in there were fine. We repowered it after two days and it has been running like brand new again. However, it does not return to power after a transfer of power from emergency power. I purchased a new VFD for that unit anyway because I thought it was dead. I am not going to install it until we figure out what is wrong with the first one, and if it is correctable and will run it and keep the new part as a back up. During that same power failure, the primary sludge pump No. 3 failed. It has since been rebuilt and back on service. • Training Session—On October 18`h we had a training session here for five contact hours for wastewater and water. We had about twenty wastewater and water personnel from various engineering firms and wastewater plants in this area. Everyone thought it was a good class. It was on laboratory procedures. • Flow—Flows are up due to the pumping letters being sent out. The Harwich flow is mostly going to Dennis/Yarmouth due to their pricing being a penny less than us for Harwich. Chatham has shut down their septage operation completely. They are now in the hook up phase. I met with a contractor over there last week and I asked him when they think they will be starting the new facility. He said he didn't think it would be anytime between January and March of 2012. While that is happening,they are not accepting any septage, so we are reaping that benefit. They are building a septage receiving facility over there but from what I am told , they are only going to take septage from Chatham. We will lose all of Chatham eventually, unless it is a partial load and it comes here, or they may have an outrageous rate and they might come here anyway. • John Kelly stated Weston and Sampson is going to do the study that we are looking at for the alternatives. They run the Chatham Plant as well as the Dennis/Yarmouth Plant. When the Dennis/Yarmouth article failed, the next thing that they did was withdraw their DRI application at the Cape Cod Commission. I understand from Weston and Sampson that now they are looking to George Allaire to come up with a plan to address the issues going forward and what impact that has on their ability to receive and what it does to the cost structure because someone is going to have to pay for that. • Jay stated the year-to-date flows are average compared to the last five years. • John Kelly asked if the Board needs to have further discussion on rates. • Jay stated he is going to see what Yarmouth is going to do January and February. If they have something that we can't match, we won't see any flow. • John Kelly asked about collections on bad debt accounts. • Jay stated there is still one bad debt account. Everyone else is paying on time. 4. The Board reviewed the Districts' bank balances. 5. A motion was made by Sheila Vanderhoef to approve Treasury Warrant No. 5 for payment.This motion was seconded by Charles Sumner and unanimously approved and passed. 6. Old Business - U.S.G.S. Bill : • Charles Sumner asked about the outstanding debt to U.S.G.S. • Jay stated there is an outstanding bill of$45,000. I called their accounting person and they were going to get back to me. In the meantime, Peter Weiskel got in touch with me saying they wanted to extend the program. I have not heard anything about the program extension or back from their treasurer. • John Kelly stated his understanding on the extension is that they want to tie together all the historical information and the current information and put together a report that covers all of the questions regarding the marsh and where the plume is going, and that they are not charging us for the extension. • Jay stated they did say there is no charge for the extension. • John Kelly stated if things are looking good as far as the Districts' cash standpoint, we can start to pay some of that, even if it is $5,000 paying it off over time. • Jay stated we will send them some money and we will call them as well. • Charles Sumner asked about Ocean Edge. • Jay stated Ocean Edge has gone through quite an array of pumpers over the years. For a good ten years they were a great customer and we gave them a special rate and did direct billing so they didn't have to rely on a hauler. That worked well for about ten years. Then it got very aggressive in the pumping business. They went with a different company and they started trucking it somewhere else. It's currently not coming here. The best deal that they had was when we gave them 5 cents a gallon and allowed them to start in December when it is slow. The sale started in January and February, and we let them continue until the beginning of April. Somehow they got talked out of it. • John Kelly stated that George Flemming was always very good about talking to them to bring it here. He asked Jay to send Charlie an e-mail stating exactly what the deal was and perhaps he can discuss this with them. If we can help save them money as well as help us at that time of year, I think it makes a lot of sense to try to pursue it again. • Jay stated the other side of it is what do we want to charge for the sale rate this year? • John Kelly stated let's go on the assumption that the 5 cents is the sale price for this year. That's what we have always done. I can't see where Dennis/Yarmouth will go below that rate. • Charles Sumner stated lets wait until we get the business from the Brewster letters that we just sent out. 7. A motion was made by Sheila Vanderhoef to adjourn the meeting at 11:00 a.m.. This motion was seconded by Charles Sumner and unanimously approved and passed. Respectfully submitted, ah/ L'.73d et- C Y ndit Bachman District Secretary