REGULAR MEETING NOVEMBER 11, 2013
<br /> Chairperson Karen White: I would ask that we let the presenter complete their presentation.
<br /> Then we will come to the Council for questions,before we go to the public portion.
<br /> Becky Schaefer: So,this slide details the deadline for the consent decree within the next five
<br /> years. The 1s`deadline is to complete all of the Phase I projects which includes sewer separation
<br /> by December of 2017. Starting one project by March 2014, that there are five tanks that are
<br /> upstream of the East Race just one of them needs to be started by March 2014 and then one 111 project at Leeper Park needs to be started by March 2017.
<br /> Eric Horvath: So, next steps we've got this long term control plan, this 20 year plan that has a
<br /> number of different items in it and we've gone over those items but in a nutshell you've got
<br /> separations that we are going to be doing upgrades to our treatment plant large interceptors
<br /> sewers to get more flow to the plant and then storage facilities that will store instead of
<br /> overflowing into the river, it will store it,then after it stops raining it will be pumped back to the
<br /> sewers to get to the treatment plant. Right now,what we are focused on is Phase I which is the
<br /> sewer separation projects and this is in those areas where you've got combined areas of having
<br /> back-ups in basements and so we are going to focus on those areas separating those out and that
<br /> will reduce the amount of flow in the system and reduce the amount flow that we need to store.
<br /> Because it will take some of the clean water sources off of the system entirely, store entry, I
<br /> should say. Then in addition to that, we are going to be focusing at the Waste Water Treatment
<br /> Plant an upgrade at that facility. The consent decree requires us to be able to treat a hundred
<br /> million gallons a day at peak, so during wet weather occasions we need to be able to treat a
<br /> hundred million gallons a day and we are at 77 peak now, and so the initial two phases will be
<br /> eliminating sewage in basements from separating sewers in neighborhoods and the secondly
<br /> upgrading our treatment plant. Then, concurrently what we are going to do is; and Oliver you
<br /> asked the question about you know what kind of rain event, and there are so many factors that go
<br /> into it, cause, intensity, duration some of it's where the rainfall occurs, the coverage area, and
<br /> part of its just how many rainfalls you've had and have wetter grounds, you will get more run
<br /> off. All of those things go into it and so you can guess that the model is not perfect, and as they
<br /> built the a model, they built a conservative model, and now we've got these hundred plus sensors
<br /> in our system, they are giving us real time data every 5 minutes on flows and depths,we've got a
<br /> better idea of how our system operates. So we can utilize those including rain gauges sensors in
<br /> different parts of the city so we are going to utilize that information to recalibrate the model so
<br /> we can get a more exact model than what we have currently. And so, we hope to see is that
<br /> some of the numbers that we are looking at will do down significantly so, instead of needing to
<br /> have a tank that pulls eight million gallons of combined flow, perhaps we can get a tank that
<br /> holds six million gallons. We will know after we do the recalibration of the model and can see
<br /> where it lies. And then associated with that will be an update of the LTCP and look then are
<br /> there ways that we can still get that same environmental benefit and get the end result,but do it
<br /> less expensively, that is going to be absolutely paramount to us, to continue to try value engineer
<br /> every project and find ways to do this program, what ways we can save cost and do it in a way
<br /> that is sustainable when we look at the economic component as well. So that will be our next
<br /> steps, after that will then the Phase II projects you know we plan on optimizing the system using
<br /> technology as best we can. Those things on storage tanks, interceptors,use of green solutions,
<br /> will come in to play as we re-evaluate whether or not we can take some of the flows off with
<br /> green solutions and just re-look at the entire plan if we have time. So this number, these come
<br /> from the sheets that you got from John and he is going to talk about how the capital plan drives
<br /> the rates and ultimately what I want to show is that we have to do optimization and we have to
<br /> use technology to reduce the cost because we are fighting inflation. We have$432 million
<br /> dollars of capital improvements that have yet to be done in the next 16 years. Those were 2007
<br /> dollars, the ENR Midwest Region Construction Cost Index with inflation over the last 20 years
<br /> of 3% annually, so moving that forward in the years that we were going to use if we were going
<br /> to do these projects could be as much as a$667 million dollar project. So clearly we have our
<br /> work cut out for us to try to reduce the cost of the overall long-term control plan. Another thing
<br /> I want to share, Dr. Ferlic we talked a little bit about this, and by the way Phoenix, is higher than
<br /> our right now,there are at $58.46 a user right now. (Referring to power point) This is our utility
<br /> rate in comparison and what I did is I just put South Bend/Mishawaka Metro against the other
<br /> States and these are the top 10 states in rank, the rank on the left is the overall rank of all costs of
<br /> living and I've got them sorted here by utility so you can see we are just under Mississippi in
<br /> terms of being competitive for overall rates. Now, mind you this is all utilities, this is not
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