MINUTES OF MEETING
CORAL SPRINGS IMPROVEMENT DISTRICT
A regular meeting of the Board of
Supervisors of the Coral Springs Improvement District was held on Monday, December
21, 2009 at 3:03 p.m. at the District Office, 10300 NW 11th Manor, Coral
Springs, Florida.
Present
and constituting a quorum were:
Robert
Fennell President
Sharon
Zich Vice
President
Glenn
Hanks Secretary
Also
present were:
Kenneth
Cassel District
Manager
Dennis
Lyles District
Counsel
Jane
Early District
Engineer
Dan
Daly Director
of Operations
Kay
Woodward District
Accountant
Ed
Stover CSID
Staff
Joe
Brown Lazlo/
Intrastate
Gerrit
Bulman CH2M
Hill
Cory
Johnson CH2M
Hill
Walt
Schwarz CH2M
Hill
Mike
Gai Sun-Tech
Engineering
FIRST
ORDER OF BUSINESS Roll
Call
Mr. Cassel called the
meeting to order and called the roll.
SECOND ORDER OF BUSINESS Approval of the Minutes
of the November 16, 2009 Meeting
Mr. Fennell stated each
Board member received a copy of the minutes of the November 16, 2009 meeting
and requested any corrections, additions or deletions.
There not being any,
On MOTION by Mr. Hanks seconded by
Ms. Zich with all in favor the minutes of the November 16, 2009 meeting were
approved.
THIRD ORDER OF BUSINESS Supervisors’
Requests and Audience Comments
Mr. Cassel stated Mr.
Browne from Lazlo is here. I have before
you a copy of the November 15, 2009 progress report, which is the latest. It was to give you an idea of the current
progress as of November 15, 2009.
Mr. Fennell asked is there a
report? I see something is up there on
the screen.
Mr. Cassel responded Mr. Brown has
some photographs of things which have been going on to go through.
Mr. Fennell stated let us go ahead
and do that.
Mr. Brown stated good
afternoon. I just want to give you a
brief overview of what we have accomplished to this point. Please
note Mr. Brown showed the Board slides of what he referenced. These are former photographs of the
transfer pump station we are stripping here.
We have the base slab which is going in at the backwash pump station;
rebar placement, concrete placement, finished product for the base and stub ups
for the walls. This is a six inch PVC
line which is going in. Everything has
been tested. That is the backfill
compaction along with the marking tape. This
is the 18 inch line being installed on the water side. All of these are water.
This is the membrane building; the
trench that goes down in the center of the building and electrical ducts going
in. This is the running of one of the
electrical duct banks which will be servicing the water side. This is a 24 inch tie in at the water side;
pressure testing, backfill compaction.
This is the wastewater plant sandblasting and painting of the inner
walls stub out for the effluent connection.
This is a layout for the column pads for the connecting walkway plant;
form work, rebar, concrete placement, curing, backfill compaction and finished
product. This is the RAS/WAS pumps which
go in on the Plant F side. This is the
two inch water line over at the wastewater side; backfill compaction, clean
up. That is about it. Are there any questions?
Mr. Hanks responded to summarize;
you got a lot of site work taken care of so now you are moving your way into
the building.
Mr. Brown stated yes we are
actually, on the membrane building, doing all of the sub-foundation stuff. We are still underground so you do not see
much up top, but we have done a lot underground. It is mainly the electrical plumbing and
foundation work. We are doing well on
the other side. We are at least 75% to
80% over there. The actual clarifiers
came in along with the aeration equivalent.
That will be set here in mid January to the first of February. We are on schedule to meet the April 3, 2010
deadline. Then we will be focusing 100%
on the water side. At the January25, 2010 meeting It
was clarified that Mr. Browne meant the deadline for Plant F.
Mr. Hanks stated some of those
valves I saw were with the stem on the side.
Is that because they were butterfly valves?
Mr. Brown responded I think those
were actually gate valves with side operators that you saw.
Mr. Fennell asked how are we
relative to schedule?
Mr. Brown responded you are doing
fine on the other side. The water side
has tightened up tremendously, but we are going to be pushing it. We have some ways to accelerate so we are 5%
behind schedule. We have done numerous
schedules from September, October and November.
From what I understand my schedules have always come out okay. I heard Ms. Early mention she has something
which showed they were rejected. We have
been going back and forth with schedules just to get them accepted for a while
now.
Ms. Early stated Mr. Johnson should
be here in about 10 minutes. He is
running late. I would rather wait for
him. I brought the schedules, but he
said he had comments on them. I am
really not involved in this schedule so I would rather hold off for him.
Ms. Zich stated I was surprised with
the nanofiltration building. When are we
going to actually see it?
Mr. Brown responded you probably
have a good 60 days before you see walls go up above ground. We have a trench that is approximately six feet
deep, not to mention the slab and all the underground before you actually see
the walls on the building. You are
probably looking at least February or March to see the block work.
Ms. Zich asked and is that pretty
much on schedule?
Mr. Brown responded that will be the
schedule, yes.
Mr. Fennell stated it looked like
you were cutting in some mains there.
Were there any issues when that happened?
Mr. Brown responded as far as I know
when these gentlemen were out there they witnessed everything. We did not have any problems.
Mr. Fennell asked did we actually
connect into the main mains, is the pipe ready to go in or is the valve sitting
there?
Mr. Brown responded you have the 18
inch, the 16 inch and the 24 that we cut into.
They are all valve connections.
Mr. Hanks asked are those all water
lines or finished lines?
Mr. Stover stated one is all water
and three are finished. Then they tap
into the force main for the waste for the new building.
Mr. Hanks stated so you are going to
have major taps and until we get the plant up and running there is really not
much more. You can put the pipes in the ground,
but you will have to test it and finally get it accepted by the Health
Department.
Mr. Brown stated and it gives us our
finished point. Getting those taps out
of the way gives us our finishing point running from the building to that
point.
Mr. Fennell asked are there any
issues as far as the city or the county, as far as approvals or anything like
that?
Mr. Brown responded for the most
part we are fine. There are a few
building permit requirements we had to meet and plans had to be changed that we
will be addressing, but I do not think there is anything major at this
time.
Mr. Fennell asked is there anything
we can do to keep it going?
Mr. Brown responded our biggest
problem right now has been between CH2M Hill, Mr. Cassel and me trying to get
us expedited for payment. Right now we
are waiting on estimate number seven for October and estimate number eight for
November. I am preparing nine right now. It has been back and forth with schedule
revisions and just getting the paperwork in line. It seems to be holding us up more so than
anything; just the paperwork, not the physical work. When you delay payment it slows down subs and
makes it hard on us with our suppliers.
We had a meeting a couple of weeks ago to try and expedite some things. I think we are in line now based on the
spreadsheet.
Mr. Cassel stated the last
spreadsheet I got I think we are in good shape.
Mr. Brown stated hopefully things
will flow a lot better.
Mr. Hanks asked Mr. Cassel, have you
been involved in these meetings?
Mr. Cassel responded yes. Part of it was the original way that the
request for payment was broken out was not as detailed because it could not be
as detailed until they got the progress schedule broken out into greater
detail. Now that the progress schedule
is broken out in greater detail the pay request had to match. You had to move a bunch of numbers around in
the pay request and knowing where they came from, and to, was an issue that as
I looked at it, you could not reconcile the numbers easily. I requested they go back and do
reconciliation, which they did and they got it to me today. I think we are in pretty good shape now that
we can move the pay request forward pretty quickly.
Mr. Hanks asked are all the parties
in agreement on the procedures and forms?
Mr. Cassel responded yes.
Mr. Brown stated that is not a
problem. The schedule, which went back
and forth, dictated how the pay request had to be changed. Once that was changed it finally got, for
these final approvals that is when it changed a great amount from say, 5 pages
to 13 pages. That is where the detail
had to come in to show what we were doing out there. That is when Mr. Cassel wanted the explanation
between how the money got reallocated to all of these different items.
Mr. Fennell stated thank you very
much for coming. It is always a pleasure
to see the pictures. Are we going to see
you again in a couple of months?
Mr. Brown responded yes sir.
Mr. Fennell asked for February?
Mr. Brown responded yes. This is the pay request, Mr. Cassel. Do you take this?
Mr. Cassel responded I will give it
to Mr. Johnson.
Mr. Fennell stated thank you very
much for your time. We appreciate it.
Ms. Zich stated thank you.
Mr. Brown stated you are welcome.
FOURTH
ORDER OF BUSINESS Staff
Reports
A. Manager
·
Consideration
of Amendment to Interlocal Agreement with Broward County for NatureScape
Irrigation Services
Mr. Cassel stated the first item is
reconsideration of the NatureScape interlocal agreement between the District
and the county. As I explained in my
memorandum the termination segment was modified at Coconut Creek’s request to
the county. They modified some things
and sent it back out. Since we already
approved ours and sent it in, we will have to do an approval of the amended
interlocal agreement and resubmit it. Because
the amendment makes changes to the term and the termination language I did not
want to just approve it without the Board looking at it and everybody agreeing
to it a second time.
Mr. Hanks asked Mr. Lyles, have you
looked at it? Do you have any issues
with it?
Mr. Lyles responded I do not have an
issue. Let me just do a quick additional
explanation. Apparently Cooper City
asked that the county revise this form of agreement that was going out to 20 or
30 government agencies and most of them had already approved it. They wanted the ability to terminate it
midstream for convenience and without cause.
The county inserted a new article six, which is on page six of the draft
you have. It essentially provided for a
lot of language for termination for cause, no specific grant of the ability to
terminate for convenience and without cause except on the county’s part. So either the County Commission or its
Contract Administrator can terminate this agreement at any time by just giving
us notice and without cause.
We are still under the meeting of
breach performed by the county, except when you get to the end of new article
six it recites that the consideration paid includes $10 for the second parties,
which is us, having the right to terminate for convenience. What I am telling you is it will not be worth
time and trouble to try to upset the
apple cart and do it all over again.
We are certainly not going to terminate this small interlocal agreement
which is more for show than substance anyway.
It does not really say what Cooper City asked the county to do, but it
does not put us in any worse of a position than we were in before. Essentially we are signing this that we are
going to pay them whatever it is and they are going to look at our water use
when it comes to these issues.
Mr. Fennell asked has Cooper City
actually signed this?
Mr. Cassel responded as far as I
know it is back out to them. This was
the final form that came out to everyone.
Mr. Fennell stated I am a little
surprised they wanted to have a convenience clause for them, the county said
they wanted one too and it was thrust in there.
I just do not want Cooper City not to like this and have to do it a
third time.
On MOTION by Mr. Hanks seconded
by Ms. Zich with all in favor the amended interlocal agreement with Broward
County for NatureScape Irrigation Services was approved as presented.
·
Consideration
of Bids for Stormwater Pump Station Trash Rack Repairs
Mr. Cassel stated several months ago
we kind of brought this in as a repair.
We went back and re-bid it. It
has come in and we are recommending the bid be awarded to Lambert Brothers,
Inc. in the amount of $29,968.10 for the base bid.
Mr. Fennell stated I noticed they
were significantly better priced than the others.
Ms. Zich stated I cannot imagine why
it is twice as much. It is half of what
the highest bidder was. That is amazing.
Mr. Hanks asked are Lambert
Brothers, Inc. experienced in this line of work?
Mr. Cassel responded they have done
other drainage type structures. They are
general contractors. They do different
things like this. They are not equipped
for work in water plant scenarios, but on this type of a system we feel they
are well qualified to perform the work for us.
Mr. Fennell asked have we ever
worked with them before?
Mr. Cassel responded no, we have
not.
Mr. Fennell asked has anyone else we
know have?
Mr. Cassel responded I believe Mr.
Frederick checked references.
Ms. Zich stated the City of Pompano.
Mr. Fennell asked I assume somebody
called one, two or three of them?
Mr. Cassel responded yes. Staff took care of that.
Mr. Hanks stated it looks like they
have some that are applicable and some that really are not such as kitchen
cabinet replacement.
Mr. Cassel stated they are really a
general contractor per se, but they do a lot of different finessing.
Mr. Hanks stated then there are
others there such as installation of sound dividers, which are more heavy duty
concrete work.
Mr. Fennell asked do we have a
design for this?
Mr. Cassel responded yes.
Mr. Fennell asked do we have the
specified types of materials that will be in there?
Mr. Cassel responded yes. There are complete plans and specifications
for it.
Mr. Fennell stated okay. So what they are doing is just assembling
this.
Mr. Cassel stated constructing and
installing.
On MOTION by Mr. Hanks seconded
by Mr. Fennell with all in favor the contract for the stormwater pump station
trash rack repairs was awarded to the lowest responsive bidder, Lambert
Brothers, Inc. in the amount of $28,968.10.
Mr. Fennell stated I think there are
normal items under Staff Reports. Is there any particular reason why you did
that?
Mr. Cassel responded just for
explanations from the manager as coordinating these to make sure it is coming
in and I have all the details for it.
Mr. Fennell stated okay.
Mr. Cassel stated because there was
a number of them which required explanations it was easier to put them under
the manager’s report versus having them just a as a line item. If you prefer to have them as separate items
we can do that as well.
Mr. Fennell stated I just do that
because when I look down the list I try to get an estimate of how long the
meeting is going to take. If there are
more line items, I know I have more time to take.
·
Consideration
of Bids for Repairs to Water Plant #3
Mr. Fennell asked what is going on
with this?
Mr. Cassel responded I explained in
my cover memorandum that we had some issues with some structural steel on the top
side of the plant. We are going to need
to make sure that plant continues running without a major catastrophe until the
nanofiltration gets online which is another year and a half away. It is necessary to do the steel repairs at
this time. Initially it was brought up
as kind of an emergency, but we looked at it and the timing with the schools
coming back to session was such that we cannot take it offline. We bid it out twice because of the way it
came in. We spoke with the contractor we
are recommending and they are willing to be awarded the contract at this point
in time, hold their prices and start when school is out.
Mr. Fennell asked are you talking
June?
Mr. Cassel responded the end of May
or first week of June. This way we will
be able to take the plant offline and run the other two plants while still
meeting our demand loads. The plant will
be down four or five weeks. With the
load associated with school at this time of the year it is not advisable to
take it offline. We cannot meet our production
requirements.
Mr. Fennell asked are there any
issues here where suddenly we are going to have to take this plant offline and
we are going to be down?
Mr. Cassel responded no. We did some temporary welding repairs. They were accomplished today. There are some temporary repairs which will
get us to the June timeframe.
Mr. Stover stated there is a
structural support underneath that was really damaged. It was rotted out and that was the
issue. If that had gone down while the
mixer was mixing, it could throw it off tilt and then it would be absolutely no
good. That was the lesser of all evils
right now and it was done today. It has
been repaired.
Mr. Fennell asked do you think it
can hold up?
Mr. Stover stated in my opinion, I
think it can hold up until May.
Mr. Cassel stated we also had Layne
Christensen come down and look at it.
They discussed it with us. We
then went to a local welder and we talked to them about what it would take to
get us through the end of this timeframe.
We went through their suggestions of what we could beef up temporarily
to make it last.
Mr. Fennell asked we have these
interlocal agreements for water sharing; would that have worked? It looks like we need water right now. Are all the other districts also at an issue
where right now if we had to go down?
Mr. Cassel responded I do not
believe we could get the volume of water we would need at this point in time
with our current interconnections. We
are in the process of upgrading between us and the City of Coral Springs, but
it has not been completed. They are
doing the project. We are just
contributing funds when it becomes necessary.
Those are not completed as of this date.
Based upon our current interconnections the quantity of having that
plant completely offline would not be viable at this time based upon the
information from staff.
Mr. Fennell asked do we have other
interconnects?
Mr. Daly responded a little one with
Tamarac.
Mr. Hanks asked do we need to revisit
where our interconnects are? Do we need
to contact and coordinate with our friends in Tamarac?
Mr. Cassel responded we can probably
go back to and revisit to look at where our interconnects are, what our size is
and what our abilities are. In the
future it might be advantageous to us if we can produce the water and sell it
to them versus that interconnectivity between the two.
Mr. Hanks stated there is also a
cost associated with connecting to Tamarac by crossing the C-14, which would
not be incurred with other locations.
Mr. Fennell stated I would like you
to have staff look at that again. I
think he has a good point. We still have
a year and a half to go before we have the nanofiltration plant. If one of our things go down, there could be
an issue. I think it is also a regional
water issue. Not only could it happen to
us, but it could happen to the City of Coral Springs. If we have a hurricane again, the same kind
of issue could come up. Coral Springs
can get their plant wiped out. We could
take heavy damage. If we had strong
kinds of things, it should also lessen the probability of failure if we have
stronger ways we could draw water from other groups. I know it cost money to put these connections
in, but it may cost less than having 30% excess capacity to be safe.
Mr. Daly stated depending on the
condition of our lime softening plants we actually would have redundancy
basically once we are on the other one if we were able to keep them going when
necessary and blend when we have to.
Mr. Fennell stated we were talking
about this before; whether we wanted to get rid of those plants, take them
down, sell them to the highest bidder or is there some other reason they should
be there. Maybe there is not. I do not know, but certainly having capacity
to do water, even in a reserve, might…
Mr. Hanks stated it is a lot of
money you have to spend for improvements on a what if scenario.
Mr. Fennell stated I know.
Mr. Cassel stated we will definitely
have the staff look at what our interconnection lines are.
Mr. Hanks stated the other question
to consider is; does it make sense rather than having valves and other things,
does it make sense to have excess finished water storage capacity here at the
plant to accommodate a down. If that plant
was to go down, would we be deficient on our daily flows, our daily capacities
or would it be just on peak times and things like that?
Mr. Cassel asked Mr. Stover, where
are we on that with the plant offline?
Mr. Stover responded I can put out
about 4 Million a day with those two running at top speed.
Mr. Fennell asked what is our
current normal rate?
Mr. Stover responded the two of
those together equal what plant three does; about 2,700 GPM.
Mr. Fennell asked are we down about
25% or 30%? How much?
Mr. Stover responded it is about that. I kind of like Mr. Hank’s idea. I think we should be looking into putting in
another storage tank somewhere down the line; especially with this new plant
coming in.
Mr. Fennell stated well that is the
other issue. We obviously have 30 years
experience so we kind of planned for that.
What happens with the filtration plants?
If something goes wrong; how much can go wrong at a time and how long
does it take to repair it?
Mr. Stover responded taking into
consideration the age of the plant.
Mr. Fennell stated I try to look
forward to the filtration issues. We
really do not have an idea. Something is
going to fail some day. Do we lose 100%
capacity or is 5% at a time?
Mr. Johnson responded when we
designed the nanofiltration facility we have three trains in there. Each is able to shoulder a third of the
load. What we had assumed was that we
would maintain I believe it was plant #2, which is the newest plant, as a back
up in the event that one of the trains goes down. Generally speaking with regard to
nanofiltration plants, catastrophic failures are few and far between. I am not going to say it cannot happen simply
because it can, but generally speaking those are a pretty robust process and
they do not generally get catastrophic failures. We did look at maintaining that second train
simply because I do not know that you would want to maintain the entire
facility, all three plants, just because you need to have all the chemical
storage and you need to maintain all three additional units while you are still
maintaining a nanofiltration plant. I
think you would have a lot more of an O&M issue with having to maintain all
that excess capacity.
With respect to storage, we designed
the nanofiltration plant to have a new generator system. I believe it has 10 days of diesel storage in
the belly tank; the new tank that is over there. In the event of a hurricane or natural
disaster you will be able to operate your plant along with your high service
pumping. The excess capacity in storage
as it stands right now; you will have storage for meeting your maximum date
plus fire flow. I cannot remember how
you originally set up your storage, but the fact is you have adequate storage
here.
Mr. Hanks stated and the timeframe
to construct additional storage we will already be in the new plant so it will
be a moot point to address this issue.
We do not have a solution available to us within the timeframe that we
need it with this issue coming up. I
think we should just plan to get those repairs taken care of on the plant as
long as staff is comfortable that we are able to take care of it until
June. If not, we will come back and we
will figure out what we need to do.
Mr. Cassel stated at least with the
award of bid if we had to have Layne Christensen in here sooner, they would
already be awarded the contract and could mobilize sooner.
Mr. Hanks asked was there another
issue on this?
Mr. Cassel responded initially
Lambert Brothers, Inc. was the lowest bidder on this, but they had not done any
work of this type. Mr. Stover, correct
me if I am wrong, but I believe they said to you that they never did any water
plant work.
Mr. Stover stated yes. They have no experience at all. Their strength is their capability of offsite
welding and prefabricating something and bringing it in. My concern with them was pulling that mixer
out of there and putting it back in and calibrating it. That is where they do not have the
experience, where Layne Christensen does have that experience.
Mr. Hanks stated and if you are
looking at a four to five week window over a ten week summer and then that all
of a sudden stretches into 10, 11 or 12, we could seriously have issues.
Mr. Stover stated we are working out
a plan. The problem is that plant when
running has to be tested every hour for chemicals and all of that. We are working on a plan where if they can
actually get in there, take measurements, we can take the plant down for a day,
they can take measurements, take them back and put them on blue print and
prefabricate everything. While the
prefabrication is going on we can maybe knock off a week to ten working days,
which brings it down two weeks. We can
live with that when school is out.
Mr. Hanks asked counsel, are there
any issues in awarding this to Layne Christensen as opposed to the lowest
bidder because of the responsiveness or qualifications?
Mr. Lyles responded no. Staff has analyzed the issue and given its
report today. The recommendation, I
think, comes from all the staff.
Mr. Hanks asked is this essential
work?
Mr. Cassel responded absolutely.
Mr. Hanks asked where is this money
coming from Ms. Woodward?
Ms. Woodward responded it is coming
out of renewal and replacement. We
currently have $2.2 Million in that fund so we have sufficient funds to cover
this.
On MOTION by Mr. Hanks seconded
by Mr. Fennell with all in favor the contract for repairs to Water Plant #3 was
awarded to Layne Christensen Company in the amount of $65,884.
·
Consideration
of Bid for Replacement of 20 Ton Air Conditioning Unit for the Main
Administrative Building
Mr. Cassel stated since we just
opened the bids at about 11:00 a.m. this morning we have not had the ability to
do a complete analysis; however, you have before you a memorandum from Mr.
Daly. Our initial review by staff is
that Koldaire, Inc. is being recommended for the replacement. We checked some of the references. What I request from the Board is the ability
to either finish checking out Koldaire, Inc. and awarding it to them or to the
next lowest bidder, which is Temptrol, Inc. as we go through the final
investigations.
Mr. Fennell stated prices were
within $2,000 of each other.
Mr. Cassel stated if it is the
Board’s pleasure, you can give the manager authorization to an amount not to
exceed.
Mr. Fennell asked have you specified
the type of equipment you are getting?
Mr. Cassel responded yes.
Mr. Fennell asked so are they all
bidding the same type of equipment?
Mr. Daly responded they were given
three choices and the two lowest bidders came in with the exact same model
number and manufacturer. The other two
did not tell us what they were going to use.
Mr. Fennell stated the way these
guys work is they are local installers. They
are all buying from a distributor. There
are only two or three actual distributors.
Mr. Hanks asked are we dealing with
fairly energy efficient air conditioners?
How did we balance this out?
Mr. Daly responded this only comes
in one model. It has a 10 EER. It would be nice if it had a 14 EER or even higher,
but that is what you see in residential units.
Mr. Lyles stated the staff
specifications required that it be the highest SEER available. It is the highest you can get in a commercial
unit for a building of this type. Even
though it sounds low in terms of a residential unit, it is the highest
available in commercial units.
Mr. Cassel stated and it has the new
refrigerator in it.
Mr. Fennell stated still, I thought
it would have gone the other way. I
thought it would have been able to have very high efficiency with larger units.
Mr. Cassel stated I am not sure
because I am used to doing mostly residential.
Residential has SEER. Commercial
has just an EER. What the conversion
factors are; a 10 EER may not be the same in SEER.
Mr. Hanks stated it may be
equivalent to a 14 or 16 SEER.
Mr. Cassel stated exactly. This is why when we did the specifications on
it we said the most current highest efficiency rating on the market.
Mr. Fennell asked do you know what our
current machine was?
Mr. Daly responded 23 years old. I do not know.
Mr. Fennell asked you got 23 years
out of it?
Mr. Daly responded the air handler
was 23 years old. The compressor was
changed 18 months ago with a rebuilt. It
was changed 10 years ago. We basically
got 10 years out of the first compressor, 10 years out of the second compressor
and a year and a half out of the third. That
is pretty typical. We changed the
compressor on the roof every 10 years.
Mr. Hanks asked so would you like us
to award the bid?
Mr. Cassel responded we would like
authorization not to exceed, say $19,500, to make sure I get everything in here
on the final.
Mr. Lyles stated I think since you
put it out with bid specifications and got competitive bids you are actually
asking the Board to award the contract to the apparent lowest responsive and
responsible bidder, Koldaire, Inc. in the amount of $15,777, but because of the
emergency nature of the bid process and the timing of it with regard to your
next meeting, based on the final review of the references and their
qualifications they do not turn out to be the lowest and responsible bidder,
then to award to the next lowest responsive and responsible bidder.
Mr. Daly stated there is a little
wiggle room left with what Mr. Cassel was asking for because there is an
additional five year warranty on the condenser.
There is also a coating which can go over the condenser, which is going
to make it last a lot longer. A lot of
the contractors had actually put this in as an addendum if we chose to go that
route. Once we look at it we would like
the ability, if we felt it was advisable for the District, to go ahead with
it. This is why we are requesting the
extra couple of $1,000 as Mr. Cassel said.
Mr. Fennell asked how do we word
that?
Mr. Lyles responded a warranty is
the type of thing which is not required to be bid. It is in the nature of an insurance
policy.
On MOTION by Mr. Hanks seconded
by Mr. Fennell with all in favor the Board authorized the District manager to
award the contract for the new air conditioning unit in the administration
building to the apparent lowest qualified and responsive bidder.
·
Monthly
Water & Sewer Charts
·
Utility
Billing Work Orders
The above items are for
informational purpose only and copies are attached hereto and made a part of
the public record.
B. Attorney
There
being no report, the next item followed.
C. Engineer
·
Pilot
Testing Report
Mr. Fennell stated I read it and it
was okay.
Mr. Johnson stated the bottom line
is we found that pilot testing showed we have an acceptable rate of fouling in
the membranes. Fouling in the membranes
is a rate at which stuff builds up on the filters; kind of how you have filters
out here, except you have to backwash these filters everyday or two days to
clear the particles or what have you, off of it. On a membrane you are looking at maybe four
to six months. Some facilities will go
four to five years without having to clean the membranes.
Mr. Fennell asked is it a smart
thing to do to have a general filter run the whole thing?
Mr. Johnson responded you actually
do.
Mr. Cassel stated you have sand
filters.
Mr. Johnson stated we learned from
staff that there were some sand issues in the wells. There is a step wise filtration process where
we can screen the larger particles out so when you get to the membrane it is
basically removing the salt. We have
sand filters and we actually did see sand when we were pilot testing the small
sand filter we had on the unit. Then we
have a cartridge filter which is a lot like a home softener. There are those cartridge filters you can by
at Home Depot. We had those on there and
they filter out suspended solids. Then
it goes from there into the membrane unit.
What we saw from the testing was that we had acceptable rates of fouling
in the membrane. That is what is most
important.
Mr. Fennell stated so we are okay.
Mr. Johnson stated you are okay.
Mr. Fennell stated we mentioned
previously perhaps keeping around one of the other older water plants. We did not originally talk that way. I do not remember that. Are we seriously considering that and if so,
what is the financial impact?
Mr. Daly stated I think we will have
two and a half years to come to a conclusion.
We have a year and half before we are actually up and running with the nanofiltration
plant; maybe another year or so playing back and forth before we take it down
for good. We have a lot of wiggle room
and we need to see how much abuse the plant has taken between now and then as
well as what it will take to keep it up and running.
Mr. Fennell stated the original idea
was the nanofiltration plant would replace the whole thing. I do remember that. Do we actually need it? Having it as a luxury is one thing; if we are
trying to figure it out for back up. Do
we really need it?
Mr. Johnson responded to be honest
you have in the new plant enough capacity to cover your peak data. At the end of the day this is a brand new
process for staff to operate. As their
comfort level grows it is kind of like a security blanket. It is there just in case something is not
going right; they can revert back to that if they need to. AS time goes on I think your staff will find
these membrane systems are a lot easier to operate and require a lot less work
and maintenance. Eventually, as the
staff’s comfort level grows, the need to hold on to the old equipment
diminishes.
Mr. Fennell stated given all that I
think there was some concern expressed at the last meeting about this topic.
Mr. Daly stated it was actually
about having to maintain them and keep them in line until the comfort level is
there. Even Mr. Hyche said it could be a
year.
Mr. Fennell stated we were going to
look at some scenarios and see what the financial impact would be.
Mr. Daly stated Mr. Cassel and I
have both done that. We are still
formulating.
Mr. Cassel stated we are nailing
down some numbers and checking with other utilities which have gone through
this process.
Ms. Zich asked we have quite a while
before we have to make a decision on this, right?
Mr. Fennell responded yes, except that
from a financial standpoint of if we were going to have to sink another $1.5 Million
or whatever it would cost, to keep these plants going rather than just tearing
them down. It has a big impact on some
of the other funds we may want to spend.
Mr. Cassel stated that is
correct. It is what Mr. Daly and I are
working on to go through to look at what others’, who have migrated from a lime
softening to a filtration system, experience has been. What their experience has been, how long it
has taken them, what their costs are and what they found in their transitions. We are contacting multiple facilities, some
which CH2M Hill has done and some which other engineering firms have done, to
look at what the costs really are, what the issues are and what headaches they
ran into. Every local is a little
different and part of the pilot test shows some utilities have a lower PH level
than our PH level and they need to get it up higher so they need to use more
chemicals. It cost them more to get the
water to the level they want to get it to.
They may have less sand or more sand depending on where they are drawing
from. We are trying to look at the
numbers we are getting from them to make an internal review as to what we think
it is going to take for us during the transition to make sure we have an
adequate idea of what the cost may be if we have to run or have ready to run
the lime softening plant as well as the nanofiltration plant.
Mr. Fennell stated Ms. Woodward was
bringing this up and it was a good point.
She needs to project out, not only the capital cost, but the operating
cost. We can predict our water costs and
how much money we are going to have coming in.
What is at stake is how much money is going to be going out for
operating costs of the nanofiltration plant as well as any other plant we will
keep running parallel to it. This would
affect free capital which I would like to spend, maybe, on something else. She is saying she may need $1 Million or $2
Million for something else in order to keep us going.
Mr. Cassel stated we are looking
into that based on the minutes I read last month. We are looking at the I&I where you have
other issues. You have capital programs
you may need to do or want to do. Mr.
Daly and I are very diligent. We are
going to be working with Ms. Woodward to make sure what we have available does
not put the District in a bind for other issues we may want to address.
Mr. Fennell stated so someone was
going to look at the I&I issue. Do
we have a report on that today?
Mr. Cassel responded we have some
information which just came in today from CH2M Hill. Mr. Schwarz is here. We are also doing some work in house.
Mr. Daly stated we have a Doppler
meter.
Mr. Cassel stated we have a Doppler meter
and are checking some things in house as well to have feedback and look at the
process.
Mr. Fennell stated the I&I has
an affect on this as well. It would be
smart to go after that. It could also
affect the reasons why we would need to have any excess capabilities. These are not all separate.
Mr. Hanks stated it affects the
excess capability that we need for base water.
It does not do anything on the supply side.
Mr. Fennell stated I am not sure of
that when you look at some of these charts.
Mr. Hanks stated that would be on
losses. If we start looking into losses,
it is another issue.
Mr. Fennell stated this month’s
chart kind of pointed out that we have substantial amount of loss going out,
not to mention how much excess water we are bringing back in.
Mr. Cassel stated Mr. Daly and I
discussed this. We need to look at our
source numbers on the billed and productivity.
Mr. Daly stated Mr. Cassel was not
aware that we bill in arrears. The
numbers for the water produced is from the 1st to the 31st. It is skewed.
It always has been and it has always been acceptable that it will be
skewed every month. We are going to do
something different next month with the water charts.
Ms. Zich asked is the last one for
November of 2009?
Mr. Cassel responded it is supposed
to be.
Ms. Zich stated I figured.
Mr. Fennell stated even so the
charts are good. I do not think it is a
question about the charts. If you are
actually showing some kind of problem, that is important to us too. We have a substantial amount of loss. There are lots of different reasons why you
could have a big difference between distribution and billed.
Mr. Cassel stated the first thing we
have to nail down is our production days and our meter read days; that it is
the same 30 day cycle. It is not going
to be perfect, but it is going to be close.
Mr. Hanks stated you are reading
meters over a period of time.
Ms. Zich stated you cannot read them
all on the same day no matter what you do.
Mr. Fennell stated this chart shows
you have loss.
Mr. Cassel stated in our block of
time we can adjust it.
Mr. Fennell stated all that would be
is just a lag in the data. What you
would see is the red would be high sometimes and the blue would be high
sometimes. There is only one month were
billed and distributed come fairly close to each other.
Mr. Hanks asked if there is all this
data issue, would we not want to just average it out over a longer period of
time?
Mr. Cassel responded we are going to
dig back in and see exactly where the numbers are coming. As I am looking at them; if you have a 24%
loss in a water distribution system, you have geysers out there some place.
Mr. Hanks stated or a lot of people
stealing.
Mr. Cassel stated yes and I do not
think we have that. I think we need to
look at where our numbers are coming and we are going to re-examine these to
make sure we have the tight parameters so that our parameters are matching
closer.
Ms. Zich stated maybe it will be
better to do it on a quarterly basis instead of monthly.
Mr. Fennell stated this is good
enough. This is fine. I can read this. You can just take the delta difference per
month and that will give you what happened; maybe one month versus another,
billing or something like that, but it should have caught up somewhere and it
never did. If there was a billing delay
or timing delay, you would have seen more excess and you do not.
Mr. Hanks stated so the question
comes back as to where you are really measuring it and where you are measuring
flows to what is actually going outside of the plant or is it what is coming
in, in terms of raw water. So we will
have this tightened up for next month.
Mr. Fennell stated do not redo the
chart to make it look better.
Mr. Cassel stated no. We are just going to look at the data. The charts are going to stay the same.
Mr. Daly stated we want to report it
accurately. You cannot act on an
inaccurate chart.
Mr. Fennell stated no, but on the
other hand I do not expect that on every occasion around here that you have a
solution before you present the data. I
would rather see the data first and then go look for the solution.
·
Project
Status Report
Ms.
Early asked do you want the I&I report done?
Mr. Cassel responded I really have
not had a chance to look at it and digest it.
If the Board would like to see the PowerPoint that has come forth at
this time, we can have Mr. Schwarz run through it or we can bring it at the
next meeting.
Mr. Fennell stated I would like to
talk about this a little bit, but I understand we have someone here who is an
applicant. Maybe we can bump you up to
the top of the list.
Mr. Gai stated I appreciate it. Thank you.
I am with Sun-Tech engineering.
We represent the applicant, Walgreens.
Basically this is a reconsideration of the request we brought forth in
January. The District had asked for some
additional calculations and it has taken so long because with the economy
Walgreens was not 100% sure they were going to go forward with this site. Then about four months later they decided to
go forward with this site. In that time
we did some calculations. We provided
pre versus post calculations. The
Walgreens site is a small portion of the existing Home Depot, which used to be
Builders Square at the time, at the northwest corner of Atlantic Boulevard and
University Drive. Under that existing
permit it was approximately 37 acres and calculations were done for the entire
37 acres with certain grading parameters.
We pulled the existing calculations,
found the existing plans and I would like to point out there was an error in my
letter which was written to the District.
It said the existing site grading on the original permit for Builders
Square went from 11.8 up. It actually
goes from 10.8 up. That was caught
today. I actually highlighted, this is
the old Builders Square which is now Home Depot, where those 10.8s occur at
which are furthest away from the building.
They are basically out in the big parking lot area. If there is going to be flooding, they want
it further away from the buildings. When
the Walgreens site, which is now Borders Books, was developed that site was
actually developed with the low elevations on the parking lot being higher than
what was out in the middle of the parking lot for the Builders Square; 11.8 was
your minimal catch basin there.
We have actually taken the original
Borders building, which was .6 acres. We
reduced it to .3 acres to fit the Walgreens in.
We have increased the pervious area.
We provided for a small dry retention area. The drainage system as it exists there today
stays totally in tact. We have not
touched any of it at all. I would like
to point out also under the master permit for this parcel; 554 feet of trench
were to be provided on this parcel. We
actually provided 749 feet. So what
exists out there today is approximately 200 feet more than what was part of the
master permit. We have gone through the
calculations and by the reduction of the building as well as the creation of
the dry retention area; we are actually providing more storage on this site
than what exists today.
When you look at the overall
calculations for the shopping center there is a calculation for what is
required and what is provided. What was
required under the permit for the 100 year storm was 24.44 acre feet and what
was provided was 24.77 acre feet. We are
providing a couple of tenths more of acre feet and storage by the reduction of
the building and including the dry retention area. I am here in front of you today to have this
site approved as is today. I do not know
if you noticed, but the building has actually been demolished and they are on
hold with doing any work out there until we get your permit. They have relocated a couple of trees, but
that is as far as they have gone.
Mr. Fennell asked who actually owns this
particular site.
Mr. Gai responded Walgreens does not
own it yet. It would have been in the
application. I cannot remember at this
time.
Mr. Fennell stated there is a whole
section there.
Mr. Gai stated it is one owner for
this 2.7 acre parcel. The shopping
center is a different owner. It is all
under one master permit and there is an outfall for this parcel to the shopping
center’s drainage system in this area.
This ties in, then outfalls and goes back to the L-105 that is on the
west side of the Home Depot.
Mr. Fennell asked how does this work
now? Originally the tract was the whole
thing. It was permitted that way. Now we have separate chunks of it being
bought out. Who actually retains
responsibility for the permit at that point?
Do we now have new permittees?
How does that work? Do you know
what my question is?
Mr. Hanks responded I understand as
far as who is responsible for maintaining the system. Is that what you are saying?
Mr. Gai responded we are responsible
for maintaining ours.
Mr. Fennell stated it got divided up
into different parcels.
Mr. Gai stated there are actually
four parcels on this site. We are
responsible for everything on our site.
The shopping center is responsible for maintaining everything on their
site. That is the way it works.
Mr. Fennell stated but there are
four different people now as opposed to one when it started up.
Mr. Hanks asked was the original
permit set up with the intention of having outparcels?
Mr. Gai responded yes it was. The original permit lists four outparcels.
Mr. Hanks stated which is what is
out there presently.
Mr. Fennell asked so who is
responsible?
Mr. Lyles responded the permittee. The responsibility goes with the permit.
Mr. Gai stated all the drainage
which is on our site we must maintain and we do that.
Mr. Hanks stated for clarification,
when you say ‘we’, you do not meaning Sun-Tech.
Do you mean Walgreens or the applicant?
Mr. Gai responded that is correct.
Ms. Early stated GS Atlantic
Properties.
Mr. Gai stated that is who it is.
Mr. Hanks stated there are a couple
of questions or concerns I have. In the
past year or two we have done some stormwater modeling for both basins trying
to establish whether or not we have adequate capacity in the system,
redundancy, and etcetera. One item which
was noted is that in certain areas of the District they are falling a little
bit shy on the amount of storage provided; one of those being the east basin
which this project is located in.
Mr. Fennell asked is that the east
basin or west basin?
Mr. Hanks responded east basin. The predicted 100 year storm, Ms. Early
please correct me if I am wrong, is 11.8 out there in that location. So when you say you are increasing the
storage out there, it is increasing it above the 100 year flood. My colleagues here on the Board are going to
see water in the living rooms already, but instead of coming up halfway to the
wall it is going to come up six inches.
Mr. Gai stated when I said increase
storage I took what the site stores at the 100 year elevation of 11.8. From the pre versus post; the pre condition
stores .35 acre feet and the post condition stores .51 acre feet at the 100
year. What you have to remember is we
are a small portion of the overall shopping center. It might have worked out where this was built
up high on purpose because we are also the furthest away from the outfall to
the canal.
Mr. Hanks stated you are sandwiched
between Atlantic Boulevard and University Drive, which is higher.
Mr. Gai stated we have a couple of
roads which are up really high. The road
that is in the shopping center to the west of us is actually up around
12.4. It is up pretty high too.
Mr. Hanks asked I am just wondering;
was the original Builders Square site designed to have the outparcels at an
increased elevation or was it intended that those comply with the grading
assumption, which was pavement from 10.8 to 13?
Mr. Gai responded I looked for all
the calculations for what they wanted for the outfalls. I looked for the outparcels and could not
find anything. I did find that if you
look at the original permit, the site was actually mass filled to 11.8. They actually mass filled it to 11.8, which
is at the 100 year flood. There are some
elevations proposed at 12.3 on it. My
thinking is they realized this was the very end of the system and they had to
get a little more ahead to get to the water out to the canals so that is why it
was built up a little bit higher. I can
only go by what the original design of the Border’s Books was, which shows it
at 11.8.
Mr. Hanks asked have you modeled the
entire system to see if those assumptions are right?
Mr. Gai responded I have not done
the entire shopping center.
Mr. Hanks stated alright, because we
have the calculations.
Mr. Gai stated yes. Actually I was looking at that here and
really all they are saying for meeting your criteria is that they are given
what is required and what is proposed. It
looks like the majority is stored in the trench and then what I can do is take
that and simply add on the additional. I
have to believe when you are doing your grading assumptions you might have 10
out of 40 catch basins and 10.80. We
also have some higher ones, which are up at 11.8 behind the shopping center
too. You basically say your grading
starts from 10.80 and goes up to 13, which is simply 6 inches below your
finished floor. Basically all its saying
is grading assumption is 10.80 to 13.
They have 37 acres and for land use breakdown they have ‘x’ amount of
square feet of pavement. So we do fall
within the 10.80 to 13 with our 11.80.
We fit within the grading parameters.
There is nothing which says we have to be at 10.80. It just says the site as a whole is at 10.80,
which are the lowest points in the existing parking lot.
Mr. Hanks stated I am just concerned
that for the storm events, between the 10 year and 100 year storm event, your
site as a stand alone outparcel does not provide certain storage. It is relying on locations elsewhere within
the District to provide it.
Mr. Gai stated it is relying on the
rest of the shopping center to provide it.
You have to remember it was a 37 acre project and we are a very small
portion of that 37 acre; so yes, some of the storage that might be required for
this outparcel is relied upon on in the shopping center, but it was originally
permitted that way and build. The
Borders was designed with catch basins at 11.8.
We reduced those a little bit down to 11.6.
Mr. Hanks asked was Borders
permitted?
Mr. Gai responded it was done by Gee
& Jenson. I do not know. I did not look to see if there was a permit
for it or anything like that. We just
got the as built from the city, certification and that was it.
Mr. Fennell asked as far as what I
can see from CH2M Hill, do you guys approve this?
Ms. Early responded we were doing
the pre versus post just like he was saying.
What Mr. Hanks’ concern is if you take this parcel as a stand alone, it
does not meet our current criteria. We
were taking the same consideration that he is included in the total site. As he is saying the storage was for the
entire site and not just for his alone.
Mr. Fennell stated and is his point
is he has not done anything worse; in fact he has made it slightly better.
Ms. Early stated exactly. If we had to do it by itself as a stand alone
project, it will not meet our current criteria.
He is improving what he had before.
The overall site improves and does meet the permit as it was submitted.
Mr. Hanks stated we are talking two
acres out of 37.
Mr. Fennell stated I think we should
go with it.
Mr. Hanks stated I really want to
nail down and firm up our requirements and what is actually out there in terms
of storage that is provided. I am not
real comfortable on continuing, at least not in the phase stage and look at
this individual parcel, and this is where I am having discussion back with CH2M
Hill. We really need to come back with a
mechanism by where we have established if our outparcels are treated as part of
a whole. How is that whole thing set up? If this was not an outparcel and it was like
the Coral Springs Animal Hospital, a complete tear down, at that point that
makes all of the criteria for completely bringing it into new compliance. If you were in Broward County and did a
complete tear down, you would be looking for a new permit.
Mr. Gai stated they would have let
me go pre/post. We do it many times and
for redevelopment they let you go pre/post.
They absolutely do that and they do it many times.
Mr. Early stated this may be a legal
question, I do not know. When this
entire site was originally permitted as one permit, including those outparcels,
can we go back and say it has to be a stand alone?
Mr. Lyles responded I do not want to
muddy the water anymore, but I am not comfortable answering that question in
real time with this thing coming up at this presentation today. I have heard two separate things. I heard one master development plan, but I
thought I also heard separate permits for the outparcels at some point in the
discussions.
Ms. Early stated no. There was one master permit, which included
the outparcels. Now they are doing some
modifications and one of the requirements from the city is that they come to
us.
Mr. Fennell asked so who is the
permit holder?
Ms. Early responded there was an
original permit holder for the entire master drainage system. Now they are selling outparcels to new developers. They come in for a new permit. They, GS Atlantic Properties, are going to
have a permit just for their drainage.
They have to maintain the drainage on their particular two acres.
Mr. Fennell asked does a permit
exist now?
Ms. Early responded as he is
requesting it.
Mr. Fennell stated so basically it
was a bigger parcel and now we have a smaller parcel. Now that it has been divided up and resold we
are coming in from a separate permit for a smaller area.
Mr. Gai stated that is right. We actually looked at what it would take to
meet the District criteria. We would
have to take the finished floors and the parking lots down about a foot and a
half to make it work. If we did that, we
would be the lowest thing out there.
Because we are tied into the outfall we would flood way before anybody
else would because we would be the lowest one out there. This is why the pre and post made the most
sense. We are making it better.
Mr. Fennell asked in order to sink
the water?
Mr. Hanks responded to provide the
storage. I am not sure. You would have to lower the parking lot.
Mr. Gai stated because of ADA and
everything, when the parking lot goes down, the building has got to go
down. The biggest problem is with your elevation
being at 11.8 your basins are at 11.8 so all of your storage takes place in the
trench and in the dry retention areas and green areas. So what you have to do is lower the building,
lower the parking lot and now we become the catch basin of the whole shopping
center because we are lower than anyone else.
This is why when it was done as a master permit.
Ms. Early stated currently some of
his storage might be somewhere else within…
Mr. Hanks stated might be. That is the key. It is not definitive.
Ms. Early stated all we can go by is
that it was permitted by SFWMD. It met
the criteria for that entire site. If it
rained just on his building and not anywhere else on that site, than you might
be able to tell something.
Mr. Hanks stated understood, but
just this last weekend Hallandale and Pembroke Park got either the 100 year
storm or pretty close to it. They had
some serious issues down there. We did
not get that here. What would happen
here in Coral Springs? That is my
question. I am just not at that comfort
level that we are providing the right amount of storage out here. We have a permit. We have a permit criteria manual, which was certainly
in effect in 1992. I am just asking a
simple clarification and this would be an engineering statement. Does the Builders Square or Home Depot
shopping center as it is now provide for the storage that is not being provided
for on the new Walgreens?
Mr. Gai responded I would have to
say to meet the 11.8 criteria that yes a portion of the storage requirement of
Walgreens is provided within the whole 37 acres. Everybody shares storage there. The trench that we have is shared by the
Builders Square. It has all interconnected. We have one common system.
Ms. Early stated obviously none of
us ran these calculations for this entire site.
As an example, in NSID there are parcels that do not meet the stand
alone permit because it has been provided offsite within the District. That is what he is saying. His parcel is provided within that overall
development.
Mr. Hanks stated but if you were
saying, “okay we do not have to provide that 17.5% water body requirement for
NSID because this place here has built it for us,” you would want to see some
documentation that it was indeed allocated right to that part.
Ms. Early stated which we have. I understand your question. We just do not know if this whole site works.
Mr. Hanks stated and this is not an
animal hospital because the animal hospital did not tear down the
building. The animal hospital gutted it. Here we have gone ahead and taken down the
whole thing.
Mr. Gai stated under these
calculations in 1992 the whole site does work.
Our parcel is included in these calculations.
Ms. Early stated I think what Mr.
Hanks is asking is if it still works with your changes.
Mr. Gai stated it is better. We are enhancing it.
Mr. Hanks stated well we have to get
this off the dime. I trust you
understand we are trying to figure out what the best way to approach this.
Mr. Fennell stated the problem is
when you start putting more distribution over a wider area, some are going to
stay over here and there is going to be a parking lot in the center, which is
all cemented over and if you suddenly go and decide to take a chunk of that
parking lot and try to apply criteria of that parking lot, it is going to
fail. Obviously there is a limit to the
logic we have here about this thing.
Mr. Hanks stated you cannot zoom in
because at some point you are going to get so close in that is going to…
Mr. Gai stated you could take every
little acre, try to do it on the 37 acres and some will work and some do
not.
Mr. Fennell stated the problem we have
is we have divided up the ownership of this thing. Even though we have different owners coming
in, the fact is the different owners are dependent upon each other for water
storage and water usage. This is a more
complicated thing than an individual permit.
Mr. Lyles stated and to make it a
little more complicated as I listen to this discussion, from my point of view a
missing piece is what sort of cross easements or obligations do the now
separate owners have to one another to insure you are all providing, if there
is a master permit, that is one thing.
If part of it fails, it all fails, but now we are having separate
permits and I do not know that we have any sort of interdependent rights among
the owners.
Mr. Gai stated the specific and
general conditions of the permit are pretty standard for all permits and they
kind of address that; where everyone is responsible for their own. You have to have the five year renewals and
all of this type of stuff. If they want
to rip off a part of the parking lot and redo the drainage, they have to come
to you for a permit and you would be asking the same thing. How does it affect the whole?
Mr. Hanks stated right now they have
a permitted route of discharge so they have legal positive outfall under the
present scenario because it was permitted through the SFWMD. If Home Depot, or whoever the ownership is of
the master system, was to decide to change things, they would have to either
provide an equivalent means of connection or it would be a civil matter between
your client and them.
Mr. Lyles stated so we need to make
sure that a new permit, if it is authorized, specifically incorporates and
references the underlying SFWMD permit and if any part of it goes down, it all
goes down. They have to make sure they stay
in compliance on a 37 acre basis.
Mr. Gai stated that is not a permit,
but just to let you know the permit runs with the land. All SFWMD permits run with the land so it
does not matter if I buy it or someone else buys it, the permit is still running
with the land. We have no problem if you
want to make that a condition.
Mr. Lyles stated my perception is we
are in a little bit of an interim period where we are reevaluating whether we
need another mechanism, what the criteria are and how we are going to do this
going forward since we are almost totally built out and in a redevelopment
stage. We ought to have some asterisk in
this particular transaction indicating it is linked totally, legally, to the
underlying SFWMD permit. What we have
before us is a little outparcel and not the whole permittee. I am concerned about setting a precedent with
a decision on this one that will come back to haunt us.
Mr. Hanks asked is there an issue
between us and SFWMD in that it was a 37 acre and are we able to review off
that…
Mr. Gai stated 40 acres.
Mr. Hanks stated but still, SFWMD
issued the original permit and for whatever reason did the Board at the time
here in 1992 say it is 30 somewhat acres?
Mr. Gai responded the only reason it
originally went to SFWMD was because there were wetlands on the site. It would have never gone to SFWMD if it were
not for that.
Mr. Hanks stated okay.
Mr. Gai stated strictly because of
the wetlands.
Mr. Lyles stated that certainly
makes sense.
Mr. Hanks stated you have done your
homework.
Mr. Fennell stated there is a big
issue I do not think we are going to resolve with this particular issue. He has not caused any harm. The real issue would be if someone else in
another parcel, which actually does have storage, comes and says they have more
storage than they need and they want to pave it over. The longer term is how do we inter tie those
parcels?
Mr. Hanks stated right. Not only that, but how do we take a look at
what the criteria are to help address some of these ongoing issues which have
occurred? Because of advances in the
modeling we are now realizing that the original model in 1977 did not quite
capture all of the intricacies. I will
make a motion to approve the Walgreens permit, with reservations.
Mr. Fennell stated I do not know if
that is actually a motion. I will assume
that is a side comment.
Mr. Hanks stated that is a side
comment.
On MOTION by Mr. Hanks seconded
by Mr. Fennell with all in favor the surface water permit for the Walgreens to
be located at the northwest corner of University Drive and Atlantic Boulevard
was approved.
Mr. Gai stated thank you very
much. I appreciate it.
Mr. Fennell stated I think we do
need direction here to staff. I am not
even sure how we will do this. We obviously
have these issues where lands get redeveloped, but were originally permitted in
larger sections where some of the property was meant to hold it and other
permits did, but when parts get sold which would not pass the criteria, how do
we manage that?
Mr. Cassel responded sub-permits to
the master permit.
Mr. Fennell stated I guess that is a
legal question too. Can they manage it
if people break it up into 40 little acres?
Mr. Lyles responded the short answer
is yes. We have that power under our special
act to regulate buildings and activities that tie into our drainage
system. The “can we” is an easy
yes. How we do it is the hard part. It gets kicked backed to an engineering heavy
lifting job more than a legal one. The
criteria and the goals need to be sound and reasonable. I think you have enough of a record
indicating that you have identified there is a potential flooding problem and
the need to look at it in a different way in a built out and now redeveloping
District. Staff needs to, if nothing
else, come up with what the issues are, get them in front of the Board and get
some further direction. What you might
even consider doing is; you just approved this one, the good news is now it is
academic. Maybe this is your case
study. Take this existing parcel, the 37
acres and 2 acre outparcel, what can go wrong, how do we figure out how to stop
it from going wrong or have measures in place.
Mr. Hanks stated identify the issues
associated with this one and go back and take a look at the animal hospital to
see the concerns we have there and figure out how we are going to address this
to be in compliance with the existing permit criteria manual and then how do we
improve the permit criteria manual to help address some of these ongoing
concerns we have.
Ms. Early stated I think one of the
big problems is they keep coming in saying it is not feasible financially. Like he said, for him to meet the criteria
for that to stand alone he would have to lower the building and lower the
parking lot.
Mr. Fennell stated if he is a foot
and a half below everyone else around him, he will flood in a five inch rain.
Ms. Zich stated we do not want him
to be below that.
Mr. Hanks stated there are other
mechanisms we can go ahead and do. In
1977, 1978 or 1979, Tamarac had some serious flooding problems. They went ahead and provided additional canal
and lake excavations to provide storage.
It was available to some of these businesses along University Drive.
Ms. Early stated that was one of the
things we talked about; trying to get some money somehow.
Mr. Hanks stated it comes down to
money.
Ms. Early stated maybe we can put
something into these permits where they have to pay into some fund. We looked at widening some of the canals.
Mr. Hanks stated let us bring this
back in. Let us go ahead and create this
concern list that we have. Let us try to
figure out what the easy things are that we can address, what is going to take
more of an effort and prioritize them.
Ms. Early stated and we have to get
the city involved because in some instances the city does not make them come
back to us for a permit. It depends on
what they are doing.
Mr. Fennell stated I think what we
are really talking about here is a water drainage impact; not just on your own
area, but on the affected area around you.
Ms. Early stated that is correct.
Mr. Fennell stated that is what I
think is missing. He came in here and
defined what his own job was, but what he did not do was say what the impact
was on the area he is defined in. That
is what he had to do, or we had to do.
Mr. Hanks stated the other side of
it is we have areas of the city that are providing extra storage. If someone was to come in and build it right
up to the requirements, that would have the same impact as to someone not.
Mr. Fennell asked and right now they
can do that, right? Because we kind of
have it on a piecemeal type basis as opposed to the greater good basis. We have to change that.
Mr. Lyles asked do we?
Mr. Fennell responded yes.
Mr. Lyles stated I thought it was
all a system.
Mr. Fennell stated the problem is if
you divide the system down enough that it is all exactly the same…
Mr. Lyles stated everything maxes
out.
Mr. Fennell stated that is
right. You could not put in a
driveway. Your driveway would be illegal
because it has no drainage. There is a
point where there is a greater understanding probably above and beyond your own
property limits of how the thing works.
Ms. Early stated we just had a
homeowner in NSID that wanted to increase their pool deck and the City of
Parkland came back to them saying they needed to get an engineer’s okay that
the basin will still provide enough storage for that one house. That is what she had to do because it was
more than the 40% of what their maximum is in Parkland.
Mr. Fennell asked so what is the
reasonable thing to do when you come in here?
Should he have looked at the whole 40 acres?
Mr. Hanks responded yes.
Ms. Early stated yes and that is a
good point Mr. Hanks brought up. What he
is saying is he has the original calculations, which show it does work. He feels he is improving it.
Mr. Hanks stated there are a lot of
ways to run calculations.
Ms. Early stated but he can look at
it in an overall again.
Mr. Fennell stated you are saying he
should look at the whole section. If
that is really true, then we need to have that in our permit; you have to look
at a certain area and show that you are not affecting the overall good of the
area.
Ms. Early stated we can add that
they are part of a master permit.
Mr. Lyles stated that was the
asterisk I was talking about where whatever you are getting permitted has to be
within the overall.
Ms. Early stated we can require them
to re-run the master calculations again for the entire site. That is what we should do.
Mr. Cassel stated this is basically
a sub-permit. They are asking for a
sub-permit of a master permit.
Mr. Hanks stated we are providing
them with an approval for a portion of a previously approved SFWMD permit.
Mr. Fennell stated in this case it
was nicely laid out.
Ms. Early stated if they would have
gone to SFWMD, they probably would have just given them a permit. You would have just done a permit
modification with them.
Mr. Fennell stated the reality is we
are charged with looking at the overall drainage and each one has an affect on
somebody else around them. We need this
connection and I am not exactly sure how to word it, but you are not actually
alone. You are not an isolated little
drainage district by yourself. You affect
the overall group. I am not sure how
big. You were quick with the 40 acre
answer. Should it have been 80 acres
around it? What about people across the
street? How big of an area do you have
to look at?
Mr. Hanks responded you have to take
a look at what your previous permit was.
Ms. Early hit it on the head. You
need to go ahead and remodel the original permit area and demonstrate that your
modifications are affecting it or improving it overall. Here we have an additional challenge in that
the original calculations supposedly cover all of it; including the four
outparcels which are now built, but we do not have records of.
Mr. Fennell asked so what is the
action item here?
Mr. Hanks responded I think the
action item would be with staff to come back with a laundry list of concerns
and issues.
Mr. Fennell stated I think the
wording we are looking for is how to look at, when somebody comes in and they
are going to affect properties other than their own or the potential for
drainage, what is the right wording to have.
It will probably have to be approved by the Board. I think this is a good thing we are
doing.
Mr. Lyles stated the start is the
case study we have in our hands where we have an overall permit and we are
dealing with a two acre outparcel. It is
a full order of magnitude beyond that to resolve your problem. Let us assume there are a lot of separate
permits. How do we measure the impact on
all the surrounding permittees and can we put new requirements on the property
before you?
Mr. Hanks responded I would say that
is not going to be something we are going take as a District. If we take that on, we would need to be the
modelers for the area and assign sub-basin criteria that would need to be met;
for instance, to address the elevated 100 year predicted flood stages in the
northeast corner of this District.
Mr. Fennell asked we are the ones
responsible, right?
Mr. Hanks responded but we could go
ahead and assign additional criteria.
Mr. Fennell stated actually we do
have it modeled to a certain extent because we have the canal model.
Ms. Early stated but not down to
that one parcel. Like Mr. Hanks is
saying, I think we need to put it on the property owner.
Mr. Fennell asked how are they going
to model it?
Mr. Hanks responded the first thing
we have to do is tackle these commercial outparcels along University
Drive. They are the ones who have the
capability, when it comes time to redevelop, to become more compliant with the
criteria or to provide a bigger bang for the buck.
Ms. Early stated or to just provide
calculations at all. Some of them do
not.
Mr. Hanks stated the residential
properties have very little accumulative impact. That can be much larger, but you also do not
have the mechanism to address it there on that specific site.
Mr. Fennell stated you are probably
right. The commercials are probably more
operable. They probably have a greater
coverage area. Most of the houses are
not covering more than 25% of the area anyway.
The commercial areas are pretty close to 75% from what I can see. They are the ones that are going to flood the
main road there.
Mr. Hanks stated this parcel here
would equate to, you figure on a quarter acre lot and this is round numbers 40
acres, this is 160 homes. Are you going
to have 160 homes making those modifications in that same time period?
Mr. Fennell responded no.
Mr. Hanks stated I need to move
things along.
Mr. Fennell asked okay so staff is
going to report back to us when on this with a recommendation?
Mr. Daly responded Mr. Cassel and I
will have to get together and talk with the engineers?
Mr. Cassel stated probably February.
Mr. Fennell stated it sounds like
February is the right timeframe, but I think it was a very good thing that came
out here. We have really missed in the
permitting process how you affect the overall question.
Mr. Hanks stated well we are getting
better on it so let us just keep heading in the right direction.
Ms. Early stated I guess the next
thing is the I&I report.
Mr. Fennell stated yes. Let us go quickly.
Mr. Schwarz asked do you want to go
on to the next item while I load it up so you do not waste time?
Mr. Cassel responded we will give
you some good news while Mr. Schwarz is loading up. Mr. Bulman, I am going to put you on the spot. You can report on our meeting that we had
this week with SFWMD. I think we had a
positive meeting.
Mr. Bulman stated yes, it was
extremely positive. NSID, CSID and the
City of Coral Springs met at the SFWMD to discuss the water use permits for all
the entities. SWCD was also
present. Essentially we had about 25
people in the room.
Mr. Cassel stated yes. Everybody was there.
Mr. Bulman stated we were all ready
to get into the details. No one is
expecting to get a full surficial allocation right now. In this regulatory environment they are all
being restricted and as you know we are all being forced to alternative water
supplies. Essentially they said it all
boils down to SWCD. If they agree to go
back to their base conditions, not to what they were previously permitted, but
to their base conditions, which has to do with how much water they have been
taking from original water lines. If
they reduce their requests, then all the other permits can go through fairly
easily.
Mr. Fennell asked can they do that?
Mr. Bulman responded they did. They discussed it the day before. They came to the meeting prepared. They had their engineer, IBI Group, there and
they agreed on the spot that they would do that. They said all the other applicants will move
forward. There are individual items to
address in each one; for example, determining there are not wetland impacts,
which we did the walkthrough and evaluation for last month. There was no hydrology being impacted in
wetlands in the area. The City of Coral
Springs has to monitor one wetland. The
remaining item for CSID is looking at water conservation.
Mr. Fennell asked which we have put
some money aside to go look at, right?
Mr. Cassel responded for this we
just have to draft up a water conservation plan and submit it back to
them. What we are going to do is use
some of the information which was provided from SFWMD as a format for us to
also tie into what the City of Coral Springs requires as water conservation
because we do not have the codification issues to make somebody change their
toilets or use low flow and etcetera. So
we are going to use some of the information from the City of Coral Springs’
Building Department; their requirements for water conservation issues and
reference those in our conservation plan to present it back to SFWMD. It looks really good that soon we should have
our water use permit with the allocation we requested along with NSID and the
City of Coral Springs which will probably get theirs with out having to go to
Florida. It is a good thing for us.
Mr. Fennell stated yes it is. Can we keep building on this in certain ways?
Mr. Cassel responded this originally
comes back to the Board’s direction to try to work together. We came in with the modeling with all three
entities doing the groundwater modeling because everybody was going through
water use permits at the same time. I
think it gave SFWMD a confidence level that the model did account for impacts
on the other wells, the other districts and the canals that surround them. It was a more regional approach, which I
think gave them a better comfort level.
The only think I think upset it a little bit was when SWCD came in
asking for more water to be withdrawn into the canal system. They were going to try to maintain their
canals higher to help the well system.
That kind of tipped it and made SFWMD get a little queasy until SWCD
said they would leave it where it is.
The model worked and SFWMD was happy with the model. That is where we are. At the same time they do not care how we
maintain the water within our districts between each other in the canals. If we have interconnections and we maintain
our levels, they just do not want SWCD bringing water out of the C-14. If we have extra water, whether it is CSID, NSID
or the City of Coral Springs, it can flow into SWCD’s canals. They do not care how we maintain our water
levels as long as they are not taking it out of the C-14. Those are future potential opportunities to
look at again in coordination with all three districts.
Mr. Fennell stated you are saying
there is an interconnection in the canal systems.
Mr. Cassel stated that is a
potential.
Mr. Fennell stated I think that can
make a lot of sense. I remember at one
time nobody wanted 1 Billion gallons of water, even we had it.
Mr. Cassel stated you could not give
it to anybody.
Ms. Early stated that was one of the
things I wanted to bring up; The Memorandum of Understanding that was signed
and approved. Last week we actually
pumped south from the L-36 for NSID.
NSID coordinated with CSID. CSID
was not pumping so NSID was able to pump.
NSID got a lot of rain and CSID did not.
We actually pumped south rather than pumping a lot of it out to
tide.
Mr. Fennell stated the Memorandum of
Understanding is actually working and coordination is up and running. Reaction to that is positive; first off from
a political standpoint. Now you are not
talking about 40,000 people. We must be
talking about 180,000 or 200,000 people by the time you get through all three
of those districts. You are talking
about Parkland, Coral Springs, us. You
are now talking about a significant amount of people which is a significant
political issue, especially if you could get a few more groups around us.
Mr. Cassel stated they do not have
to put the pieces together and see how they plug. We gave them all the interconnections and how
each one impacts the other one. They can
read it. They looked at their
model. They had three different
modelers. Each district has its own
‘modeler’ or permit reviewer. They
looked at it to go through it. Each one
of them had different perspectives they were coming from and they all ended up
being satisfied with the end results, which is a good thing.
Mr. Fennell stated thank you very
much. That was good news. We do not actually have it yet, but it looks
good.
Mr. Schwarz stated I do not
necessarily have good news, but maybe not bad news either. We will see how it goes. First I would like to discuss the project
scope of what we were doing. Do you have
an I&I problem in the CSID system?
This is a summary of what we found in the condition of the sewer
collection system or the impacts for you, how
much it will cost to fix and recommendations for additional testing and
what to do going forward.
The project scope was to review
existing data, system maps, rainfall data, pump station operations, your flow
data from your water plant and your wastewater plant, estimate the potential
I&I contribution to the flows at the wastewater treatment plant, evaluate
the collection system physical condition based on information provided by the
staff and also the order of magnitude cost estimate for the rehabilitation of
the system. When I say system, in this
case we really looked specifically at pump station basins one, two, three,
four, five and eight. Then we give you
some idea of what additional testing we might need depending on what you
determine the direction will be.
I&I is a problem. You suspected it was a problem. You assigned us these basins to take a look
at because you knew there were extensive flows at the wastewater treatment
plant; particularly after rainfall events.
Looking at the system wide base loads and what happens after rainfall
events, not only these six basins we looked at, but overall CSID collection
system, about 25% of your base flow on a constant day to day basis is
groundwater I&I. You are treating
25% groundwater every day. That is
roughly .7 MGD, which is 25% of your flow.
During rainfall events, system wide again, you approach 70% of your
permitted capacity.
If you look at just the study area
we looked at here, we were able to take some pump station run time data that we
were provided, it looks like some of the stations are close to five times what
they normally contribute after rainfall events.
Base flows are two times what they would be expected to contribute if
you estimated the wastewater flows that would come out of a residential
area. Pump station basins one through
five and eight are about double what you see in a system wide basis. They are contributing more than their share
to the overall system. There may be
worse than these basins that we looked at.
These are about double.
You have seen this graph before. It is rainfall events; water treatment plant
flow and wastewater treatment plant flow.
Wastewater treatment plant flow is almost always above what you are
generating in terms of water. It gets
pretty close during the dry season in February, but still we should be below
that; 75% to 80% of the water plant should be getting returned as
wastewater. We are still seeing a base
flow.
Mr. Hanks asked is that different
whether you are inland community or whether you are on the coast? Does it make a difference? In Pompano you are going to have more people irrigating
potable water than you will out here because you have the availability of
groundwater and you have the availability of the canal. Does it make a difference or is it still kind
of right along that same percentage?
Mr. Schwarz responded it seems to be
about the same.
Mr. Hanks stated okay.
Mr. Schwarz stated even in Key West
where they do not irrigate at all we still see similar numbers.
Mr. Fennell asked where is 20% of
the water going?
Mr. Cassel responded human consumption.
Mr. Fennell asked really?
Mr. Hanks responded pools, car
washes, not returned to the wastewater system.
Mr. Fennell stated I guess it
actually makes some sense. People must
be doing something.
Mr. Schwarz stated in just the six
basins we looked at the worst basin is basin number one. I do not know if maybe that is the oldest and
that is why it is number one. It is
almost 500% above what you would expect the wastewater flows to be generated
from that area. The best one in this
area was number five. It is really only
about a 200% increase. The other five
basins are all in the same range; 2.5%, 300%, up to almost 500%.
The good news is your manholes seem
to be in pretty good shape. The ones we
were able to observe in each one of the basins and based on staff reports, they
seem to all be pre-cast concrete. There
are no known problems with them. There
may be some leakage in the joints that we would have to look at when you do
your survey, but for the most part the manholes seem to be in good shape. That is good news for you guys because a lot
of systems this age have brick manholes.
They would be a lot more of a problem to restore and you would probably
see a lot more I&I. These are in
good shape or appear to be.
The bad news is the pipes are in bad
shape. They are all VCP, vitrified clay
pipes. They are about 35 years old. The thing that is most troubling to me is the
report that when they do repairs or they dig up some of this pipe, it
crumbles. Clay pipe is pretty
stable. It is an inert material. It gets damaged because it has no
reinforcement. It is pretty
brittle. The fact that it crumbles or is
somehow destabilized in your ground situation is to me a big problem. It needs to be investigated further.
Mr. Fennell stated okay. Do that.
You are right. That stuff should
last 1,000 years.
Mr. Schwarz stated it should last 20
Million years or however old people are.
There are clay jars being dug up everywhere.
Mr. Hanks stated that observation is
consistent with my observations on sewer connections that we have done
elsewhere in Coral Springs. The clay
pipe is extremely brittle and when you try to cut it, it falls apart.
Mr. Schwarz stated I have seen it in
brown waters, which I do not think we have out here. It surprised me to see that observation.
Mr. Fennell stated the pipes were
not cured.
Mr. Schwarz stated that is a good
possibility. What I would like to see
and what I think you would like to see is how pervasive this is throughout the
basin or whether this is just observations where it happens to break and those
are the worst cases. Another observation
from the data indicates the response to a rainfall event is very quick. That suggests that you have got connections
directly into the sewer system from some source; some collection system and/or
cross connections between stormwater systems and the sanitary system. Also, it stays up there so it means there are
two components. There is the inflow
component where stormwater systems may be connected directly into the system
and as the groundwater elevates the I&I stays up there until the
groundwater goes down. You have two
components. You have leaky pipes and
potential connections into the system. What
we do not have a good handle on, and when I say ‘we’ I mean you and us, are the
condition of the laterals in the system up to the service connection.
Mr.
Hanks asked do we know if the laterals are PVC or if they are clay as well?
Mr. Schwarz responded if the main
sewer lines are VCP, there is a good chance they are VCP up to the property
line where the service connections were made.
As the area developed the pipe may have changed. We probably have clay pipe coming up the
riser and across the street to the property line.
Mr. Cassel asked Mr. Daly, did staff
indicate it was PVC to the ‘Y’?
Mr. Daly responded yes, to the ‘Y’.
Mr. Schwarz stated there is a ‘Y’ at
the main, which is most likely clay pipe coming up until it gets somewhere in
the vicinity of the property line and then it is probably a cleanout ‘T’ or a
cleanout ‘Y’. That may be where it
transitions.
Mr. Fennell asked is there any
chance it is just the lift stations and they just have a crack in the wall and
there is a lot of water leaking in?
Mr. Schwarz responded I did not even
bother to talk about them. It is in the
report. Your lift stations are in very
good shape. I am sorry, but that is good
too.
Mr. Fennell stated it is good, but
it would have been a simpler fix.
Mr. Schwarz asked so what are the
impacts? It is fairly simple to come up
with some numbers. Electricity at just
these pump stations is $30,000 a year in extra pumping costs. When we get to the cost of rehabilitation it
is not a big number, but in these times it is something worth considering.
Mr. Fennell asked is it $30,000 for
all five of those?
Mr. Schwarz responded all six of
those stations on a yearly basis. When
you talk about “being green” and conserving things, that is wasted energy.
Mr. Fennell stated over ten years
that is $300,000.
Mr. Schwarz stated save that number
in the back of your head for a few minutes.
Current wastewater treatment costs you do not really monitor
separately. It is something we could
break out a little further if we got a lot of additional information, but
during rainfall periods you are treating four times as much wastewater as you
normally would. There are some costs
associated with electric and treatment processes, chemicals.
Mr. Fennell asked are we saying four
times?
Mr. Schwarz responded during peak
rainfall.
Mr. Hanks stated four times our base
load.
Mr. Fennell stated I thought we were
up 70% so that was why I was a little taken.
Mr. Schwarz stated again, let us
hold that number for a few seconds.
There is also a value to the treatment capacity. If you go back to what I said before, you
have about .7 MGD on a regular basis peaking.
During rainfall events there is 2.5 to 3 MGD extra from the rainfall and
derived I&I. Wastewater treatment,
the value of that to you is about $10 Million per Million gallons a day. So .7 MGD on a regular basis is $7 Million
worth of capacity that you are not using or you do not have available for other
use. That is just the value of that
wasted capacity.
You got surcharge conditions in the
manholes. When we looked at the
manholes, again, structurally they are in good shape, but they show evidence
that they are surcharged. This means the
sewers are backed up. The sewers are
full. They are running under a pressure
condition. If that head gets backed up
far enough you have blockages at service connections. The velocities are decreased and clogs can develop. That is a service call. So surcharge conditions in the sewers is not
necessarily a good thing; especially if you have back ups. If a VCP pipe has degraded, the potential
exists for collapses and failures. If a
pipe has no strength at all, any work in the area even under undisturbed
conditions you have potential for pipe failure.
Finally, what is the value to you as
a District of continued reliable operation of the collection system? It just talks about intangibles like loss of
service, environmental impacts, public image, regulatory compliance and
property damage; anything that can occur if you have a sewer back up or an
overflow.
Mr. Fennell asked the next time we
go out and look at one of these pipes which need to be repaired, can we bring
back samples? We can send them to a lab
and have them analyzed. They can look at
it a lot of different ways. We can
actually find out whether or not the pipe is good or bad and why it is that
way.
Mr. Cassel responded we will notify
the field crew.
Mr. Fennell stated we can bring in
one of these samples and we will get enough sooner or later to find out if it
is a significant problem. You probably
know of labs. You guys probably ran them
yourself back in college when you were doing all kinds of tests.
Mr. Schwarz stated I do not think I
have ever taken clay pipe and had anyone analyze it.
Mr. Fennell stated it is doing
something it obviously should not be doing.
We all know how a clay pipe should operate.
Mr. Schwarz stated another
possibility is your attending to a failure that has been damaged for some
reason. The clay pipe needs to be
coherent to be strong and if you break a piece out, it does not have anymore
strength.
Mr. Fennell stated when you said it
was crumbling that is different than cracking.
Mr. Schwarz stated I agree.
Mr. Fennell stated so there is a
molecular reason.
Mr. Schwarz stated but again, I have
not seen the pieces removed. That is the
way it could have been reported. It
could be damaged by equipment.
Mr. Fennell stated so let us collect
real samples going forward.
Mr. Hanks asked who reported it?
Mr. Bulman responded one of the
staff. I do not recall.
Mr. Daly asked was it a supervisor?
Mr. Bulman responded I will have to
go back and look at the name in my notes.
Mr. Cassel stated we will get the
definition of crumbling from the field to make sure it is the same.
Ms. Zich asked is it unusual for you
to see it crumbling?
Mr. Schwarz responded I have seen it
in saltwater environments. This is not a
saltwater environment.
Mr. Fennell stated they get 3,000
year old items out of the ocean.
Mr. Schwarz stated like any kind of
corrosion if it is always under water, it is in good shape. It is when it is exposed to air and cyclical
things that the damage occurs. If the
pipe is in water sometimes and then the water table drops, that is the problem.
Mr. Hanks stated and if a clay pot
settles nicely to the ground…
Mr. Schwarz stated if that pot is
always under water for 30,000 years…
Mr. Hanks stated but if it hits a
rock on the way down, forget about it.
Mr. Fennell stated there has to be a
lab someplace where we can bring two to three samples of this and they will
give us an analysis of what happened.
Mr. Schwarz stated I also have the
concern if you do proceed with some kind of lining program; the pipe still has
to have some kind of integrity for us to clean and line it. If we tear it all up when we try to line it,
you created another problem.
Mr. Fennell stated so we really do
need to understand at mode of failure.
Mr. Schwarz stated that is correct.
Ms. Zich asked is this only in
certain areas or is all over?
Mr. Schwarz responded that is what I
am asking. I do not know. I am basing it on where you had a service
call and some repair.
Mr. Hanks asked do we have a good
understanding as to the extent of VCP versus PVC mains in the District?
Mr. Schwarz responded the report to
us was that basins one through five and eight are all VCP, except for repairs.
Mr. Hanks asked is the remainder of
the District either ductural or PVC?
Mr. Cassel responded we will check
into it.
Mr. Hanks stated okay.
Mr. Schwarz asked so how much will
it cost to fix? This is the worst
case.
Mr. Hanks stated the real issue is
the cost not to fix.
Mr. Schwarz stated that is something
you have to consider when you look at everything you need to do. For these six basins the estimate is about
75,000 linear feet of mostly eight inch clay pipe. I am basically considering that we are going
to use cured-in-place, which is the technology most people use now for
rehabilitating their sewers. It would be
about $2.5 to $3 Million if you lined every pipe, every main, in those six
basins.
Mr. Hanks asked what if it is the
laterals?
Mr. Schwarz responded typically we
do not need to line all of the mains if your issues are just reducing the
flows. If it becomes an overall issue of
system reliability if we do some tests, we get more information and we find out
the pipes District wide or basin wide are in really bad shape, you are not
looking at just removing I&I anymore.
You are looking at restoring the value and function of the system, in
which case you might make the decision to line all of those pipes. Typically if you are just looking at removing
the worst I&I and the worst runs of those pipes, maybe it is 50% to
75%. Again, we need more information
before you can make those decisions.
Mr. Fennell stated but that first
option for $2.5 Million assumes the pipe is strong enough to be lined.
Mr. Schwarz stated yes.
Mr. Fennell asked what if that is
not true?
Mr. Schwarz responded then you are
digging it all up, pipe bursting it or some other technology; essentially
replacing the pipe. Cured-in-place is
considered a structural replacement, stand alone pipe, 50 year design line.
Ms. Zich stated we need a lot of
study to know what we are doing.
Mr. Schwarz stated if we need to do
lateral work, and nowhere that I have done this sewer lining situation do you
not have to do lateral work to recognize improvements in the flows, it
essentially doubles the cost of the project.
Mr. Hanks stated so you are adding
another $2.5 Million.
Mr. Schwarz stated another $2.5
Million to $3 Million. The biggest
problem is typically the connection seal where the lateral joins the main. It is either right at the top or it is on the
side. It has a vertical load on its
entire life which almost always cracks right at the pipe or at the first
fitting right after the pipe, if it was even put together right in the first
place. A lot of these connections
somebody just cuts a hole in the top of the pipe, sticks a lateral in there and
fills it with grout and in two years the grout is gone so you have a big hole
around the outside of the lateral pipe. I
do not know anything about that. We can
dig any of those up, but that would be part of a future investigation to
determine how bad the laterals actually are in the system.
Mr. Fennell asked is there anything
from our own field staff? What have you
guys seen out there? You probably have
had to go out.
Mr. Stover responded I am not from
the field.
Mr. Cassel stated he is from the
plant.
Mr. Fennell stated okay.
Mr. Schwarz stated the good news in
this right now is the market conditions for sewer rehabilitation are pretty
good in South Florida. We have four
nationally recognized contractors, maybe even more, working in the Southeast
Florida area. A lot of communities are
at the same point in their system life that you are. The systems have reached the design life and
need to repair. People are actively
lining. Just in the course of the last
six years I have seen the prices for eight inch mainline sewer repair almost cut
in half. Not only is there competition,
but once they are here they have their equipment here, they have their crews
here and their prices go down. The
timing is good right now.
Ms. Woodward asked is that the
reduced price?
Mr. Schwarz responded this price I
based on the latest bids we have.
Mr. Fennell stated I think it is $5
Million right now.
Mr. Schwarz stated these are based
on current market prices in Southeast Florida.
An unidentified person asked back in
the previous slide when you say four times the flow or four times the cost, can
you explain that on the previous slide?
Mr. Schwarz responded I think that
number might be inaccurate. What I said
before is that you are about 2.5 times your base flow during peak rainfall
events and you get to about 70% of total capacity, which is 8.6. Base flows are somewhere around 2.5 on a
normal daily basis, minus the GWI. I
think this number is a little off. It is
more like twice.
The
record will reflect Mr. Hanks left the meeting.
Mr. Schwarz stated if there is
information which suggests the pipe is severely degraded, you may make the
decision to just go ahead and line all these basins and restore the value of
the collection system. If not, we want
to target the most I&I prone areas and we need some additional information. We can do some flow monitoring to each of the
pump stations fairly easily without going out and setting up flow meters and a
labor intensive program. These basins
are all pretty compact. There is not a
lot of intercept. Those are all sub
basins. They are all basically
collection sewers that terminate at the pump station. If we had a pump station flow monitor and
some pressure readings, we could get accurate data on a monthly basis or two
months on what the actual flows are in each of those stations. That would give us a much stronger idea of
how to prioritize the basins and which one is most important.
This is probably the most important
information we do not have and that is an internal inspection of the
sewers. It would be cleaning and
televising all of the sewers in each of the basins. We would get an idea. We will not look at the laterals because most
of the television companies which actually do the mainline sewers are not set
up to do the laterals. Currently it looks
like the lateral guys who do the work do the television. I can discuss that a little bit more,
later. You can get a feel for what is
happening at each later by the visual conditions at the lateral
connections. You will see that worst
point that I talked about; the connection in that first joint. You can see that from inside the main. Those are the two most important locations
and you can see that.
The cost is about two to four
dollars per linear foot so for 75,000 linear feet of sewer we are talking about
$200,000 to $300,000 project to internally inspect and clean all of the
sewers. Again, I would like more
information on whether or not these pipes are cohesive before we do that. Maybe we will not do a big project. Maybe we will do a demonstration project;
pick the worst basin like basin one and inspect it. We may know after the first run if the
cleaning is blowing the pipe apart, we will not want to continue with it any
further.
If you are going to remove I&I,
the most important information you can get is the internal inspection. Then you base your contract documents and
what actual runs you are going to do off of that information. We probably also need to do some smoke
testing. I think there are strong
indications you have connections to the system we need to identify. They can be roof drains of individual houses. It can be storm drain systems, commercial
systems; I do not know, but it responds very quickly to rainfall which suggest
a direct connection.
I think I touched on most of these
as we talked. I think you need to decide
where this fits; $6 Million is a lot of money.
You have other priorities. What
is important to note is you really do not have a wastewater treatment plant
capacity problem unless a need develops for that capacity you are using to
treat I&I. You have adequate
capacity in your plant. As far as I know
you do not have any permit concerns, in terms of violating discharge
requirements. This is a big item that
may direct how this fits in to the priorities.
Mr. Fennell asked did we figure out
why could not get the water down auxiliary well?
Mr. Johnson responded no that is
actually in progress right now. What
they have recently done is replaced flow meters at injection well one, which is
the older well. Now that it is installed
under the monitoring well contract, it makes room for us to go in and look at
the mechanical or whatever is impeding the flow going down the well.
Mr. Fennell asked so we really do
not know that one yet?
Mr. Johnson responded no, but that
is a regulatory concern.
Mr. Fennell stated okay. That was connected here. There is an issue, which is we had a back up
well and we could not put enough down it.
We did not understand why.
Suddenly we ran into a lot of issues.
Mr. Schwarz stated if you have a
back up well that is no longer functioning, that changes the discharge
capacity. Then that becomes an issue.
Mr. Johnson stated regardless, the
rated capacity for that is around 5 MGD.
During periods of high rainfall we were looking at 6.5 to 7 MGD. It still has some difficulty providing
redundancy.
Mr. Fennell asked so what do we know
then? The severity of the problem is;
can we simply state that we are 25% over normal?
Mr. Schwarz responded 25% of the
base flow on a regular everyday basis you are treating.
Mr. Fennell stated then what happens
during heavy rains is we are 70% where we should be. The consequences of that is we either have to
process a lot more water and get rid of a lot more water, which we sort of put
money in to do that already. There is
nothing to say that this will not get worse.
Do we know that in any way? Has
anyone looked at this historically? Over
the last 10 years have we gotten worse each year? You have had these kinds of maps since I have
been on the Board so I know you have records somewhere.
Mr. Schwarz responded it is not going
to be getting better. The pipes are
going to continue to deteriorate. Clay
pipes say they have a design life of 100 years.
It probably could be forever if it is in perfect conditions. A lot of it was not installed right to begin
with. It gets abused by adjacent
construction activities.
Mr. Fennell asked so what are our
options here?
Mr. Schwarz responded I would think
you need to take a look at the cost associated with I&I in the big picture
of all the other things you have planned.
The simple part of the sewer system is it is an asset that you own and
it is deteriorating. You might want to
restore some level of the value of that asset; whether it is 75% of it or 100%
of it. At some point you will probably
have to restore all of it. The question
is whether you do it now or later.
Mr. Fennell stated we are going to
get samples of the pipes somehow so we can find out the real condition of the
pipe. That is a make or break thing
there. The second thing is even despite
all the numbers we have looked at, we have not really gone in to look at any of
the pipes yet so we really do not know.
Ms. Zich asked do we have someone
with a camera that is going to go out there?
I thought we were going to do that.
Mr. Cassel responded we looked at
cameras on the laterals. Our camera will
not work.
Ms. Zich stated I thought we were
going to hire someone to do that.
Mr. Daly stated we also thought of
possibly contacting the City of Margate or the City of Coral Springs. They each have a camera truck and crew.
Mr. Fennell asked did we pass a
resolution the last time?
Ms. Zich responded I thought we did.
Mr. Fennell stated I thought it was
something like $25,000.
Mr. Daly stated actually you would
not have. Mr. Cassel was not here. I do not believe you did.
Mr. Schwarz stated there are a lot
of communities doing this right now. You
might be able to piggyback a small portion off of someone else’s contract.
Mr. Fennell stated the one nice
thing is we are not talking about imminent failure here, but we could be
talking about continuous improvement over the years. Let us look at just lift station number
one. Let us go out and find out, get
some cameras or whatever we have to do.
Borrow or rent some cameras. We
will start off on lift station number one and see how severe it is.
Mr. Daly stated we are actually
getting some Doppler readings right now.
Ms. Zich asked what is Doppler?
Mr. Cassel responded it is a flow
meter. In house we are putting Doppler
meters to check the flows, which will also give us what is actually flowing
through the pipes so we can look at the run times. If you look at the run time for the pump it
will say 35,000 gallons when in reality it will only pump 20,000 gallons. In reality our readings are telling us one
thing and in the real world it is something else.
Mr. Fennell asked are you just
monitoring how much electricity you put into that motor? Do you actually have a flow meter there?
Mr. Daly responded I think it shows
the flow because the other meter we originally used would not handle as many
solids as where in the pipes.
Mr. Cassel stated our Doppler meter
is showing the flow of the actual fluids through the pipe.
Mr. Fennell asked do we have one out
there now?
Mr. Cassel responded yes. We did not have one before.
Mr. Daly stated we had a big rain on
Thursday so on Friday they were out there and only one of the pumps was running
on lift station one. It should have been
both with all of that rain coming.
Mr. Fennell stated I think you are
missing a factor someplace which might be groundwater level or something. There is some other little factor you are
missing.
Mr. Daly stated the whole idea is I
am not sure we have all the pieces yet. You
go there and find out only one of the two pumps is running and only needed to
be, yet you think it would be running 24/7 because of all the water.
Mr. Schwarz stated your stations are
actually designed to handle peak flows with just one pump. The second pump is there in case of
failure. Rarely do they both need to
come on at the same time. They are not
designed to go on both at the same time.
Mr. Daly stated I will have to look
at the run time on that. That lift
station I think comes on a lot.
Mr. Schwarz stated they should not.
Mr. Daly stated they did not in this
case.
Mr. Fennell stated my thinking is we
go look at the worst one, we understand what the problem is, what the pipes are
like and then maybe we do follow up and try to do something for that one
particular lift station rather than tackling everything at once.
Ms. Zich asked is there a
possibility there are only problems in certain areas and not in others and they
used different kinds of pipes?
Mr. Fennell responded this is mostly
the older area. It is the Ramblewood
area.
Mr. Schwarz stated what we were told
is these six basins are all VCP installed about 35 years ago. This is the original development area. There is another way to measure flows. There are units called pump station
monitors. They get installed right into
the control panel. You just need to
monitor the pressure on the discharge.
They know the wet well volume and they just calculate the flows. It is simple to use and install.
Mr. Fennell stated let us get some
actual numbers and find out about that pipe.
Then I think we really need to look at these things so we need to get
some cameras down here for lift station one in that particular area and look
around to see what we actually have.
Mr. Schwarz stated I do not know
exactly how pump station basin one is laid out, but it comes into the pump
station from both sides so there is at least two…
Mr. Daly stated well it is
bigger. Does it not serve 1,800 homes as
opposed to others which serve about half?
Mr. Fennell responded it has 20
horsepower motor.
Mr. Schwarz stated we could break it
up into a little sub-basin and maybe televise the sub-basin.
Mr. Daly stated I think because of
the run times that one is definitely the worst.
Mr. Fennell asked do you need
anything more from us? Do you need an
authorization for the cameras?
Mr. Cassel responded I think we can
approach it here from staff. I think we
could probably see if we can get some of this done for under the
threshold. If not, we will look at the
piggyback scenario.
Mr. Fennell asked does this actually
come under any revisions of R&R or repairs?
Do we not have budgets already for repairing equipment and pipes?
Mr. Daly responded there is R&R,
but not necessarily for this.
Ms. Zich stated not for this many
millions.
Mr. Fennell stated we are not
spending millions yet. We are just
looking at finding the problem. Is that
a different budget than actually fixing it?
Mr. Cassel responded no. It is still the same pot of money. Is that right Ms. Woodward?
Ms. Woodward responded you just have
to go through me.
Mr. Fennell stated at least there is
an estimate here of what we think it will cost.
It is $4 Million to $5 Million to do everything, but we need to find out
the severity of this issue. What I did
not understand is what the cost savings might be here. I would like to see more of that.
Mr. Cassel stated we look into what
the reduction of the wastewater treatment cost will be if we reduce it by a
million gallons per day out of the wastewater system.
Mr. Fennell asked suppose you have
this area of six basins and you have at least down to the average of what
everything else is, what would that mean to us in wastewater flow and what
would it mean to us in operating costs?
I do need to be able to match this off somewhere.
Mr. Schwarz responded getting the
flow data that Mr. Cassel is talking about now is the big part of that.
Mr. Cassel stated it is key.
Mr. Fennell stated at that point we
can say if we invest $5 Million, we are going to be saving $250,000 a year or
$500,000 a year in operating costs, or maybe it does not come down to
that. I do not know what that is. I still do not have a return in investment on
this one.
Mr. Schwarz stated there are still
costs associated with doing emergency sewer repairs. How much do they cost?
Mr. Fennell responded that is
probably a standard cost we already have and it is probably already in the
budget. We are probably at a run rate
where we just handle it.
Ms. Woodward asked are we replacing
with the same type of pipes?
Mr. Schwarz responded no.
Mr. Fennell stated it would be an
improvement.
An unidentified person asked are you
saying there are $10 Million in savings per 1 million gallon reduction in flow?
Mr. Schwarz responded no. What I am saying is if you needed to build a
million gallons per day of wastewater treatment capacity, it would cost you $10
Million, roughly. It depends on what
else you have to do; if you have reuse or advance treatment. That is what that is worth to you. You have spent that money already.
Mr. Fennell stated it is capital
cost. Are we still looking at adding
more wastewater treatment in the future?
Mr. Cassel responded no. I believe we are fine with our treatment
capacity. With what we have with Plant
‘F’ coming along and the other plant we just had come online, we are good with
our treatment capacity. I think the
issue comes in with the extra that triggers into some of the redundancy flows
and your redundancy in the wells we are looking at is how much we can put down
the well after it is treated. Say we
take a million gallons out of our treatment process everyday, that gives us
that extra million gallons we can push down the well if we had to so you are
not maximizing your well capacity so when and if you get to that system that
you have to push the well past what you are actually at, you are not in that
territory where the regulatory agencies are going to say you are above your
capacity and you have to do something else such as drill another 24 inch well
at a cost of $6 Million. This is what we
are trying to look at internally with staff.
How can we make all of these things, whether it is the piping inside,
where we are bringing wastewater in, how we are treating it or how we are
getting rid of it, to minimize the potential impact of a regulatory agency
telling us we have exceeded this parameter and have to do another $6 Million project?
Mr. Fennell stated do go back and
look at the history because there is another issue here. My house is now 30 years old. The ones we are looking at are 35 years old. All of the area is aging out. I would like to understand if this has been a
continually creeping up problem, which I suspect it has. It is the oldest area, which would mean if I
do nothing; the problem just continues to get worse to a point where five years
from now we are going to be adding another treatment plant. I need to look at a trend here going
forward. I realize this does not happen
overnight, but five years from now you could be coming back and asking for
another water treatment program because suddenly you have not just Ramblewood,
but Shadowood and Maplewood now have these creeping problems which have gotten
worse.
Ms. Zich asked how often are we
making repairs in this area? Is it once
a week? Is it once a month?
Mr. Daly responded our crews pretty
much go out for water line repairs and not as much for sewer line repairs. It is usually backed up sewer lines. That is what our guys usually deal with.
Ms. Zich stated it is not the
cracked pipe they are usually repairing.
Mr. Daly stated the majority of the
time they are out there on water breaks and backed up sewer lines.
Ms. Zich stated so tell me how often
they do repair.
Mr. Cassel stated I do not know
exactly a number, but from listening to staff…
Ms. Zich stated I want to know how
many times in a certain period they are repairing the pipes we are talking
about.
Mr. Daly stated we keep logs so I
can get that for you.
Mr. Fennell stated she has a good
point. People know right away if they do
not have any water, but no one goes out and complains, other than us that we
have another 100,000 gallons or 50,000 gallons of additional repair. We do not usually go out and repair for
that. It would have to be a catastrophic
failure before we go off, right?
Mr. Daly responded or blockage.
Ms. Zich asked so how often are
those?
Mr. Cassel responded Mr. Daly has
the records from staff.
Mr. Daly stated our blockage is
usually tree roots at the ‘Y’.
Ms. Zich stated but the tree roots
cause them to crumble and then we have to repair those. How often does that happen?
Mr. Daly responded I will find out
for you.
Mr. Fennell stated we may not know
the whole thing because in my house, for instance, when I have blockage
problems I do not call CSID. I call a
plumber who then comes out with a snake, then goes all the way underneath out
toward the line and cuts off a bunch of roots and then it is good for another
six months.
Mr. Daly asked does he come past the
‘Y’ onto our side?
Mr. Fennell responded what happened
was all the roots from the trees we planted on all the yards went looking for
water sources. If that pipe breaks there
and it is only a foot or two down, those roots will find their way there.
Mr. Schwarz stated one of the other
problems with the older clay pipe is they were not rubber gasket joints. They were packed gaskets and those gaskets
just disappeared. Now you have all the
joints which leak too.
Ms. Zich stated I have never had a
problem at my house.
Mr. Fennell stated we appreciate
this. So you guys are going to go forward
and we are going to go look at number one.
Mr. Cassel stated we will see what
other information we can dig out.
Ms. Zich stated it will be
interesting.
Mr. Fennell stated we are talking
about a long term investment. We will
actually solve the problem for another 10, 15 or 20 years.
Ms. Woodward asked how long were the
original clay pipes supposed to last?
Ms. Zich responded they are talking
about 100 years.
Mr. Cassel stated typically the
design limit for a clay pipe is between 50 and 100 years.
Ms. Woodward stated so we have some
that are potentially falling apart at 35 years.
When they say this fix is going to last 50 years, can it only last 30
years?
Mr. Daly responded no. That is PVC.
This will last longer than that.
Mr. Fennell stated there is an
anomaly there. If in fact these pipes
are actually crumbling, then these are defective pipes.
Mr. Cassel stated or the crumbling
could be the fact that when a clay pipe is disturbed, it cracks and falls apart
easily. What the field crew may be saying
is that when they pick it, it breaks up easy and it will. You have to be very careful, but once you bed
it, if you bed it in the ground properly and compact the fill around it and you
do not move the fill, it will stay there for years. The real determination is what does staff
mean when they say ‘crumble’.
FIFTH ORDER OF BUSINESS Approval of November
Financials and Check Registers
·
Summary
of Cash Transactions
·
Projected
Cash Flows
·
Engineering
Projects
Mr.
Fennell asked are there any questions?
Ms.
Zich responded no.
On MOTION by Ms. Zich seconded by
Mr. Fennell with all in favor the check registers and financials for November
were approved.
EIGHTH
ORDER OF BUSINESS Adjournment
There
being no further business,
On MOTION by Mr. Fennell seconded
by Ms. Zich with all in favor the meeting was adjourned.
Glen Hanks
Robert
D. Fennell
Secretary President