Loading...
LFd 04162018 OPS 1 OPERATIONS COMMITTEE MEETING Monday, April 16, 2018 3:30 p.m. Conference Room 1st Floor Present: Shannon Cotulla, John Thiel, Jim Jones, Heidi Baugh, Richard Solbrig Public: None A meeting was held to discuss the following: TOPICS DISCUSSION 1. PUBLIC COMMENTS. None. 2. CONSTRUCTION PROJECTS a) Plant Emergency Generator Replacement (Cal Electro Inc.) • Cal Electro is preparing to mobilize next week. • District has applied for three separate FEMA grants, each potentially worth $1.2 million. Responses to the applications were due in February, April, and the last one in October. To date we have not heard any news on any of the applications. Waiting on these grant responses may delay the project if we continue to wait. We need to give the contractor direction. • Staff is trying to determine and weigh out whether to wait on the possibility of receiving some or all of these funds, or move forward with our project - due to start in May with the Generator component to start in August. Once we start the generator part of the project we will no longer be eligible for the funds. • If we hold off on starting the generator project now, we will have to go another season with the old generator. As it stands, with our current construction schedule, the new generator will be in operation by November 2019. Staff is also taking into consideration the contractor delay costs. Staff is meeting later this week to discuss options. b) DVR Irrigation/ C Hydro (Thomas Haen Co) • Work continues on this project, mostly on the farming setup and pivot rig controls. We expect to be planting by the end of this month or first part of May. • Shannon indicated that we are planning a tentative open house out there on August 20th just prior to the Lake Tahoe Summit. • C-Hydro has been running in auto with few issues. Liberty installed the wrong type of meter and they will be changing that out. We will earn more on the C-Hydro power than we pay for power at the agricultural rate. The new meter will capture both sides independently so the District can receive the benefit. c) Fallen Leaf Lake (District) • Chris Stanley is working with the Fire Chief on installation of a common structure to house both their Generator and ours behind their fire station. • Our Genset is on order through White Rock Construction. • John reported that work at Station V8 should be initiated in May. All necessary easements are in place. • Easement for V7 is in the final draft stages and waiting on a minor revision. John expects to be able to finalize this last easement agreement by mid-May. • We are modeling the force main to help devise the pumping and control system since nine pumps will be pumping directly into the common force main. We are trying to avoid a complex control schematic by having the pumps appropriately sized and sequenced. • While the force main is adequate for all domestic flows, I&I continues to pose a problem during storm events. There have been some improvements, but the problem still exists. 2 d) Ponderosa Waterline (Sierra Nevada Construc-tion) • We are starting discussions with the contractor about finishing the paving on this project from last season. • District will meet with City staff to discuss paving completion and find out if there is a better way to distribute final paving in that neighborhood. • We anticipate the paving will be complete in June. • We have not had a lot of response from the 22 homeowners about moving their services, but we know this is at least partly due to the fact that there is still too much snow on the ground. District will be making more phone calls to follow up on this. e) Water Meters Phase 4 • Vinciguerra expects to start work the first week of May. • Met with the gas company last week. There has been a problem with getting the gas company (actually their locator, ELM) out to locate fast enough. The gas company rep indicated that he will reach out to ELM to see about meeting our needs. • John reported that Vinciguerra wants to maintain the 100-125 meters/week rate of progress, which would allow him to complete the work in approximately 4 months. f) Marlette Waterline • Thomas Haen Company Inc. is being recommended for award of this project at Thursday’s meeting. • We received two bids, which were both under Engineer’s estimate. • Thomas Haen Company expects to start in May and be complete by the end of July. The inspection crew we have working on this project will then be needed on another project to start in August. 3. PLANNING / DESIGN a) Fire Hydrants, Service Valves, Pine Valley PRV, and Forcemain Bypass Stations • We plan to advertise for project bids in May. Construction to start in August and finish in October. • The work includes installing 15 fire hydrants and 10 system valves out in Meyers, and install force main bypasses on Al Tahoe force main, and improvements at Pine Valley PRV, which is grant funded. b) Sierra Blvd Waterline • We are completing our part of the project design in-house which will be folded into the full City project. Our portion is estimated to cost approximately $400,000 on a $4mil project. City will include our plans in their project and we will reimburse them for this work on our facilities. • City is not yet out to bid. Not sure they have all the funding in place to start in July. c) Keller-Heavenly Improvements • We have 30% design under review and are reviewing a report on tank materials, steel versus concrete. Looking at a life cycle cost analysis for this difficult to access site. • We are working with Garth Alling of SES to complete the biological evaluation. Once this environmental work is complete we can package it and submit it with the SRF application to be submitted in May. SRF review is expected to take a year. • EDCWA funds continue to fund the design work at Farr-West. We are using staff time towards the match requirement. d)Waterline Planning • Steve and Tiffany are compiling all potential projects from various sources – the water system optimization plan, fire flow evaluation, and undersized waterlines program. • We are developing a number of projects in the $1.5 to $2M range for construction over many years. It’s looking like as many as 60 projects throughout our distribution system. • Once identified, we will prioritize the projects and develop a CIP plan for implementation for various funding levels. e) Groundwater Management Planning South Y Remediation • Cascade Drilling will mobilize to the Eloise site this Sunday. Cascade is a subcontractor to Kennedy Jenks. We are contracting with Carson Pump to do the aquifer testing and 3 treat the water before taking to the sewer. It will be high in PCE. • This drilling and testing process will take about 6 to 8 weeks. • Shelly and Ivo are preparing to send updates on the status of this and the second meeting date and time. f) Fallen Leaf Lake • Design on improvements continue - See report under “Construction Projects” above. g) Big 5 Pump Stations • We have received the Final Condition Assessment from Carollo. We generally find the electrical gear is old and needs replacements. New pumping systems needed at Upper Truckee and Tahoe Keys. Concrete in generally good condition although we wells tend to be undersized. New wet well or expansion likely needed at Tahoe Keys to accommodate the addition of a third pump there. • Carollo has completed the field component of the seismic analysis and expect to have this report complete in the next couple of weeks. • The final component will be the hydraulic assessment which is currently being worked on and including the recent storm flow information from the sewer system flow meters installed last November. • We are starting to generate project alternatives based on results so far with designs coming in the next year and implementation for several years after. h) Sewer Collection System Assessment • Engineering and Underground Repair Sewer are working together on the flow monitoring implementation and data collection. • We are also continuing work and collection of data with respect to Sewer inspection work from the ECL and pipe list. Crews have been able to tv about 100 of those from the ECL. In the process we have identified areas that need to be addressed, and some more urgently that others. • Chris would like his crews to do some of these repairs. • We are working on a representative pipe list of 368 pipes identified in a cross section of different pipe sizes and materials throughout our system. Brent set up the project areas and is moving crews through this. 4. OTHER a) AMI Towers • Sensus installed 3 additional towers and are still not getting the reads they promised. • They are in the process of assessing where they might install additional towers, and how else to remedy the problem. b) Luther Pass Pump Station – 700hp pump • Met last week and decided to go down two pathways for evaluating how best to proceed. • We have requested that Flowserve confirm the price they provided during our last bid process; and then also inquire about a possible price break if we decided to order a second pump. • We have asked Marteck if they know any vendors, who work with other manufacturers (than Flowserve) who could produce a product that would work with our motors and replace the pump(s) out there. • In looking at alternatives for replacing both 700hp pumps, we want to avoid having two different 700hp pumps. c) Recent Operational Issues • We’ve had two spills recently – one at Washoan and Muskwaki; the other in Gardner Mountain on a force main. • The Washoan spill was caused by root-intrusion of lines on CTC and USFS lots. The roots grabbed a huge solid ball of what looked to be shop rags. This spill caused District to modify their protocol so that crews have signage in our responder vehicles to post in the event the need presents. District conducted a neighborhood meeting, owned the problem and identified the steps being taken to make sure this did not happen in the future, namely the lack of warning signage. We have had problems in this area before, 4 and will be adding these service laterals to the list to cap. We will also be sending pamphlets about not flushing “disposable” wipes. During the neighborhood meeting we asked people to remind their neighbors of this, especially their upstream neighbors. We will be doing additional sampling mostly to allay the fears of the neighbors. • The Gardner Mountain spill was thought to be water initially. On second look it was determined that it was in fact sewer. Crews dug it up and found that the line had, at some point in history, been hit and punctured by the tooth of a backhoe and plugged with ramneck (that held for a number of years). It did not appear to have been leaking for long. Crews fixed it quickly and cleanly. d) Capital Improvement Program Planning • John will be conducting the Water CIP Workshop Thursday at 12:45 to 1:45 p.m., just ahead of the Board meeting. 5. ADJOURNMENT Next Ops Mtg. Next Operations Committee meeting will be held on Monday, May 14, 2018, 3:30 p.m.