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HomeMy Public PortalAboutTri-Town Groundwater Protection District -- 2014-01-08 Minutes i ;ORLEANS, BREWSTER, EASTHAM GROUNDWATER PROTECTION DISTRICT 1f LU ii' " BOARD OF MANAGERS MEETING Cle JANUARY 8, 2014 Board Present: John Kelly, Chairman, Orleans; Charles Sumner, Brewster; Martin McDonald, Eastham. Others Present: Jay Burgess, Chief Operator; Cyndi Bachman, District Secretary; Beverly Carney, Orleans resident; Mary Ann Bragg, Reporter, Cape Cod Times Newspaper. 1. Meeting called to order at 9:05 a.m.. 2. A motion was made by Martin McDonald to approve the Board of Managers Minutes dated December 11, 2013. This motion was seconded by Charlie Sumner and unanimously approved and passed. Vote: 3-0 3. Citizens Forum: • Beverly Carney, Orleans resident, stated at the last Board of Managers Meeting there was discussion about the District's Annual Report for the three Annual Town Reports. The only recent ones she found were 2009 for Orleans, and 1999 for Brewster, which she handed out copies for the Board to review. • Charlie Sumner stated that it would be a good idea to compose an Annual Report for the District to be put in all three Town Reports. • John Kelly stated we could take the annual report that Jay prepares and include it in our Annual Town Reports. He also stated he would put something together and circulate it to both Charlie and Martin so we can finalize it at the end of the month. • Charlie Sumner stated he thinks people don't know what is really going on here at the plant, and putting an Annual Report in our town books would be nice. 4. Chief Operator Updates—Jay Burgess: • Process—Nitrogen was 21 mg/1, which is good for this time of year. All other nutrient readings are in the single digits. We are trying to convert the sand filters to denitrification filters and we have been running them now for almost two months. One of the first things we need to do is to get the dissolved oxygen within range in which denitrifying bacteria grows. The current process that we have has an extremely high dissolved oxygen, • John Kelly stated that is why it is important to have that information for the three Boards of Selectmens meeting in February so the towns can make a commitment for what needs to be funded, even if it only gets the plant through the next three years. Attorney Mike Ford is drafting an Article of the IMA extension and I will forward a copy to both Charlie and Martin for their review. I am assuming we will talk about a second Article which will be to fund engineering as well as a list of items that need to have funding appropriated. • Charlie Sumner stated most likely we will have an Article to extend the life of the discharge permit and then if we decided that there was life after that, we would have to appropriate some kind of engineering money. • John Kelly stated there are several options. It seems we have a stand alone vote to extend the IMA agreement without money attached to it. We have a decommissioning plan which would mean that after December 2016 we are talking about demolition and removal of this plant unless there is a vote to extend it beyond 2016. There is also the costs associated with the permit renewal. We are going to need money beyond what is in the operating budget before December 2016. It almost becomes a series of options. In May we are going to need some engineering money to do something, either to start the preliminary design of the decommissioning plan, or the preliminary design of what needs to be done to get the plant to run through December 2016. • Charlie Sumner asked how do we frame these costs. • John Kelly stated the report we are going to get from Stantec will be phased showing May 2014 through December 2016 and what we need for permit renewal. We already know what the demolition costs are so that is option one. Option two is what we need to get to 2016. From that point on we commit to some extension. At the next Board of Managers Special Meeting on January 29th we will review the Stantec report and what we will give to the three Boards of Selectmen on February 12th. The Stantec Proposal focuses on reviewing the Wright-Pierce Evaluation Report from 2005. There's an opinion of probable cause to upgrade or replace the equipment which will allow the plant operations to continue to the end of 2016 when the existing discharge permit expires, and an updated cost estimate from the evaluation document to upgrade this facility to meet the anticipated nitrogen limits expected to be included in the pending groundwater discharge permit. We are basically asking them to help the Boards make a decision and at least frame it in such a way that they can go back to their respective towns and ask the voters to vote on it. 4 ■ • Martin McDonald asked if there is something in their report that takes care of upgrading the plant beyond 2016? • John Kelly stated the original report has both a twenty year extension and getting through 2016. • Jay stated he spoke to Brian Dudley and asked him theoretically if we get this denitifrication system working, would this satisfy the needs of the State for a permit beyond 2016. He said absolutely, but that is not their only concern. Their concern now is for the facility and the equipment not being replaced and that there has to be some type of report put together that addresses the aging equipment as well. • John Kelly stated the 2005 report had a long term and a short term plan. The baseline information is there and Stantec's job is to update it. • Jay stated we started our annual Winter Sale but the weather is not cooperating. The haulers are already starting to ask about next month's possible sale. Generally we run the Sale for both January and February. The Yarmouth Plant will be shutting down in February to work on upgrades to their plant and will only accept septage from Dennis and Yarmouth. 5. A motion was made by John Kelly to extend the Winter Sale through February 2014,with the rates being 7 cents per gallon for in-District towns and 8 cents per gallon for out-of-District towns. This motion was seconded by Martin McDonald and unanimously voted and approved. Vote: 3-0 • Charlie Sumner stated the three member towns should be looking at the other towns who are using this plant. The liability is on the three member towns, so it is really a question of what are we going to design. Are we going to design for just the three member towns? • John Kelly stated in the past we were never able to get the non-member towns on the lower Cape involved. The fact is this plant was designed 50% larger than the needs of the three member towns. Orleans has not decided what they want to do beyond 2016 and we are working on alternatives. One of Mike Domenica's thoughts is we don't want to lose this site assignment, but everyone is hung up on the potential negative impacts on the marsh. One of the options Jay has pointed out is that maybe you can pump the treated effluent. My Board is going to meet with Mike Domenica tonight to help us frame Articles for our Town Meeting in May to hopefully move the process forward. I have a very divided Board on what the option is for the potential reuse of this site and whether it will be for Orleans only. My Board has not voted to do anything as of yet. If we can get through December 2016, at least it will allow some of the additional work to be , done. We need to have some discussion on what if one of the towns wants to continue with the IMA but the voters don't vote the repairs. The IMA is clear that if you don't fund your capital obligations, you are out. We have never gone to the towns for money for the plant other than the original construction money, which was ten cents on the dollar in the mid 80's. At least if you present it in two Articles, it gives the voters the opportunity to vote to extend the IMA agreement, and then vote on the second Article to consider funding the plant. State Law changed the law that allows Selectmen to sign the IMA extension without going to town meeting but your town counsel should review that law. Orleans has a Charter which limits their authority and we have to go to Town Meeting for a vote. The IMA says it can only be amended by a vote of the three towns. • Charlie Sumner stated his recommendation is to go to town meeting. • John Kelly stated this is a very important vote for each of the towns. • Martin McDonald stated Charlie brought up a good point about the out-of-District towns. When we start looking at the cost of going beyond 2016, there are two options, one is we could reduce the size and capacity of the plant to save money, or come up with a way to have the other towns help fund the plant to keep capacity for them. Whatever we come up with from Stantec, there should be some variability in how it is funded. • Jay stated last year he sent a letter to each Town Administrator of Wellfleet, Truro, and Provincetown and each of their Boards of Selectmen stating that after their health departments entered the pump slips into their system, they could run us a report with names and address of properties that have not pumped in three years and we would send out reminder to pump notices at our expense. I also let them know that the plant may not survive due to not making enough money. I got no response from any of the towns. • Jay handed out the District's draft budget for review for the next Board meeting. • The Board reviewed the Districts bank balances. 6. A motion was made by Martin McDonald to approve Treasury Warrant No. 5 for payment. This motion was seconded by Charlie Sumner and unanimously approved and passed. Vote: 3-0 • • • Jay stated no, it won't function as well. Any nitrification system in the northeast or any other cold climate will not function as well in the winter as it will in the summer. They require tight temperature ranges for optimum growth. • Martin McDonald stated we wouldn't necessarily need it year round. • Jay stated no we wouldn't but there are some plants that have seasonal discharge permits because of that. On Cape Cod we discharge in the ground because we are not allowed to dump into receiving waters. Every place else in the country dumps into receiving waters so the nitrate permits are higher in the Summer due to the recreational activity taking place in the waters. For now, the denitrification is moving along and looks promising but is not 100% yet. • Maintenance—The storm clean up was no real problem other than the flow stopped for a couple of days and the ground is frozen. Unless it is a real failed system, the heat of the tank keeps the ground around the system soft so the haulers are able to dig. We did have a frozen louver on the emergency generator and we are going to try to open it. Since this happened during the storm, I will file an insurance claim to pay for it. • Bar Screen—As I have mentioned in the past, the headworks in the receiving area is one of the areas that is a red flag as far as things we have to do to continue to operate the plant over the short term. The original bar screen has been out of service for at least ten years and we have been using the bypass bar screen, both of which had two inch spacing. The industry standard now is half inch spacing. There is a big problem in the industry as a whole with these new personal wipes that everybody uses that do not dissolve like toilet paper and they stay as a rag until they get pumped. We get thousands and thousands of them that get built up on the bar screen due to the two inch space. Once a week we have to take out a solid mass of them by taking pumps apart. I contacted Brewster Welding and they are going to come to the plant to give me a price to build us a bar screen to put in place with half inch spacing so we can at least capture some of this stuff. I have talked to other operators and they are having serious problems with these products as well. We are finding the intervals of having to hire a vactor truck has become almost yearly now and as soon as the sale is over, one tank has to be cleaned and probably the second tank as well. Last year when we cleaned out the tank we received bids from $6,000 to $20,000 and awarded the bid for $6,000, but there is no way they would bid that price again due to the problems they had whole time they were here. We will have the tanks cleaned again this Spring before the Summer flows begin. 4 almost complete saturation. We started at 8mg/1 when we first started running the sand filters in an attempt to use them as denitrifiers and brought it down to 5 mg/1. The standard for denitrification is 2 mg/1 or less. We have the perfect storm of things that can go wrong to starting up a system this time of year. For one thing, they are temperature sensitive and the water out there now is around 14c. Cold adds oxygen to water which is another source of oxygen that we have to try to get rid of Oxygen has always been a good thing for our process but now that we are trying to do another process, oxygen has become an enemy, so to speak. We have always used one RBC as a recirc which only receives final effluent. We shut that off because just the spinning caused it to create dissolved oxygen. That is what got us down from 8 mg/1 to 5mg/1. There are things that we can do to get it even lower but this time of year the temperatures are cold and bio masses are not growing. We would have to start step feeding it in order to make the bugs work a little less all across the shaft, which in turn would lower the dissolved oxygen at the end of the shaft and create the conditions for denitrification. This time of year is a bad time to start doing that. • I spoke to some of the experts in the field, as well as to Mike Giggey and Brian Dudley, and they are in agreement that the next big move shouldn't happen until the temperatures warm up and we have more robust growth on the RBC's. Without adding anything, we are not out of compliance running the way we are. I have already mentioned we are going to have to add a carbon source, which will be either methanol, or a product called microseed that is made in Falmouth to create the bacteria. The microseed needs no special treatment. The methanol does need special treatment and we have been in touch with the fire department. I had a meeting with Captain Bob Phelp and he is studying information on it and will get back to us regarding storage, because it is basically as flammable as gasoline. We are generally pushing our permit on nitrogen and got it down to 21 mg/1 without doing anything other than running those sand filters. We are starting to get some type of bacteria growth that is benefiting the effluent. • John Kelly asked if the product from Falmouth is a bio alternative. • Jay stated yes it is but it is more expensive. We had a pod on site that I since sent back. It was here when Captain Phelp came down and he thought that the pod would probably be good enough as long as we had grounding rings on the barrels so that there is no static discharge away from the barrels. I am waiting for his report and I think it looks favorable. • Martin McDonald stated assuming the sand filters work to get the nitrogen down, does that mean next winter it is not going to function as well? • Receiving Scale -The receiving scale may have to be pulled out and concrete poured into that space like we did to the other scale. I have been holding off doing this project due to the town's decision of possibly continuing the plant for another twenty years, and if so, I would not want to fill in that area with concrete that would later have to be chipped out. • Security Cameras - We have three failed security cameras. As you know, we have six cameras stationed around the plant to watch various areas. We have had graffiti problems, trespassing at night, etc. We haven't had any problems since we put the video cameras in, but three of them are failed and I have a meeting later today with the alarm people to decide what we want to do. During the same time we install cameras, we could install a new receiver that anybody could dial into, i.e., police department, or anyone who had the code to view the plant. I am going to talk to him today about getting a price and getting an ID address that could be shared amongst the employees and authorities, that way they could notify the fire department, for whatever reason for alarm calls in the middle of the night. I will have more information on that for the next meeting. • Odor Control Exhaust Pipe - A twenty-four inch exhaust pipe in the odor control system started leaking and it had no water going into it. We were trying to figure out what was causing it because it goes up through the roof. It's not leaking at the outer roof, but in the inner roof there is some water trickling down. I determined it only happens on really cold days. I think what is happening is the warm air from the plant is pulling all the exhaust air out and puts it through a wet scrubber of bleach and then through a carbon filter so that no bad air is being spread to the neighborhoods. I believe it is condensation from when the cold air hits the warm air which causes it to liquefy and run down the inside of the pipe. We shut the system down yesterday and took apart the entire odor control system to make sure everything is working. It is in pretty good shape except for that small leak, which is not hurting anything as far as the odor control is concerned but it is starting to damage a small portion of the roof and will spread if we don't take care of it. It is plastic pipe that has dried glue around a coupling, which we will sand down and seal as soon as the weather gets warmer. • Stantec - I will be meeting with someone from Stantec today who is here for the three year study to see what we need to continue operating through December 2016. My personal feelings are that we can continue to patch the plant along until the town decides what they want to do. My biggest fear is our checking accounts dwindling. Right now we have about $180,000, and have one customer on credit hold and another one in collections. The bottom line is we have about one Warrant of bills and two payrolls in the bank. If we had a catastrophic winter and haven't bolstered our bank account and couldn't pay our bills and payroll, then there is no money to purchase the things that need replacement here. • • 7. Items for future Agendas: • Review Stantec Report • Review District employee costs related to decommissioning the plant. • Review District's draft budget • Review draft Agenda for February 12th Joint Three Boards of Selectmens Meeting. 8. A motion was made by Martin McDonald to adjourn the meeting at 9:55 a.m.. This motion was seconded by Charlie Sumner and unanimously voted and approved. Vote: 3-0. Respectfully submitted, Cyndi Bachman District Secretary