The Watuppa Water Board convened on November 23, 2021, at 6:48 p.m., noting the departure of Mr. Pearson but confirming a quorum. The board approved the minutes from its August 11 and October 14, 2021, meetings. A significant portion of the meeting was dedicated to proposed leak abatements, with specific properties like 127 Oxford and 48 Bridge discussed due to unusually high bills, and the board unanimously approved the abatements as presented. The board also addressed an Open Meeting Law complaint from Mr. Colin Dyess regarding a virtual meeting on October 14, 2021, and voted to send a draft response to him.
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due to a city council meeting uh the meeting of the watopa water board will now come to order at 6 48 p.m um mr clerk would you call league role for attendance i think at this time we must make a statement that mr pearson has left the water board and the water board being a three-member board two members constitute a quorum therefore the borders in order to come into session excellent president president member
0:45there being a quorum i call this meeting to order pursuant to the open meeting law any person may make an audio or video recording of this public meeting or may transmit the meeting through any medium attendees are therefore advised that such recordings or transmissions are being made whether perceived or unperceived by those present and are deemed acknowledged and permissible with that i would ask the clerk
1:18to move to item number one citizen input item number one citizen's input um if there is anybody here for citizens no citizens input thank you item number two minutes of the previous meetings um we have two sets of meetings minutes to be approved those of august 11 and august october 14th can we uh can we approve them separately or should we i'd like to prove them separately if we could say again could
1:55we approve them separately yeah there's a separate item yes i'd like a motion to approve the minutes uh for the august 11 2021 meeting motion made motion seconded uh mr clerk would you do we need a roll call vote on that since we're back in person there's no roll call vote no roll call provision therefore uh all in favor aye therefore the august 11 minutes are accepted as submitted october 14th
2:272021 minutes maybe we have a motion on that motion made and seconded all in favor motion uh all in favor accepted the october 14 2021 meeting minutes are approved item number three proposed leak abatements and denials um i would just like to ask three quick questions and those are 127 oxford 48 bridge and zero duvall they seem lawfully high yeah so uh just one so there was two corrections from when the agenda was
3:14posted to uh finalize what's in front of the board so that would be on oxford street rather than 1268.74 the recommendation for abatement is 1048.63 the other correction that was uh that was made was on frost street the original agenda recommended 168.82 cents the revised that was that's provided in the package tonight was 171.14 um so again just on those uh the ones that you that you've mentioned about oxford street
3:57we can take them individually if you'd like explanations so oxford streets the original bill was 2 64.
4:0982 cents again that's indicative of a you know leak within a property that goes unintended or unaddressed for a full three-month period as you know their average bill prior to that was somewhere in the six hundred dollar range five six hundred dollar range somewhere in that ballpark uh so the abatement uh for uh for these as you know how the abatement policy works we take the average uh of
4:40the bills we subtract that out of the high bill and then we abate 50 percent of the average so their original bill uh you could also see on the analysis the quarter after is when so what they got that large bill and the leak must have continued into a portion of the quarter after and the quarter after was a thirteen hundred dollar bill almost fourteen hundred dollars as well but we're only able to obey one bill
5:08if i may they've um what type of a property is this do we know he seems to have jumped significantly a couple of times just yeah if you notice in the beginning there was a new meter put in there was it looks like a leak potentially back in 19 it was reduced and then this leak and then it was reduced again i'm not sure it doesn't have the land use code
5:39on here for the type of property so i'm not sure if it's the same as a multi it is a multi-family okay multi-family wow thank you so that was uh again if you want to talk about the other one you mentioned 48 ridge yeah
6:0748 bridge yeah he seems to be going along the 400 500 600 and then he jumps to 14.
6:16and then i see one here on 5 10 21 at 3 400.
6:22yeah yep so it did go up to the high bill was a 3 400 bill with an estimate so there was probably a leak an estimate and then the leak continued so again you can see the average is running probably you know in the in the 500 range in the as the abatement policies subtract the average and we provide 50 credit of the overage which gives a credit of 14 185 and 62 cents
7:03he seems to jump around quite a bit i look from 5 10 21 to 8 9 21 he jumped he drops from 37 06 down to 7 100.
7:17wow you know again for years that's been talked about these high bills that people get you know prior people used to call heart attack builds because you know people really uh really you know when they get the bill yeah but uh you know these are typically a leaky toilet uh a faucet that's left that's left on uh how old to take that burst or leak in in a basement that goes into the dirt or something to
7:53that so you know a lot of times what these uh what these leaks are not to belabor the point i'd just like to ask a question i i had a situation actually it happened several different times in which the property in question was also one well known to the police department for drug trafficking and what they found was that the drugs were being stashed in the toilet tanks and that the toilets were running
8:24constantly i'm not kidding um and um that was what was causing the heart yeah and the overflow tubes were just running and running and running and it was discovered that way so sometimes it's interesting to look and see if there's any criminal activity going on in some of these properties because um i can even tell you the name of the young lady who is infamous and water department all right thank you very much um
9:00jared entertain a motion to accept the weak abatements as presented motion to approve the leak abatements as listed seconded all in favor of i excellent moving on item number four open meeting law complaint this is from mr colin dyess if you'd like uh i can read the open media law complaint just for the record uh on 10 14 21 the war tupperware board our board held a virtual meeting
9:41the board violated the open meeting law by the broad field to provide instruction for the public in its agenda notice on how to attend the virtual meeting until the board revised its agenda less than 24 hours before the 1014 meeting began uh during the board's 2014 meeting the board has under item three of its agenda rules and regulations gate access at reservation this item did not clearly list what was
10:10to be discussed at the meeting pursuant to the open meeting law section 20 um number three the board discussed and made votes regarding hunting dogs hunting permits and target shooting during uh item number three and its agenda and it clearly had nothing to do with the agenda items and these were reasonably anticipated topics as the board members already had the rules and regulations at their
10:39disposal before the meeting began number four a quorum of the board briefly discussed inspection towers gate houses screen houses under item number four which is laid build other potential matters this item number did not clearly state what would be discussed a violation of the open meeting law section 20b uh the board while meeting virtually failed to take a roll call vote uh to approve its meeting minutes when the
11:08vote to approve the minutes mr pierce and mrs terry voted here which is not an appropriate way to vote in a roll call so actions requested a new vote of the 8 11 minutes in further compliance with the open meeting law i did provide you a draft of a response to these items within your uh within your packet if no one has any questions or would like to discuss the response or anything feel free
11:35i don't know if you have any comments on i found the draft letter to be complete it's fully explanatory i'm sure mr dice understands and i shall not state here again okay excellent if if the board would like to vote to uh acknowledge me to respond to the open meeting law claim to be the draft that was provided the chair had entertained a motion to um to prove the draft and have it forwarded to mr dyes
12:11as our response to his complaint seconded and all in favor aye therefore we will send that on to him okay moving right along algae control and watershed management agreement between the city of fall river town of westport in chiberton the town of tibberton rhode island we received a copy of the the agreement as stated this requires a signature of the board this evening to finalize this agreement i think it's
12:58a step in the right direction i guess the situation is that it's going to be approximately a hundred thousand dollars the money has been put up by bay bank i believe um this is something that is vital to the area we just had a rowing event on that pond that brought thousands of people down to utilize that asset and i believe that that's just the beginning of what could be something really terrific it's hard to
13:40believe that we've got an olympic class growing course in the south without upon so i'd like to entertain a motion to approve the agreement yeah if just so i can explain the agreement just so everybody is aware the agreement is for us to enter in with westport and uh dividend there is no monetary value to this agreement it's an agreement that we're all going to get to the table and try to look for
14:13a solution if there is monetary value that needs to be added in the future uh that will be up to the parties to come up to a decision at that point but this is means that we're all going to work together uh there is the uh the phase one which is currently underway uh and as the president did say it was funded by bay coast bank in the amount of 100 000 um
14:36so that is uh that is within here that's projects that's already underway uh we're expecting to get a draft report from that sometime before the holidays here review that over the holidays and then have another public public meeting after the holidays next week i'll probably be sending out an email notice to all the public that was at the first meeting just to let them know what's going on
15:00you know this is going to be a multi-year multi-step process moving forward but this brings everybody within that watershed full river westport dividend to the table so that we can all work together to better that watershed that's great um what would the clerk like a motion to approve yes so uh chair we call for a motion to approve the agreement for algae control and watershed management between the city of
15:33fall river the town of westport and the town of tibberton rhode island motion made motion seconded all in favor motion passes next item next item on the agenda is lead to froze so the next item that's on your agenda is a possibility of whether you drink water powerpoint presentation um so earlier today i was on uh wsar uh explaining about uh an exceedance that we recently had in our drinking water system uh it's an
16:15action level exceedance so it's uh it's in exceeding that requires us to take up action the action that we need to take is work with epa and dep to get public notification out about uh about what's what's what's happening so this is in regards to lead in your drinking water our drinking water as it leaves our plant does not have any lead in it we test sample throughout our entire system
16:44we we have no detection throughout our system where we where lead gets developed from is within the lead service that comes from a house that comes from the main into a house or within pipes that are in the system so we'll start off here a little bit of introduction um so the drinking water that leaves our plant again is lead free when it leaves the facility moves through the distribution system
17:16most of our distribution system is made up of either duct line pipes uh cast iron pipes uh it says it you know epa says it plastic too some systems use plastic we don't have plastic we have a very small amount of asbestos concrete pipe but it's a stable asbestos concrete pipe uh that feeds uh some very limited sections of our system um so if we only have steel within our within
17:42our pipes how we have and we have no wood within our water how are we having this issue so the issue is caused again when you have either a lead service that feeds a property or a lead solder within copper pipes or brass fixtures or brass piping within a house lead you can't see or smell within the water so you can't see how this water has lead this water doesn't he can't
18:07smell it odor there's no particular taste to it the lead would get into the water from sitting within one of these either wet services or other facilities you know that would have led and allow it to leach into the water for a long period of time if it's water that's moving through the pipes and it's constantly moving around it's it's not going to have time for the lead to be able to leech into it so
18:34even with areas where high levels of lead with are found within your drinking water that typically only contributes to about 20 of the lead within something that somebody could ingest so lots of other spots where you can get lead from whether it be lead paint within a house uh wet paint um you know within the environment dust is very high in lead environmental dust as well as soils typically you know you
19:02think about it years ago there used to be lead in the gasoline lead used to come out of the exhaust of the cause would eventually fall into the soil that's how a lot of times within soil remediation you end up getting backgrounds of blood within within soils within urban soils so environmental protection agency passed drinking water regulations for copper and lead back in 1974.
19:28lead services is you know one of the things that fall river uh is in our system they were installed typically between 1920 and 1950. uh it's it's kind of funny you talk to people within the water field and they say you know poorer communities back in that time didn't get lead services because they couldn't afford afford it the more the wealthier communities which back in the 20s to 50s
19:55fall river was booming with the textile industry we were more prosperous community our community was able to afford lead services which at the time was a better was a better product to have than the other options so what was better back then isn't that good now so 1974 uh congress passed the safe drinking water act that put certain levels of different types of uh different type of
20:24contaminants within the drinking water supply uh then epa so epa established treatment techniques and enforceable you know procedures for different levels of different things within within the water the treatment technique regulated for lead referred to as the lead and copper rule which is something that epa developed after the clean drinking water act uh requires that water systems to control the
20:51corrosivity of the water uh regulation also requires a system to collect tap samples from site served by systems so under the wedding copper rule we're always going to be doing sampling because most systems all have lead whether it be in internal plumbing or excuse me most systems have lead whether it be in the service internal plumbing in their fixtures they also pretty much all have copper
21:16so most houses have copper plumbing within their houses um so you're going to be sampling for one of the two um you know lead sampling and lead testing within this in the city of fall river isn't anything this new it's been done for years and years and years back in 95 or so back in the 90s is when it dp and epa got real heavy into some of the testing as he came into 99 the city
21:42was put under a uh an aco an administrative consent order because we were above the action levels and didn't follow some of the steps that needed to be taken during that time we worked with dep and epa back then up to 2005 we adjusted our waters chemistry with their approval to be able to minimize any corrosivity within our system and we were able to uh to move forward with the new acl since 2005 that
22:12we've been under and we've been compliant with and we still are epa requires it that we do a consumer confidence report every year and also whenever there's a problem we need to alert customers so since we hit this action level so the action level for lead within a drinking water system is.015 parts per million what our sample was was.016 parts per million we were one one thousandths of a per
22:49million above the action level um i'm going to talk a little bit about the sampling that we do uh the last round of sampling we were on a three-year cycle for outlet for our lead and copper so we were good for a while you you typically on quarterly biannually sampling then you go to yearly sampling then you go to three-year sampling we're on a three-year sampling cycle 2018 third quarter was the last time
23:15that we tested and we were right underneath the action action limit uh this year when we tested on the third quarter we were just above the uh just above the action room as i said uh we sent out kits the sample kits to 70 different poles so how we actually do the sampling this is the actual kit that we use and a lot of other communities use you know we
23:39make these up we get a uh we get a bottle from our testing laboratory so this is a typical sample bottle we fill it out with the client's name and everything on the on the front of the sample bottle the sites that we choose have to be what are called tier one sites so they have to be confirmed that they have a let service that goes from the main all the way into the house
24:01so those are the sites that we're required to test we can't go and test something that has a plastic service or a copper surface has to be something that's a lead service so the sample kit has that bottle has a paper we knock on the door if nobody answers it says sorry we missed you we'd like to pick this up tomorrow we put the date on it and stuff like that in there
24:25there's a change of custody form which the customer needs to fill out uh there's directions on how to do the actual sample so this sample isn't taken by our staff it's not taken by somebody that fully uh knows the sampling process you know but we try to give as much information to the customers as possible to be able to allow them to properly do this sample and then if we don't get them the first
24:49time we go back multiple other times so we like to have 60 samples requirement is 30 through dp we like to have 60 samples to make sure we have a good sample set so we first delivered to this first 60 homes we usually have 10 reserve we weren't getting a good response from the customers and providing us back the samples so we went to our reserves and passed out those other 10 sample kits
25:14that's what and we ended up getting 64 sample kits back so how the sample works the customer gets this bottle they need to go to either a kitchen sink or a bathroom sink and fill this bottle but it needs to be what's classified as a first draw sample so the customer needs to take this bottle and make sure that the water hasn't moved in the system for at least six hours so
25:40either overnight where nobody's used the restroom during the night or you get it where everybody goes to work right when it's the first person to come home from work takes takes the cap off goes over to their kitchen sink fills it up puts the cap back on that's how the sample is taken you don't let the water run you don't let the anything happen so it's the water that you get in that's been sitting inside
26:06your faucet the pipes underneath the sink and then it's some section of pipe that feeds down after the meetup so currently every year we bid out for our testing laboratories currently this year rhode island analytical is the uh is the lab that we're using they're sent out to those labs we don't test the lead in-house again this is just a picture of the sample kit that we send out uh it needs
26:32to sit for a minimum of six hours usually the kitchen or the bathroom cold water faucet it needs to be it needs to be a cold water faucet you can't use hot water because it changes the uh the chemistry and we'll come up with a proper test so these are all things that the homeowner needs to do when they're taking this test so this is the actual claim form so this
26:55is a chain of custody so this is what tells us uh you know a the homeowner here is certifying that they did the test properly for the instructions this sample location is telling us the sample location what time was it taken when was the water last used before it was taken and this chain of custody follows from this sample all the way through the process so that we have all this information and
27:22it's it's certified that they haven't had any plumbing or any remodeling or re work of the plumbing within their house and if they do they have to describe the changes because that could stir something up which could give us a bad sample too so sample results from this year so we have a action level exceeded so the action level for massachusetts is.015 parts per million and that's looked at
27:49at what's called the 90th percentile so you don't take an average of all of them you don't take the highest number or the lowest number you take what's called the 90th percentile so you set all of them up on a chart ninety percent down for the number of samples that you have that's the number that you use um so there was a number with the samples that we got there was number probably about a
28:12third of them were no detects so they came back with zero there was a number of them that were extremely low point zero zero eight four point zero zero one two um as you went through the list eight of the samples were above the action level um so eight of those samples were elevated dp regula so once we got that we got that back we need to notify all of our customers as a
28:42procedure that needs to be gone through we need to notify our customers get public notification out there within 60 days of the closing of that quarter so the quarter was closed a while ago took us some time to get the results in we need to get all of our notifications out prior to uh november 30th again so this isn't a violation so we're not going to get an nln unless we don't follow public notification
29:10procedures and other procedures that are going to be required um we're not getting a write-up it's not a violation of our uh administrative consent order that we have um just because we're going through all this process so it's not a violation or anything like that it requires public notification and different types of outreach so again we talked a little bit in the beginning about lead and how led gets
29:35into the water so you have your water main that runs out here in the street running down the street you have a pipe that feeds from the water main into your house and then you have all the piping within your house that feeds to your different fixtures a couple of ways that it can happen this lead service line that feeds from the street into the house is one way that that
29:57could happen if that's lead uh there's many materials that that could be made out of brass boosting brass steel highly unlikely in fall river again those were a lot of times back in the 20s 30s and 40s those were put in other communities that were affluent as fall river back at that time um but you also have now cop has been used for years within within these services uh and most recently over the
30:24past probably 20 years they've been using a lot of uh hdp polyethylene that that is used for this there's also cross poly that they use and some other different types of poly materials once you get into the internal plumbing of your house a lot of houses is copper pipes within within the house you either have copper you have iron in some houses you have brass in some houses more uncommon most common is
30:53copper but you do find those other ones um and so brass piping or steel piping could leach lead into the water as well those are used uh those are manufactured with lead within there copper piping not so much but you have the solder that's within the copper piping i think lead solder was used up until the 80s uh you know in the mid 80s it was used still for for connection of copper piping i think
31:19even today there's still some piping i think waste piping you can still use copper soda on and stuff like that so uh excuse me let's solder on copper pipes so you know it's still out there but uh but that is one way that it could get in there the other way is the fixtures so you get into some of these fixtures that have you know the beautiful fall river you have a nice beautiful old
31:44sink with the elegant uh brass faucet that comes out brass huge amount of lead was always used in manufacturing brass that's how it was so malleable that's how it was able to bend and it wouldn't crack during the cooling process and the forging process is they would add lead into it um and that lead from the brass can leach into the into the water so there's multiple different ways that it
32:10could get in primarily within with all within the system that's owned by the private homeowner so all the plumbing within the house falls underneath the jurisdiction of the state plumbing code underneath the you know the plumbing inspector's office the water service that runs from the main into the house as per city ordinance uh the responsibility of that service is the property owners all the way from the main
32:36all the way into the house the service repair maintenance of that per city ordinance is the property owner's responsibility um so that's kind of uh that's kind of where that where that is historically uh with the services and our next picture will one of the next pictures we'll talk a little bit more about the surface itself so again how led gets into the drinking water we talked about plumbing materials and
33:04the fixtures and how it can corrode so the alkalinity so the chemistry of the water you have alkalinity and you have the ph which tells you the acidity of the water you know we did studies back in the back in the early 2000s and we adjusted our ph we adjust our ph with caustic so that we keep it around 8.5 as our target we're typically right around that right around that area between 8.2 and 9.6
33:36but if we if our ph starts getting too high then we have issues with contact time so we need to keep our ph within a certain range to be able to properly have contact time uh to kill the bacteria in the water with the chlorine and then also be able to make it so our water isn't too corrosive um what stops it once we send it out into the system from that ph moving up or
34:02down or adjusting within the system is what you call alkalinity alkalinity is a buffer that stops the ph from from moving really our alkalinity we send our alkalinity out about maybe 28 or so our target a minimum that we want to see it at is 20.
34:21we always stay above that typically throughout the systems we get 24s whenever we test alkalinity throughout our system so our target for alkalinity is high and we have to use co2 to adjust our water to be able to get the alkalinity we wanted so that's not something we get naturally that's something that we have to adjust so temperature of the water is one thing that can really affect whether lead
34:50leeches in or or not so if the water is warmer it's more likely that you're going to have lead leech in so again so that's why when i talked about our sample samples need to be taken with the cold water because if you use hot water uh it changes the chemistry of the water and how the wet could reach into the water the amount of wear on the pipe so if you have a pipe so
35:11when you get the ph properly balanced within the water system you end up building building a coating on the interior of the lead service so these are some sections of lead services that i have here this is a one inch led service 5 8 slit service these were removed and inside here you end up getting a coating a little buildup that protects the water from from getting fully in contact with the lead
35:40as long as that stays intact that interior coating by keeping proper uh proper ph and proper alkalinity um it's highly unlikely that the leather is going to leak into the water so that's one thing that needs to be maintained is that protective coating on the interior of the lead so that's where the amount of wear on the pipe so something that's used constantly high flows could potentially
36:07strip that uh strip that off and um and you know that would allow the water to come more in contact with the lead and somewhere that has a lower flow that potentially has uh you know less contact with the lead how long the water stays in the pipe or stays in the faucet or stuff like that so you have a faucet uh you know that you use once a year or twice a year in
36:32your basement you know during the holidays or something like that water inside the inside that faucet probably has a lot more than the one upstairs in your kitchen that you use every day presence of protective scale or coatings inside the plymouth material that's something that i just talked about so again there's multiple things that that could affect that you know if you have a uh if you have a
36:57service that comes down to a restriction so that restriction that small point the velocities right there the water are gonna become a lot higher they're gonna scour um so that could be a potential point where more light could enter the water than other areas but this is what i talked about when i talked about we're going to get back to the lead services and how they enter your house so out here you have the
37:20public name in the middle of the street or near the middle of the street typically i was on the middle they're usually four feet off the curb but just for underneath the paved roadway so the property owner owns the service all the way from this main all the way into the house per ordinance so a little service or any type of service would run this this will either be typically a
37:45a one inch service the smaller led services were 5 8 so sometimes three quarter copper is a typical size we've run all one inch plastic now primarily the water department as a courtesy for its customers has always maintained this section from the pipe to the curb stop so right in here you have what's called the curb stop that's that little box that you see in front of the house that if we need to shut the
38:14water off to to the service or to the house we're able to access that in on the other sidewalk and turn the water off to the property what that does that gives us a one point to tell whether there's a if there's a leak out here we can turn this off if the water stops then we know it's on this side and the property owner is responsible for replacement if it's on this side then
38:37typically again as a courtesy to our customers we take care of the repair but that's the one point where we can shut it off to be able to tell potentially whose side it's on but then you also have this other section that is owned by the customer that runs all the way into the house so when we do water main replacement projects which we've been doing since the early 2000s and one of the
39:00things that we always talk about is the lead service replacement that we're doing the lead service replacement that we're doing and what was required by dep within our administrative consent order and what has always been acknowledged as removal of a lead service is the removal of the service from the main to this curb stop what we'll talk about in a little bit is the credit program
39:27that we have for when the customer wants to do their side of the service uh the home side of the service uh the credit program that we have set up but when we've removed the lead service we've always gone from the main to near the property line so this is underground here you can see so this is an old lead pipe a grayish pipe this probably had some type of leak
39:56on the service uh this isn't a picture of one of ours this is something if we go out to alleged services or a house where there is a leak uh if we go dig down and see and have a led service there we're replaced from the main all the way to the curb stop we don't put in a small piece of copper we remove that full lead service but just to show you
40:18what a lead service would look like compared to a copper service so health effects of lead exposure again you know first thing to do if if people are concerned about this the first thing kind of to do will be to determine whether you have a lead service in the next couple of slides we'll walk through how to for somebody to be able to tell that um but let's talk a little bit about the
40:50health risks um you know the most health risks would be to infants uh pregnant women or younger children as has been discussed in the past again you got to think the sample that we did a third of them would not detect a third of them were below the limit and there was only eight out of the 64 that were above the limit but in adults there is some there is some health effects uh
41:15decreased kidney function brain damage digestive nervous system disorders reproductive problems cardiovascular effects anybody that has any concerns we always recommend that they talk to their primary care physician or their own personal doctor to be able to discuss any of these effects so in pregnant women reduced growth of the fetus premature birth in children behavioral learning problems lower iq
41:47slower growth hearing problems disease kidney function so these are people that have large long-term exposure to to this to this again any health concerns or anything like that i'm not a trained health professional none of my staff in the water or sewer department not trained health professionals we always recommend that somebody contact a properly trained health professional to discuss any of
42:15the health effects related to this steps you can take to reduce your exposure so you know we talked about the health effects but it's not good you know if you have a lead service the water is still drinkable it's still usable it's still bathable you can still brush your teeth you just want to make sure that you have fresh water coming out of that tap so our recommendation epa's
42:39recommendation and we've had this on our bills again this isn't a new problem in fall river this problem has been around since alleged services were installed in the 20s this problem was brought to light back in the late 90s early 2000s you know there was other people standing here doing the same thing probably not with this nice powerpoint presentation but they got through it back then and we're
43:04letting the public know that problem is still here and what to do to protect themselves is the biggest thing so our recommendation is to run run the tap water for 15 to 30 seconds so when you wake up first thing in the morning go to brush your teeth turn that tap on let it run for 15 to 30 seconds that will take and bring fresh water from the main all the way into your house so you
43:25won't have that water that's been sitting in the service or sitting within your faucet or sitting in your pipes you know all night while you were sleeping for the past eight hours it'll give you a nice fresh water so run it for 15 to 30 seconds or turn it on stick your hand on direct you'll notice the temperature change when it hits your hand when you when you're getting some
43:46fresh water that came out of the main compared to what was sitting in your house all day so use cold water when you're cooking preparing baby formula stuff that you might want to do you always want to use cold water because again we talked earlier about how the temperature when the water temperature increases it changes and helps that lead leach into the watermark so do not cook with a drink from the hot
44:16tap water let dissolves more easily within within the hot water don't boil your water so you know you think of you think of a contaminant in the water you always hear about boil water orders or something like that boiling the water does not remove the lead the lead is a dissolved mineral dissolved metal within the uh within the water boiling the water will not remove the lead all it will do
44:42is remove some of the water and potentially you know intensify the lead um identify and replace any plumbing fixtures that contain leads so maybe that old faucet that's leaking that you know is all brass maybe it's time to replace that and you know all brass all the way up until 2014 is when they passed the lead-free zero lead within brass facilities yeah all the way up until 2014 and you
45:14didn't they didn't have to phase out all their stock until i believe it was 2016 or 2017.
45:21so all brass fixtures up until that point still had a fair amount of lead within within their actual uh things so you're talking brass fixtures grass couplings within piping systems everything perhaps makers yep still had a fair amount of lead within them it wasn't until like i said 2014 was when it was passed for wet free within brass even to this day though i think it's 0.07 percent of the
45:51product by weight they can still have of lead within the brass so this is what we were talking about before the actual how to tell whether you have a lead service or not um this is a couple of different examples and we'll have it we'll have another slide so this is down potentially in your basement or a crawl space of your house where your water meter is so this is where where the water service comes into
46:15your house goes into your water meter and then feeds out to the whole plumbing system within your house so to find out whether you have a lead service first you figure out where your water meter is you go over to your water meter and you'll typically have the pipe that's either coming out of the floor or it'll come out of the wall and turn up and you look at this section that comes
46:37out of the floor comes out of the wall look at that section this picture is a close-up of right in this area so where the valve is so this section is the part that's coming up out of the floor this is what you call this is the lead service and then this is the lead ball so this is the connection between lead and copper that allows it to tie into that valve
47:02so you want to come over to this section your service that's before your valve and take a look see if you see this dullish gray material if you take a key or you take something to scratch the outside of it just a little bit you don't want to jostle the surface or move it but you just lightly scratch it even with your fingernail and it's a shiny gray that means that you have a lead service
47:25or at least this section of your service is led um so that's one way to tell if you do have a lead service within your house this is another picture kind of just showing as it comes up again the lead ball is right there so the lead service comes up to the floor the lead ball the valve and then it changes to iron pipe and then on this side of zion pipe turning into copper over there
47:52so again you need to locate where your meter is find out where it is now so if you have a pipe that looks like this again a dulles gray material these are both lead services that were removed we're required by our aco to keep samples of all the lead services that have been removed within our system so we have them for the thousands that have been removed per per aco but if you take this
48:19you take just your fingernail and you scratch it i don't know if it can be seen on the camera but you have that bright lid you know this is this is malleable if i really wanted to put this over by the embedded i could but that's not something that you want to do you don't want to try to bend that surface or move that surface because that could break that protective coating on the inside
48:40that we talked about you want to just take your fingernail lightly scratch it and see if it's shiny underneath that will tell you if it's lit if it's a uh you know if it's a copper color like a penny or a greenish you know tarnished color you're talking most likely you probably have a copper surface uh if you're if it's a black plastic or blue plastic and different types of colored plastics that we use
49:05then you have a plastic surface you most likely don't have outline service so that's kind of the first bite that you would start to see whether you had lead service again while you're down there in your basement if you want to check your plumbing you check your copper pipes and you you look if you have copper pipes and your house was built prior to you know two thousand you probably have led
49:25soda within those now and again we talked about brass plumbing fixtures and other types of plumbing fixtures it was all led up until 2014 when that regulation was put into effect so um talk a little bit about uh the lead service rep lead service line replacement so epa re enacted the leading copper rule back in the day to protect the public house health reduce the exposure to letting go
49:57within the drinking system uh hud encourages and supports lead service replacement the water uh that's pumped now again like we talked about is what they call more passive so it's less corrosive it doesn't need a way it's allowed let services are allowed to build that protective coating on the inside as well as copper and it won't dissolve the lead in the copper as much as if were at different phs
50:28and again we've had a multi-year program we've been going for years here of lead service removal so something that we've been proactively doing as per our acl as per the lead-in copper uh removal requirements you know something that's coming up is the revised 11 copper rule so a lot of stuff that we're going to have to be doing over the next six months yeah is something that was going to be
50:55required through the new lead and copper rule 11 copper rule was something that was enacted it was about two years ago under president trump's administration through the epa then when president biden came on they put a hold on the leading copper rule the industry suspects to make it more stringent than what was previously than what was put out by the previous administration but there's going to be a lot more
51:25requirements for all communities to be able to do to do lead service removal under the new lead and copper rule they're only going to count a lead service as removed if it's a full-let service that's removed they're going to require full interactive maps of the communities and all the to show uh all the locations and wet services and there's a lot of other requirements within that letting copper rule again
51:50they pulled it back they never fully released it they're revising it it was supposed to be up by the end of december i've heard rumblings that it's going to be pushed out for a further period of time that they won't be releasing it at this time but some of the things that we're going to be doing moving forward is going to be coming up anyways and these these are you know i think we've
52:11all talked about them is the unfunded mandates you know they come down with these mandates that we have to invest and change things and they don't come with the federal government it doesn't come with money to back these particular mandates up you know i know right now there's a lot of federal money out there and i think the board knows that i love chasing as much money as i can so we
52:35don't have to put the burden onto the rate payers but sometimes there's not enough and repayers do have to burden some of these costs let's service live uh credit program um so right now overall within our system we look back at our records and we estimate there was about five thousand lead services throughout our whole entire system back that were installed when we originally started looking at
53:04the lit service replacement uh back in the 90s the late 90s we estimate there was about 5 000 lead services we're working to verify and update those records so one thing you know i know we're going to get a lot of calls from people moving forward because this is already on the radio it's going to be on the news tonight there's going to be mailings going out so there's going to be a lot of
53:26publicity about this and there's going to be a lot of questions one thing that i've asked my staff with all the calls that we get that i ask the people out there if you're going to call us you know and you're going to ask the questions and stuff like that we'll walk through you with how to determine if you have a lead service or not but if you determine that
53:43you do just give us a call back let us know so that way we can verify our records we can make sure we can have a real verification that you do have a service or that you don't have a service within your property that would be something that would be helpful from everybody so so far over 3000 lead services have been replaced from the main to the curb stop that's something that we've been
54:08working on for years now so we have a credit program for the homeowners if they replace their lead service this program has been in place since we started the lead service removal program back in back in the late 90s and it started out with a hundred dollars for the section from the main to the curb stop and then there would be another hundred dollars if they did from the curb stop into the house
54:39probably about five six years ago was updated to five hundred dollars per section so if the property owner replaced from the main to the curb stop uh they would be about they would get a 500 credit applied to their bill if they replaced the section from the curb stop into the house they would get another 500 credit on their bill there's a form that needs to be filled out we need to
55:00get a section of the lead service copy of the bill done by the drain layer and our inspection needs to be done on the removal of the wet service so those are just requirements to be able to receive that credit but it's all stuff that we work with our customers so when we've done our lead service removal and we've replaced from the main to the curb stop we've always let the customers
55:21that have web service know about this program some customers take advantage of it but not all customers very few customers have taken advantage of you know being able to replace their led service if we're doing from the main to the curb stop it you know for them to do from the curb stop into the house they could get a you know they could get a 500 credit they could potentially have
55:46the contract that's doing our work we've never told that a you know customer can't use a contractor that's doing our contract or they could use their own private contractor as long as they're a licensed drain layer to do the work but to be able to get the savings of economy of somebody being out there the road being you know the area being torn up at that time to replace that led
56:09service and be able to get a credit um yeah i wish it was something that more of our customers would take advantage of so this is just a piece of copper that uh guys this isn't this is again just a file of file photo that that we had but so to replace a service this is the type of trench that you would see you can see back in the edge of the sidewalk here is
56:36a blue mark so probably right in this grass area or in the sidewalk is where the curb stop is so this crew is most likely replacing the service from the main uh to the curb stop area so they'd have to excavate again over here and potentially what we like to do and most contractors like to do is we try to pass the cable through the lead service and pull it so you don't
57:02have to dig the whole entire way it's a cost savings with uh and not having to tear up the road that doesn't always work and then sometimes they have to fully execute vape from here to the side of the road then there's also the section of the service that goes from this curb stop all the way up into the house into the property and that section uh need to be replaced as well
57:28so just let's talk a little bit about the notification process that we're going to have to do so far we've been in contact with dep and epa multiple meetings with with the two organizations together uh i've had multiple conversations with the ep uh south coast region here uh they've been relaying all the information up to boston about uh about what's going on again uh this is an action level exceedance
57:54this is not a violation what it means is that we need to take action the action that we need to take is public notification as well as other steps that will be coming up out in future months but our first step is by november 30th we need to get public notification out there that's what we've been working with them to get out there and that's what we're going to be doing moving forward
58:22so first we need to get uh hard copies of uh of the following to um of a pamphlet that we've developed it's been approved by dep we need to get it out so we've given some to the board of health we're giving some copies to the school department so they can distribute to the schools and make them available if people need them uh all that and also we're working with former housing
58:46authority giving them coffee so they can get them to all their properties so if people at their properties would like them they would be able to have them that will all be done prior to november 30th uh we worked with the health department to get a list of all of the pre the child care facilities within the city health care facilities doctor's offices health organizations we work to be able to get
59:15to get all their information we're going to be mailing all of them um the uh the pamphlet as well uh medical facilities obgyns wik office department of uh transition assistance um that'll all be by november 30th it will be mailed to all customers billing address so all 20 000 customers that we have we need to mail the informational pamphlet out to so those informational pamphlets have
59:45been printed over the past week they've been reviewed by dep approved for us to be able to be sent out they've been printed over the past week they'll all be delivered to the post office by close of business tomorrow i expect over the weekend most customers will receive them then so then we'll meet that meet that requirement we'll hand deliver to some of the public housing complexes again that's working
1:00:14with for the housing authority to get those distributed we're going to be printing a notice on future water bills talking about the exceedance our ccr report will need to have um i think we have another notification yep so a press release that was released this afternoon so at three o'clock this afternoon i was on wsar uh and talked about this action level exceedance talked about what people can expect uh
1:00:45and talked about what we're going to be doing moving forward uh we did a uh psa public service announcement that was released to channel 6 channel 10 channel 12 wsar wsar portuguese as well as journal and the herald news so those are all the required public public media outreaches that we're going to be that we're going to be doing so we do have we do have copies of the information in different languages
1:01:24dep zjc community map required us to do it in portuguese spanish as well as khmer so those are available we do have them in our office the public notification pamphlet that's being out has a blurb on the front uh and asking people in those languages even either have this pamphlet translated for you or contact us so that we can mail you one in the proper language that you're looking for so water board meeting
1:01:56board of health has asked me to be at air border health which i've probably be doing this presentation to them as well and i expect we'll be having other public discussions about this in the future so the other things that we're going to be doing moving forward again we're still working with dep and epa on some requirements that they're going to have we're going to be required to do
1:02:18quarterly testing now for lead moving forward until we get two clear samples and uh and are able to reduce that that sampling frequency um you know other things like some of the biggest things to remember if you do have a lead service or you're concerned flush it flush your tap water use cold water flush it for 15 to 30 seconds before you use it we do offer a credit program for removal
1:02:48of your lead service for customers to be able to to do that if they do have a lead service one thing uh if you do have a lead service and you're concerned and want to have some sampling you want to test your own water we do have a list of dep certified labs that can sample for customers we've contacted them that's available on the city website or you can call the office and we can
1:03:14mail you the list of those of those laboratories the other thing if you're still concerned you could get a water filter not all water filters will filter out lead you have to make sure that the particular water filter that you're purchasing is will filter out lead you know brita there's different styles of brita filters some do lead some don't other that's just a brand name there are other
1:03:41ones out there that do and don't so just be careful we also will have a pamphlet on our on the city website that talks about the water filters uh as well and what to look for when you purchase one so i know that was a long presentation and thank you very much for hanging in there but you know this is something that's going to be uh that's that's going to be out there
1:04:04there's going to be a lot of discussion on it um moving forward and you know i think one thing is getting the proper information out there is going to be one of our biggest things because there's going to be so much misinformation of where this could go or what's happening but one thing we've got to remember this isn't new to the city of fall river this isn't you know we didn't change our water
1:04:30chemistry and all of a sudden i'll let them out of the room so excellent presentation thank you
1:04:46excellent presentation that completes item number six item number seven is updates on ongoing projects uh thai sales supply of am i right equipment change order is for zero dollars yes is kind this was a time extension just to be able to uh continue the project still underway and moving forward uh and there was no monetary change do um the notification on the meter changeout uh they were
1:05:25running very low during the covid period that seems to have picked up since covet is yeah so so covid uh put it put almost uh pumped the brakes on the whole project you know there was a lot of weather what was going on so we kind of put a hold on the whole project um once we got going again we got back into replacing amrs and then we started more with the mailers and entering
1:05:51people's properties to replace the meters the numbers are still kind of low so if anybody has received a a card from felch engineering uh saying that the city wants to replace their water meter please contact the phone numbers on there schedule an appointment they have saturdays they have nights to try to work around people's schedules but you know this is something that we need to get done because it still is a
1:06:15very low compliance rate on that project do we need to consider any other steps uh such as enforcement uh there is things that that we're looking at right now we're still i think we're on a third round of sending out mailers to customers to try to get you know looking from there some of the next things that we may be looking at is uh uh you know potentially uh an estimated accounts or something potentially
1:06:41escalating bills um because threat threatened shut off at one point you know that's that's where do we go with that but i think i think we need to get through this next round and see what type of compliance we get to you know we're going to try door hangers we're talking about trying uh knocking on doors and stuff like that so we're developing the plans right now we want to see what the compliance rate is
1:07:04out of this mail and then we'll see moving forward i'll be interested to follow that because um again we did the uh meter changeout program in 95 96 7 and 8.
1:07:16and we beat the bushes and it was the threat of termination of service because the meter was considered a condition of receiving service correct yep that takes care of that most importantly motion could prove the change order yeah seconded all in favor the eyes have it item number eight other potential matters wilson road water booster pump station so i just wanted to bring this to the
1:07:58board's attention uh we did receive a grant from the mass works uh it was just approved by the city council and we will be moving forward um so on wilson road we're doing a uh we're going to be sharing a station with uh with a wastewater pump station a wastewater pump station all the pumps and pipes and everything will be underground our drinking water station will be above ground um the other
1:08:19portion of the building that will be sewer will only be their controls and the generator and stuff but we did receive a grant from the mass works in the amount of 2.5 million dollars to be able to move forward with this project the overall project cost is just under 7 million dollars a portion of it paid from the uh sewer department a portion of it paid from the water department uh
1:08:43for their consecutive parts um so this grant will be uh shared between water and sewer uh the funding is in place in the sewer department as well as the water department for the construction of the station second item is water system improvement project so uh this is in relation to opera funding um so our funding was provided to uh the water department um we're gonna be uh we're gonna be replacing some water
1:09:16mains with uh with the opera funding we have almost 1700 million feet of water mains that will be uh that will be replaced um a list has been provided within your packet so these are these are streets that were uh somewhere on phase 20 somewhere on phase 21 uh summer streets that need to be done um that shoot that the gas company is going to be impacting as well we try to align all these streets with
1:09:49those streets to be able to move forward so it will be oak grove ave marlin street president ave cross street north belmont vestal reading street sterling welcome street archer street atlantic boulevard moody street lasana street ryan street duke street and pembroke street so this will be for water main replacement as well as uh le 35 led excuse me 31 web services will be replaced um additional fire excuse me yeah 35
1:10:25services will be replaced um the overall project is not going to cost the ratepayers uh anything on these streets we'll be going through we'll be replacing our water uh some streets the gas companies already replaced or they will be replacing their main uh once all the work is done on these streets we'll be coming back repaving the affected streets as well as doing the sidewalks on those streets so
1:10:51again this isn't going to cost our ratepayers you know our staff will be managing the project there isn't funding in here for staff for management but uh we uh we are getting almost 1700 feet of maine replaced and 35 led services replaced with no cost to our rate pace it's a point of interest is that we're looking at all just over three miles of new water main being put in
1:11:18and yet only 36 lead services and most of this is in an older area of the city so it indicates exactly what you were saying before that we've been replacing lead services at quite a rate without a doubt next is the water treatment plant staffing update so this is something that i wanted to talk to the board i think i've spoken with both board members individually about uh the staffing uh and um just
1:11:49previous to this meeting we're in front of myself and the president we're in front of city council uh discussing this matter as well staffing down at our water treatment plant is low and has been low for some time now we are low on operators so currently we have we have two operators to fill four shifts we do have five budgeted operator positions we have uh management that has been assisted with filling in those open
1:12:25those open shifts uh as the board knows where 24 7 operation operating around there we can't shut our plan off um so you know our staff has been between uh lab tech who's been covering shifts our water quality manager uh a previous manager of the director of treatment and resources which i'll get to in a second all of everybody has been putting in more than their more than their time to assist
1:12:59with continuous operation of the water treatment recently we did just lose our director of treatment uh jody raposa she moved she moved on elsewhere and uh you know that was that was that was another big loss she was she was taking shifts off shifts saturday shifts night shifts that some of our operators weren't working you know as the committee knows the board knows we've been battling to get our rates
1:13:31which will help with what soldier approved then we'll be able to move forward with some of our possibly adjustments that need to be made to salaries or other things done for those employees to try to draw in new employees you know i'm a big proponent of trying to reach out uh to get staffing to get trainees to get people uh in you know my hope is that uh you know there are
1:14:00programs out there bcc has a training program for licensed operators you know we're willing to work with uh with people that want to get licensed and want to move into the field you know this whole entire field between water and wastewater is uh an industry that isn't uh hugely appealing to people to go into uh even though you know somebody coming out of high school um you know prior to covet i
1:14:25was i was talking with durfee and diamond students and i was bringing them on tours of the plants to try to get them interested into the field you know somebody coming out of a vocational high school and acquiring a drinking water license or a wastewater operator's license could be immediately employable without a doubt there's no doubt in my mind no if they want to work they can work you know
1:14:51we're not the only system in this situation i can tell you that much this is a statewide region-wide uh issue almost nationwide issue but it's something that we need to work on a our employees need to need to have comparable rates to other systems we're a lot lower right now than other systems i can tell you that right off the bat i've done i've recently done a comparison of operators to other systems you know our
1:15:19management in fall river highly underpaid compared to other systems you know i was just having a discussion with somebody about directors and um you know what people paid and somebody says well you know this director is getting paid almost the same amount as this director from the other community but the director that does for fall river isn't just doing the drinking water system he's doing the drinking
1:15:39water system and the wastewater system he's the primary for both so it you know there's a lot of things that play in so so when it comes to that point you know every and i've heard this a lot from the council recently too about you know that our employees are underpaid but there needs to be a correction to that we can't just sit there and say that our employees are
1:16:02underpaid with no action to it um so just something that i wanted to talk about um so currently we do have um with the staffing issue that we've had uh with the operators uh and then with our director uh leaving um and she did give us proper notice um but it was it was you know with a two week notice which is you know recommended but it's uh it's a short time to we wouldn't have
1:16:31enough time to advertise get somebody on board and cross train at that point i i made the decision to reach out to a couple of our consultants that do operations and management of plans woodward and curran was able to provide us a management personnel to be able to come in to work to manage our plan you know somebody needs to be there there's daily weekly monthly dep reports that need to
1:17:00be completed there's monthly reports for nifties down at that plan that needs to be completed and submitted air quality monitoring reports chemical reports contaminant reports as well as manage daily management of the staff as well as oversight of the whole entire operation of the treatment plan that is not something that we could afford to try to uh to try to wing it that isn't something that one could really afford
1:17:27to so i made the decision to bring in somebody while we search to bring in a qualified person to fill that position i think we're going to have to look at all sorts of alternatives here you know it is it is something that we that we're gonna have to look at you know um again with uh you know again the rates that we pay it's gonna be tough to pull in a
1:17:55qualified certified person to be able to manage that facility it's something we're going to have to look at and we may not be able to find them and then we'll have to look at all times jody was pulling a shift and yet she salaried employee so she wasn't even being compensated for the work that she was doing we lost her for less than ten thousand dollars but it's a terrible situation
1:18:22and we just left the city council in which we had to scrabble for support for a water right just to get it to the full body it's not a good situation no so again and that's that's one of the reasons i wanted to bring up this staffing issue that way the board's aware everybody's aware of the situation that's ongoing you know it's uh it's not a good one my hope is through
1:19:02some uh talks that are ongoing and other things we'll be able to better some of this my hopes is that we do get rates that support our budget moving forward um you know that and that's one thing that i've said in front of council multiple times and you've reiterated tonight is coming down and having to have these uh uncomfortable uncomfortable discussions but their discussions about it nobody wants to see
1:19:31a rate increase nobody wants to see that but we need to be able to support our department you know but all of that going back to our uh employees as well you know how does that make an employee feel stable that they're going to have a job next year it erodes the morale right you don't know whether or not you have a viable employment right especially for somebody who has a ticket
1:19:59who can move that from place to place to place into a more stable environment no it's it's it's untenable yep more stable better paying environment compared to it it is so frustrating to hear the political reasons why they don't want to take the bull by the horns those simple facts of life are without water you're not going to have a city period you don't have life this isn't and we're talking pennies
1:20:39we're talking pennies nice work bringing bringing them in though yeah you know again it wasn't something it isn't something that uh i have the time you know my days now are uh beyond booked um you know and there was no other staff that would be able to there's nothing you could do it was uh it was so it was something that needed to be done to make sure we stay compliant with all of our
1:21:14regulations make sure we are working with uh comply regulation age agencies to be able to keep our system safe and keep the water going up to our customers
1:21:33i don't know i think going forward perhaps more communication open communication with the council might help this might help but we need all the help we can get at this point i mean we we've got to look at every option period that concludes the agenda of any other business to come before the board no hearing none motion to adjourn seconded motion made seconded all in favor aye at 8 10 pm thank you very much