11-25-13 Common Council Meeting Minutes

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REGULAR MEETING NOVEMBER 25, 2013 idea briefly on what the sewer overflow looks like (referring to the Power Point) the image to the left is under normal dry weather conditions the pipes are big enough to handle the overflow that comes through them and those all go to the treatment plant, the water get treated, and then discharged to the river in a clean state according to our NPDES Permit that we have. In wet weather however, we get a rain event, this is the 60 to 70 times a year that this happens, the sewer surcharges, so it can't handle all the flow, it backs up, and then spills over a dam and flows into the river. The reason that we don't dam that up entirely because if it didn't overflow in the river it would all overflow into people's basements, streets and other places that we would have serious human health issues. So here is our system (referring to the Power Point) the red dots are the 36 combined sewer overflows in the City. City limits is 40 square miles and half of our city limits is still on a combined sewer system. The development of this plan goes back to 1989, South Bend started study their CSO system as far back as then and really started in earnest looking at their long term control plan in 2002. They were working with EPA and DOJ came in and put a lot of pressure on actually everyone in the State to get these long term control plans done and developed. In 2008, they started their technical plan and were negotiating level of control with EPA and the Department of Justice and then in 2011, the end of 2011 signed the consent decree on the long term control plan. So here is what our plan looks like (referring to the Power Point) comparison to other plans about $40,000 on a cost per acre basis and we have talked about this before but our population is small and we have such a large combined area our cost per capita is very high, it's an issue that we're unfortunate to have, but nevertheless we need to take responsibility for and address. So our plan basically requires us to develop and eliminate these wet weather overflows at all times except for 4 times during a typical year. We can never have dry weather overflows and when we do have wet weather overflows we've got to disinfect. So we have to have some means of disinfection on the nine remaining overflow points that we have during those four occurrences a year. So it will be significantly less than what we have today. Some ask why not just eliminate them all, that was part of the alternative analysis that they looked at and they looked at a number of different plans to try to get the cost down and do a cost benefit analysis and to eliminate them all was I believe over a billion dollar issue and you would have half of the city torn up just separating sewers or building huge tanks to store it. We have talked about this as well we have do have some re-openers built into the plan. This is something that we are serious about it reopening the plan, it is very difficult to have a 20 year plan and not to expect there to be changes in it. So we know that there are going to be things that we can do with green infrastructure and with technology that we can make improvements on the plan and so we will continue to re-look at the plan and find better ways to implement this and hopefully save some money in the process. So the next five years here's what we are looking at in terms of requirements in our consent decree,by December 31, 2017 we need to have completed all the Phase I Collection System Controls. So the Phase I stuff that we have been talking about in separating sewers and trying to keep sewage out of basements according to the consent decree needs to be done by December 31, 2017, these are all controls,projects that we not only have in process but completed. Phase II controls upstream of the East Race we have got to start by March 1, 2014 and Phase II storage tank at Leeper Park we have to have started by March 1, 2017. So in the next number of years those are the key spots in the consent decree that we have to meet otherwise we will have stipulated penalties associated not meeting those. So here is our plan (referring to the Power Point) what we are proposing to do and the next steps. #1 get the sewage out of the basement. There are a number of sewer separation projects that we need to do in various parts of our community, addressing those 225 homes that we looked at and surveys in getting that sewage out of their and reducing as such the overall amount of flow that's going to be going to the system, reducing the overflows to the river and trying to keep as much of this as we can going to the treatment plant. We know that we are going to have more flow coming to the treatment plant and our consent decree requires us to change our treatment plant to meet a peak flow of 100 million gallons a day. Right now we can meet a peak of 77 million gallons a day and so that is also part of the first phase of projects that we need to do and we are staring to move forward on and these would be all these project would be ones that we are looking at doing in this time frame that we are talking about for rates in 2014-2017. So looking at the, we recently updated our facility plan for the treatment plant and have a plan moving forward on how do we get to a 100 million gallon per day plant facility. These are the phase I plans/projects, you see the East Bank, part of that has been done, we still have to do East Bank Five, Avenue has been done, we've got Oliver Plow, some work to be done there, Kensington and the sewer separation projects that we talked about as well as Southwood needs to be done as well sewer separation, and wastewater treatment plant upgrades that I discussed. So next steps are also at the same time we are moving forward with the Phase I which we talked about getting the sewage out of the basements and upgrades to the treatment plant we know that we've got 5