1993-01-21
SPECIAL TOWN BOARD MEETING
JANUARY 21, 1993
3:00 P.M.
MTG#6
BOARD MEMBERS PRESENT
Supervisor Michel Brandt
Councilman Pliney Tucker
Councilman Nick Caimano
Councilman Susan Goetz
Councilman Betty Monahan
TOWN OFFICIALS
Tom Flaherty, Ralph VanDusen
O'BRIEN & GERE REPRESENTATIVES
Tony Geiss, Rick Gell, Brian Gidlow
Supervisor Brandt opened meeting. The purpose of the meeting is to discuss a water rate study and
anything else you want to discuss, and any matters that are related.
Tony Geiss-What generated the water rate study, it would be actually the facility planning on the water
plant itself. I thought, I'd introduce the water rate study by talking just a little bit about the water plant, the
needs and other things that we looked at looking at the Queensbury Consolidated Water District what was
involved there. What generated this was the fact that the water plant was experiencing high demands on
the system. The system had high demands on the water plant higher than what the plant was rated for. In
fact, recently you can go back ten or eleven years that it has exceeded in it's peak days the rated capacity of
the treatment plant. In fact, on some cases even the withdrawal capacity from the river. ....is the
withdrawal capacity from the river and 3.75 is the capacity that the plant is rated at. These concerns were
what generated. What do we need to do with the water plant, what does the town, the board need to
consider at the water plant. Then we looked at, I guess to start that out, we projected flows. In the long
term we projected flows just for the town, town districts and then for surrounding communities that might
come in. Then we generated a couple scenarios of what size treatment plant should there be and ultimately
what the cost of those types offacilities would be. We looked at the projected flows for Queensbury only
the Queensbury districts, I should say. It's going to be somewhere around 10, 10.1, 10.15 mgd, was going
to be needed just for projecting the flows here for the next twenty, twenty five years. So, we have a
treatment plant that's rated at 3.75 and we're looking at just for Queensbury a treatment plant that's needed
of ten point something. We then said there is Kingsbury and other very viable outside users, in fact we had
met with some of the users. I guess some of the more viable ones would be the Village and Town of Fort
Edward, Hudson Falls and Moreau, which brought it up to close to 15 mgd is what we're looking at.
Modular wise looking at the system we can expand to 3.75 and could have met the facilities modularly, I
think it's 11.25 keeping the boxes about the same so all the units meeting health department regulations
come up with 11.25 millions a gallons a day plant. Then we said, what would it cost to do the fifteen,
cause fifteen was bringing in some outside users then we came up with it was about $250,000 over the
prize that we estimated for the eleven to do the fifteen. The recommendation of the report was the fifteen,
in fact I said modular the second word and these were part of some earlier presentations. We got the
capability to, going all the way to thirty and we show that in the report. I want to say that just to say it will
fit on the site it will incorporate several additional facilities to the client and modularly to, can get to, from
the fifteen to the thirty with what we planned. But, the fifteen itself includes the facilities that really
surround the existing cause. The existing are on these gray lots that you see here and the pink are the
additional facilities that we're going to add. The board lists the facilities that we're adding and maybe we'll
just walk through them just briefly then we can put a dollar value on them overall and then we can get into
what that dollar value reflects in water rates. The pumping down at the river the intake is good it's rated at
fifteen mgd. We've got permission to withdraw five so you need to go to get permission to withdraw
fifteen and that was part of the original negotiation that they acknowledge. You are building the facility at
fifteen, but we're getting permission for five right now and when we expand comeback and talk to DEC.
But the pumps here, I think there are three pumps two five's and three. I think they are good for eleven
mgd when you put them all on at once.
Rick Gell-Right now your just under ten.
Mr. Geiss-You can pump about ten up from the river. The pipeline from here to the treatment plant is also
sized such that you would be able to handle the 15 mgd. New pumps would be required in here to get to
the 15 mgd's. Then we get into the facilities here a rapid mix basin where you bring the water together and
mix chemicals into it would be required. There are existing rapid mix basins, but we would need a new one
to accommodate the additional flow. In fact we would probably bring all the flow to one basin rather than
trying to split flow to three basin's. That's easy to split flow to three basin's, but when I tried the little
chemical flows that I would have to split we're talking fractions of a gallon a minute so you want to add the
chemicals at one spot then go to the other basin's so we looked at a new rapid big basin. Then the
flocculator and clarifier really they're two existing ones and we'd be putting in a new one and rehabing the
existing ones to get to the capacity. What we're talking about here the flocculator wouldn't change, but the
clarifier's we need to increase their settling capability by putting some new mechanism's in them so that we
can use the same basin, but flow a higher rate through them. One of the things that is really critical while
we would retrofit, I guess with the clarifier we go back and retrofit the existing clarifier's with the
equipment and cover the existing equipment. Three new filters would be added the existing filters are here
we'd be putting on three new filters. Right now each filter is rated at 3.75 million gallons a day. We've got
two of them and the way the health department rates them you have to have one operating and one full
standby. Your putting out water 7 1/2 even pushing it to 8 mgd by using two filters all the time that's really
exceeding the health department approvals because you don't have any standby. In the summertime if you
we're to lose just one of those filters you don't jump down to ninety percent or eighty percent capacity you
drop immediately to fifty percent of your capacity. That's one of the reason's why it's needed because if you
lose one of your filters which could happen especially in the summer you don't have the capability of
peaking out at the 7, 71/2 to 8 mgd's if as you've been doing you'd drop right to the 3.75 or 4 mgd's very
critical item in looking at this. So what we need to meet the health department requirements we would add
three filters so you have two existing, you'd have four operating and one standby which would give you the
15 mgd capacity. Now, the purpose of that is in putting the extra capacity we've got to look at the existing
pumping station has two, if I remember it, two 5 mgd pumps in it Ralph?
Ralph VanDusen-Yes.
Mr. Geiss-We would be looking at ways to get 15 mgd out of the facility so you would need additional
pumps. For this facility and with the adjacent clear well for 15 mgd wouldn't meet the state requirements
for holding times before you can put the water into the system. Therefore, looking at, and also this
pumping station is quite small to try to put another pump into it we would have problems with the existing
pumps because of the heat build up and such things. So we're looking at a new clear well and would add a
new pumping station. Clear well would be under filters with a pumping stations associated with it. This
would also give the capability that if we wanted to we could clear out the clear well here or clean out.
Right now there is no way of doing anything with this clear well without taking the whole plant off line.
So a combination here of having a second clear well connecting this pumping station to both clear wells so
that you could use all capacities planned here and then a pipeline to connect it into the system. Peripheral
to this is a little chemical storage, your going to have additional chemicals, just volume of chemicals with
the new facility and also you have waste lagoons and this area over here you'll have drying beds on the
adjacent area for handling the waste that is generated at the facility. Right now, you have a lagoon here and
a drying bed and you get into the pond here that's been used temporarily to collect the sludge in, as well.
Now, we're looking at setting up the lagoons with drying beds so you can handle the sludge that's
generated, I think I covered everything on the list there. The facility cost, I had mentioned the $250,000
difference the facility cost for a 11.25 mgd facility was $12,500,000.00 and the 15 mgd was
$12,750,000.00. The difference between the two facilities you needed to go to another clarifier, you
needed the pumping, you needed lagoons and things, the only thing, different between the two facilities is
one filter right here and that is the $250,000.00. That is in our estimation gave you an intemmental step
that gave you a lot of capacity for a very cheap dollar, also gave you the capability of taking in the outside
customers. Once we go through the water rates you'll see there is a dramatic effect on water rates as well.
We found after doing the original study we talked to several of the outside customers there are some
interested, I don't think any are signed up as yet, but they are interested. I think, I'd like to turn this over to
Rick so he can talk really what we came for the water rates.
Mr. Rick Gell-Just briefly some of the tables in the report are reproduced in this little handout, I'll send
them around. I just want to go over some of the concepts that are in here. Basically we had three primary
goals with the water rate study. One was to develop rates such that the total revenues received would
match the total expenditures so you could operate the facility without making demands of the fund balance
transfers of the previous years. The second was to evaluate the economic feasibility of the plant expansion.
The third was try to allocate cost in a way that the capital cost were recovered through advelorum taxes and
the operating costs were recovered through water rents. We did this by using an established methodology
by the American Waterworks Associations. They have several methods that are considered acceptable. We
elected to use the base extra capacity method because it's a little easier to define the large user type cost in
knowing the adjoining communities were going to be interested in this project. We thought it be a little
easier to use this method and be able to roll that in with the negotiations with the adjoining communities.
What we found, I don't think to anyone's real surprise is currently the advelorum taxes cover more than just
the capital costs and the water rents are not sufficient to cover all of the operating cost. In total the
revenues generated are going to be less than the revenues required taking into account inflation and
production costs increase over a time. We needed to do a variety of things with whether or not the plant
was expanded and that included basically raising the water rents to match expenses and decreasing the
advelorum taxes. Another thing we found was that on a capital cost perspective that most of the costs for
facilities were being absorbed by the consolidated districts where other districts were actually benefiting
from facility. We also proposed a reallocation of capital cost to the variety of districts so that each district
that benefitted from a facility bear a portion of the cost of that facility. These tables that are in your hand,
table two, basically shows the difference between the operating costs and the projected water sales that
were revenues from the rents. It's about a third of the way down it shows a deficit that continues to increase
over time. Near the bottom there is a difference between the capital cost and the projected tax revenues and
it increases over time this is under rate structures, table ten shows an adjustment to that. Basically we
developed a plan that over a four year period we can bring the water rents up to a point where they match
the operating expenses. We can bring the advelorum taxes down to the point where they match the capital
cost. We balance out in 1996 requiring no transfer of funds from the interfund to make up any little
differences. The net effect of this table is about a twenty two percent increase in total water bill over a four
year period. Table eleven shows a similar arrangement this time with the plant expansion assuming that no
outside users come into play. This basically results in about a sixty four percent increase in total water bill
over a four year period. That's basically shown again, on table nineteen, this time it goes by district it kind
of combines everything together. There is a whole number of other tables that kind of progress through the
steps in the report. But, the bottom line it's shown here on table nineteen the consolidated district being the
largest district. We have a total annual water bill for a typical residential water user using about 70,000
gallons a year and having an assessed value of $100,000.00. We have a total water bill going from $315.00
a year to about $385.00 a year.
Mr. Brian Gidlow-What would you say you attribute this....is it just projected inflation?
Mr. Gell-The inflation accounts for about twenty two percent. Without any outside users coming in the
plant expansion accounts for about forty percent. Excuse me, I'm sorry, I've been reading these tables
wrong. Nineteen is just the...inflation. Some districts are impacted more than others that's as a result of
reallocation of costs based on district benefits. Table twenty, is the table that shows the impacts of the
water plant.
Councilman Monahan-Plus inflation, right?
Mr. Gell-Plus inflation. We looked at the potential impact of the outside communities and that really varies
with any combination of communities to come in the service area. To come in with a hard fast number on
just what the impact is it's really impossible until you know the specific communities involved. But, the
bottom line is, if we get to the point where we have commitments for 15 mgd facilities these costs will be
reduced by about twenty five percent or about a hundred dollars a year annually. With that in mind the
costs are obviously significantly higher that the Town is accustom to paying today. They are fairly
representative of some of the other communities that we're working with today that are entertaining major
water plant expansions the Town of Colonie, Onondaga County, City of Beacon, it's a lot of money, but it's
not an unreasonable program. I guess, I'd like to turn it now over to Brian to kind of give you an idea of
where we think the project needs to go from here.
Mr. Gidlow- I think to just talk just for a second about the last two table of handouts table nineteen and
twenty. For instance, district forty in 1996 their projected a $385.00 roughly total bill including advelorum
and water rates for district forty that's without any plant expansion. If you just take a look at the similar
number in table for district forty 1996. For a 15 mgd expansion with no outside users it's about $517.00. It
could be fortunate enough to get the capacity allotment for outside users which would reduce that about one
hundred dollars a year the typical user then would pay about $417.00, which is not significantly different
from the....your going to face if you don't do anything. It's an reasonable increase, we just tried to allow for
inflation in table nineteen and we allotted for inflation plus new facilities in table twenty no outside users.
You get all the allotment of outside users then we're looking at something at $417.00 per year. So, where
do we go from here? Based on the assumption that you need to do something to maintain the ability to treat
water consistently for all of your customers whether it's an 11 1/2 mgd capacity or a 15 mgd capacity to do
anything with your facilities we tried to list here the steps that we believe would be necessary to move
ahead. The first two are sort of tied together. The first one would be SEQRA, State Environmental Quality
Review Act. Basically the 202B proceedings would need to take place to provide additional facilities.
Those two things would pretty much, go hand in hand, and have a potential time period we're estimating
three months depending again on mostly the SEQRA issues, assuming you would file a long form
environmental assessment form and also go through the procedural requirements, to go through the 202B
proceedings. When you have the basis already for the 202B, we have the report that was done and
submitted previously the July 1991, that gives the basis for cost estimates, gives the basis for the need and
that basically lays the groundwork for going ahead with the 202B. Similarly the need to get the permission
to increase your allowable intake and allotment from the current 5 mgd to whatever...is appropriate. We
believe that would take approximately three months to make that come together. In parallel to that and that
would be ultimately summarized in the water supply application that would be submitted to the regular
state agencies. In parallel with that, you would need to continue discussions with the outlying communities
to try and get a commitment from them to determine exactly what they would commit to, in terms of
facilities and financial commitment. Also, to continue to negotiate with Niagara Mohawk for the purchase
of the property for the grinders. Those will be key to the ultimate success of the existing communities as
well as the expanded facilities. The next step would be to start the preliminary design we estimate that
would take about three months to get to a point where we could submit the preliminary plans and a report
outlying the facilities with the proper radio authority basis of design and submit that to the health
department for review and comment. We've recommended that be done, because it saves an awful lot of
headache, to skip that step and don't bring the health department in at the preliminary phase and then get
the final design submittal then you have questions, needs to change and so on then you end up doing things
over again and that's not very efficient. There is no formal requirement for health department approval, but
they've always cooperated and sent back a review letter indicating their concurrence with whatever
comments are. I think that's very appropriate and helpful to make the whole program finish smoothly. The
next step would be basically, to continue on with the final design it would take approximately five months
to do that. When the final design is concluded we then make a formal submittal to the health department to
get their formal approval. Once, they received you could go right to advertising for construction contracts.
Bidding and awards process would take for a facility of this size approximately two months or so. Then
your looking at a construction period of approximately eighteen months that's somewhat depends on
exactly when the contract can be awarded if it can be awarded at the beginning of a construction season. I'd
see no reason why an eighteen month construction period couldn't take place. If the timing is off and is
awarded right at the end of a construction season we might have to look at allowing the construction to
proceed through into the subsequent construction season so that they basically get two full construction
seasons. Then we get into the start up and shakedown phase that would last for a month or so during which
time new equipment would be put on line. In the case of this contract because your always going to need to
continue to produce water a portion of the construction is going to have to be phased and scheduled so that
new equipment will come on line sort of in a phase program so that you can continue to produce water as
the construction completes itself and is completed. That, in a nutshell is what we see would be the total
program and if this process was to start. I'm looking at February 93, we would be looking at a start up in the
tail end of 1995 of the completed facilities. That's sort of a rough time frame that we believe would be
reasonable to look at. So, with that if you have questions on the facilities the rate study the time table...
Supervisor Brandt-The floor is open. Does anyone have any questions?
Councilman Monahan-What do you think of construction prices now? Where is construction here in the
northeast? Is it still contractor eating contractor or is it starting to open up so their putting prices in more
favorable to them rather than the buyer?
Mr. Gidlow-It's contractor eating contractor right now. This is a owner's market.
Councilman Monahan-I heard there is a little movement that's why I asked.
Mr. Gidlow-It's hard to tell at least from our prospective right now. I'm not quite sure what's available to
go on the street but, this is a prime bidding time. On the...that we have to go to bid where we used to get
maybe five or six bidders we're now getting ten, twelve, fourteen bidders. For some of the construction
contractors that I know of...
Councilman Monahan-Are they coming in right now under projected cost or are you putting your
projections down that low figuring it's dog eat dog out there. Basically when we made our cost protection's
we made them based on the cost that we understood at the time.
Councilman Monahan-Do you just use a mean standard book or something like that to arrive at your cost or
do you go out and look at the market?
Mr. Gidlow- When we do our cost estimates we look at the market at the time and normally add some
allowance for escalation. Whatever amounts for escalation we've probably done as a standard thing for the
last year or so that escalation probably hasn't taken place. If anything if we put a job out onto the street it
would probably come in less than what we estimated a year ago so that's the current situation. A lot of it
depends on what the federal government is going to do if they are going to pump some money into the
economy. I wish I could tell you what that was going to be because if I could do that I probably wouldn't
have to be here today, I'd be out counting money somewhere. Right now it's a owner's market and if you
can get stuff out to bid this is the time to be doing. I've never seen anything like this in about twenty four
years.
Councilman Monahan-I'm looking at your time schedule right now it looks like you wouldn't be ready to go
to bid until almost a year from now. I'm wondering do that...and five months for final design?
Mr. Gidlow-Ifthe whole project was going to go as a whole that's probably true.
Councilman Monahan-So what do you think a fast track type of a thing perhaps to cut that time down to get
in on this market?
Mr. Gidlow- To get in on this market there are not an awful lot of projects that are designed that are ready to
go out to bid. Not only has it been kind of lean for construction contractors it's been kind of lean for
owners. We don't have many jobs that, I know of that are designed that are going to go on the street right
now. The fact that you might not be able to get on the street right now doesn't mean that's particularly bad
news because there are a lot of other owners who have needs for projects that aren't ready to go on the
street now either.
Councilman Monahan-They all show up at the same time then your in trouble.
Mr. Gidlow-Well, the first one out is going to get the best deal and that's the dilemma. So, yes if this
project went as a whole it would probably be a year or so before you could take advantage of that. On the
other hand there aren't a lot of other owners particularly at least municipal owners in New York State.
We're basically going to attract those kind of contractors to do this kind of work that don't do high rise
buildings and all that other stuff that do water plants, but there aren't a lot of other ones out there right now.
It's not necessarily bad news if you can be ready to go now that would give you a distinct advantage, but it's
not necessarily all bad. Now, some components of this project could be done independently and we talked
about that a little bit internally, briefly. For instance, the sludge beds you can use those right now, basically
done independently with the rest of the program and you can also look at doing other things. But, generally
when you start getting into the process area of the plant those things are pretty much tied together. If you do
one...clarifiers and so on you really can't implement those until you have a filter that goes with it. The stuff
that's in the plant process itself is pretty much tied together. But, the... drawing beds those could be
implemented separately. There are also some improvements in your outlying system that could also be
done separately.
Mr. Geiss-Betty, to answer your question. The City of Johnstown just went out to bid last fall or winter in
fact, they settled on a bidder sometime just before Christmas. They went out for bids and then they had
some type of squabble with the bidder so they rebid. They even got better bids the second time then they
did the first time with the low bidder being beaten by another bidder is what happened. To say what the
market is that what it is right now, I can't say we're going to have that next spring. One of the things
looking when you talk schedule. If you look at starting here and carrying the SEQRA and district and then
the design, okay. If it takes eight months or nine months to get to this point, okay we say your starting
February your starting to talk winter let's say six months takes us into the fall, eight or nine months takes us
into the November area. Those two time period starting today are critical cause you could take bids and get
ready for the next spring and start work and work the following spring.
Councilman Monahan-Contractors always want one on the table if they know whose going to bring in the
cash.
Mr. Geiss-So, I'm saying to squeeze here it be good to spend the time to get this done and then don't try and
fast tract design. Fast track design it's difficult it can be done actually it takes more of our engineering
time. But, when you squeeze it where are you going to end up with in your bidding period it's going to still
be the fall time period that is not going to make that much. If you wait till June or July to make this period
then you may want to fast track to get ready for the spring construction period to be ready to go out to bid
say, in mid January if you can't beat Christmas you might as well go to mid January to get your bids. But,
to be ready you have to plan almost two months for this bidding and award is a two month period. When
you receive the bids you sign the contract, but be ready so he can start ordering equipment and then start
building when the frost comes out of the ground. Starting today, squeezing this doesn't do you much good.
But you get into June or July then realistically squeezing it could be a factor to get in the right time to take
bids.
Mr. Gidlow- That will also have an impact on the length of duration of the construction. If you can have the
bid and award completed so that he's ready to put his spade in the ground when spring comes he has the full
benefit of the next construction season. You can then probably get away with an eighteen month
construction period.
Councilman Monahan-he's got those winter months to get his bonding together, his insurance, get all the
approvals.
Mr. Geiss-You ask what could be done? Replacement of pumps is an item that could be done and we have
electrical's to satisfy going from a 75 horse to a 100 horse power motor down here. But, the pumps take six
months to be delivered, okay. You've got a building to put them in you all ready have the electrical there to
support it. He could be getting shop drawings in and those could be delivered and that could be an item
that Brian puts in here with the drying beds. But, as he pointed out here filters are critical to you. But, if
you built three filters then the clear well goes underneath the filters so now your going to build the clear
well and the filters. Then the pumping station really draws off the clear well so maybe it's a...out or maybe
the pumping station is part of that building. We put it in as blocks here, but structurally it may be part of
the building you don't have to put the pumps in there. But, if you put the three filters in drawing on these
three clarifiers, now if we don't upgrade the clarifiers in some way we're going to start having quality
problems in the water plant cause now we're going to be pulling more water through the clarifiers then what
you've settled. The dirt or other particles you set on the clarifiers when you rush water through fast it picks
the particles up and then the filters can't clean the water back out again so that end up as a catch twenty
two where do you go. These can be phased in the chemical storage and the pipeline some of those things
can be phased. In fact, looking you want to keep the plant in operation keeping the plant in operation is the
utmost you produce water and you sell the water you produce. You can't afford not to sell. You can't afford
to have the people not have water. You can't afford not to have the water available for sale. Who cares
about the revenues, you can't afford not to have it available, so when you work around here you need to
schedule this. That's another factor in the time frame that you've got to look at is that he can build all this
but he can't really touch existing. Like the filters we can get the new filters on, but we've got to get them
fully operable then we can go back and do something with the existing filters which need new media in
them. Put a new clarifier on then, we can take one of the clarifiers out and rework the inside of it so it will
meet the needs for the higher flow rate. That's the kind of thing that your looking at when you do this kind
of work and all the time keeping the operators so they know what's going on. It's a lot of coordination with
contracts, but it needs to keep the water flowing and keep the water quality right at the top the water quality
is the thing that you have to report on. So some of the construction, I don't think you can reduce the
construction down to twelve months on this. You might squeeze the front end, but the construction time
period cause you do have to phase this. You can't bang go all at once you start here and work through.
We've got to tell him what parts he can work with and what parts, in fact we don't tell him when he can
start this, but we can tell him that this has to be done before we can do this and that this new piece can't
start until that piece is in place. Then he could work his final construction schedule together, but really the
bottom line criteria in what we layout for him in the conditions of the contract. We've done this before
rather than tell him he's got two months here and a month there we say, before you can touch these filters
you've got to have these filters in and working then you can do this. Before you can do anything with this
clarifier we want this clarifier in and working so then you may take out one clarifier rehab it the other and
then work the structure over the top of it because probably the structure would be one structure over the top
for everything. This kind of thing is what we'd be looking at it's got to be sequenced like that.
Mr. Gidlow-I think one of the other things in addition to the construction market being it an owners
market. The bond market right now is reasonable, favorable too. To go to permanent financing or bond
anticipation notes and then make your timing to go to permanent financing. Compared with previous year
this is reasonably attracted.
Councilman Monahan-What are bonds going for now with a good credit rating?
Mr. Gidlow-Six percent, seven percent. Some of the clients, I'm working with you might know better for
Beacon, one of my clients does not have a very good credit rating....
Mr. Gell-Beacon's looking in the six's, but I don't know the exact number.
Supervisor Brandt-What length term?
Mr. Gell-Thirty years.
Thomas Flaherty-Those drying beds are going to have to be addressed for this coming season. Weare
temporarily using temporary beds we do not have the ability to handle the sludge that we're making now.
Mr. Geiss-The drying beds are fairly independent from the plant. They are very easy to get going in fact,
the more critical thing would be obtaining the land. The design of them won't take that long. Once we have
surveyed we can lay them out and the criteria. We've designed several drying beds, lagoons and drying
beds. The drying beds would go on the adjacent property over here to the north.
Mr. Flaherty-We've got everything we've got now full and we've made temporary ones on the lawn.
Mr. Geiss-The drying beds are very criticaL...
Councilman Monahan-Are those drying beds going to be on the same side of the water plant or across the
road, the new ones?
Mr. Flaherty-We hope to put them on the land that we want to get from Niagara Mohawk which would be
out behind, you know where the church is?
Councilman Monahan-Yeah.
Mr. Geiss-I thought, I had them on that board and I didn't. But, here's the edge of the plant and here's the
lagoons, I show up on top. All of these facilities are on the existing property and then the drying beds are
on the adjacent property that's why we listed purchase property for the drying beds. There has been some
on going negotiations with Niagara Mohawk as the owner of that property. Of those and the independent
of the project is the project line for construction things like that can be made available very quickly.
Mr. Flaherty-The withdrawal application too. Presently we're exceeding our application now.
Mr. Giess- The application the way it reads is in the litney of the first three paragraphs it says, I think it was
dated in 76 or that range. That you were building facilities that are capable of taking up to fifteen mgd. At
this time you are allowed to take five million gallons a day, okay. Now, we have several years which we've
had days in excess of five mgd.
Councilman Monahan-Do we have to send those records in of how much we take out everyday and stuff so
they can come up any time and raise cane from those records if they wanted to.
Mr. Geiss-Those are Health Department records that you refer to. The operator is suppose to record daily
flow rates maximum and minimum and average on their flow reports that go into the Health Department at
the end of every month. Within ten days of the end of the month the operators have to file a specific form
for all the flow rates for past operation of the plant are part of the record.
Councilman Monahan-They are daily flow rates.
Mr. Geiss-They are daily flow rates maximum, minimum and average. Like I said, within ten of the end of
the month they've got to be submitted to the Health Department. Their looking at not just flows, but your
quality standard. But the flows are part of the record that you submit to them. But, again in getting that
and that's not a big thing because you've already told them back in 1976 that you we're going to go back to
15 mgd. One of the little caveat's that's in the original application was that you do share water with other
communities. I think the one and a half or the five said that you were going to share like one and a half
mgd of that with other communities.
Mr. Flaherty-The permits states that we have to maintain one million gallons of capacity of surrounding
communities.
Mr. Geiss-There exact numbers.
Councilman Monahan-How much are we selling to Kingsbury?
Mr. Flaherty-Thirty thousand, forty thousand a day.
Councilman Monahan-It's just a drop in the bucket, really.
Mr. Geiss-One of the number, I want to point out the numbers, I use when I talked in the beginning the 10
and the 15 are our projected water use rates. When I brought in the outside users those are their projected
max day rates too. I'm not looking at if you were to go out to the outside users tomorrow you were going to
have a flow 15 million gallon a day client.
Councilman Monahan-We don't build for tomorrow.
Mr. Geiss-We're not building for tomorrow. We're building for twenty, twenty five years down the road at
their max rates.
Mr. Gidlow- That's going to be important in discussions with the outside communities because you will
need to talk to them basically in two different aspects. One of them would be the maximum capacity that
they would want to commit to and that basically determines what portion or fraction of the capital cost they
would pay. Then additionally you would get from them a commitment for an average daily capacity. They
would pay also based on that proportion of share of your annual costs.
Councilman Monahan-Will they buy future capacity? Is that how that will work?
Mr. Gidlow- They would buy a capacity.
Councilman Monahan-But, not just the basic capacity they would buy a future capacity.
Mr. Geiss-Your not interested in them. When you negotiate with them your signing a long term contract so
when your going down the road we use the year 2015, twenty five years to be exact. Twenty five years
down the road we would look at their capacity down the road to that point and that's what you want because
your not looking at a two year contract to sell them water your looking at a long term deal. That's ties into
water rate because your advelorum is tied to capital. If your going to see a difference in advelorum you
want to tie them into the term of the bond so that their portion for capital comes in so you can payoff the
bonds. Some of the things that have happened, in fact since we did the report in 1991 verses some of the
talk that went around because we had numbers here that added up to 30 mgd back in 91, how could we get
there with Glens Falls and everybody in. But, even some of the other users such as Moreau came back and
said they wanted like half of the water that they originally took. We asked them what you want, where do
you want to project it, how do you want to project it, where, what? They basically gave us all the numbers
that we cranked a number out from. They gave us the basis to do it. When we talked to them again they
said, well we may be interested but it's only four instead of two point seven....only one point three. Well
what that does is that they were one of the bigger projections. Even if they are interested now and also, I
think it was Hudson Falls that reduced their rates, but all those rates add up to right now somewhere in the
range that's very plausible users a little over 14 mgd as their ultimate rate which falls into your 15 mgd
facility very nicely. It's not the same 15 mgd we added up in 1991, but it's 15 mgd that's what I'm saying to
you. We had looked at Lake George they were very strong when we were doing this and we added them in
here, but when the numbers came out, they went their own way. They realized what kind of pipelines they
would have to build to connect in which something you weren't including in your cost. Your not going to
build a pipeline to give them water their going to build a pipeline to you to take the water then they worked
the numbers and said, well it's really not that good. Someday they may come maybe not they are going to
have to decide awful quick. In doing that though we added them up when we talked the fifteen. But now
we add the others the Village and Town of Fort Edward, Hudson Falls, Moreau, Kingsbury, Kingsbury
definitely you have a contract with them. But, the others are very viable and may add up to just hundred
the fifteen which gives you still a little more capacity left if someone wants a little more water you can
work a deal with them or if you get a big water user here in town. We accounted for both, but if you get a
big industrial user you've got water to sell.
Councilman Monahan-Which may be one way of bringing them in.
Mr. Geiss-That does bring them in.
Mr. Gidlow- Y ou might want to comment Rick, of the rate structure and how that is put together for large
say, industrial users.
Mr. Gell- This rate structure is specifically set up so you have a rate for the bulk water use. The large user
rate gets to the point where the rates reflect essentially the actual cost of production and distribution alone
doesn't account for the peaking charges associated with someone who uses maybe a smaller volume of
water, but they use it all in one day. The bulk rate is well suited to attract industrial customers, it's not in
the handout. Table thirteen basically your first twelve thousand gallons it's expressed as a rate, but it's
really a minimum charge it equates out to a little over a $1.41 most of your customers are charged $1.20
per thousand gallons. When we go to the rate increases we start seeing a difference between people using
over fifty thousand gallons per quarter compared to people using twelve thousand a quarter you can start to
see a significant difference between those two rates.
Councilman Caimano-It's a fifty percent difference.
Mr. Gell-What that reflects is storage requirements and peak pumping capacity.
Councilman Monahan-Are you saying your going to get fifty thousand gallons of water for a $1.20?
Mr. Geiss-No. We're saying that you can get from twelve thousand to fifty thousand gallons to get that for
$1.20 per thousand gallons.
Councilman Monahan-Per thousand gallons, okay.
Councilman Caimano-But, the relationship is still there.
Councilman Monahan- I just wanted to know how to read that.
Mr. Geiss-The justification is and there is a whole lengthily description in the report. Basically when you
have larger users there is still one user in lieu of being a lot of houses. When you've got that your still
reading one meter to serve them your doing several things there is still only one customer so you don't have
additional cost to serve the large user. When he takes the water and treats it with chemicals and you pump
it every gallon you use that way cost so much he never goes to zero, but he approaches a certain lower
limit. It gets down to just the pure treatment of the water in supplying it to him. The cost for him to move it
down that pipeline is about the same. It's cheaper cause he's one user you just get it to him than it is if you
were five or ten or fifteen or twenty users.
Mr. Gidlow- There is some discussion to that rational in the report. That's basically in accordance with the
A WW A requirements recommendations it's a standard way of doing it.
Councilman Monahan-In 1993 there is a big jump is that because that because it was projected with the
bills coming in for the new plant starting there.
Mr. Geiss-The bonding starts to hit for the new plant.
Mr. Gidlow- The table thirteen includes the impacts of the plant expansion, but without any other outside
users.
Ralph VanDusen-1991 rate and 1992 rates are the current rates right now.
Mr. Gell- That starts the adjustment back to getting to the point where the water rents match the operating
expenses. We scheduled that over basically a four year program.
Councilman Monahan-The water rent really wouldn't have your capital cost that be your advelorum in
there.
Supervisor Brandt-Any other questions?
Councilman Caimano-Starting in 1993, the difference between the low level user and the commercial user
the difference between the first colunm and the last colunm is almost exactly fifty three point six percent
every year. How did we come up with that exact number?
Mr. Gell- There is a table that basically sets up the balancing of the rates.
Mr. Geiss-It's a factor and maybe it ends up as a percentage, I think.
Mr. Gell-Page 7. This takes all the units of service base being what Tony mentioned chemicals would
make no difference when the water was used how much chemical it would take. The extra capacity would
be cost associated with delivering water on the maximum day of the year having a larger pipeline, bigger
pumps, peak power usage. The last is the customer meters and services cost for preparing the bills, etc.
Direct fire service it be the cost of maintaining fire hydrants. We get all those costs and those are the
elements that go into all of these types of accounts. These go back... which takes these four accounts and
says, what kind of volume of water do they actually use.
Mr. Geiss-One thing is you don't need to provide peak capacity for your large user. Your typical large user
is on a flat basis. He jumps up to a higher rate. You don't see like a homeowner you could see like a one
point six, two to one factor even from summer to winter. An industrial user they come up and they use
water they water their lawn, but it only ends up as a little bump on their water draft. On your draft it ends
up as a big double use. This is why the industrial user uses a lot of water and uses it all the time using a
hundred percent of your facilities. The other user, the intermittent user and the small user wants a lot than
nothing. Even in the daily it goes up and down to from washing in the morning to bathing at night. But,
that's why there is a difference in cost of doing the max day and the max hour. The industrial user isn't
causing you that problem you have to allocate the cost across. This is where the larger user, he's still
paying by the way he still has to go through the lower rates the other user goes through, but he gets there
very quickly and then he's into the third schedule.
Mr. Gidlow-What you hit upon what your fifty one point three percent, basically that's the ultimate
allocation.
Mr. Geiss-That's where it is.
Mr. Gidlow- These tables and the little bit of the text and the figures gives you a little bit of the background
of how we got to that point.
Councilman Caimano-One other question. On your log scale here, you have two arrows one at fifty and the
other at two hundred (tape turned)
Mr. Gell- The first one at fifty it's really drawn at forty eight and that's forty eight thousand gallons per year.
The other is two hundred which is fifty thousand for fifty thousand for four quarters. Those two pointers
are selections so to speak of the blocks. On we go to table eight which is very similar to table seven, but it's
the verification that we did allocate costs to those user groups in a reasonably equitable manner. Now, it's a
trail and error procedure you can't get it perfect, but the table on the right says that this is about as close as
we can get it. We got it one hundred percent for the residential, commercial users typically pays about one
hundred fifteen percent of his defined actual cost of service. The public pay about one hundred and five.
Mr. Geiss-You try to fit a rate then to what you've pulled out and sometimes it works exactly. One's going
to be exact and the rest are going to fit as best you can.
Mr. Gidlow- This was a reasonable breakdown in allocation of those costs. We could go through the trail
and error and then do a check on it then when it comes reasonably close we say that's close enough this is a
pretty good balance.
Ralph VanDusen-I have a question on table thirteen. Table thirteen is assuming we build a plant expansion
of upgrading to fifteen million gallons a day?
Mr. Gell-Yes.
Mr. VanDusen-Is it assuming that Queensbury is paying all of that cost?
Mr. Gell-Yes.
Mr. VanDusen-What effect would that have on the table if we sold other communities water?
Mr. Gell-It depends of which communities. I guess, if everybody came on line those rates could be
reduced, I think as much as sixty to seventy cents per thousand.
Mr. VanDusen-Your saying if we sold four million gallons to somebody bulk sale to other communities all
the numbers here across the board would be reduced by that number?
Mr. Geiss-Essentially it would be. In fact, it says here on page twenty, up in the middle of the page it's
estimated that each block rate may reduce between sixty to seventy cents per thousand gallons should the
upon mentioned governments purchase water. Further, above it talks about the advelorum which would
result in about a twenty percent reduction in the advelorum also by bringing in the outside communities. I
think which equates to Rick's one hundred dollars savings in the user bill here.
Mr. Gell-The bulk rate includes more than just the production costs and that's why it is continuing to go
down as you add more customers. The more customers you add the slower it's going to go down. It
eventually is going to reach a flat spot, but it's still going down in the range that we're looking at.
Supervisor Brandt-Any other questions? I have a question. Is the Water Department basically are you
making a recommendation? Is this the recommendation or are you going to write a recommendation
separate from this?
Mr. Flaherty-I can write a recommendation separate from this it will parallel with this today.
Supervisor Brandt-So what your saying as a department you guys feel this is what the board should do?
Mr. Flaherty-Speaking for myself, yes.
Councilman Monahan-With fifteen million?
Mr. Flaherty-Yes. Last year was a wet year we were lucky what this year brings we don't know. We can
prolong this for a period time, how long we can prolong it I can't tell you it depends on our luck.
Councilman Monahan-Sooner or later we're going to have to bite the bullet on fifteen million gallons it
looks like.
Mr. VanDusen-We're going to have to do it for eleven point two five it's economically advantageous to take
the next step.
Mr. Flaherty-If we have a warm dry year this year we are very well facing restrictions that we haven't had
in seventeen years.
Mr. Gidlow-We believe that the timing is about as good as we can imagine it getting although we're never
quite sure of that.
Mr. Flaherty-If you start today it will be a minimum of two years before you draw a drop of water. Your
facility we've got now are going to have two more years of aging.
Councilman Monahan-Didn't I hear you say maybe I've got the year down that if we started in the spring of
93 start up would be at the end of 95, did I get the date right?
Mr. Gidlow- That's what I said.
Mr. Geiss-Roughly, what Brian went through for months as I added up he can up to about thirty to thirty
two months. You could squeeze a little bit on that and cut out, but if you say late 95 or mid-year 95, even if
you took four months off your still only talking mid-year 95.
Councilman Monahan-It all depends on the construction weather too. You can have a wet spring some of it
can't do much construction...that's all a gambler's choice.
Mr. Flaherty-I'll emphasize again, we can't wait until 95 to do something with the sludge handling facilities
that's got to be addressed up front.
Councilman Monahan-Does it make any difference whether we bid those as a separate item and get them
going now as far as getting a good price over all do you think?
Mr. Gidlow-I think they are independent enough and different enough kind of construction that, I think
they can reasonably be broken out independently and not cause any penalties, not cost any additional cost
to be put into the program. This is basically earth work it's not heavy piping and equipment. If you were
going to do it all in one package depending on who the general contractor was that was going to do this
might be something that he would just sub out.
Councilman Monahan-Then he's going to put his cost on top of that too.
Mr. Gidlow-Possibly. That's possible, but in this market people aren't putting much cost on they want to
get some work to keep their people busy but, generally that could be a consideration. But this is different
enough and detached enough so it really can be independent of it and it would make some sense to do that
particularly with your current needs.
Mr. Geiss-Another thing arises that contractor you wouldn't have to worry about having two contractors on
the site at the same time union, non-union, conflicts of who gets to the gate first. That could be on going
say this sunnner before any of the other contracts are even out on the streets for bid.
Councilman Monahan-How long would it take to get the contract ready and have that ready for bid and
then with the work schedule length of time it would take to complete that work?
Mr. Gidlow- This probably could be done in 1993 fairly easily total.
Mr. Geiss-You would do the lagoons first because they wouldn't require as much clearing or other... In the
meantime, you have some clearing to do and other things for the drying beds some tree removal and some
grading. But, if you could make the lagoons available he'd have a place to put the sludge. If you could
then have the drying beds available before winter then you could flood the drying beds and let the freezing
action take over see with drying beds it's actually freeze dry it's like the coffee. Basically water plant
sludge or waste, but it's got an ...ion in it and to break it you need to either they use the term freeze it or add
energy to squeeze. Freezing breaks that water ion back from the aluminum and then just the heavy
particles fall from the bottom. So, with this aspect if we can get the lagoons built so we can collect it get
the drying beds so that before say the end of September, October, they can be flooded you'll have the
benefit of having the drying beds there when there really needed.
Mr. Gidlow- That would be the sequence that we proposed that these get built first. Again, depending on
how really your late spring is and what the weather's like these could really be done late spring early
summer.
Councilman Monahan-What do you think the cost of that part of the project would be?
Mr. Geiss-Just construction cost without contingency's or legal and miscellaneous in there about
$910,000.00. Two lagoons including lining and fill, two dry beds including lining and fill one was four
hundred forty the other four seventy.
Councilman Monahan-You don't have your engineering cost or any of that kind of stuff.
Mr. Geiss-The contingency's on your talking maybe eleven hundred dollars, a million one hundred
thousand dollars.
Mr. Flaherty-We're presently investigating alternatives to handle the sludge that we've got stored for this
year. We're looking at trying to get prices on bringing in presses or something else to handle what we've
got we've got to do something with it.
Mr. Gidlow-One of the things that the freeze dry beds do for you the lagoons that were for storage and
ultimately the freeze dry beds to dispose of the sludge and it freezes and it significantly reduces the volume
so that your not talking about ultimately having to dispose of large quantities which probably today the
only place to put that sludge is probably the landfill.
Councilman Monahan-Can we put that in our landfill...is there thing that were going to have a problem
with.
Mr. Gidlow- There shouldn't be. But, as Tony mentioned if you can freeze the sludge the volume that
ultimately has to get put somewhere the landfill or whatever is significantly reduced. The potential exists
it's certainly not anything that's given. From a technical point from our standpoint that material that's left
that residual it has no harm value to it, but it has also no benefit it's sort of neutral. You could spread it out
on this lawn out here and it certainly wouldn't hurt it, but it wouldn't help it. There maybe some ways to
get that considered to be beneficial material to put on soil as a soil condition or soil stabilizer if there was
some way you could just add nitrogen to it like you do with your lawn fertilizer. We could take this inner
material that's basically not beneficial, but not detrimental make it beneficial through some addition to
make it beneficial to the soil, turf, trees, then it could be disposed of in park areas, gold courses. There
maybe lots of places to get rid of it, but that's a concept that hasn't been approved by anybody yet. The
freeze dry beds will give you some time and if that concept could get implemented then that could be a way
of ultimately disposing of it without having to pay the landfill. If it doesn't develop then ultimately your
going to have to put it in the landfill wherever that landfill might be.
Councilman Monahan-When you get those done over there what will be the capacity of years holding?
Mr. Gidlow-I don't know how you sized it.
Mr. Geiss-What's nice about this is that they are sized such that you can take a foot to a foot an a half
sludge into the beds each year. One of the benefits and Brian said it in his talk is that you don't have to
empty it. When you put a foot an a half of sludge in there your talking sludge that's only three, four, five,
percent solids the rest is water. When you get a foot an a half in there it's almost nothing when it's done.
Mr. Gidlow- When it freezes and thaws and you skim the water off the top by gravity your left with a
residual that's like that. You could put a fair number of residual build ups like that on your beds.
Mr. Geiss- I have a plant that we did this type of lagoon and freeze dry beds that went on line in 86 and
hasn't cleaned their beds yet.
Councilman Monahan-You just keep adding the next years right on top?
Mr. Geiss-You keep adding the next years. It's the type of thing someday they've got to do it and they've
got to take it off. There waiting for the reg's to move the reg's have moved since 86 to now, but they have
to take it to a landfill the answer isn't there yet so they are not removing it. The lagoons here are going to
be deeper we want to do holding, but the beds are very shallow and the banks are only two foot. If, I'm
doing eighteen inches the banks only need to be two feet high with some free board on them. But, even if
you need a little more you can just scrap it to the sides for the time being. You can get easily the five or six
years before you actual waste off the site because your consolidating. One of the benefits even if you waste
that to a landfill normally with the dewatering the way Tom says you want to get it to twenty percent some
people can get a little more some less. I'm talking twenty percent of it's solids and eight percent is water. If
you can freeze it and bring out all the solids ninety five percent is solids five percent water. You pay by the
ton to go to the landfill so see there is significant dollars savings whether it's your landfill or somebody
else's significant savings to give them just the earth not the water. You can go there with twenty percent
the machinery today can get you the twenty percent, but not a lot more. Some sludge waste can get up to
twenty five percent, but typically water sludges are very soft sludges they call them very fine particles in
them you can't get them much higher than the twenty percent. So, your paying for the eighty percent water
by weight because that's the way the cash register works at the landfills.
Councilman Monahan-Is there an odor to this stuff after it settles?
Mr. Geiss-No. I've taken many people on tours of water plants and we've walked right out. I've grab it and
you can put it right up to your face.
Councilman Monahan-So, when this goes to a landfill it wouldn't create....
Mr. Geiss-In fact, landfills have been approved to use this for intermediate cover. It isn't used in the
landfill it's used as intermediate cover on the landfill is what it's been used for in the past.
Mr. Gidlow-It has a coffee grind consistency after it's frozen and thawed. Just to summarize that certainly
could be a portion of the overall program that could be segmented out to serve your current needs.
Councilman Monahan-That really could go on a BAN when you got ready to do your regular bonding.
Mr. Geiss-You could do your financing that way.
Councilman Monahan-Not only aren't you going to get a good rate on a bond that small your better putting
it together with the rest of the package, I would think.
Supervisor Brandt-Any other questions, any other discussions?
No further action taken.
On motion, the meeting was adjourned.
Respectfully Submitted,
Darleen M. Dougher
Town Clerk
Town of Queensbury