6 1 2022 Water Board

could you uh call the role please yes definitely uh president ontario president uh member ferreira is not present in memphis collins present okay item we're going to jump to item number two because item number one requires the presence of um member ferrara and who is a prison ontario you just need to read the oh i'm sorry i'm sorry i apologize i apologize pursuant to the open meeting law any

person may make an audio or video recording of this public meeting and may transit 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 thank you thank you now first of all um before we begin i would like to welcome member collins um rebecca brings with her

a wonderful expertise in the construction industry and i've known ms collins for quite some time and i know she is a welcome addition to the whatever water board it's been a long time since we've had a lady on the board and that's great okay um item number one on the agenda is ratification of a prior meeting but member collins was not at that meeting and therefore we're going to table item

number one until uh member ferrera comes and then we can go back to that so moving along item number two on the agenda is citizen input and there is no citizen input so we can move on to item number three which is the minutes of the previous meeting of march 8 20 22.

um again um if you wanted to table that just because remember collins wasn't present at that meeting that is i think very good advice because so world table item number three because uh member ferrero is missing at this time um item number four proposed leak abatements um in our packet for this evening we received a report from the community utilities regarding abatements i have no questions on them if

remember collins does if not chair would entertain a motion to accept the abatements as or the appeals as supplied to the meeting so i would like a motion okay um i vote in favor of that as well and so the uh the number of appeals outstanding 99 is that for this year total no so that's outstanding uh right now still to be uh still being to be processed uh or evaluated because

there's a period of time that we need to wait for uh for the uh report to be evaluated okay um so that we can do the calculation as per the leakability policy um so just uh a recap there was ten abatements on this uh on this uh on this meeting uh touring four thousand eight hundred nineteen dollars and thirty four cents uh as we're ending the end of the fiscal

year fiscal year twenty two uh total uh abatements that were issued within fiscal year 22 totals 25 845 dollars and six cents

with that approved i would like to return to item number one on the agenda saying is that member ferrera has been able to join us at this time welcome sir good evening um this is a little strange i'm going to ask for guidance from the clerk on this um we received or the attorney general's office received an open meeting law complaint yes and reading the finding of the attorney general's

office i would agree that the first finding that the meeting notice was delayed in posting it was corrected less than 24 hours later but it did fail to meet the 48-hour requirement for the notice to be up and therefore mayor cooper um we will endeavor to not have that happen again it was simply a scrivener's error um the second part of the open meeting law violation concerns the gates and the proposed gate program

and i disagree very strongly with the finding and the conclusions reached by the attorney general um i found nothing in the agenda to lend any confusion to what was going to be discussed at that meeting however the ag's office has asked us to revisit the meeting of october 14th and to discuss and re-vote any votes taken at that meeting so the first item would be the minutes of the previous meeting

we received those minutes and we voted to approve them in lieu of the requirement to re-vote the chair would entertain a motion to accept the minutes of the previous meeting of which was august 14th of 2021 excuse me didn't have august 11 2021 so may we have a motion to accept the million minutes seconded um fall in favor aye aye the eyes have it the minutes of the august 11th meeting are accepted this next item

are hunter fire lane gate access rules and regulations previously rules and regulations gait access at the reservation i don't know that we need to go into any great detail if the clerk feels we should i can give a quick overview of what transpired uh yeah i think a uh a brief uh okay you know a brief if there's any questions if any of the members have any questions on the item or uh

or anything like that you know again during that meeting the item was discussed uh the program was enacted and the program did move forward uh and it was done as the pilot program following those rules and regulations but exactly so um the city was this goes back to almost a year ago the city was approached with a request to open the fire lane gates for the hunting season 2021 into 2022 and we held meetings

to we didn't hold a water board meeting we had discussions we did research we went over a lot of things and the conclusion was that the gates would not be opened um they posed a significant the gates are there to stop illegal dumping to protect the watershed and limit any vehicle traffic dirt bikes etc etc etc and the decision that we came to was that the gates could not be left open and that we would endeavor

to assist hunters who either had difficulties or an impermanent or had reached an age where they couldn't they had difficulty retrieving downed game that we would envision a pilot program in which a set amount of keys would be given out to a small group of hunters for the only purpose the express purpose of retrieving down game we settled on 25 keys we gave those keys out prior to the start of the archery deer season

we monitored the situation out there constantly to see what was going on and we at the end of the season no deer were killed no deer were retrieved no one took use of opening the gates to go in and that's the story um i think from reading the attorney general's decision we now should take a revote of the pilot hunter gate access program and so the chair would entertain a motion to ex to to go

and accept the hunter fire lane gate access rules and regulations as supplied at the october 14th meeting as you've stated at the october yes excuse me the yeah the october 14th meeting yes all right second voting in favor i think we've got to do a roll call on that one so uh material yes excuse me president um remember her yes uh remember collins abstaining thank you moving on to item number three which is

the minutes of the previous meeting you received the minutes in your packet chair would entertain a motion to approve the minutes of the previous meeting of march the 8th 2022 2022 thanks for the clarification just in case motion made motion seconded uh in favor yes yes okay we reach item number five and that is lead and copper rule compliance and i'm going to ask the clerk to brief the board this is a very

complicated issue let me just give a quick overview for um remember collins the lead and copper rule sprang from the safe drinking water act it's a federal regulation that limits the amount of lead or copper found at the tap in a potable drinking water situation or at the home as you know as we all know prior to the modern era most services in older cities like ours were made of lead

um those that weren't were made of brass or bronze more brass both of these materials contain a great deal of lead as do fixtures fittings and copper pipe that is soldered and so the state is charged with the enforcement of the lead and copper rule and requires the department to test frequently and requires a great deal of oversight to provide water that is safe and i will leave the rest of this to the clerk

excellent thank you very much president um so this uh i broke this up into three three sections for explanation uh i've already been to the board uh and explained to you uh in the in the last biannually biannual sampling or last lead sampling that we did we had an exceedance of the lead action level the lead action level is 0.015 parts per million our 90th percentile uh was what point zero one six

parts per member parts per million so we were one one thousandth of a pound per million over this standard um so out of that uh there was a list of things that we needed to do as per the safe drinking water act and mass dep's regulations um regulations 310 cmr 22.

uh the action level uh exceedance means that we have to do action uh there's some action that we need to take those action includes everything from uh full notification uh to all of our customers um as well as health care facilities medical facilities um posting on websites you know we did it public meetings which was also required uh we did you know we went through dp's checklist of all the

requirements that were required to do prior to the time frame allotted to we submitted all of our paperwork to dep they accepted it and then uh they after the completion of everything uh they issued a notice of non-compliance um so they said they were saying that we were not compliant with uh all of our action level exceedance requirements all the actions that we needed to do so their letter goes through and states

that um you know so our corrosion control that we do down at our treatment plant which is part of lead removal so corrosion control what we do by adjusting the ph and the alkalinity of the water treatment plant that reduces the ability for lead to be able to leach into the into the drinking water so we took uh in one of the actions that we did take right off the bat um we did

send a dp a letter that we were adjusting the targets of our ph and our alkalinity um we brought them up slightly the targets uh and it was laid right out in there that are the targets that we aim for so we went from a ph range of 7.6 to 9.5 uh up to 8.0 to 99.5 okay and we went from a target alkalinity of 18 to 28 uh and increased increase that as well

and again those are targets that we aim for uh while we're making the water there's always some variations in fluctuations so we're aiming for those targets as you deal with ph and alkalinity uh there's also other things that we're dealing with to maintain that those numbers go into the equation for one being contact time to make sure that we get proper uh chlorination uh to kill any bacteria within the water

so our ph can't go too high uh or else we wouldn't have the proper contact time per dp's calculations so that's why we can't just jack the ph way up the other thing that we're always dealing with well people say well you just you know put more chlorine in to get your contact time formula to work if we put more chlorine in then we're dealing with thm trihalomethanes which is a by-product

to the disinfection that would use the chlorine so it's a balancing act to work on the congressional control as well as meeting all the other requirements um so we were adjusting our targets that was laid out to them one of the other things that they laid out in the uh notice of non-compliance um was about our lead service line replacement program uh and uh credit that we offer to our customers uh so we

have a program and we've had this program since uh 2005 uh the aco that was issued issued in 2005 that we've been following right along for our web service removal plan and abatement program as well as corrosion control and originally in that 2005 uh aco we were supposed to offer the customer 100 credit if they removed the lead service from the curb stop into their house and 100 credit if they removed it

from the curb stop out to the main um probably about seven years ago yeah we increased that credit from one hundred dollars per section up to five hundred dollars per section yeah within the letter of notice of non-compliance letter that dep sent they feel that that credit amount is not act uh is not enough to offer to our customers for for the lead service line removal so they feel that we should be

offering our customers more of a credit than that um may i ask the clerk a question they feel that first of all the water service belongs is the responsibility of the water taker in other words when you sign up for water that water service from the corporation in the main to your water meter including the plumbing in your house is your responsibility the city historically has worked on the service from the main to

the curb stop but in no way shape or form would the city go on to private property to perform any work that's one point the second point i'd like to make and and then return this to you is that in both of these cases in the corrosion control and in the lead service line replacement the city is in compliance the city in fact had a program a lead service line replacement program in 2005 that was

accepted by dep yep now they are saying we don't have a program yet they accepted the program we gave them 17 years ago as well as and your response your letter i've spent the last four days rereading going over this over and over and over and i i don't understand the letter from mr mclaughlin from the state i do not understand it i believe there is some factual misrepresentation i i don't think the right information

reached the person issuing the letter because had they done some research they would have found out that the city was in fact in compliance that this is much ado about nothing the other thing i want to point out is is that paul river is a gateway city and our our citizens are hard-pressed we hear this all the time they can't the rates are impact adversely the taxes impact adversely the the economy of this

community the the the the average income in this community is extremely low and for for the state to say to us that 500 isn't good enough i think my reply is that's an unfunded mandate if you want it any higher send us a check because i don't know how we can ask people any more than we already have i i just don't know and excuse my interruption i did just i've

spent so much time reading this and the more i read it the more questions i come up with it's because your response and and i must say this city this board this department is really very lucky to have someone a wordsmith of your your quality because this is an extremely good letter it points out and attached to it are all of the factors proving proving conclusively that the city in

fact did everything that's now being asked of us you did everything i i'm totally confused as to how this is going sorry no no i trust me i share your frustration um you know the letter goes on to state as as you said that we don't that we um didn't submit the service replan that we didn't do certain monitoring requirements uh and that's all within their letter uh when you get to the

actual notice of non-compliance so for notice of non-compliance from dhp they have to say this is the regulation that you violated x y and z yeah and that's where that's where they got there was two things that they stated that we violated so a lead service line replacement program and it's a failure they reference 310 cmr 22.066b 5a so failure to submit a lead service line replacement plan you know and

so i look at that and i pulled out the regulations and i pulled out all of our past you know i pulled out the box that we have for what led service uh program that we've had in place since the late 90s and been working on uh following our aco since 2005 and i look at that and you know so you read the regulations and the regulation says that within 60 days

after the closing period of the of the action level exceedance you need to submit a ledge service removal plan to the department unless otherwise approved program by the department which i take out our 2005 aco which is an agreement between the city of fall river and mass dep that was mutually agreed upon and entered into in 2005 and right in that 2005 aco has a lead service removal plan that we've been

following uh since 2005. i believe that plan also has their acceptance correct it was mutually mutually agreed upon and accepted by both bodies at the time um so you know and that's that that goes into my response um part of my response to to dep you know the other thing that they uh that they cited us on a violation of uh was essentially not submitting by monthly sampling for alkalinity uh nph

and so these uh you know these are samples that we've done for years sure we do them on a regular basis uh throughout the uh the entry to this entry point to the distribution system by twice a month we take a sample we run it for alkalinity and ph so we had that documentation and in my response to dep i provided them a copy of that documentation that would be these sheets here clearly showing that

in each of the month those tests and their results were forwarded to dep correct yes you know again um i i i was a little dumbfounded by some of their things i i don't understand it once once i got into uh once i got into the research and looking through uh what we had to do um so again that that was you know the other thing they want the notice of non-compliance in the letter they want

the notice of non-compliance uh to be stated within our ccr consumer confidence report that'll be out by the end of the month um well we always list everything in the ccr including any citations violations etc that are done yep now in this case are we going to be required to say we have been cited for a violation of the uh lead and copper rule oh by the way you did comply with it i mean i

you know we're going to put it in there that that we received and notice and uncompliance because we received a notice of non-compliance um whether what the legitimacy to is to that notice of non-compliance is still in debate i i respectfully i i don't see it in debate i i i absolutely do not see it in debatable the proof is the the proof is in the documentation i mean this isn't something we invented it's it's

it's disturbing because it's almost like someone and i'm not saying mr mclaughlin at all i've known mr mclaughlin has been a great um asset actually for the city over the years he's been very helpful um i spoke with former director cagle about his um you know relationship with mr mclaughlin and he said told me the guy was straight up very good very very good no this is nothing someone is it's it's just i i don't know

i get paranoid it's like somebody is is pushing this from outside of the state this is this smacks of federal and i i really i want to watch what i have to say because it's i mean on one hand you have somebody saying look you didn't do your homework and on the other hand we've got our homework assignment with an a and um your stamp saying you got it on your desk in time i don't

i can't imagine your frustration i mean mine is just i don't know what to make of it yeah you know uh right now again it's it's uh it's it's it is a frustrating situation uh and it is gonna um you know there is gonna be uh long-term term cost uh and consequences to all of this to our repayers essentially if we are required to pay for the removal of the lead service on private property

that would be catastrophic because in turn they would and if i understand correctly require us to readdress all of the services that we previously pulled out from the main to the curb stop as in our program as stated in the beginning as by city ordinance i don't know this is the this screams of an unfunded federal an unfunded mandate you can't you can't say to a a department or a

city you know go over and do that without producing the the funds to do this we we can't afford this the city can't afford you you're talking about millions of dollars i mean people thought the cso program with something if we've got to tear up streets yeah you know again this uh this this is uh extremely uh extremely costly uh to be able to do all these lead services you know with the volatility right now

within the construction market um lord you know it's uh it's tough to uh tough to nail down what what an exact an exact cost would be in relation to this but as it stands right now i'm estimating this at 23 million 23 million on top of everything else we've got going 23 million okay um bonding for 23 million it probably had what you figure 50 cents to the right 75 cents to the right

uh yeah would be would be higher than that be higher than that oh good uh i'm going to use the old hackneyed phrase i think the city is being used as a judas goat i i think i think somebody is pushing this with with a larger agenda out there of of if we can get a gateway city online and we can force them into doing something like this now we can turn

around to this group or that group or this area and push this this is you know and again and again one thing that we do have to keep in mind that uh you know making sure that lead is not within our drinking water and not going um into our community is is is a top priority and you know there is a lot of money spent by agencies uh whether it be hud with

the leading program or other agencies um you know that is that the health of the community uh is one thing that we definitely always have to keep in mind that said we are talking about a first grab sample and those are the samples where the water has remained stagnant in the line overnight or or for an extended period of time and so you take the first pour out off of the tap the truth of the

matter is is that if during the night somebody flushes the toilet the the circulation of the water through the main through the the private surface has then cycled i i it's i mean nobody wants lead in the water we don't want that my god we've spent millions and millions of dollars under the 42 7 program under under the corrosion control the at the plant we have spent tireless time to getting the lead out of the water

it's not in the water correct correct and 100 what you said you know just want to reiterate a couple of things that you said make sure that it's clear for the people out there the lead is not in the drinking water it's not in the water it gets into the water either from a lead service that feeds your house from the main to your house from the plumbing within your house or the brass fixtures within your

house ways if you know you have a lead service or old plumbing the best way to make sure that you're getting lead-free water you wake up in the morning run your water for 30 seconds that takes care of it you go to work you come home after work after the water's been sitting all day run your water for 30 seconds just when you come home so that way you don't have

the stuff that's been sitting in the pipe stagnant for a long period of time that is the best way to make sure that you're getting fresh water all the way from the main uh that hasn't been sitting in any pipes that have lead in them as long as i have been affiliated with the department that message has been sent to our consumers time and time again it used to be on the

water bills still it still is thank you this is really very troubling yes you know again this is uh this is something and it's still evolving uh it's still moving forward um you know again my response to the uh 2dp uh on the notice non-compliance i feel that we're in compliance with uh with the two things that they cited us on there was also four uh things that they wanted us to respond on

and i believe we're within compliance uh within all four things so that's uh you know that's kind of uh where we are with the notice of non-compliance uh and my response to dep so my response was sent to dep um back uh on april 27th um and that was within the guidelines of one we needed to respond to uh dep um just earlier today uh as of uh four hours ago uh i received a uh

a letter that uh i would imagine dep is gonna send to me um but i received it from a state delegation um excuse me i received a letter a copy of the letter from one of our state delegations i have not received it yet from dep the dep sent their response to the area legislative delegation and not to the department at this time i have not received it

you know i'm i may have been a little uh exuberant when i was saying something is pushing this but that's not even that's not even proper level you it's so again the letter the letter that that i that i saw from dep uh they feel that we are still in violation with not having a lead service removal plan in place when we have a lead service plan in place and we have the signed documents in our

hands okay um so again uh that that was there that's their response uh to me and they are uh looking to hold an enforcement conference an enforcement conference we're gonna need a bigger boat so that brings me to uh the next point um that i would like to talk to underneath this uh item uh this agenda item uh which would be uh assistance from um if needed so first i'd like to talk about legal

assistance and legal representation um you know i've been uh uh i've looked into a couple of different firms in this uh firm uh macky shea endurang uh has been uh has been recommended to me i wanted to come to the board and talk to the board about uh if they wanted me to reach out to this company i did receive a letter from them uh and so they did they did hear about uh our current issue

and i uh received a letter from them uh in regards to uh their interest in uh providing us service so i would like the board's permission uh as well as i will uh gain the permission of the law department uh to be able to uh interview these uh this sperm and uh discuss discuss this matter with them to see whether we would like to you know engage with them in uh in assistance representation during this

during this matter the enforcement conference the date is coming up the end of june in the letter that i received from dep so this is a fast-moving fluid mata so if the board would uh if you've had time to review this if you could potentially approve me to uh to interview these uh this firm have some discussions with them and then enter into an agreement with the uh with them not to exceed potentially um if uh

if i feel that they are eligible to absolutely i mean we you're going to need expert technically proficient legal representation this is way above anything we could do i would think the city's law department would prefer to bring on someone else and the chair would like to entertain a motion to approve to interview mckeeshay during pc for legal assistance regards to the lead and copper rule a motion made by

member ferreira seconded seconded by member collins all those in favor well i think we should have a roll call on that can we i can access the question and reference that absolutely i'm sorry no that's okay um have we talked have you talked to cooperation council in reference to this law firm and the reference to this potential and did they refer us to go outside or i have had discussions with with

corporation council corporation council is willing to sit in on any meetings with dep or any other uh or any other company i have mentioned uh i have provided corporation council with a copy of this letter uh of intention uh and um you know he at that point didn't show any opposition um but i did not uh ask for i didn't you know look for approval to hire outside counsel at this but he reviewed the

letter and you've had the discussion with them yes thank you that was it thank you hearing no further discussion you take a vote on the matter uh member faire yes ma'am counts yes president terry yes thank you so the next thing would be a technical representation um and when i initially received the notice of non-compliance from dep we did you know we did have a deadline to respond um and

you did see my response let up i've been working uh i had woodwood and covered working on a couple of a couple of projects for us so i did enter into a uh into a contract with them years a while ago the board gave me the ability to enter into contracts unto me fifty thousand dollars and uh i've been using woodward and curran uh they assisted me with gathering some of the data uh for the

response to dp as well as uh other data that we've been uh collecting uh because again this is a continuous moving process that we're dealing with um you know i've i've heard that the ep was going to be coming with some type of response so i've been trying to get hot ducks in a row over time here so i am in contract with them i would like to continue using them moving forward um

you know i feel that they've provided the excellent technical assistance through the initial response and everything else that we've followed up with today therefore the chair would entertain a motion to continue the collaboration of woodward and current for technical assistance they've been part of us for quite a long period of time and are quite familiar with our situation and our our department so moved second

any discussion on the on the matter hearing no discussion we take a boat uh roll call vote roll call yes remember yes yes the presentation yeah thank you thank you thank you again um just on this whole matter i depending on what goes on within the next week or so i may be calling for a uh for another uh possible meeting with the waterboard uh just to update you on the ongoings of

this matter uh this is uh a very fluid matter that changes day by day something that right now is fast paced but we uh we'll be both all right um moving on item number six on the agenda is uh a request for the approval of the purchase of 16 acres of forest land to protect the copic of drinking water supply reservoir located on indian town road the purchase is from a jeffrey silvia

marielle massey to the city of fall river we have in our packet of information we have a copy of the purchase and sale agreement i believe the funding for this is supplied through opera uh no so there's two fundings oh there's two potential surveys corrected right now uh one would be uh cpc okay and one would be the uh we have a grant application into the drinking water supply protection uh grant fund

okay so it would either be through cpc or through the grant yeah if you like if the chair would like to have the uh the maps available as well on the powerpoint i can explain a little bit about the location so this is an overall map of our copper cut reservoir area so this is copper cut reservoir over here is where fall river proper is so forward to urban city northwood tuppers right

over in this area this is the dartmouth line so you when you come from reed road you come from reed road you come up this way uh and you come up into copper cut road follows up copper cup road all the way to the side um so this piece of land that we're looking is at is this red box right here uh it's a piece of land that as you can see is

well within the watershed uh of the copaca well within the tributaries uh that feed down into uh the copper cut reservoir uh this whole entire blue shaded area uh with the red with the red areas are the whole watershed and then the red areas are the more heavy tributaries that do feed down into into this area this is one lot that this is one area that we've kind of had our eye on for a while

because there was some uh activity that went out there in relation to wetlands that we didn't agree with conservation had an enforcement order uh in this area so it's something that we've been uh that we've kind of had our eye on the current owners uh you know back and forth eventually they they were looking to possibly sell either the whole lot or a piece of the lot and we ended up looking at uh

potentially to purchase a piece so this is indian town road uh copaca reservoir would be over here this is the whole entire parcel it's a long large long stretch parcel there's a house currently on the parcel which is down in this corner that house is going to stay the owners will will retain that uh and that's why it's drawn like this so essentially this is going to go through a subdivision

process uh where they will retain this lock uh the water department will be purchasing that portion of the law through zoning that lot could be subdivided and there could be multiple houses built on the backside of that so that is naturally a concern within the watershed forest development of that of that parcel so that's one of the reason that it interests us plus also within the

watershed within the within the viable area uh it's somewhere that will look that we've uh you know kind of kind of had an eye on so this is just a layout of the funding cost right now we're looking at a uh cost through the purchase and sales agreement of 230 000 for the land cost uh we'll have 30 000 in some surveying costs legal costs and closing associated so total project cost of 260 thousand dollars

as i said the drinking water supply protection grant is a grant that we did apply for uh we expect we expect a an announcement hopefully sometime in the very very near future uh and uh the amount that we applied for through that grant program is 121 thousand seven hundred dollars uh that leaves a remainder of 138 300 uh of the cpc uh grant so um if we are not uh giving the drinking water supply grant

we did apply for the full amount through cpc uh with a small amount that the water department would have to pay for the legal costs uh as cpc uh that would be a match from us but if the uh drinking water supply grant is uh is awarded uh it would end up costing us the department nothing because we'd have the cpc funds to match the drinking water supply grade excellent

so you're in the area of about fifteen thousand dollars an acre yes not bad what's that here's a quick question paul what's the estimated uh uplands in that lot oh what's the breakdown wetlands that would be a question that michael bossier would be better to answer he was yeah he was he was unable to make it tonight again i know there's some wetlands that go up the side of that

lock uh the whole entire lot is not covered in wetlands um because there was an area they're going to assume this lower portion is yeah up the side in the little portion there was some violations and we can assume that a good portion of the existing that is that the seller is to remain the majority of that lot is probably wet if it's because it's down here yep you know

the house was built is uh in that area of indian town road has culverts on this uh you know swales on the side of the road that convey the storm water and uh into those areas so yeah that is uh that is one of the lower line areas through there hence the purple nationals yep the uplands are buildable the wetlands are not i'm assuming for the most part

and it's part of is a part of this sale would because i'm i apologize but i'm assuming that that would all be um uh septic is there is there's city water and sewer out on indian town road nope there's no water and sewer that's all septic out there so they they would have do they have a current uh septic system there which is approved so that we wouldn't have to deal with

any of that i need to okay nope so so essentially we divide off the section that we're purchasing uh and we we take that portion over uh the house and everything doesn't even their legion field remains on their 1.88 all of the everything to run their house stays on the the well the septic everything cool the lord knows they're not making any more land i'm just going to say that

buy it they stopped making it yeah again you know with with the critical area that this is uh close to copper cut as well as uh as well as the surrounding um areas that are uh part of the bio reserve um you know it makes it a mix of good luck to be able to add to the portfolio for this area um you know the one thing that i would ask the board uh

if they do approve uh this this approval still does have to go to city council as well as any grants that we do receive if if the board would so inclined to approve the purchase of this law as well except as well as acceptance of any grants that would be needed for purchase of the law so the vote to be taken is um with the contingency as listed in the purchase and sale agreement

am i correct which would be approval of the planning board the city council site 21e 100 funding from local and state and site plan if all of those are met yep um if there was no further discussion the chair would entertain a motion to uh let's how we're gonna phrase this to approve the purchase and sale agreement with the provisions as set forth in the purchase and sale agreement signed by mr furlin on february 28

2022 um and if again if if it included any grants acceptance of those grants um yeah a hundred percent well subsection d say 100 funding from local state or other source so that would be contingent so the approval would be contingent on approval of the planning board approval of the city council a 21 east site inspection report acceptable to the buyer 100 funding from local state or other sources

site plan review committee approval of the new leaching field reserve area to be situated on the seller's portion of the property 80 000 square foot to be retained so we have no liability whatsoever in that that being said the chair would entertain a motion to proceed with the provisions as noted i do uh can we just clarify that the 100 percent funding from local state and other sources covers the

acceptance of grants and um in the event that we may be a whisker shy that we think that the local portion refers to the waterboard as necessary right yes

roll call on that we'll go back to the video for the language yeah we'll go back remember for her good luck with that one remember yes mccullen yes president terry yes thank you thank you very much moving right along at the speed of light here um number seven current water department staffing update so this is usually the bad news can it get worse this is something that i wanted to talk

to the board about i want to make sure that we're public we're open and uh and fully transparent on uh what's uh what's been going on what's uh continuing to go on um water department and i've said it at city council i've said it in many different forms we have a serious staffing issue within our treatment facility uh as well as uh now it's uh some of our other uh

some of our other divisions as well um so just to run over uh our treatment facility what we're missing down there for staff right now is when one the director the director left uh she left back in um november october november left for uh higher wages at a uh at a surrounding community we're missing two shift treatment operators uh so there are full four um four shifts that we staff our plant with 24 hours a day

we only have two of those shift operators currently working we had some of them leave for higher wages right now within the water field also seeing it in the wastewater field there's a lot of movement going on because uh there's a great demand for licensed operators within the field um you know we did a uh we did a side letter agreement with the uh with the use union recently to up the wages for licensed operators

um and it got us where i was thinking was the mid mid-range um for the state uh but when you're seeing uh operators in the operating positions being advertised for 42 dollars an hour we're not anywhere close to that so um you know it's it's tough it's something that we're dealing with uh currently right now um we do have the two shift operators uh we also have uh uh terrence sullivan uh

my ex-predecessor he's uh working as a 1099 employee uh he's also assisting with some of the administrative tests with the director not being in uh we have the water quality manager mike griffith he is also assistant with filling some of the ships nights and weekends uh we have dave peeler who is our lab tech he's also a licensed operator uh he is filling some of the open shifts

as well uh and we've brought on another 1099 employee which is actually the next employee of ours uh he's now works for another community but he has been picking up a couple of ships a week um and that's uh tony neves uh is uh also uh is also uh operating down there as well he was familiar with the plant he went through a training a retraining to become familiarized with the plant and

he has been uh he has been picking up a couple of shifts a week which uh helps us but um it is just uh just you know right now a plug we need to get these positions filled um you know the other positions that's open down there float maintenance operator so that's somebody that would work on maintenance but then also could backfill any open shifts uh we don't have that because uh to the lack of applicants

you need to be mechanically inclined and also a licensed operator and then also we're down to watchman attendance which is another position where we have four shift people we were down one uh that employee uh trent put in for a transfer to a different division uh i'm holding him in that position as a watchman attendant until i fill his position um but he would like to eventually transfer to the

position to the uh division where he uh where he wants to go uh and i was just given resignation letter uh yesterday by one of our other watchmen attendants how many shifts are you down so you're down that's many employees but how many shifts are you covering due to your lack of staff so shifts in a week uh we're converting uh 12 shifts with overtime um out of out of a week yep wow

plus then if one of the other operators one of the ones that is on shift uh either has sick or vacation time we would also have to fill those with overtime in one of our visits to the city council we were talking with the environmental affairs subcommittee about the difficulty in filling positions and i can't help but wonder the increased scrutiny shall we say call it that from dep on this department

could in large part be the cause and effect of not being properly staffed and we're not being properly staffed because we can't afford to pay people we lost our director of treatment for almost eight thousand dollars that's it's unconscionable uh that we can't retain good people and it's it's not all it's not only at the treatment plant we're losing them up at the maintenance section uh we we lost a

foreman over to a private contractor here in fall river the guy was great um you're caught between two huge forces here one of regulatory and and the the other of a maxed out rate no without a doubt you know this board knows as much as uh anybody um you know the budgets that are put together the budgets that i propose to the to the boards uh the budgets that the

board then approves and gets sent to the city council um you know we always try to work to minimize the rate increase to our ratepayers as much as we can but you know when it comes down to it we need to be able to supply a hundred thousand people with clean safe drinking water we need to be able to meet all the state federal regulations um having licensed operators at the plant is requirement of those

state and federal regulations um you know so uh you know eventually something is going to have to give here and that's why i wanted to bring it to the board uh so that the board's aware so that the public's aware of what's going on um but something is gonna have to give here you know you mentioned dep whether whether this plays into it uh you know the board does know a year ago

uh dep did uh reduce our capacity rating um um from uh from adequate to uh conditional um one step down from that uh is the lowest would be inadequate um which you know you know if we are uh given an inadequate rating um then dep really starts to really start to step in a little bit more um you know and they start to say all right well what's the issue here uh you

know capacity has uh has a couple of different um components to it if you read uh requirements within the regulations you know as a financial component has a staffing component in the general component and ability to be able to provide you know meet the requirements so you know they they come in they take a look at that uh and then they they say you're inadequate to get to adequate you need to do x y z

x y z cost a b c this is what you have to fund um you know and again um it's going to be something's going to have to break here you know and again i just want to i i just want to bring this to the board detention that's why uh there isn't anything for a vote here for the board um i just want to make everybody aware of the situation that's that's ongoing

uh of the problems that we're having um so that uh you know any actions that we do have to take in the future um you know it's it's it's known what's going on we're in an untenable position right now the simple truth of the matter is we need more revenue that's a simple fact we need more revenue the idea of increasing sales is great but in this day and age finding water intensive industries is difficult

those days are gone so the burden falls on the ratepayer and currently we're 358 100 ice to bring this department up to full staff if we get cited it's going to get expensive and there's nothing we can do about it because the one thing we've got is water we've got lots of it the problem we have is we don't have customers we just don't have the sales you know without a doubt uh it's you know

for for years we've talked in in cloisters about you know one of these days they're going to drop a hammer on us and you know you can't continue and we don't want to run like this nobody wants to run like this nobody wants people working wacky shifts nobody wants nobody wants this all right yeah again so one thing that i've been working on i've been putting together a different type of staffing point

different rates um and different things uh there are uh ongoing negotiations so um you know i don't want to go into that you know into that at this time but again i want to be able to uh i want to be able to talk about the issues that we're having um you know because because right now i to be honest i'm concerned we're moving into a perfect storm here oh yeah

there's no two ways about it we have dep coming uh coming at us with it with uh lead in non-compliance with that uh we have uh we have staffing issues at our facilities um as well as other other things ongoing so um you know again it's something that i was concerned about so i wanted to bring it to the boats the potential exists that they could come in and take over the potential is there

you know again if we would drop to uh inadequacy rating um you know um i don't know uh many communities within the state that have been dropped to that but uh you know there are there are other things besides them coming in uh if we are inadequate if we have found uh capacity rating is inadequate we have the potential of losing the ability to get srf funding there goes your funding mechanism i was just going

to say that you and i spoke about that before i mean if we're rated inadequate our banker shuts down so there goes your srf money there goes your grants there go there goes the only thing keeping us viable right now

wow well isn't this interesting we're just going to call ball mr happy you know again it's just something that i yeah tonight's uh tonight's a tough meeting because because there's a there's been a lot going on um but again you know this staffing uh just in the maintenance division too we just want to bring it up uh you know we have five water maintenance staff uh that are missing in uh and one supervisor uh that

uh as uh as president ontario said it's just recently left uh and he was uh he's a great loss to the city he was a he was a model employee yeah okay if it's any consolation it it's no better on a private side so yeah because we can't you know and we we don't know where the people have gone in all honesty it's it's been very difficult to make hires

over the past 18 months uh what we thought would have we thought things would have progressed or at least gotten somewhat better by now and and they're just as bad if not worse as they were a year ago and that that's the same for any of the subs that work for us yeah just can't find qualified help and and it isn't on the private side it is not a monetary factor

because it doesn't seem to matter how much money we we throw out there um they're just not there the people the qualified people just are not there so all right so wow okay moving rapidly along item number eight uh updates on ongoing projects um i was a little confused understanding the ying and the yang i think is one way of putting that in uh engineering perhaps yeah the one that confused me was cn

on the last one yeah so 41 780.

yeah i apologize on the agenda that should have been and these are all just for informational purposes oh okay you don't require a vote on any of this these don't require a vote this is uh things that have been processed administratively could you explain that one to me i've just 41 41 780 additional lead service replacements and then a quality balance quantity balance excuse me you know 41 780 but the contract

amount remained the same yeah okay so so uh this is in relation to phase 20 water main replacement for cn uh there's a company that did the water main replacement for us last year they were finishing up this spring with a couple more streets of replacement that were in their contract we also had them do some additional lead service removal for streets that we knew were gonna that we wouldn't be able to get into for

a while um so we asked them to do that uh so we essentially increased their contract by forty one thousand seven hundred and eighty dollars for those led service removals uh but then within their contract there was uh there was quantities and items that were not used throughout the contract twice so essentially we reduced the contract by that forty one thousand uh seven hundred and eighty okay so so that

in short cn picked up the lead services and it's a wash correct beautiful but again i always like all that stuff i like to document it no no no no no please yes so that it is a great question what's done um i was pleased to see you were that the department was very satisfied with um cn i uh yeah yeah mario ran a good project when he worked for uh earlier

yeah without a doubt he's just paving out some of his last streets this week um and uh you know he does uh he does a very very quality job yeah nice nice nice nice couple i think i think we've uh another number of phases maybe three or four yeah amazing and they've always been excellent to work with yes yeah he should have oh um item number nine is other potential matters something else can happen thank you

thank you ms collins is bringing locusts

and everyone will be itchy for the remainder of the evening now for 17 years or something does the uh the clerk have any other uh is there any other business to come before the board no i do not have anything thank you you've given us quite enough sir um with that being said um the chair would entertain a motion to adjourn the meeting to sorry thank you