9.27.2022 Fall River City Council - Committee on Health & Human Affairs

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pursuant to the open meeting law any person may make an audio or video recording on this public meeting or may transmit the meeting through any medium attendees therefore should be advised at such recordings or transmission are being made whether perceived or unperceived by those pursuant or deemed acknowledged and permissible my first item on the agenda is Citizens input do we have anybody for Citizens input

see none um can I make them item one on the agenda is minutes motion to adopt minutes of March 31st second that motion all in favor all in favor aye aye meetings minutes accepted item number two on the agenda is a resolution to discuss complaints of odors emanating from the wastewater treatment plant adopted 8 16 2022 anybody wishing to speak on the matter may come down from Mr Ferlin

hi good how are you good evening tonight councilors good evening um Paul Ferlin the administrator of community utilities thank you Jason wetherby violia water plant manager thank you can we have anybody else come down would you like to come down and speak on the matter

I'm passing from my thumb s thank you Mr swaz can you just state your name and address for the record uh did you like that no you can say that my name is Joseph C Source uh also known as Jose uh I'm from the Saint Michael's uh so some people call me Jose others call me Joseph but I'm Joseph and I live at 235 King Phillip Street in Fall River

and basically uh I mean my my issue has been odors from the sewage plan for many many years and way back when I first started operation it was pretty bad but then I think they uh changed some Personnel changed some equipment and it became reasonable you know the odors were maybe just once every so often but not not too often or not enough to complain about but starting in 2017 the

Otis started to occur and mainly uh I started complaining because it was the Fourth of July and we have our family down and I have a very large yard for Fall River and um you know we're out there and all of a sudden you know we're booking stuff and we start getting these odors from the storage plan so it was I mean it was kind of embarrassing because they they asked

well what's what's that odor from you know so I have to tell them that's the source plan anyway going forward uh a few days I think on the 17th I I uh contacted uh well actually what I did is I emailed to the city council the mayor uh but then I got a response from Mr Paul Ferlin is is Mr Ferlin here okay okay we've we've spoken yes we have okay

so uh anyway we went back and forth with a few issues uh Mr Ferlin might have corrected me on a letter from Terence Sullivan back in uh November 8 2017 that there was an article in The Herald News stating that the equipment was somewhat outdated or you know served its purpose and uh but they were in a process of uh multi-contracts I guess that they were doing work there uh and they would not

start doing anything with the sewage or with the odor issue until after the first uh contract was done and I believe the contract was something electrical I'm not 100 sure but but anyway uh so again going going beyond that I've written a few letters to Mr Ferlin uh and uh copied the city council and stuff so um it just seems like it's an ongoing issue um and you know he people can tell me that

that it's it's uh being worked on uh you you claim your workers work very hard and I don't doubt that but the thing is is that if it served its purpose then why why why not be proactive and replace what needs to be replaced instead of keep working on it working on it working on it and I think that's what we've done and so the orders continue and um I'm not saying it's an everyday issue but

it's it's enough you know that I complain um the other thing and I know that none of us here can do anything about it but uh I I see trucks coming I live perpendicular Bay Street or a perpendicular off Bay Street and um they have these I call them soil um what are they called yeah anyway yeah they but but they're from out of town and they and they uh

bring sewage in to be processed at the plant at least that's my understanding and I only got that understanding from talking to Antonio Souza um and and again but I I've lived in Fall River for well actually for 70 years uh 72 years as a matter of fact so I'm 76. so anyway uh I lost my training but you saw the trucks oh yeah the trucks right and again you know sometimes

um I've actually followed a truck from

anyway uh from where William Street starts into Bay Bradford Bradford yeah and either he had his vents open it was a one of the big long trucks not one of the local rosebuds or anything like that but so anyway I kind of followed them down to the sewers plant and I didn't speak with the driver but there were a couple of fellows that were having a smoke outside the building and I then I asked them if

we were receiving um um sludge from other communities and of course I was told though that's not the case but now I hear that we do uh so again you know I'm old school I'm old time I I'm proud of living in a city there are many people that you work with many people they call down the city but yet they shop here they go to uh grocery stores here they go to hospitals here

but we're still considered the young pit of Massachusetts that's how I look at it and and I say to myself hey the hell were you go dump it somewhere else but anyway I know the the city makes money by by having them do this so you know it's I guess you you have to it's something that you have to accept so do you yield so two yeah yeah so um did you want are we accepting sludge

so we're not accepting sludge we're accepting septage from out of town what is that so that's uh somebody goes cleansing a septic tank septic tanks and stuff right do do they pay us yes what do they pay us so it's 66 per thousand gallons so our annual revenue stream from that is uh last year I want to say we were about four hundred thousand dollars it's uptick this year so we're on track for

about five 550 000.

now I had gotten an email from Mr Swiss and I did call him we spoke I also at that time I had talked to Pat Casey because I know if there's something in the South End people usually I still will tell Pat and Pat called and she was told that the clarifying machine had broken and they had put it back online at two o'clock in the morning it was back

online are you the one that she spoke with I'll call her and find out who it was that she spoke with no because I've been through the neighborhood yeah and I've talked to Pat um but no not by a phone conversation I didn't speak to now your company is still doing it I thought your company was sold out to somebody else another company bought your company no no that didn't happen

she had a company merger oh a company merger who'd you merge with uh Suez yeah that's what I heard now um Mr Krillin could you tell us what you're doing down there to alleviate the odor that's coming from there yes so you know again I think a lot of people may or may not know Wastewater planet has been there since the early 40s um that's when the Clean Water Act went

into effect and uh and has been in operation continuously ever since um over the years there's been multiple upgrades throughout the whole entire wastewater treatment plant as well as our collection system in the 70s there was large upgrades in Dupont for um at the time different types of treatment that needed to be done uh in the early 2000s there was other upgrades in to csos and the capacity that's uh that's

rated uh at the plan so recently uh and you know I've had conversations with Mr saws um you know um occasionally do we have odors that come from the plant yes where a industrial plant that treats Wastewater from over a hundred thousand people with within the city uh flow can go anywhere from low we've seen this summer at night which is extremely low for us of 11 11 million gallons a day up to 110 million

gallons a day during a wet weather event um if you go back and Mr Saw's complaints I know originally uh to Terence Sullivan in 2017 uh there was complaints and conversations that we had back in 2020 uh and complaints this year historically if you look back at those years they were dry years very little rain that affects our system differently I know we're always most of the time I'm

down here talking about the flooding that occurs throughout the system and how our uh collection system is undersized to be able to take the wet weather flow well the other problem that we have is that our system is too large to be able to take sustained period of dry weather flows um so you have this large combined sewer system with the Wastewater that is sitting out in the system a lot longer than what it should

be so it takes longer to get to the plant areas of It Go septic or have other issues by the time it gets to the plant it's ready or past its time that needs to be treated and makes its way through our plan so because of lack of rain the sewage doesn't get to the plant as fast is that what you're saying yes is there a way to get it to get to the plant faster

I mean we have water well so if it means you've got to put water to it do you agree that putting water to get it down there we have water we've had a water source yeah so so there's no water sauce can I say anything at all though oh okay let's let Mr for all in go ahead and so the problem is those years where you have low ground water is typically

drought years this year we were able to stay above the drought um you know requirements to be able to put water restrictions in place but to take and flow water through our Wastewater system just for just for the ability to convey Wastewater to the plant probably would have put us within those drug conditions where we needed to do water restrictions without throughout the city um so that's again you know you're

balancing off having to deal with the drought on the water side to be able to maintain Supply to our customers and then also on the Wastewater side not having enough water to be able to convey the Wastewater down to the plant fast enough you know so historically and this is something that I've so 2016 2017 drought year older odor complaints and older issues 2000 or so um again drought year very little rain

had older issues this year uh July I think we got.02 inches of rain in all of July again you know I don't think we've ever seen floats I've never been here where we've seen flows of 11 million gallons uh into our wastewater treatment plant at night groundwater tables were very low infiltration was very low coming into our system uh which again just kind of disrupts the process on us

um so on that that's one of the issues is getting the Wastewater to the plant so by the time it gets to the plant it's it's ready to be treated you know we have open um clarifies down there so far our primary clarifies they're open clarifies um and again when the water slows down the water moves through those clarifiers a lot slower which means that they may be in there a little a little bit longer

than needed from there they go to our aeration basins which are covered uh and then they go to the secondary clarifies which uh also open so there's a couple of different spots throughout the plants where there is the ability for odors to be admitted um because they're open top they're not covered the areas that we do have covered so are uh head Works building where the Wastewater first comes in

that's the area where you have the height the highest hydrogen sulfide concentrations uh because the Wastewater is coming in it's turbulent so hydrogen sulfides coming out of the Wastewater and the hydrogen sulfide essentially is the odor that you get from from Wastewater so the hydrogens and sulfides that building's enclosed and we have a scrubber unit on that building uh this that building uh was upgraded in the

2004 upgrades gravel was up upgraded and improved at that time um and again that's been in operation since then the other areas that we have covered is our sludgedy watering facility that's within the building and then also uh sludge holding tanks so those are also uh have a cover on them and have uh Odor Control Systems that suck the air out they go through a tower that sprays chemicals to take all the hydrogen

sulfide out of the air and then it's discharged out into the atmosphere so those High hydrogen sulfide areas are the areas that have a large amount of odors have treat the other areas don't have treatment to the open air you know and again you know like I said in the beginning you know we're in an industrial plant that treats Wastewater so occasionally are there going to be odors without a doubt you know

I know one one time this year you know one of us grub is you know you you blow a whole a chemical line or you know one of the pumps goes down um our staff's there typically gets it repaired within you know within the next shift or you know as quickly as possible when to get everything repaired and gets it back online but do those mechanical breakdowns occur occasionally yes without a doubt

can you can you speak to are do you have some units that are old and out of date with the information that he has that need that would help is that accurate so again you know we have a plan originally from 48 upgraded in the 70s um you know is a plan uh old yes do we have a lot of uh things within our plant that are um past the engineered useful life without a doubt

um you know we have uh we're currently uh doing a project that was approved November uh 2017 by referendum ballot of 123 million dollars uh which includes uh contract one and contract due down at the wastewater treatment plan uh contract one we uh we went through we we went through that project it was a two-year project uh that could that uh included uh upgrading all the electrical

through the whole entire plant which was uh primarily original for to the plant or when the buildings were brought online uh throughout the plant so a lot of it was from the from the uh late 40s and the 70s uh so getting that core infrastructure within our plan upgraded was one of the first things that we needed to do uh we also changed out a blower within our uh PSA building as well as demolished

our incinerator building that was taken offline in uh 2016.

contract two that we've been working on almost a year and a half now uh once contract one was completed we went into contract two uh contract two is upgrading of all about gravity thickness so those are the areas that take our sludge that comes off of the bottom of our takes goes into these gravity thickness which are Lodge holding tanks and helps settle sludge down uh can't water off to be able to make a thickest

sludge for Less hauling and trucking going out the other areas that are being upgraded is our dewatering process so the mechanical process we had three belt filled depresses um that were in in our facility uh two of them I believe were from the late 70s one was from the early 90s they were still in operation up until we took them offline during this project one of them was still in operation so that takes uh

so we were able to take we're upgrading all of that with uh some new belt filter presses uh as well as uh some new uh gravity belt thickeners which will give us some versatility in uh sludge disposal options because that's kind of a national issue with sludge disposals so those are the upgrades that are currently going on both of those facilities are going to get new Odor Control

um towers and new motor control systems that will that will work um in those enclosed spaces the history of the wastewater treatment plant and how it all works I think it's good for the public to know I've been down there several times this is the issue that's on the table right now is what are we going to do about the odors that are there and one of the emails

that you sent Mr Ferrell and said that a lot of the equipment is outdated how much money do you make a year what does your department pick up in sewer we pay water and sewer sewers more than our water what do we get annually so our annual revenue is roughly about 24 million okay so we have 24 million dollars and that's been going on what has been done because I've been on this Council a long

time I've never heard anybody come down and say we need to replace equipment at the storage treatment plant it's the Enterprise fund money to do that do we need to take out a loan audit to do something what work needs to be done would you know sir you're down there all the time what what do you see as a solution to the odors that are there what what other resources can we give

your company to help so that our residents don't have a problem with Oda well I think the city started by floating the bond which 123 million is going to go to good use but that was in 2017. yes which isn't now it's in the second phase of construction so how much is that costing us contract two is uh 52 million dollars okay so we have a lot more than that

we had more than that so what did we spent so far so we've spent uh roughly about 20 million on contract one uh we have done the um Globe Street intersection Middle Street separate we've done the president nav Pump Station that's CSO stuff I'm talking about the equipment at the sewerage treatment plant if the equipment there is faulty what are we doing with replacing that I know that we have money and we're doing

CSO and everything else part of it but right so none of the equipment at the wastewater treatment plant is faulty or not operational uh what I've said is that it's past its useful life uh but if it's fast it's useful life again so you know we are replacing pump stations from the 1960s right now as well those were past the useful life the you so talking to an engineer a useful life of a mechanical

piece of equipment is 15 to 20 years right if anybody keeps their pumps in our industry for 15 20 years and then replaces them um it would be unaffordable you need to maintain your equipment and keep your equipment going like we have done yes it does get to a point you know uh where you uh where you do the course benefit analysis of replacement versus uh versus maintenance but again it's uh you know it's the

you know we did the integrated plan back in 2015 which lays out the replacement of our hometown everything at the wastewater treatment plant you know so it talks about all the equipment at the wastewater treatment plant and replacing it step further when in 2019 was the wastewater treatment plant feasibility study which was A step above so you had the integrated plan that was a 60 000

foot view then you had the 30 000 foot view which was the feasibility study of the wastewater treatment plan um you know 1.38 a billion dollars was the price tag in 2015. for correction of flooding issues CSO issues as well as upgrade of the wastewater treatment plan you know so the 123 million dollar authorization uh that is being paid back by the rate payers uh is the first step in that

progression to be able to replace this equipment going forward I remember years ago they put some type of a citrus smell so that it wasn't you know that that odor wasn't there is that something you're thinking of doing now is that something that can be done um you have any suggestions we have some we have some of the um odor uh We've purchased two units more uh this season uh which are going pretty

much 24 7. yeah so so we've had and it's a citrus based um odor can you add more to it during the drought times so so we had two misters uh that have been on site for for years that have been in use for years um this year we did uh we did order two more and they went online this year um for that area um Citrus is is a tougher order to come

by we were using vanilla earlier in the year uh we've switched over and more recently have been using the Cherry really that's fascinating who knew so is that is that cherry vanilla Citrus is one more expensive than the other are they different prices I think that Sherry might be more it is really that's fascinating so so which we have we got it I mean anything to mitigate the odors that's what I'm my main concern is

so I guess because you're not speaking to engineers and you're speaking to regular people so let me just bring it back here so Mr source is having this horrible owner and his neighbors so is there an instrument that you think could be fixed or no it may not be on in the wastewater treatment that could help with odors if the answer is no then it's no but is there yeah you know I there

isn't we you know we do everything within our power with our current Odor Control Systems uh and anything else that we can do to to minimize the odors uh any odor complaints that we do receive and we do receive them uh we typically send out a supervisor from the plant goes out uh typically speaks to the homeowner or or other other people you know I can tell you I've been out multiple times in the different areas

where we receive multiple complaints I've spoke with many of Mr Saw's neighbors uh back in 2000 uh at all times of the day seven eight o'clock at night early in the morning I spoke with many of his neighbors and um you know that there back in 2000 you know reviewing my notes for this meeting I went back and I reviewed I know it's talking with them you know their recollection is that the odors over the

years aren't as bad as they were back in the 70s so I respect that but clearly it's bad for Mr souls and you know I love what you said about loving living in the city I respect that so these misters that you're talking about you said this was a year drought year is it possible to have more misters how do we fix that for those neighbors down there can we do something about that you know I

I can't say that adding more misters is going to fix the problem you're putting um you know essentially the Mist is uh they're taking the water that has an odor in it and blowing it into the air how far off you know Mr Saw's house is over 3 000 feet away from a wastewater treatment plant a neighborhood away from our wastewater treatment plant whether that misted air would carry that far to

correct the issue with his house I I can't say that it would well I would make a motion that we table this that we have um Mr perlin and Viola come back to the committee within a couple of months that you have a plan so that this doesn't happen next summer again it seems that the odors always happen more in the summertime but table it so that the next

time we meet you can come in with a plan of what can be done to alleviate the Otis so I should be my motion I second that motion all in favor hi motion to adjourn second that motion meeting adjourned all in favor aye meeting adjourned