1993-08-11
SPECIAL TOWN BOARD MEETING
AUGUST 11, 1993
4:30 P.M.
MTG #59
BOARD MEMBERS PRESENT
MICHEL BRANDT -SUPERVISOR
BETTY MONAHAN-COUNCILMAN (entered meeting at 4:45 p.m.)
SUSAN GOETZ-COUNCILMAN
NICK CAIMANO-COUNCILMAN
PLINEY TUCKER-COUNCILMAN
TOWN OFFICIALS
TOM FLAHERTY, SUPERINTENDENT OF WATER
RALPH VANDUSEN, DEPUTY SUPERINTENDENT OF WATER
BRUCE OSTRANDER, CHIEF OPERATOR
REPRESENTING O'BRIEN and GERE ENGINEERING
Mr. Tony Geiss, Project Manager
Mr. Brian Gidelow, Vice President, Chief Engineer
Mr. Peter Gibbons, President
Supervisor Brandt called meeting to order ... I'm going to open the meeting and put it in your lap and you
tell us what you've got, then if your department has questions, specifics bring them on and we'll work out
an agenda as we go, whatever is comfortable. The main thing, we get everything on the table and satisfy all
the questions that everyone has.
Mr. Tony Geiss-One thing maybe we can get while we're just waiting, I brought some, there was a question
on lagoonal and freeze dried beds and other things. What I've got here is three samples, samples of all the
same sludge. That's water plant sludge as it settles coming right out of the basins and things and Bruce and
everybody knows that when you freeze that, you end up with this. It settles to the bottom, it breaks the
bond. That won't, just letting it sit and that's sat now for a week or better ever since I got it, won't come
down. But I froze it, all the same size sample comes down to that and when you dry it which is the next
process, in other words, the freeze dry process, you come out with what is coffee grounds. That's, I just
thought I'd show.
Supervisor Brandt-When you talk a freeze dry process, you know, are you talking a natural evaporation
process or are you talking?
Mr. Geiss-Machinery?
Supervisor Brandt -Yea, machinery.
Mr. Geiss-Natural.
Supervisor Brandt-What?
Mr. Geiss-Natural.
Mr. Brian Gidelow-When you live in this part of the country, you can do it.
Councilman Caimano-Did you have to add polymer to that?
Mr. Geiss-There's nothing. The polymer has been added to get to here, okay and you don't need to add any
more then that. If you end up with and you're going to be recycling your water as you do now, sometimes
you may want to touch up if you were discharging to a stream, sometimes you want to make sure you settle
and you do touch it with the polymer a little bit or a little bit more alum, depending on how you handle the
sludge to get or the sludge to get it to this point because if it won't settle in your lagoon, then you've got to
touch it up again. We've had to do that because, in fact on this plant, the treatment plant is at the top of the
hill and the lagoon is at the bottom, okay, where we had flat land and when it went sailing down the hill,
hydraulically we got to slow it down before you can get a nice even flow into a pond, well, we hit it there
and the flock particles, the little sludge particles, we broke them apart. So, what we did and found is that if
we add just a little more polymer at the top of the hill, it mixes and when it hits the pond, then it resettles
again. So, yes and no is, I guess, your answer Nick. If you've got to do it to get your discharge
requirements, you do it is what the, you do whatever you've got to do to meet DEe. But this is all natural.
Councilman Tucker-Is this the way our system works now, that we've got in our plant?
Mr. Geiss-Pretty much, doesn't it?
Mr. Ralph VanDusen-Yea, similar. The original system was lagoons and drying beds and we added some
temporary structures that have been there several years. But obviously we can do it similar, we can not
remove sludge at all... and that's something that we've addressed.
Councilman Tucker-Okay.
Mr. Geiss-You drain the water off after it's frozen... and the water off the top, and then you can let this sit
outside and it turns to that. This, I just drain the water out ...
Councilman Caimano-Should we shake that middle one up?
Supervisor Brandt-When you drained it, when you, you know, ... that out and, is that dried under roof at
that point?
Mr. Gidelow-Just let it sit outside and ...
Mr. Geiss-Just let it sit outside ... that was dried in my garage, it wasn't outside but we've had it dry out in
just open about one acre. Ideally, we, on treatment plants we look at like a one acre bed for drying. But
when you do put it on a bed for drying, it's on a very shallow bed, not on a deep bed.
Councilman Caimano-Now you ... the ... to this now, if you shook this up, it's still going to ...
Mr. Geiss-Shake it up and do it.
Mr. Gidelow-Shake it up good and then set it down next to your ... as we go along you'll see ...
Councilman Caimano-Is that about twenty percent solids?
Mr. Geiss-It's already coming up, that's how heavy it is ...
Mr. Gidelow-Feel the difference, one's been frozen ...
Councilman Caimano-But it's changed.
Mr. Geiss-Oh yes.
Councilman Caimano-It's released all those water molecules.
Mr. Geiss-The chemical term I guess is the hydroxide molecules broken and you can either do it by
freezing or squeezing. Freezing is natural. Squeezing, you got to put alot of energy, alot of mechanical
effort into and it's costly. This, for this climate, no problem at all. We've got alot of experience all through
the central part of the State and your north of that area and you've got the climate to do it.
Councilman Tucker-We've got enough freezing time in the area to take care, year round, right?
Mr. Geiss-That's right. Well, what you do, okay, year around, you freeze it in the Winter and you use the
lagoons to store and you keep pumping this stuff, the heavy sludge up on top of the lagoons until you get
the lagoons full and that's to like nine, twelve inches max because twelve inches will freeze. Because, if
you put and we found out the hard way, three feet, maybe the top two will freeze and the bottom foot
doesn't and you end up with a mess when you go to get it. So, we've re-designed and this is coming out of
a third and fourth generation of the beds, build shallow beds, maybe eighteen inch high banks on the side,
only put nine to twelve inches of sludge in them. Okay, and flood them in the Summer and if you get a
little bit of a evaporation in the Summer, flood them all the more so you get that nine to twelve ready for
Winter and when Winter hits, it freezes. Then you've got to design the lagoons though to handle storage for
your sludge for the rest of the year then. Say, come November, first of December, you got to stop pumping
sludge because your sludge lines will freeze. So you get then, the lagoons got to handle the storage volume
for that sludge until your next June or July when this, when it has, you've de..., you know, you end up with
this as soon as Spring comes, okay, it's already started to settle, almost settle out entirely. You've got the
facility to drain the water off of that and bring it right back to your lagoons and when you can get down to
that area or get it down to this here, you don't even have to remove this every time, you can just flood on
top of it again.
Councilman Tucker-I see.
Mr. Geiss-But eventually, you want, because it comes down to this volume here where you started with that
volume, so you got room to cheat a few years before you got to remove. In fact, that's one of the topics
here, is what you do with it when you remove it. We'll talk about that when I get to that question.
Councilman Tucker-Is this stuff here, I understand can go directly into a landfill or anything like that?
Mr. Geiss-This stuff right here has been used for landfill cover, intermediate cover on landfill. And if
there's question on where else it can go and I think some of those questions with years to come, maybe
there will be even more places. But it is approved for intermediate landfill covers and has been used all
over the state for that.
Councilman Tucker-Tony, where you know they're talking about closing all the landfills, they're talking
about closing all the landfills and stuff, where would this stuffbe going after that happens?
Mr. Geiss-Okay, that was your questions.
Councilman Tucker-Yea.
Mr. Geiss-Right now, there's ability or the probability that maybe land application, it will support grass
growth. Okay, we've taken this and grown grass in it. Right now, there's very little organics because what
you take out of the water, is mostly sediment but it's not organic in nature. So, there's very little nutritional
value or I guess the term that DEC uses, is beneficial use. Okay, because of that, they don't like it to go on
the land but they haven't proven that it's really bad but they say, you've got to prove the beneficial use or
you can't use it. So, for land application right now, they haven't approved it. Okay, under the new regs.
The other thing that you can do, is you can go, mix it with sewage sludge and compost it or mix with yard
waste and compost it. Not much in here is going to compost but the whole mixture then, by definition
becomes compost and then it can be applied to the landfill. I mean, you're playing definition words with
DEC here. Okay, not much of this will compost, I've got alot of experience in compost but if you mix this
with everything else, everything compost and what you got when your done, is compost and there's a
couple of other things that may make this applicable to put out on ... depending on how you look at it.
There's other definitions on definition of what is in a soil... or definition of what a fertilizer is.
Councilman Tucker-Well, certainly then, a government has got to look at the future of what it's going to be
doing with this stuff.
Mr. Geiss-And when I said that you didn't have to take off the lagoon the first year or maybe the second,
you've got a little room there, is you got room to work with government to find out what to do with it too,
you can put it on the landfill. In fact the first year is worth, you probably won't even take off because it's
not enough to scrape off, to put a front -end loader in there to do the scraping, you wouldn't get enough off.
But the second year, there maybe enough but you've got time to work with the government to find out ways
of doing this. One of our ideas is a company, I think I can mention it can't I, I talk fertilizer. Fertilizer by
definition, you can take it in and you know the end PN ratios. Well, all you've got to do is take it in and
have it analyzed and get a ratio on that and all of sudden I've got this labeled and it becomes a fertilizer.
Maybe, I even got to add a little something and it becomes a fertilizer, now I can transport that, not as a
sludge but I transport it as a fertilizer which means, I can take it anywhere I want. Again, what do you
want to do it with it and it also becomes applicable that there's now a beneficial use to it if I add maybe a
little nitrogen into this or something, very little change in chemical balance on this and it becomes
beneficial to the law. So, there are some ideas we, O'Brien and Gere are working with to get this to be,
because we do alot of water work, how can we do a beneficial use for all of these customers we got and
water treatment plants we work with, to make this useful. If they won't let it go like that, the other thing is
they found that in forests that maybe this isn't all bad, on open crop land it isn't that good but maybe it can
be applied to forests also and spread in forests which you've got alot up here. But they haven't okayed that
a hundred percent either but that's in the works. I haven't played alot with that one but I have with the
fertilizer and you know, when you play games with definitions and you meet their rules, then you can do
what you need to. I know the fertilizer trick, they do with sludge all the time. They dry sludge out to
ninety-five percent, they get labeled as a fertilizer, all of sudden, they can transport that now as a fertilizer
across State boundaries with no problem.
Councilman Caimano-In spite of the fact there's no phosphate of any kind in there?
Mr. Geiss-They got it labeled for what is in it and now they label it as a fertilizer. That's, it's the label they
put on it.
Councilman Caimano-It's on the low side of neutral, that ...?
Mr. Geiss-You mean the PH?
Councilman Caimano- Yes.
Mr. Geiss-That probably, right now, is just a little below seven.
Supervisor Brandt-Okay, let's get into the plant.
Mr. Peter Gibbons-For everyone that doesn't know me, I'm Peter Gibbons, I'm with O'Brien and Gere.
Today, I have Brian Gidelow who is our Executive Vice-President and Chief Engineer, and Tony Geiss,
whom everyone should know, would be the Project Manager on this project if you decide to select us.
We're glad to be here. I think that you have seen in our proposal that we listen to the Board and what you
wanted to see and we're willing to deliver it, deliver it on time. We have a schedule in there that is a tight
schedule, we can do it, we'd like to do it for you but we need you, to have your approval and we would like
to answer any questions you have today regarding our proposal, questions brought up by the Water
Department or other questions that you might have relative to the type of plant, the process, construction,
whatever. At this point, I'll turn it over to Tony who will briefly describe some of the things the we've
proposed in the proposal and then be open for questions from anyone on the floor.
Mr. Geiss-I think I'd like to pass out one thing to start with and I found these in the file. This is the
objectives that I think we started the original report with, the 1991 report and I think they're valid objectives
even today, very valid for what the project needs, to expand the treatment plan, to maintain operation
during construction. To maintain existing operation during construction. Provide flexibility for future
expansion. Design for loading rates to produce water at existing or better quality. The Department of
Health requirements. You know, operate the new facility in conjunction with existing one and minimize
change to the existing process. These were notes and I think a handout that we had with the first project we
did and I think they apply, are very applicable to what the technical approach that we followed today. And
we went through the facilities and just, I will go through just a brief summary, in fact I'll probably work
from the Board here, a summary of what we have and what we proposed. And then I'll get into the
questions, because I think my discussion of the questions will relate back to what we're doing. I think some
of these things that we've talked about, we have changed slightly but the pumping station, I guess the
intakes are the first item which are right here. You got three intakes right there. They're existing, they have
sufficient capacity. The question zebra mussels on the intake, needs to be addressed. We've talked about
using an existing chemical line between the treatment plant and here, using a new distribution panel so that
we can get the chemicals into the, all three lines. So we can address that problem and I'll discuss it more
because you've got a specific question. The pumps, you've got three pumps in this facility, a three and two
fives and the, in looking at that, you want to get to ten MGD and one of the items here we looked at and I
believe it was the other engineer's report, talked about a seven and a halfMGD pump. We looked at a
seven and a halfMGD pump with a variable drive on it. So, we're putting that into this facility to do that
and that's how we're improving the capacity here. Why seven and not five, seven is going to be your future
expansion. So, seven and a half, to get to fifteen, so, I put a smaller one in here, we can vary the speed on it
to give you your capacity you need.
Councilman Tucker-What do we got, two fives and a three there now?
Mr. Geiss-Two fives and a three.
Councilman Tucker-And you're going to take the three out and put in a seven and a half.
Mr. Geiss-Take the three out, right and whether it's five or seven and a half, you're paying a little more
construction cost, engineering doesn't matter of whether it's five or seven and a half. But the pipe line from
here to the plant, no problem, it's got capacity to fifteen MGD's. I think here we deviate a little bit in that
we're looking at now one rapid mix and I think here comes in a little bit of what we had experienced on the
project before, was one rapid mix or we want to put a flow measure device in. In fact, if we got a pipe line
that, a pipe line basically does this, we want to put a flow measuring device and I'll just draw it like that, it
can go almost anywhere in the line, so we can measure total flow from that treatment plant. Right now,
you have, this is two tanks here and you got two flow meters that want to feed each tank. Am I right
Ralph?
Mr. VanDusen-Yes.
Mr. Geiss-What I'd like to do is put one new flow meter in, you're having trouble with the existing flow
meters. I'm going to put in one new flow meter and measure the total flow coming at the plant. Now, what
I'm going to do is right in this area here, I'm going to put in, one place to add chemicals too.
Councilman Tucker-One what?
Mr. Geiss-One application point for chemicals and mix them in. And that gives me the ability to base the
chemicals off of this flow meter, I can add these chemicals. Becomes critical because the next perimeter is,
I'm going to, instead of two clarifiers, you're going to now have four. Okay, where if I left the flow meter
where it was, you would end up with four flow meters and that would have been very difficult to try and
find out what you're flow is. Now, I know what it is, I add chemicals and one of your questions is, do I
care, how do split flow here or do I know I split flow. I don't care anymore. I look out here at the end of
the weirs and I say I got about one inch of flow going over the weir at the end and abouts good enough,
within ten percent. The only reason you were measuring flow before was to add chemicals.
Councilman Tucker-You're going to do it prior?
Mr. Geiss-Now, I'm going to do it all at one spot and make it easy and I'm either going to, you know, that
one box is going to have a mixture in the middle and I'm also going to provide the capability of putting
chemicals into a bypass around it, if for some reason, there's trouble, is what I've included in. Then we talk
four clarifiers open, no cover. The existing sludge collectors need to be replaced. So, we're going to put in
sludge collectors that collect under the water rather than scrape the top. The next thing would be the filters,
we're going to add, you've got two filters here, now here we can add the filters here or we can even go
down here and add the filters and I've got to, that's something I've got to look at and decide on yet. You
know, I talked about it over here. Kestner had their report put them over there, it doesn't matter, I can do
one or the other and I've got to do a little evaluation. I think coming over here might be better but it's not
critical. Two more filters is the perimeter, we'll get you to, I think it's ten point five MGD on the filters, a
little bit bigger but they're going to be all identical size filters.
Councilman Tucker-Now, that ten point five, that's the State rating?
Mr. Geiss-State rating.
Councilman Tucker -Yea, right, they can do better than that I understand.
Mr. Geiss-They can do a little better than that, they've been pushed a little better but you have ten point five
out of three filters. Okay, you're going to have four filters, at full capacity standby. So, if you had them all
running and which you've done and have been doing this Summer where you got all, both running and
you've been putting out seven, seven and a half, almost eight MGD. So, you've had them all running, you
can put out instead of ten and a half, you're closer to fourteen with the filters.
Councilman Tucker-Well I know, if! understand it right, the rating system is, right now our plant is rated,
we've got two filters but it's rated with one of the filters out of action.
Mr. Geiss-That's right, you assume one filter is out of action.
Councilman Tucker-So, if we go to four filters, the State is still going to rate it with ...
Mr. Geiss-One filter out.
Councilman Tucker-Okay.
Mr. Geiss-Yes, it's still going to be rated with one filter out...
Councilman Caimano- They're all three and a half?
Mr. Geiss-They are all three and a half, they're all going to be identical.
Supervisor Brandt-That criteria of one component down, how does that impact the clarifiers?
Mr. Geiss-It doesn't, it applies to the filters. I don't have a copy often states with me but it's the clarifiers,
are not as critical and you do have extra time in the clarifiers to do the settling.
Supervisor Brandt-But it's not, in their books, it's not applicable?
Mr. Geiss-It's not applicable to the clarifiers, it's the way the filters are rated at the plant.
Mr. Gidelow-Basically the filters and the pumps.
Mr. Geiss-Yea, the filters and the pumps.
Mr. Gidelow- Y ou take the biggest pump out of service in order to get your rated capacity, you got to take
one of your filters out of service to get the rated capacity.
Supervisor Brandt-The biggest pump?
Mr. Gidelow- Yes.
Mr. Geiss-Yes, the biggest pump has to be or the biggest filter.
Mr. Gidelow- Y ou have different size filters.
Mr. Geiss-Yea, that's why, here the filters are going to be about the same size, they may be an inch, six
inches bigger one way or whatever the new dimension or the current equipment dimension is that we can
get, is what we're going to be looking at.
Councilman Caimano-Surface area will be about the same on each..?
Mr. Geiss-Surface area is going to be about the same size, the same or maybe slightly bigger. If we error,
it's going to be just a bit bigger so we've got the capacity.
Councilman Caimano-Can we go back to the rapid mix for a second?
Mr. Geiss-Sure.
Councilman Caimano- Things change in treatment, is there, are there ports, is there an ability for the plant
to go in and do some testing through that rapid mix if something new comes on line, without having to shut
down the plant or get involved in the plant?
Mr. Geiss-That would be difficult with all the water going through the rapid mix. They would have the
ability and here, I'll give you, this is new to me. You've got two existing rapid mixes over here that are on
the, the existing clarifiers have rapid mixes in front of them. We could treat the water here and then you
could add an additional bit of water in here to see what would come out. You have to pump this down so it
didn't go into the system, would be all. So, you could play some games and that's right off the cuff as an
answer but there is capability of doing that to improve in your case because you do have, the existing
clarifiers got small rapid mixes right in front of them. So, you can do that or even if you add, just in front
of the flocculation basins which actually looks like this and these are the rapid mixes are right here on both
sides of that, you can add chemicals in front of the flocculation here and do some stirring right there with a
temporary mixer, to play some games too, if you need to. In fact, one thing and this is deviation, we looked
at the four clarifiers, one of the first things we talked about was putting in the settling tubes originally or
settling plates. The, and Kestner had proposed clarifiers and I am proposing clarifiers for a little better
reason on what you can do. I think and when I sat down and looked at it and evaluated what we could do
for you and what you could do with this afterwards, you've got two clarifiers that you push to seven and
half, eight MGDRA and got good water out of here. I can push these up so you're going to get a little better
then five, five plus out of each one of these and give you your ten MGD through, with the settling tubes,
you've got to put a building over the top. I give you two more clarifiers, you got almost fifteen MGD, that
if you really want to push this, you've got a little more capacity there. Now, you, got to watch out, I don't
want to encourage you to spend extra costs but I'm also, what I've done here too is I've gone and sat back,
what helps operation the best. The amount of time that the water is in the treatment plant, if I'm trying to
push all my water through two smaller tanks, operationally, they don't have as many alternatives to
catching correct, if there's a change in the water, change in the alkalinity or the PH, just change in
something that happens, I don't have as much time to correct if we're moving through two basins, as we do
as they're moving through four. So, operationally, this gives you a little more time to operate the plant.
Supervisor Brandt-And your slowest rates are in the Winter time when, you know, ice is a problem, your
way down in your rates anyhow.
Mr. Geiss-You're way down in your rates. Winter, when ice is a problem, you're operating this plant at half
the capacity, the rate of capacity. So, that's no problem.
Supervisor Brandt - I have some questions about the removal of sludge in the Winter time. How do you
address that?
Mr. Geiss-Okay, the removal of sludge. Right now, the sludge device is a bridge operated device that has
to come across the top and hang down through the ice. Okay, now you got to take, you got a sludge hopper
and this is the way your tanks are and before you had this big bridge device over here that actually had a
plow up here and hung down with a plow down here to do it. The same tank that your going to put in, is a
chain, come about half way up and back around, with a bunch of plates in it. These are all pretty much
plastic plates, it will be plastic chain and plates. That, you're going to operate on a periodic basis to bring
the sludge over to here. It wasn't the problem of pumping it, it was the problem of running the collector
that you had before. So, this is submerged.
Councilman Caimano- That's under the ice?
Mr. Geiss-This is, pretty much you're talking about halfway up, are we Brian?
Mr. Gidelow- Yes.
Mr. Geiss-About halfway up. If you got a ten foot deep tank, which I believe the tanks are, you're talking
maybe this is going to be a five foot depth, approximately four or five foot.
Supervisor Brandt-You'll never see more of that, a foot of ice.
Mr. Geiss-No.
Councilman Tucker-During the Winter time, is the sludge going to stay right in these things?
Mr. Geiss-No, the sludge will come and you're going to get, your going to pull the sludge because this goes
in this direction, you're going to get piles of sludge and it's going to pull it into here, this kind of sludge
right here and maybe not quite as thick as that even but move it over here and then what you got is, you got
a draw off pipe and a pump here that will pump it out to the lagoon.
Mr. Tom Flaherty-That's one of the problems we have now, is that it stays in the clarifiers ... now because
we can't move it with the traveling bridge.
Mr. Geiss-Yea, it's the bridge that stops you from getting, because you can't get the sludge to this point.
Supervisor Brandt -You can pump out now if you had it, like in this system or ...
Mr. Flaherty-What happens in the Winter time now is that you can't move it and it just keeps building and
building and building up in the clarifier and you cut down the size of your clarifier and thereby cut down
the time that the water is in the clarifier.
Mr. Geiss-See what happens is, you end up and you can pump out of here right now, but you get your build
up of sludge through here, you got a water layer up here and all of sudden the water is coming in here and
it's going much faster, it's got only half the time in the basin and you've had some higher tributaries in the
Winter but I think it's more because your storing the sludge in there then it is water quality problems.
Councilman Caimano-Is the automation based on tributary or consistency or is it just an annual type thing,
the automation, the movement ...?
Mr. Geiss-Of this?
Councilman Caimano- Yea.
Mr. Geiss-Probably you're going to have it on a time basis and may even timed on when the operator's are
available to make sure when it does operate, if there's a problem, they're aware of it. This is typically
hydraulic driven, you put a hydraulic pump up on top and then there's a hydraulic motor under water that
drives this.
Councilman Tucker-Now, clarify it for dumb old Tuck, okay. In the Winter time you're going to pump it
into the lagoons?
Mr. Geiss-Yes.
Councilman Tucker-How are you going to compensate for the elements, ice and snow on the lagoons and
what have you?
Mr. Geiss-I don't care about ice and snow on the lagoons. I'm going to flood into the lagoons, there's going
to be room enough and I'm also going to take the water off the other side of the lagoons, the melted water
or the drain which will come out from the side of the lagoon.
Councilman Tucker-This happens during the process of flooding?
Mr. Geiss-No, this is the lagoon, this is a holding lagoon.
Councilman Tucker-Alright, you're in the lagoon now, yea.
Mr. Geiss-Okay and you've got ...
Mr. Gidelow- This is deep.
Mr. Geiss-Yea, this can be seven to ten foot deep.
Councilman Tucker-Oh, okay.
Mr. Geiss-It's not a shallow...
Councilman Tucker-I see.
Mr. Geiss-This is a large storage lagoon.
Councilman Tucker-I had it, envisioned the drying bed ...
Mr. Geiss-No, no, not the drying bed. The drying bed is this ..., and you know, shallow and here I said max
eighteen inches on the berm and I only wanted nine to twelve inches of sludge.
Councilman Tucker-Right, I understand now.
Mr. Geiss-Okay?
Councilman Tucker-Yes.
Mr. Geiss-I'm flowing into a deep lagoon and over here I put a submersible pumping station like the sludge
pumping station that basically will take the water off and pump it back to the system, so that's how I
maintain the level in the lagoon.
Councilman Tucker-Okay.
Mr. Geiss-Basically, you put a pipe out at this end with a manhole and a pump right down in here and that
goes back to the treatment plant.
Councilman Monahan-Does that become part of the water that's getting treated, I mean the water people are
going to use?
Mr. Geiss-Yes, you retreat the water. There is, right now, you don't have a permit to discharge water back
to the river. Am I right?
Mr. Flaherty-Right to the head of the process.
Mr. Geiss-And it comes back in, it will come back in, back in here to the rapid mix to be, more chemicals
added. It's a minor flow, the flow you're talking about here for, just to be a number on it, is typically, in
fact five percent but it's more like three to five percent.
Supervisor Brandt-Flow?
Mr. Geiss-Flow.
Mr. Gidelow-But a much higher consistency, a much higher tribute.
Mr. Geiss-It's got a, yea, from your well water, is very clear. Okay, you have very low tribute water. So,
yes, it's going to be a little higher tribute but it's only going to be in the range of the three to five percent of
the total flow.
Councilman Monahan-Tony, isn't that water also already loaded with chemicals that's coming out of the..?
Mr. Geiss-Yea, but it's only three percent of the total flow again. So, if! got to add, if you put it in
numbers, if I got to add ten pounds of chemical for more total flow, I'm only talking maybe point 0 three
for that, that I've got to be offby. And being offby the much, a three percent difference in chemical,
doesn't make any difference in the treatment itself.
Councilman Tucker-Well, we can't put it back anyway, can we? We can't put it back into the river, can
we?
Mr. Geiss-No, no, DEC won't let you put it back into the River.
Councilman Caimano- Y ou can drink it but it can't go in the river.
Councilman Tucker-Yea, so we've got to do something with it?
Mr. Geiss-That's the bottom line. There are going, there maybe cases in the future where we want to go
back to the rivers, so we want to stay close to the river and put a pipe going, aim it that way and we may
want to do that in the future because right now, if! go back ten years, we always had discharges to the
river. You've got this worked out from your seventy design but in the seventies, we were getting
discharges back to streams, in our designs. It's just recently that we've got into zero discharge because we
always thought, let's get the discharge to the stream, if we want to recycle the water, we'll do it but we want
permission to go to the stream, is the way we always designed plants. Well, DEC in the last few years have
said, no, you can't go to the stream. Well, now there's new regulations that are coming out with the Health
Department and the AP A, that says, maybe you don't want to recycle the water anymore, to improve your
overall treatment because of, you know these, the names of the giardia and the crypto sporidium. Those are
long names but basically they are cysts and viruses and they're what happened out in Milwaukee, just this
last year. Okay, and what happens is, they're in that flow, that three to five percent. You've taken them
out, now some of them could be recycled back and the Health Department may come back and say, no you
can't recycle. So, you want to point, okay and there's going to be new, in fact I'll give part of my answer of
one of the questions is what they call the enhanced surface water treatment regulations that are going to
come out where you're going to be testing for these critters. Okay, and these are new things that we, you've
got to be aware so that when ultimately, you want to, we got the lagoons here but angle the pipe that way,
okay and you got the place to put it too.
Mr. Flaherty-We presently have the capability of going back to the river, we just don't have a permit to do
it.
Mr. Geiss-That's right, I'm sorry, there's a twenty-four inch line?
Mr. VanDusen-Back to the river is larger than that, thirty or, it's good size.
Mr. Geiss-It's part of your overflow too, right?
Councilman Tucker-Going back to the river?
Mr. VanDusen-Yes.
Councilman Tucker-Do you use it at all?
Mr. VanDusen-No.
Mr. Flaherty-We can't, we don't have a permit.
Councilman Tucker-I didn't ask if you have a permit, I asked you if use it at all.
Mr. VanDusen-That would be against the law.
Councilman Tucker-Yea, I know.
Councilman Caimano- There is a third option, and that third option is to take that water, that three to five
percent water and put it in a clarifier and ... itself, right? Take off the ... and put that back into the system.
That is a third option ... expensive.
Mr. Geiss-It gets very expensive and you can't guarantee for drinking quality, the criteria I gave you, you
can never guarantee that those little, the cysts and the virus aren't going to be carried over again and see
what it does, it's not bad, your system does the removal and it will do it again, but there's, you're looking at
that point 001 percent that may get through your filters and systems, and if you do get an over load, that's
what they're looking at and the Health Department is going to look at in the new regs that are coming out
and I think they're talking like 95 or something, they're going to make you test your well water and your
finished water for these viruses and cysts and then they're going to say, here's how good your plant is,
here's how good it's got to be. Right now, they look for three log?? removal which is ninety-nine point nine
percent. Okay, but and you may get the nine, but then they may say, that's not good enough and that's what
we're looking at for treatment for the year 2000. And that's, I shouldn't have thrown it all in but I work with
regulations with my committees and things and I'm aware of all these but that's the type of thing we look
for, for the future too. And I think by the year 2000, we may well be discharging back.
Councilman Monahan-Ralph, in our lab now, do you have the capability to test for this.
Mr. Geiss-No, I can tell you. We, we got a lab it's a hundred times bigger than his plant lab and we don't
have the capability. The State Health Department does, the Erie County Health Department does and I
don't know if there's another lab in the State that has staffed up for it yet. We're looking at it for our lab but
it's like a seventy to a hundred thousand dollar investment and it's not a little thing.
Councilman Tucker-Don't do it until you have to.
Mr. Geiss-Well, we may do it because other people have to, how's that and we're ...
Councilman Monahan-You would be doing it for people.
Mr. Geiss-Yea, we're going to be doing it for people but you would never do it for yourselves, too
expensive. You could never justify it for your own plant. Allow me to continue. We stopped at the filters,
so now you've got filters and whether it's here or here, you're going to ... you're going to draw a line around
it and you're going to put a clear well around one or the other of these to store the finished water. Same as
you have, you know, clear well here and clear well under your plant, is all clear well under there as well.
So, you're going to have more storage which is a requirement of the regs again to get the chlorination and
the contact time. Then we go into the high lift pumping station.
Councilman Tucker-Can we go back a second?
Mr. Geiss-Sure.
Councilman Tucker-In the clear wells, there was discussion before isolating one from the another so that
they can send a diver down there and clean them or whatever the hell they want to do.
Mr. Geiss-I've got that worked out. There's a couple of things I've got to go through there. That's going to
be part of the question scenario, is the, the isolation actually comes in the next perimeter in the pumping
station is, can you take water from one clear well or the other clear well and still pump, while the clear well
is out of service. And I've worked out in the proposal, a way of doing that. It's going to require that the
plant go out of service for maybe a day, or maybe two which is very difficult to do. And I'll show you, I'll
talk about that when we get to that point because I've even come up with an updated scenario that might be
work out even better but it's going to require a little different, a little more work on this clear well to do it.
So, I'll present that to you. But on the pumping station we're looking at isolating the pumping station and
giving that capability and I'll talk about a couple of alternatives how to do it without building a new
permanent pumping station. But that's an option too that I think should be put on the table, okay.
Councilman Tucker-Okay.
Mr. Geiss-But we put the third pump, we talked the third pump at seven MGD. Well, Kestner had the third
pump at seven MGD, that's why I said seven MGD. It could be seven and a half. The question came,
could it be seven and a half, no problem. Seven, seven and half doesn't matter. Okay, but there's an option
to put it right in that small pumping station right there. The lagoons, that takes care of the existing pump
and pipe line is existing so there's no problem there. Okay, the sludge lagoons, here are your lagoon and I
think, is it down here, is the other one, the temporary one?
Mr. VanDusen-Yes.
Mr. Geiss-And here's your drying bed right here, major modifications. We're looking at probably two lined
lagoons to store the sludge and then drying beds. And here's where you've got a property line that goes
around the plant, existing. We can put the lagoons back there and we can dot this whole site with drying
beds but it's going to curtail any future expansion of the plant and here's where I said, you should look at
picking up at least back here from NIMO, the land adjacent back here which would make the layout of the
lagoons not a patchwork mace but a legitimate and good engineered mace would make the operation easier
because when I get a lagoon and I'll just draw one in like right here and I've got a drying bed that's
squeezed up, up here, as you see, I got to get the water, I can pump to it but I also got to get the water back
from it. Okay, so if I've got one, that I had to stick up there because the size and the land configuration,
I've got to put a special way of getting the water back as well. Yet, if I can come back here and line up
three of these, I can put a sludge line on one side and a drain line coming back the other with no problem
and line it right up. That's the kind of thing and also, it won't, and if I can do that and go into the other
land, I don't interfere that if you want to build out here and out here, I don't interfere with that on the site.
So, that's why I said, it would be good to get that land now but that's your option.
Supervisor Brandt-There was some discussion at one time of getting more land on the right of your
drawing, more to the east.
Mr. Geiss-That I would think for future expansion for the lagoons for the next expansion, that should be
gotten also because I can do this here, the next expansion over here, you want to put the next set
Supervisor Brandt-There's a road going down through there right, so, it would be on the other side of the
road?
Mr. Geiss-On the other side of the road.
Supervisor Brandt-Operationally, that would work?
Unknown-Yea.
Mr. Geiss-The drying beds are really what I'm looking for room for, Mike. Not the lagoons. The lagoons
would stay here.
Supervisor Brandt-Okay...
Mr. Flaherty-Excuse me, have we determined that those lagoons have to be lined? We started to do a study
to see if we could get ...
Mr. Geiss-We started to do a study and DEC, I think with the current regs and I put it in here that the
lagoons will be lined. Okay, the DEC regs and what you're doing with groundwater and there's
groundwater protection programs, we were trying to prove that we weren't going to effect it. With our
schedule and everything, we said, here's what we're going to design, lined lagoons. We're not going to go
and negotiate with DEC for a month or two months and put the engineering time in to do that. We said
here, we're going to go right into design. And that's some of the, how did we get where we are today, we
took some sharp points and aimed them at certain things like that and said, here's what we're doing, we're
not looking to do this, we're looking to do this and that's part of how we got here again today with our price
and everything else.
Councilman Tucker-Did you and this just come to my mind, chlorination, we were talking about scrubber
Mr. Geiss-Yes, I'm sorry, I can get to that.
Councilman Tucker-Okay.
Mr. Geiss-I, In fact that's, let me finish, any other questions on lagoons?
Councilman Monahan-Tony, the difference in cost to us between lined and unlined lagoons when ...
Mr. Geiss- I don't have a number right off the top of my head but it would be the cost of the lining.
Councilman Monahan-I mean, is it cost effective not to give you engineering time and put the money into
lining the lagoons, which way is the cost effective way?
Mr. Geiss-I think with today's regs and what we're seeing going forward, line them. The lining could be
something as simple as an asphalt.
Mr. VanDusen-Betty, let me just mention one of the concerns, we have some monitoring wells there that
we've, on our own that we've looked at and right now we are picking up aluminum that is on the down
stream side of our existing drying beds, there's aluminum on the upstream side, there is not. That's not
something that's being regulated today so it's not a problem. Tomorrow, if aluminum becomes a regulated
discharge then that is a problem. If the aluminum is getting through from the sludge, it's safe to say that
most anything else could. So, I think in the long term benefit, you might as well line them now and be
done with it.
Mr. Geiss-It's not a regulated where we, because he said we picked some up
Supervisor Brandt -Your high-lift pumps, go back to them for a second, you said they could be seven or
seven and a half, I had it down for variable speed pumping. The other two pumps your adding, the other
two pumps are what size?
Mr. Geiss-Five MGD.
Supervisor Brandt-Okay.
Mr. Geiss-The existing are two fives.
Councilman Tucker-We were talking about some work on the other two, weren't we?
Mr. VanDusen-That's been discussed as far as the electrical control, the motor control center.
Councilman Tucker-Yea, well, something about making them variable speed and
Mr. VanDusen-Taking a look at that.
Councilman Caimano- The new ones are, you asked, the seven MGD pumps, you're talking about variable
speed, are you going to retrofit the others in to a variable?
Mr. Geiss-Well, that was one of your questions. We can do that with no problem because we've already
will have sized, I meant so say, will have sized the variable frequency drive for the new pump, so we know
what size drive and everything else would be involved, some conduit and wire and where we locate,
physically locate the drive which would probably be adjacent to the other one that we put in. And my
answer to that, for no additional costs.
Councilman Caimano- That was my question. I know you can do it, the question is, at what?
Mr. Geiss-On that item, there was no additional costs because we're not doing any real design, it's done.
We're doing one and we'd size it the same as we would for the seven and a half, we wouldn't size it
different for the five. We'd put a bigger one in because some day you might go with a bigger pump so
we're put the bigger one in now. So, there's no need
Supervisor Brandt-Heat dissipation in that room, you've addressed that and adequately you think?
Mr. Geiss-I would put, there's two ways of doing it. I've talked about or two things I'm looking of doing.
Number one, I probably put in a big wall louver of some kind and a huge exhaust fan. The next thing, it
might be even advisable to take the windows right out of there so you get no solar heat take up in that room
in the Summer. I don't know if the windows make one bit of difference or not, to be honest with you, but
we would put a huge exhaust fan in the roof and louvers in the walls so that you can open the doors, or you
don't have to open doors or anything, you can just turn fans on and it probably be two fans, not one. The
room is very small.
Mr. Flaherty-You're going to have to address something on the windows anyway because the existing
frames are steel and they've all rotted out. Whether you do it, as part of the plant expansion or you do it as
a maintenance problem, the steel is down in the water and they've all rotted, all the frames are rotted out.
Councilman Caimano- Well, it also strikes me, the higher we keep that temperature, the more potential for
micro-bio growth which means we have ... right?
Mr. Geiss-That temperature inside that room doesn't affect your water at all.
Councilman Caimano-It doesn't?
Mr. Geiss-No, no.
Councilman Caimano-Okay.
Mr. Geiss-What that does is, that stresses your pumps and your motors because you want to keep those
operating at as cool a temperature as you can.
Councilman Caimano-Right.
Mr. Geiss-And those are big four hundred horsepower motors in there right now, you probably are going to
talk adding and the third one might be a five hundred horsepower and that's alot of heat generation for that
little room. I mean you're talking, you're going to have a wind tunnel in there when your done, I'm not
going to lie to you.
Mr. Flaherty-With the existing pumps, you're running a hundred and twenty-five to a hundred and thirty
degrees.
Mr. Geiss-With how much fan?
Mr. Ostrander-That's with both, both of them on.
Mr. Geiss-With both fans?
Mr. Ostrander-No, with both motors.
Mr. Geiss-With both motors on, how many, but do you have the fans in the roof?
Mr. Ostrander-There's just one.
Mr. Flaherty-What fan?
Mr. Geiss-What fans, okay. I'm talking, you're going to be making a wind tunnel to bring air in, so you
don't bring water in with it, you got to design the louvers but you may end up with a wall, one wall just
louvers on that building to bring air in. You may have in two fans and I'm looking at two, so that if you've
got to turn one off for some reason, you've got another one there because heat build up is too big there.
Chlorination, chemical feed, I guess let's talk chemicals, we'll start with chlorination. Chlorination system
and one of the references was to look at the existing system and how you can store it because there's a
storage facility and the chlorine feed is in this corner of the building. We looked at the sizing on that, you
can put the, redo the existing chlorine feed room, putting in new chlorine feeders which are back in feeders
which are safer. And you have enough storage in this existing room to give you, I forget how many days
supply but I think we worked up that you had storage for three plus two on scales for tongue containers and
that gave you more than enough supply and there's room in that room to do that. The proposal addresses
the safety aspect of putting a chlorine scrubber in as well. That would be, as we proposed a new building
off to the side here and that would be, what you're looking at is an air scrubber to take all of the air from the
chlorine room, okay, and run it through a scrubber and you put the chemical caustic and drip the caustic in
the top and you pull the air up through. So, you do a chemical change so you strip the chlorine out.
Councilman Caimano-But your last page addresses that too and that's the alternative design. I don't know if
you've seen the alternative design but it seems to me, based on my history that if we can get a safer way of
doing this and their alternative design is one way to do it, that we ought to take a serious look at it. If we
can get the same kill with liquid chlorine or with hypochlorite and the cost is a wash, we ought to ...
Supervisor Brandt-The cost isn't a wash. Now, how much of a factor is it?
Councilman Caimano-It is, if you take the capital expenditure out.
Mr. Ostrander-Okay but there's a time period where you'll catch up and pay more for the hypochlorite.
Councilman Caimano-Okay.
Mr. Ostrander-It would be a safety factor but costs, hypochlorite is going to cost you ...
Councilman Caimano-But your recommendation as far as you guys are concerned is to stay with the gas?
Supervisor Brandt-Well
Mr. Gidelow- W e did a back in the envelope cost analysis, just quick and dirty and we said in our proposal I
believe that we felt that you could save the cost of the new building to put the scrubber in, we felt that was
worth eighty to a hundred thousand dollars, including the equipment, the scrubber and so on. If you
bonded eighty to hundred, let's call it a hundred thousand dollars because it's a round number, if you
bonded ... for thirty years, it's going to cost you roughly, in today's interest rate, seven thousand dollars a
year in bond cost to pay for that construction cost. So, you're going to save seven thousand dollars a year in
bonded indebtedness. If you're now paying ten thousand dollars a year say for chlorine, it's probably going
to double the cost. So you're going to, for hypochlorite, your going to pay twenty thousand dollars a year
instead of ten. So, it may cost you ten thousand dollars a year more for the chemicals and it may save you
seven to eight thousand dollars a year on the bond costs, so it's going to cost you somewhere around two to
three thousand dollars a year more for the chemicals and then after twenty years, you're going to start
ending up paying more for having done that. And I guess that's the price of safety.
Mr. Flaherty-But you don't know twenty years from now what the safety requirements are going to be.
Mr. Gidelow-But you don't know what the safety requirements are going to be with chlorine or ...
hypochlorite for that matter.
Mr. Flaherty-When we initially looked at it, I was kind of reluctant but the more and more I looked at it,
I'm beginning to change my mind.
Supervisor Brandt -You're also eliminating the transportation from chlorine... through the town.
Mr. Flaherty-You're eliminating the cost of the scrubber and one thing I'll throw out for consideration is,
you might want to take a look at taking the money you save on the scrubber and looking at better high-lift
pumping solution then one of the ones or some of the ones we looked at in the beginning.
Councilman Caimano- I've got to agree with you, to me, the peace of mind that for two thousand dollars
compared to what could happen with gaseous chlorine, is ...
Mr. Flaherty-You eliminate your requirement, your State requirement for a safety, a hazardous or a safe
chlorine emergency plan and I don't mean to me a, you know, trying to throw a panic but if you look at the
chlorine emergency plan and you look at what you've got to do, you've got ...
Supervisor Brandt-It is a panic.
Mr. Flaherty-If you have a leak, in order to comply with the rules we have, you've got to evacuate the Glens
Falls Hospital, you've got to evacuate the nursing homes, West Mountain, you've got to close down Route
9, you've got to close down the Northway, part of South Glens Falls, I mean, it's something that you can't
handle.
Councilman Caimano- Y ou have an argument against that?
Mr. Ostrander-If you're going to do it, do it for safety, not for saving money because in the long fUll, you
won't.
Councilman Caimano- The safety.
Supervisor Brandt-Right.
Councilman Caimano- I'm saying, I'm willing to pay the two grand a year ...
Mr. Ostrander-Okay...
Supervisor Brandt-We can find two grand somewhere else.
Councilman Tucker-When you're talking safety now, there's no problem with this new chemical?
Supervisor Brandt-Well ...
Mr. Geiss-It's not a new chemical.
Councilman Tucker-Well, I mean, is there any problem, wait, it will be new to our process.
Mr. Geiss-It will be new to your process. Basically...
Mr. Flaherty-It's the same chemical we used when we had the pump house.
Mr. Geiss-Yea, it's sodium hypochlorite and the simplest form, it's fifteen percent solution, which you buy
in the stores is five percent solution, is bleach. Okay, it's basically chlorine in liquid form but it's only
fifteen percent by, only fifteen percent of a gallon, is chlorine is what it is by fifteen percent solution. You
have to handle it as a chemical, what we looked at is, that we would take the existing chlorine room and put
a tank inside the chlorine room and then put containment. Build, put the tank in and then build a
containment wall right there.
Mr. Gidelow- Y ou have to have double containment so if the tank leaks, it gets contained in the second
tank.
Mr. Geiss-In the second tank.
Councilman Caimano- The potential danger is
Supervisor Brandt-You buy this liquid?
Mr. Geiss-Oh, yes, from the same chemical suppliers you buy the chlorine from.
Councilman Caimano-And the potential danger is to the person on site, that one or two people there, that's
obviously the potential chemical danger there but not to the populace in general.
Mr. Flaherty-Well, so is gas.
Councilman Caimano- I know but the gas is ...
Councilman Tucker-No, I was just
Mr. Geiss-There's still handling problems, that's what you're saying.
Mr. Flaherty-Yea.
Mr. Geiss-There's still handling problems, you got, with any chemical, you've got to know how to handle
the chemical.
Councilman Caimano-Ifthe tank breaks, it's contained within ... and the vapors have no consequences.
Councilman Tucker-Yea, well that's, that's his point.
Mr. Geiss-It doesn't, the chlorine doesn't dissipate into a big green cloud, not from the liquid. Okay, it's
stays in.
Councilman Tucker-Okay.
Mr. Flaherty-The biggest problem you'll have Pliney, you'll buy clothes for the employees because you'll
eat holes in the clothes, when you spill it on it.
Councilman Tucker-The biggest thing is, you don't want anybody getting hurt, that's all.
Mr. Geiss-No, that's why we offered it for safety. Other facilities, I can go to the biggest one like
Hackensack Water Company which runs a water company in New York State and New Jersey, they...
chloric through their whole system and they've got, they're a two hundred million gallon a day system.
Mr. Flaherty-I don't know if this will answer your question or not but the City of Albany just went from gas
at their Lincoln Park Zoo, the Lincoln Park Zoo, their Lincoln Park pool, they switched from gas to
hypochlorite because of the safety, they're were concerned with the safety.
Councilman Monahan-I think we've all heard of instances or watched them on TV when, you know, the ...
and stuff with chlorine, what they've had to do to contain it and everything.
Mr. Geiss-It's a concern, he brings, Tom brings up a very big fact on the safety plan which you've got to
work up and you got to remember, the safety on this, how do you address a leak. Technically, every time
there's a leak, even if it's a leak when you're just changing cylinders and there's a valve leak, if you send
somebody in to do it, that's an active response, just to fix that little valve and tighten it down and then once
you say you're doing an active response, you've got the other fifty pages of safety manual you got to carry
out. The other option is, every time you see a leak like that is to walk out of the treatment plant and call for
help and that's a passive response. Well, nobody does the total passive response because all the operators
are trained to check for leaks as you do it with ammonia and everything else, but the new regs say, either
you get out all the way but if you go in at all, you got to have the rest of the safety manual follow to. And
it's not difficult but then you got to keep updating, you got to go into your head, hazardous, you know, the
emergency people, everything else have got to be informed, things like that, you know, you've got to have
an area for people to gather every time it happens because if you have a big one and the people don't go out,
you know, they get so they don't respond to the small one and you got a big one they go out, you got a plan
that you didn't follow and your liable then.
Councilman Caimano-Have we ever had a drill? Have any of the fire companies ever had a drill, have
they?
Supervisor Brandt-As far as I'm concerned, we'll find a way to save the money somewhere else and just get
the hazard out of town.
Councilman Tucker-Well, you're not talking alot of bucks though, are you?
Supervisor Brandt -Oh yea.
Councilman Monahan-Even if you are, it's worth it for safety.
Councilman Tucker-Yea, but I mean what are you talking.
Councilman Caimano- Two grand a year.
Supervisor Brandt -Even if it's five... just get on with it.
Councilman Tucker-Of course you're looking into the future a long ways and none of us can do that so.
Mr. Geiss-Well, I'll throw another hooker in here. Right now, the International Great Lakes Institute and
Commission is looking at why everybody is using chlorine, why aren't they using something else?
Councilman Caimano-Okay.
Mr. Geiss-To be very honest with you and the answer the water people are giving, tell us what else we can
use that will disinfect our water and maintain disinfection. So, we're not, basically the sewer people are
getting pounded on but in so doing, they're pounding, as the water people use alot of chlorine also and some
day in the future, they're questioning how, but we don't have an answer of what else we can use. But that's
being, that study is going on or the International Great Lakes is saying, no more, if you discharge to any of
the Great Lakes, your sewage treatment plant is not going to be allowed to use chlorine in the very near
future.
Councilman Caimano-I asked you before, the ultraviolet is still not into it?
Mr. Geiss-Ultraviolet, you can do it for water but see when you use ultraviolet, if you're putting it through
the pipes, ultraviolet will do a kill but it doesn't give you any residual...
Mr. Flaherty-You can't retain your residual.
Mr. Geiss-There is no residual, it does a kill, bang, any water that passes this ultraviolet light is clear but
now it gets now over there by Peter and it could be reinfected because it we didn't do any kill over in that
area, we did the kill right here.
Councilman Caimano-Ifyou went to a hypochlorite system, with the use of ... reduce the need, if you use
the hypochlorite now as your residual downstream of that, would that reduce the amount that you would
have to put in?
Mr. Geiss-Maybe.
Councilman Caimano- No?
Mr. Geiss-I don't think so.
Mr. Gidelow- You're still going to have to have the same amount of chlorine residual.
Councilman Caimano- That's true.
Mr. Geiss-Most of your chemical feed goes in to maintain your residual out in your system. So, you hold it
and keep it disinfected for a long, in fact, the criteria from the health department is, either there's point two
or point five parts of chlorine in the system, okay and it says parts per million of chlorine in the system.
So, you've got to maintain that per the code right now. So, you see, ultraviolet, ozone
Councilman Caimano-It makes no difference, you still got to make the residual.
Mr. Geiss-You still got to have, by regs you got to have chlorine out there. So, you can do it, so, that's
what you need. Other chemicals, you've got other chemicals that are applied here too. We need to
probably make some adjustments to the equipment because I think some of the equipment and Bruce can
tell me, correct me, is good up to maybe the six or the eight MGD but to get to ten MGD, we might have to
put some new feed, re-adjust the feed devices or add new feed devices.
Mr. Ostrander-That's more ... than the feed equipment.
Mr. Geiss-That's right.
Mr. Ostrander-But, the rotor-dip to go higher for the ...
Mr. Geiss-Yea, the rotor-dip but that means just changing the rotor on it. Soda Ash is a chemical that
you've been adding the last several years that you've been using a temporary feeder with. We propose to
put a new silo with a feeder in and we're going to put the silo somewhere outside, maybe over here. We're
not going to put it in the building. The chemical feed area is over the clear well, and rather than load that
floor with a silo and a ... full of chemical, and we weren't, not knowing how much loading or if it was safe
or how much more we were going to have to reinforce the floor, let's move the silo out here and the feeder
is going to be right in the bottom of the silo. So, when the chemical gets delivered in the dry form, I'm
going to blow it up to the top, and the silo may end up forty feet high, thirty or forty, I don't know, I didn't
do a number on it. But in the bottom of it, it's going to come down right into the feeder, go into solution
right there and then we're going to pump that solution into the treatment plant.
Supervisor Brandt-All the more reason to go into liquid chlorine, you don't have chlorine storage outside, it
gIVes you more room.
Mr. Geiss-It gives me room right next to this chemical feeder. You know, and one of the little things right
here, we had a loading dock problem that we said we can correct by adding a few feet onto the dock, as I
remember here. The existing instruments are twenty-five years old, they're large case instruments. You got
a panel that sits right in the front of the building up here. We're looking at relocating, that's also in the area
of your chemical, that end of your building is chemical feed too, to give a little more storage for chemicals,
that's an ideal area to take on, to give a little more storage for equipment because your loading dock is from
this end. We would relocate the instrumentation, in doing, we would put in an updated version of the
instrumentation. You would still have the panel to do controls but you also have a computer that would do
the monitoring now in lieu of the all the large case instruments. Okay and it would do monitoring and
recording but you would still have the controls very similar to what you got now. We don't believe in
letting the computer control the plant. The operators still control the plant. The decisions on how to
change the control the plant are done by the operators rather then try to let a computer do things that you
don't know what's happening. But the computer is a recording device, is a monitoring device and makes
everything so much easier. One thing it does that I like, that operators don't like, I use this example alot, is
when the alarm goes off, it used to be, you know the operator would push a button, the horn would stop and
then he got the rest of the shift to fix it and then the light would go out. Well, you don't, as you came in and
they can happen in the beginning, middle or end of the shift, you didn't know when he fixed anything or if
he solved the problem or not. When the computer is on line, the computer says, now it, the alarm went off,
now's when the operator responded, not two hours later but you got a record of when he responded, you got
a record of when he fixed it too. A record that anybody can go in and read if you want to go through the
whole stack of paper. But that's the kind of little update and response time you get from the computer
doing the recording of the data. And also you can get monitor, get the information off on the screen.
Supervisor Brandt -You're saying, a typical control room that I've seen recently for that and I'm talking
special control because of computerization, the rooms become very, very small, and when you're saying
then the displays with computers, that can be made small but what you're saying is you keep panels for, for
control so it's manual control, not computer control. Is that correct?
Mr. Geiss-Yes, essentially. Here
Mr. Flaherty-The panel can be alot smaller too.
Mr. Geiss-The panel will be smaller because you won't have anything in the panel.
Mr. Gidelow-I wouldn't say we call it the manual control, we call it semi-automatic control.
Supervisor Brandt-But a person has to go do it, whatever it is.
Mr. Gidelow-We like to have the operator have the interface to change ...
Supervisor Brandt-Right.
Mr. Gidelow-He can make the judgement call.
Supervisor Brandt-Okay.
Mr. Gidelow- That is the instrumentation room for a 32 MGD water treatment plant.
Supervisor Brandt-That's a little different.
Mr. Gidelow-Okay, well here's, here's some, these are on instrumentation, is what they're on but that's a
panel, the plant went on line in December of this year, that panel there has lights on it, you still have, that's
going back to the old type things, in fact it's got alarm lights on it. That plant is capable of being operated
independently, if the computer goes out the plant can fully operate without the computer, okay, which ..., it
has a backup computer but who knows what will happen but you've got to be able to operate the facility.
Open and close valves are down with the manual switches on that plant but all the monitoring, you see the
screen right there, everything is monitored and recorded, there's two printers associated with the computer.
One does all the data recording and the other one is an alarm ... but that's the type of thing we're looking at
doing. The programming for this can all be bought as packaged software and in fact, you spec into the
contract how the package software gets modified to your specific plant. Like, how many recording devices
and how often you want it recorded and how you want it printed out. But the package software is the way
we're looking at going. We're not going to manufacture, design a new piece of software, there's two or
three companies that make this packaged software that's available on the market. And then there's service
for the software afterwards because if we design you a special one then your tied back into us and if a guy
leaves us, we may not even be able to help you. But this way, there's companies out there that will give
you the packaged software and they even update it and you get the updates from them as well.
Mr. Gidelow- W e didn't explain that all very well in our proposal but we did in fact intend to do that, we
just never really said it very much. So, that, all this effort to do this, the computer interface and so on is
included in our pricing.
Mr. Geiss-Yea, that's included in the pricing.
Supervisor Brandt -Our staff asked you the question, if I remember right, about the type of monitoring
devices that are feeding your computers. Would you address that?
Mr. Geiss-Yes, the elements, the transmitters and primary elements. I specifically wrote in there that we
were going to hook up to the transmitters, leaving the existing transmitters and primary elements the way
they were okay, because that's a connection point that we could find, also it meant just a wiring connection
and not looking at investigating for alternative or ... devices on the other side. We have developed a price
for what we can do the, looking at the primary elements for the whole system as well. And I think we give
a summary of prices or do you got it right there?
Mr. Gidelow-I can give it to you right now. We've looked at all your primary elements and we've
determined whether they need to be replaced or not and if they do the right ... for it, four thousand dollars
additional cost to do all of that.
Mr. Geiss-And that's from the preliminary design and construction.
Mr. Gidelow-Some of that will be preliminary, some of that will the general construction.
Mr. Geiss-Yea, I'm not, we didn't give you the break down but that four thousand is for right through the
job.
Mr. Gidelow-Including construction phrase ... engmeenng.
Mr. Flaherty-Before we get done tonight, can we go down through the prices?
Supervisor Brandt-Oh yea, absolutely.
Mr. Geiss-I think, we're just about ready to go down through the questions and then maybe that would be
one way to make sure we cover everything. There's a couple of things on bidding and other things but I can
cover those as we go because there's a couple of questions on bidding. I could sit down, so I can read.
With the bifocals, I can't stand and read and talk and it's tough, it is tough. Okay, why don't we go right
through the letter which I got and to the second page which starts with proposes covered, O'Brien and Gere
proposes to cover the project with four contracts for the plant expansion, the tank and the Northway
crossing. And the question here really is, is four contracts sufficient to do this, should there be more
contracts? I'll tell you my druthers, I'd love to do this whole project with one contract. We've done several
projects along this line, with one contract where we were legally allowed to do it. And I say legally
allowed and that, those are some of the better projects we've produced. In the case of this work we can not
do it with one contract, we have to go to a minimum of four contracts, according to the wicks law.
Councilman Monahan-You're talking about your plumbing and your electrical and all that jazz?
Mr. Geiss-Yes, it's right in the law that you have to have, is it plumbing?
Mr. Gidelow-Plumbing, heating, ventilating and electrical as well as general and the alternative on this
project would be to have a separate additional contract besides those four with the tank contract and then
another one ... for the pipe line crossing under the Northway, because those will be done probably not by
the same guy that will be building your plant, it's different type construction. Certainly, the tank would be
something done by a specialty contractor but as Tony mentioned, we've done some work for some
authorities where they're not required to follow the wicks law. Certain authorities in New York State don't
have to follow it and one of them, the typical water plant, had significant piping work, it had freeze dry
beds, it had everything that you got, it had a very large tank on the site, all done under one contract because
they could get away with one but we chose not to put the tank in a separate contract, we didn't have to put
the electrical, HVC, and plumbing in separate contracts. And what it does and I don't know if you've read
some of the legislature again, this year considered whether it was going to either relax or eliminate entirely
the wicks law, they've chose not to do anything, but me, as a design engineer, I would love to see the wicks
law eliminated because the less contracts you have, the less potential you have for one to get in the other's
way, the less overall administration that you get and the less we have to be involved, it just makes
everyone's life so much easier and on our projects, we've got significant showing that the savings on those
kinds of contracts are significant when you don't have to do the wicks law. Now, alot of people have made
that pitch to the legislature, it hasn't been eliminated yet but some day I think it will, it's getting closer and
closer every year. One of the things that you can say is, well, if we go to six different contracts including a
tank contract and a pipe line contract, we'll have more control over who we get. Well, I don't really think
so, because under the municipal law, if you get a tank contractor that's the low bidder that's someone that
you don't want, you don't have an awful lot of discretion to not give him the award of the contract and give
it to the second guy, you start getting into the area where the low bidder if you throw him out and give it to
the second guy, probably is going to maybe start some legal action. You don't have alot of discretion. The
only thing you really can do if you get a low bidder that you don't want, you can reject all the bids and try it
again and hope you don't get him again. But you really don't have a whole lot of say in whose going to be
your low bidder, whether you bid it as a separate ... or whether he's a sub to the general.
Councilman Monahan-Excuse me, because this ... you can tighten up those specs so that some of your
gypsies can't qualify to be the bidder ...
Mr. Gidelow-We're going to do that anyway because it really doesn't matter whether he's a prime contractor
or a subcontractor, the tightness of the spec is going to determine whether you're going to let everybody in
the world build your tank or if you're going to let a qualified builder do it.
Councilman Monahan-Your problem with your subs is that your GC is out shopping back and forth
between them and he's shopping for price ...
Councilman Caimano- That's really our own concern is
Mr. Gidelow-We think we can bring you your ... bid but it's not going to be a whole lot more, I don't think
it's going to be any more, give you any more control now then if we did it as a separate prime contract and
that same guy was the low bidder on your, as your prime contractor. The only real thing you can do is
reject that bid and try to do it again.
Mr. Geiss-I'll tell you what we did on that ... project which is for water authority and we took one bid but
we had him list his subs at the time of bidding which eliminated him shopping.
Councilman Monahan-In California, you have to list them
Councilman Caimano-Wait a minute, when would you list them? When they submitted the bid?
Councilman Monahan-On the bid, on the bid.
Mr. Flaherty-And he can't change them.
Mr. Gidelow-Now, he can't change them but one of the things that you under New York Municipal law is
he lists subs that you don't like, there's not much you can do about it except you can reject the bids and do it
over agam.
Supervisor Brandt-Right, reject the whole bid.
Mr. Gidelow- Y ou can't control it. You can't say, well we don't want his bid even though he's low because
we don't like this particular sub. You don't have that discretion in any event in New York State. But at
least you get to see it and at least you'll know what you're getting and he can't change it so he can't go out
and shop afterwards.
Mr. Flaherty-It eliminates the problem of him shopping after he gets the bid. I mean, you've got that much
protection.
Councilman Tucker-You guys have done alot of this. How many times do you run into this, that somebody
your building the water plant for says, I don't like this sub? How many times do you run in this kind of
stuff? Maybe cause they don't like the way they spell their name or what?
Councilman Monahan-No, it's the quality of work Pliney.
Councilman Tucker-But how many people, Betty, sitting on a Board like this and this company's building
or bidding the plant, how many people are qualified to say this guy isn't any good or that guy isn't any
good?
Councilman Caimano- The answer of course is, none of us and that's just the reason we want to tie it down,
at least from point, I want to tie it down now. I don't want the decision by the general to be ...
Councilman Tucker-No, I was just asking, how many times do you get this thrown at you?
Councilman Monahan-Alot, alot.
Mr. Gidelow- Twice in my career.
Councilman Tucker-And how long is your career?
Mr. Gidelow- Twenty-four years.
Councilman Tucker-Well, then that ain't too often, is it?
Mr. Gidelow-Not very often.
Councilman Tucker-I don't see it as a real big problem, myself.
Mr. Gidelow-And we don't see it as a real big issue but we thought we would tell you what our opinion was
and why we think four is going to give you about as good a deal as six. The real key to it as you say,
tightening the specs up no matter how you do it, to try to keep people either don't have the experience or
that had never done anything of this nature or it's way bigger then they've ever done before, to keep them
from being eligible to do it.
Mr. Flaherty-I feel more, personally, I feel more comfortable, if they can list them up front and that
eliminates the shopping after the job is done.
Councilman Tucker -Yea, right.
Mr. Flaherty-That was my major concern.
Councilman Monahan-I think they make the same qualifications now for the subs as you do for the prime.
Mr. Gidelow-One of the other things we can do and it depends on the town attorney if we can do some
things called base bidding but we need to make sure that your town attorney would agree with that because
... base bidding in New York State is illegal. Well, it depends on what your town attorney says but there's
some ways to get around that, that can even give you more protection then just a tight spec. We just base
bids some stufffor a couple of.. in New York State.
Mr. Geiss- We just did one for Colonie.
Councilman Monahan-What do you mean, what does the word base bid mean?
Mr. Geiss-Okay, where base bid means, you spec this and you want a bid from this individual, say the tank,
this one tank manufacturer, you want to get his bid and you allow and you name this alternative tank, well,
let's say you've got two people that are good, he must list one of those two people in the top line and that's
what he bases his bid on. Now, he may say, I've got somebody over here that is as good. We say, alright,
list him underneath here and list if it will cost us less or more to use this other guy but you must use one of
these first people in the top bid and you can write other people who qualify underneath here.
Mr. Gidelow-And he might give you a deduct or brand X of ten thousand dollars.
Councilman Monahan-It's like an alternative spec almost.
Mr. Geiss-Yes.
Mr. Gidelow-And then what happens is, you will award the contract based on his base bid which is the
preferred manufacturer and then, after a contract award, you can decide whether you want to take a deduct
to get brand x or not but the control is in your lap and we can do some things like that if your attorney
agrees that that's legal. Some do and some don't.
Mr. Flaherty-Whose the attorney for Colonie?
Mr. Geiss-Your counterpart, Tabner and Laudato.
Mr. Flaherty- Tabner, okay.
Mr. Geiss- Tabner was there.
Councilman Tucker-Guys, you're talking about four bids?
Mr. Gidelow- Yes.
Councilman Monahan-Four or six now?
Mr. Geiss-Four.
Mr. Gidelow-Four, we're talking about four.
Councilman Monahan-The tank can go under the
Mr. Geiss-Under the general.
Councilman Tucker-The size of this project, the four bids are going to be fairly good size then, aren't they?
I mean
Mr. Geiss-The general is going to be big by far, the electrical is going to be substantial, good size for an
electrical, the HV and plumbing is going to be puny contracts.
Councilman Monahan-We had the same thing over here with this building and re-doing
Mr. Geiss-We're going to have to, the plumber we're going to have to make work for him to be honest with
you.
Mr. Gidelow- Yes, we're going to have to make it worth his while to put a bid in, otherwise you won't get a
bid.
Councilman Tucker-Okay but, alright, I guess what I'm talking about the plant, the tank and the piping
under the Northway, aren't they all going to be fairly decent contracts?
Mr. Geiss-Yea, they're all going to be decent contracts.
Councilman Tucker-Yea, I guess what I'm saying is, is that the fly-by-nighters aren't going to be able to get
bonded to do them, are they?
Mr. Geiss-No, no, you're going to get a good size contractor to come in here.
Mr. Flaherty-Especially if you wrap them all together.
Mr. Geiss-That's right, he's got to bond
Mr. Flaherty-Out of the area contractors.
Councilman Tucker-Yea, okay.
Mr. Gidelow- This going to attract people from allover New York State.
Mr. Geiss-New England.
Mr. Gidelow-And New England
Councilman Tucker-Yea but I mean it should draw quality people.
Mr. Geiss-Oh it will, it will definitely draw your quality contractors.
Supervisor Brandt-Okay, let's keep going.
Councilman Monahan-Big isn't always quality, though, Pliney.
Councilman Caimano-Single inspector.
Mr. Geiss-Single inspector, we proposed a single inspector for the project, we ... him out at forty hours a
week, basically eight hours a day, five days a week for fourteen months which was the duration of the
project. The question in here, will a single inspector do the job? This is alot of work for a single inspector
with three sites. The alternative here that we're talking about and we've got, is there's been some discussion
of a clerk of the works to be involved here. Now, the definition of what a clerk of the works does, is
critical here because if a clerk of the work is going to be sitting in an office up here in town hall, that
doesn't help what we're talking about getting the inspection done. If the clerk of the works is sitting down
there in the trailer and is working along with the inspector on the job and does go out and if there's need to
double up or to help, I mean he reports to us, we've used municipal employees helping our inspectors and
report on what's going on, on other projects. So, that would help. The additional cost for a second
inspector on the job to cover the remote sites which are the tank and the pipe line crossing which is like,
we're talking a five month duration for that contractor, the first Summer or the first construction season is
when that tank and pipe line will go on, we had a price of
Mr. Gidelow-For every month that we had a second inspector, an inspector is basically going to cost twelve
thousand dollars a month. So
Councilman Monahan... qualify?
Mr. Gidelow-One man for one month is going to cost twelve thousand dollars.
Councilman Goetz-What if it's a woman?
Mr. Gidelow-One person per month.
Mr. Geiss-Good point.
Mr. Gidelow-Part of the deal ... it's really difficult right now because, two reasons, to tell you, what the
inspection load is going to be and the two reasons is this, first of all, none of us today know who the
contractor is that's going to be doing the work. Good contractors, you can not have to have somebody
looking over their shoulder all the time because they do good work and I can name you off a whole bunch
of good contractors. If it's an awful contractor and we won't know that until the bids come in, you can't put
enough inspectors on the job to watch everything that's going on.
Councilman Tucker-Yea, I know that.
Councilman Monahan-You better find a way of rejecting that bid.
Mr. Gidelow-And so, that's the first thing, we don't know who the contractor is. The second thing is, we
have no idea what his schedule is going to be, how he's going to go at this job. He could at it by trying to
spread the work over the whole fourteen months duration, he could do it any number of ways and we don't
know that either. And so, it's very difficult to determine right now whether we can get away with one but
it's going to be awful tight. If we have one inspector and a clerk of the works that can help out with some
of the duties, then I think it's doable. If we have an excellent contractor, I'm sure it's going to be doable. If
we have an awful contractor, we're going to need as many people as you can reasonably afford to keep on
top of him and that's the dilemma right now. But to put it
Councilman Tucker-Assuming we're going to get a fairly decent contractor, it's sounds like your inspector
and a good clerk of the works, the guy that wears the boots and gets out there and
Mr. Gidelow-We think that's going to work.
Councilman Tucker-Yea.
Mr. Gidelow-But if you need another inspector or part time basis, one month of full time inspection is
twelve thousand dollars.
Councilman Monahan-You're talking about eighty dollars an hour, almost.
Mr. Flaherty-What would you expect the length of the Northway crossing?
Mr. Geiss-Five months. Actually, three months of construction, the tank is going to be the five months, the
longer one. I think I, it shows that in the schedule to you Tom.
Councilman Tucker-Is there anyway that we could dictate how we would like the project to go?
Mr. Gidelow- Well, you can do that and let's assume that you could save a months worth of inspection for
ten thousand dollars. The problem is, we don't know how much more it's going to cost the contractor to do
it and by finding a way, I would recommend that you let the contractor build this project within the
fourteen month duration, the most efficient way he can do it.
Councilman Tucker-Okay.
Mr. Gidelow-Because I think the inspection savings are likely to be minuscule compared with the savings
that you'll get in the bid. The more you tie up a contractor and how he can do things and he's going to be
tied to some extent on this project because of the sequencing at the plant site to keep things in service.
We're going to put enough restrictions on him, that you're going to have to do, I would not try to impose
any additional restrictions on him, with the market place, we'll come up with the most efficient way to do it.
Councilman Tucker-Yea, I agree with you. Okay.
Mr. Gidelow- While we're talking about inspection costs, the other thing that we prepared here is overtime
costs and normally... left on our devices, if we were going to prepare a budget for you and suggest
anything, we would suggest that you allow ten percent overtime for the inspector. That's a forty-four hour
week because when it's nice out, they're going to be working to get stuff done. When it's five o'clock and
time to go home and they're right in the middle of a concrete pour, you can't do that, you've got to work
overtime. And so we suggest that ten percent allowance be used for overtime and if we had ten percent
overtime for the entire duration of a fourteen month project, you would add twelve thousand dollars to our
inspection cost. That's highly unlikely, he says in the Winter, they're not going to be working overtime,
hardly at all but if you put fourteen months at ten percent overtime, it's adds twelve thousand dollars to the
inspection cost for one inspector. Again, I think that's a number that you should write down so we don't
forget about it but we really ought to determine that when we know who the contractor is and we
understand what his schedule is and we understand who your clerk of the works is and then we can figure
out a way to try to manage them to get it done with reasonable inspection, at the least amount of cost.
Councilman Monahan-Does the inspector get paid by the hour? I mean, I'm thinking like in the Winter
time when he maybe only is going to work ten or fifteen hours depending upon the kind of Winter we have,
you know. Or is there a basic he's going to draw every week or what?
Mr. Gidelow-Ifthe contractor shuts down for the Winter and there's nothing going on up here, we take our
inspector back and you don't pay for him.
Councilman Monahan-No, but I'm thinking we have the kind of Winters that we often have, maybe you
could work this week and you can't work next week or you work three days or something or other, and it
depends on the phase you're on too.
Mr. Gidelow- What we try to do is this, if the inspector can reasonably be put on some other job somewhere
else, we'll try to do that. My guess is, that we're not going to have another job near by enough here so that
we're going to be able to do that. So, if the contractor is working, as the weather will allow, we're going to
have to keep our inspector here and you're going to have to pay for him unless we can find something else
for him to do and I don't know that we're going to be able to find something else for him to do. Maybe if
we've got something going on in the Winter
Councilman Monahan-But you don't send them home, like we used to send home our roofers and
mechanics and stuff, you don't send them home and they don't get paid.
Mr. Geiss-The problem with that
Mr. Gidelow-It's hard to treat people that way...
Mr. Geiss-You can send a roofer home and you don't care if he comes back tomorrow because you can get
another roofer
Councilman Monahan-Yes we did because you have to have the right kind of crew to put those on too.
Mr. Geiss-Well, okay and
Mr. Gidelow-But that's the dilemma.
Mr. Geiss-It's a dilemma because the contractor shows again the next morning, we got to have the inspector
there. When that starts happening, okay, and I think this is reasonable too, if that starts happening, we say,
what is your schedule, what's going on and we got to make adjustments here because you're, we're
becoming very inefficient and so are you, what's going on? This schedule with the plant, with everything
that's going on, he's got to work through the Winter to achieve some of the things that's he's going
Councilman Monahan-Well, he'll be doing inside work too.
Mr. Geiss-There's alot of inside work and relocation work and other things that will be done and maybe
even to the point that he during the reasonable part of the Winter, he's going to even put scaffolds around
and do some of the concrete work to get things and keep things moving.
Councilman Monahan-Can we decide there's times during this project we need a second inspector and other
times that we don't or is it for the whole project or not at all?
Mr. Geiss-No, there are definitely, you can decide when there's times when you need a second inspector. I
think one of the general terms that we might say that there is just to talk right now, is during the first
Summer that the project starts going, you have the tank and the pipe line going at the same time, a very
reasonable point to have a second inspector from that first May until the first of October, when you've got
the tank and the pipe line going and that would take alot of the travel and other things off the inspector's
back and be able to have him up here on those part of the project, then he disappears.
Mr. Flaherty-It would be easy for one inspector to cover the tank and the Northway crossing because of
their proximity to each other.
Mr. Geiss-They're walking distance from each other.
Mr. Flaherty-Alot easier then one from the plant site to try to cover that.
Councilman Tucker-Going back to what I was saying a few minutes ago when you're were talking about
the contractor may want to spread this project over the whole fourteen months and what I was talking about
is, couldn't you when you draw up the specs, request it, the tank and the pipe be done in the first year?
Mr. Geiss-Yes, we will, I'm sorry. Yea, I think we were talking water treatment plant and no, the tank, the
tank we can put deadlines for the tank to be done. In fact, we intend to. The tank is to be done the first
year and the crossing, that first Summer. No, they, he doesn't have all year to do those.
Councilman Monahan-And the tank would be a subcontractor anyway, wouldn't it?
Mr. Geiss-Yes. We put deadlines in for that portion to be
Councilman Monahan-So, I mean there's no reason why the GC wouldn't want to get that done, as quickly
as possible.
Mr. Geiss-Well, if you gave him a year, he takes a year. I mean, you got to
Councilman Monahan-Well, what I'm saying, it's not usually his own forces to do the tank so it's not
Mr. Geiss-That's right.
Councilman Tucker-No, but what I'm saying, if the general contractor has the discretion of spreading this
over fourteen months, he could say to his sub, you're going to do this but I want to do it in the second year
or something like that.
Mr. Flaherty-You want to the tank first because that will help you take the pressure off the plant.
Mr. Geiss-That's right and we've shown that is the schedule for contracts in our proposal that the tank I've
got is one, two, three, four, five months approximately and the water main's about three months of
construction in the first Summer starting about the end of May going on to somewhere around mid October
for the tank. But that's how we've scheduled and we do want them to get it done then because trying to fit it
into the following Spring, is going to be tight, not for the water line as much as the tank. We want that
started and finished in good weather because the finishing coats on the tank are the critical ones. I don't
want them in December, I want them in good weather and that's, the rest of the tank will go up.
Supervisor Brandt-Bear with me, I don't know some things about, does the clerk of the works, that person
works for the town, right?
Mr. Geiss-Yes.
Supervisor Brandt-And as the town's employee responsible for the town but if that's a good relationship
with you people, that person could help as the second inspector at times
Mr. Gidelow- We've done that on a number of projects.
Supervisor Brandt -So, if we can find the right person, we can protect ourselves and help you guys out.
Mr. Geiss-That's right.
Mr. Gidelow-And save yourselves some money.
Mr. Geiss-It would have to be a give and take, he would report to, you know, he would be paid by you but
he would have to work with our reporting formats and other things and look at things and we've used
people like that.
Supervisor Brandt-Okay.
Mr. Geiss-No problem at all.
Supervisor Brandt-And that goes with Pliney's comment of the guy has got to be able help
Mr. Geiss-That's exactly what I said, a good working clerk. Yea, I'm not looking for somebody that's going
to, like I said, can't sit up here, he's got to be on site but he can't even sit on site, he's got to be willing to get
out. But he can, alot of the things that he can take off the inspector is like taking on the, getting the
submittal on the hours, keeping track of what men are on site, you know, the paper, some of that paperwork
can be his to take care of so the inspector, our inspector can physically spend more time in the field. He
can be filling out some of the forms or doing some of the
Councilman Monahan- Verify delivery of materials.
Mr. Geiss-Delivery of materials, delivery of, how many loads come in, you know, making sure the tests got
performed, that they were taken, the results will come in anyway. But things like that, that really take, let's
our inspector then get over onto the site where the works being done.
Councilman Monahan-Alot of paper trail.
Mr. Geiss-Yea, the paper trail is what scares us with one inspector because one inspector is going to spend
two to three hours a day in the office keeping track of the paper, not going to be in the field all the time.
Supervisor Brandt-What's typically, a clerk of the works cost a community, good ones?
Mr. Geiss-Good ones
Mr. Gidelow-Somebody you might hire as a contract employee rather than bringing him on full time
permanently?
Supervisor Brandt -Yes.
Mr. Gidelow-I would say thirty to fifty thousand dollars.
Councilman Monahan- I think we had one on the State Police building, Mike, if I remember right.
Councilman Caimano-How much did it cost?
Councilman Monahan-I don't remember to be honest with you but it was a small job, you know, that wasn't
a big one.
Councilman Caimano- Thirty to fifty thousand dollars total for the job, not annually?
Mr. Gidelow-I would say a year.
Councilman Caimano- That's a year?
Mr. Flaherty-... Betty, you don't want him on the plant site.
Councilman Monahan-No, I'm not saying you do but I'm just saying we have done
Mr. Gidelow-But that's what you can get a guy for
Councilman Monahan-I mean you got to have the right qualifications to do that type of thing.
Mr. Flaherty- ... you know what I mean.
Councilman Monahan-No, I know Tom, I know what you're saying, you've got to have the right
qualifications to do this kind of a job.
Councilman Caimano-Well, I'll have to get over that hump. I have this thing about us paying thirty to fifty
thousand dollars for someone whose supposed to be our representative, working with the enemy so to speak
and I don't mean that in a bad sense. I just
Supervisor Brandt-Yea, there's a delicate point, you can't serve two masters but you, on the other hand if
there's, is it a full time job to do the paper trail and what have you? I don't know, you have to find the
relationship.
Councilman Caimano-Maybe there's a series of jobs that the clerk of the works can perform that would help
you that are benign, so to speak, they don't really
Supervisor Brandt -You don't want to get into a position where it becomes too close a personal relationship
to where
Mr. Geiss-I don't understand what you're saying.
Councilman Monahan-No, I think Nick in the normal, really what it is, is almost an advisory position
because the clerk of the work is out there to protect the town's interest.
Councilman Caimano- That's really what I would like to have.
Councilman Monahan-And that's what it should be.
Supervisor Brandt -Yea.
Councilman Monahan-But in the meantime he still has to work closely with them to coordinate everything.
Mr. Geiss-Our purpose to be there is to protect your interest.
Councilman Caimano-Right, true.
Supervisor Brandt-In fact, they're parallel purposes, that's right.
Mr. Geiss-So, they're parallel purposes, it depends on whose paying the check and you're getting a direct
report, not a report through us but we're getting his reports daily. I mean, it's not, we're both there to
protect your interest.
Supervisor Brandt-Right but for us it's also a protection or a look over your shoulder to say, geez you
know, in here's screwed up and that's what the problems about.
Mr. Gidelow-He can be making reports directly to you in that capacity and he can be assisting us in our
capacity.
Mr. Geiss-See, what it does is, if you're going to have a clerk of the works and what is he going to do on a
project of this size if he doesn't do some of the other smaller paperwork, he's going to be doing change
orders and a few other things but that's it. Not a full days work really. I mean, if you don't get him on site
to do things, he's going to be looking at change orders and the overall contract, stopping down to see the
site and then, then he stops.
Mr. Gidelow-It's almost not a full time job during the Sununer.
Councilman Monahan-And then just for our own ... when a contractor puts in their voucher to be paid, they
certify that they put this much material on the job, the clerk of the works goes and actually counts to make
sure that material is there so that you're paying for what he says he put in there and you're not paying to
finance another job that they maybe doing some place else.
Mr. Geiss-You've got to watch the definition of what the inspector does too, Betty.
Mr. Gidelow- That's what our inspector also does.
Mr. Geiss-The inspector, the engineer certifies too.
Councilman Monahan- I know you do but alot of places they'll take the clerk of the works word for that, he
can cut that amount of paperwork off your back.
Mr. Geiss-See, that's where we can cut some work out.
Councilman Monahan-That's what I mean.
Mr. Geiss-I mean, you just described some things that we say the inspector does but that's the kind of thing
that the clerk of the works can do but it's, we've got to work together to do the same thing.
Councilman Monahan-That's right.
Councilman Tucker-I really think if you pay the money to get the qualified person to do it, you're inspector
and our clerk of the works can be their own man, the job will get done and they'll both do their job.
Supervisor Brandt ... personalities and experience
Councilman Tucker-Yea, talented people can work together and serve two masters.
Councilman Monahan-When we talk about the tank, have we decided we've got the kind of lining and the
kind of tank and all that kind of stuff, or is that yet to be done?
Mr. Geiss-Well, we proposed on designing a pre-cast concrete tank which was what your, in your request
for proposal. That's what our proposal is based on.
Mr. Gidelow-And we think that's probably the best tank you can get anyway.
Supervisor Brandt-There were other people who had made proposals that said, look at steel tanks with
epoxy linings and that sort of thing but this is the first class answer is what your, you know, what your
quote is.
Mr. Gidelow- That's right.
Councilman Monahan ... tanks in this town, it's kind of interesting how you were going to answer that.
Mr. Gidelow-I think over the long haul, with the maintenance of the steel tanks, that over the long haul, this
is the better solution.
Councilman Tucker-You're talking pre-cast, Tony?
Mr. Geiss-Yes, pre-cast, pre-stressed is the type of tank that we're talking about and actually the benefit is,
is that it is actually pre-cast on site. The floor is poured on site and actually the floor is below ground, so
that the floor becomes, you don't put a frost wall down, the floor is down low enough that you're protected
from frost. You then pre-cast the panels around where the tank would go up and actually you cast eight or
ten panels are cast flat, okay, and they're one on top, pour one, when that cures, you can put, they put a
piece of plastic down and they pour another panel and they got, you know, rising form. And they also do
that for the dome roof. The roof is laid out with identical pieces so they keep pouring the roof panels, pre-
cast on site. Now, the next, it's pre-stressed too, so, now they stand all the panels and actually the most
critical part of the construction is taking a panel that's laying down and lifting it to a stand up position. And
that's the design criteria, more so, then when it holds the water because now, you put all the panels up, you
fill in the cracks in between because it's got a steel liner on it by the way, there's a steel liner in the panel,
that's going to be inside the concrete. Now, you fill the cracks that are in between the panel and then you
wrap the panel, or wrap the whole tank with steel wire and pre-stress it. And after you've got like one layer
of wire in, you then spray concrete on it, then you put another layer of wire in and depending on how the
tank is, the wires are close together at the bottom and further apart at the top and also, how many layers of
wire you get. And then when you're all done, you put the finished coat of spray concrete on and the roof by
the way, the panels are put in and then the compression ring or concrete is poured right in place so that the
roof is in tight. The final is the final thorough seal coat so you get a nice single coated tank but everything
is built right here. So, you're using local concrete and the local labor for it to build the tank.
Councilman Monahan-Do we got to have this one... by AP A and all that kind of stuff, like we did before.
Mr. Flaherty-It's not in the park, no. I already looked.
Mr. Geiss-There is a question here that in fact, the park, the park line from here goes down here and back
up. Your other tank fell into this area right here. This tank is up here where the park is way up and over.
In fact, this line on the USGS, matches, you got a town map and it shows the park line on the map and they
agree. So, that's when I, when your letter was written, I said, I've got two maps that agree, if it is in the
park, let me know but I don't see it as being in the park and I didn't put anything in for the park because I
saw the park line going around. So it is not, the AP A is not affected.
Councilman Monahan-Now do you paint this, the steel that's on the inside, is that
Mr. Geiss-No, the
Mr. Flaherty-It's buried in the concrete.
Mr. Gidelow-It's in between the concrete, it's protected by the concrete.
Councilman Monahan-Oh, it's buried in the concrete?
Mr. Geiss-Yes, everything is fully concrete. It's a very thin ...layer of steel. I think before we get, there's a
couple of people that have very good talks on this and probably I can make arrangements to have one of
them come up and show you the phases of construction. One of the contractors has a nice little slide show
that he could show you and when you get together you can see it, how it goes up together.
Councilman Monahan-And you can make this concrete so it's that tight, you know, what I mean, no pours
and stuff on the inside?
Mr. Geiss-No problem.
Mr. Flaherty-They built one in West Rutland, eight or ten years ago that I went over and watched being
built over there.
Mr. Geiss-We've put up as many of these as we have steel tanks over the last twenty-five years, I dare say,
as many concrete as steel and we put up the coated steel tanks as well. They all have their applications, the
concrete as the least maintenance of all of them and the concrete we put up a tank as big as fifteen million
gallons and as high as seventy-five feet.
Supervisor Brandt-Let's keep going.
Mr. Geiss-Instrumentation and control.
Supervisor Brandt-We've covered that.
Mr. Geiss-I think we've covered all these points for the next three paragraphs and we said that the status if
that the first one is look at the other and the software it is all included in our estimate. Low lift pumps, at
the present time, two and three pumps no longer pump at five MGD, looking at what it would cost to
rebuild these pumps and also variable frequency drives. We have, we did not include looking at these
pumps in our proposal so there will be some additional work in the investigation phase but we do know the
approach to do would be to look at what would be involved and then the, put in allowance into the contract
for the contractor then to pull the pumps during the construction phase such that when he pulls them, we've
got an already a dollar money allotted to fix the pumps, if you know what I'm saying. We would
investigate in the early phases where they should be, what the type of equipment is, and what we're trying
to get, what the optimum we're trying to get out and then we also work out what the price would be, say
five thousand dollars a pump or two thousand dollars a pump and we would put an allowance item in the
bid for doing the repair on the pump. When the contractor physically does the repair, we would pay the bill
for doing the repair, is how we're looking at putting it together and you've got the dollar amount.
Mr. Gidelow- The engineering, to put all of that together is four thousand dollars to do that and we've done
that successfully on a number of projects.
Councilman Caimano-Are you going to put variable frequency drives on them?
Mr. Geiss-Okay, variable frequency drives we can put on, we're putting one on now. Okay, and one of the
options we looked at is to locate that back up at the treatment plant because physically down there you've
got the fifteen hundred ... your flood level, you've got a small building, we'd have to put it up in the air if
we got it there. The other two feeders create a problem because physically the other two feeders, we're
going to put a new feeder down for this one. The other two feeders for the pump, one comes down from
the main plant, one, the other feeder comes down through the motor
Supervisor Brandt-Are you talking electrical feed?
Mr. Geiss-Electrical feed, excuse me, yes, I'm sorry, electrical feed comes through the motor control center
down there, be difficult to work the one through the motor control center because we would have to reroute
a whole new wire system for that. But we could put another feeder, a second variable frequency drive in at
no cost because we've designed the one and locate that back up at the plant, then I think would give you the
flexibility of the operation of the plant and I don't think right now, I've looked at it a couple of different
ways that you need actually all three.
Supervisor Brandt-One of the them can be a base flow pump, either on or it's off.
Mr. Geiss-The other pump would be a base flow and you would have two variable that you could adjust on
and the larger one would definitely have the variable.
Councilman Caimano- When you get finished, what are we going to have as far as minimum flow and
maximum flow of these pumps, total?
Mr. Geiss-Total, max, you're going to have over ten MGD, maybe eleven and a half, twelve MGD, twelve
MGD say and I've got to do hydraulic curbs to match up what I'm talking about here because if, you know,
when you add pumps, they don't add up
Mr. Gidelow- Two fives doesn't make a ten.
Mr. Geiss-Two fives doesn't make a ten. You'll have in excessive ten MGD with the, when we get done
rebuilding the two fives, you'll have ten MGD out of the two fives. So with the twelve on there or with the
seven and a half added to one of the fives, you might be at twelve MGD.
Councilman Tucker-You're talking about the low-lifts at the river?
Mr. Geiss-The low-lifts at the river.
Councilman Tucker-Making two of those variable and one
Mr. Geiss-Leave one ...
Mr. Gidelow-And there's no change in the engineering costs to do that.
Councilman Tucker-I see.
Mr. Geiss-To do the variable frequency, no change. The low end would be, I think you can reach down to
three MGD with that and again, I've got to look at the curbs on the pump to do this, Nick, to be honest with
you.
Councilman Caimano-My point was, that you can supply the plant, if you're going ... the plant, it will
supply.
Mr. Geiss-Yes, I think we can reach down to three MGD
Supervisor Brandt -We're just getting back down to the argument of whether rebuilding those pumps, is it a
proper maintenance charge or it's a capitalization charge on the project and it's a small amount of money
and I think we all came to a conclusion in the past that we want to include it in the job...
Mr. Geiss- I think including it in the job and we've got a way of putting it in
Mr. Flaherty-It'll be cheaper in the long run.
Mr. Geiss-Yea.
Supervisor Brandt -Yea.
Councilman Caimano-Is it cheaper to maintain, put new impellers, new motors on those pumps, then it is to
put in new pumps?
Mr. Geiss-Probably and I'm looking at this in another facility, it is cheaper to put new impellers on the
bottom, the motors are good and they lasted
Councilman Caimano- Y ou don't have to change the motors?
Mr. Geiss-Don't have to change the motors at all or change the pump heads at all. All you're talking about
are impellers, maybe able to just put the same or identical impeller on or we may have to change the
shafting and put new, new, a different impeller because they don't make that one anymore.
Supervisor Brandt-How about energy efficiency in the motors, you know, is there a savings compounded
eventually or that we ought to look at it at the same time to higher efficiency motors?
Mr. Geiss-Yes.
Mr. Flaherty-Niagara Mohawk has, correct me if I'm wrong Ralph, Niagara Mohawk has a rebate that we're
eligible for, for going to variable speed.
Supervisor Brandt-Variable speed or energy efficiency, either one.
Mr. Flaherty-Either one but the variable speed was, if I remember right, was a substantial figure.
Mr. VanDusen-Yea, they're doing an evaluation right now.
Mr. Flaherty-They're doing an evaluation to tell us how much we can save.
Mr. Gidelow- The rebate aside, just to save the energy is probably now worth your buying, if these motors
are good and they'll function for the next five to ten years, just for the energy savings, you probably
wouldn't do it. But if you can get the rebate from Niagara Mohawk, generally that makes it, to your
advantage to do it even though you're not saving the energy, they're saving the energy and they're willing to
pay you to do it.
Supervisor Brandt-Right.
Mr. Flaherty-They're doing the evaluation in all our functions to tell us what we can
Supervisor Brandt -So you're actually subsidizing
Mr. Gidelow- You're subsidizing, you're doing it
Supervisor Brandt-Right, in their case, they're subsidizing to do it so that they don't ... more.
Mr. Gidelow-So, it really depends but if it's just for the energy cost, probably not.
Supervisor Brandt-Okay.
Mr. Gidelow-But for the subsidy
Supervisor Brandt-So, we need to look into that and evaluate it. But ... don't want a low variable speed ...
Mr. Geiss-The variable frequency over the just the straight conventional starter, is more, yea, there is more
because you've got electronic boards in the variable frequency you don't, you have just that big contractor
in closing in with a few standard relays. In the variable frequency, you got a whole, electronic boards.
Supervisor Brandt-Right, so you're aware your base flow should be a ... pump and maybe you look at the
efficiency of motors if there's enough of a need.
Councilman Caimano-Well, actually, let's think about that for a minute. Because of the variable, the
variable flows that are needed by the plant. Maybe the base flow is better off as a variable speed because...
Supervisor Brandt-You take your lowest flow and that's your, that should be a fixed pump. If your lowest
flow is five million gallons, if it's less than five million then you got a reason to go ...
Mr. Gidelow-Not only that, five MGD, your ... speed pumping would be the ... pump in the Summer and
you might have the variable, would be the base pump in the Winter.
Mr. Geiss-Yea, that's what I was just going to say.
Councilman Caimano-Yea, but I want to be able to control that as it gets down that low.
Unknown-Okay, that's fine.
Mr. Geiss-In your opening... plant down to a certain... and then you're going to turn it off and then turn it
back on eight hours later too. Okay, I mean is what you do, you don't go down to zero. You don't measure
from zero up high, you bring your plant down to three MGD and you operate it so when everything is done
and full, you turn it off for a few hours and then turn it back on. You don't bring it down to zero.
Supervisor Brandt-But you said though in this whole thing ... we may have to add four thousand dollars to
bring these pumps up ...
Mr. Geiss-Yes.
Councilman Monahan-That's the engineering, just the engineering.
Mr. Flaherty-Well, that's all we're really talking about here.
Councilman Monahan-Yea.
Mr. Geiss-Okay and on the next page, we're talking the clarifiers and there was a question here on ice forms
at the weirs. We did not include changing the weirs in looking at this because I went back to the structural
people to talk to them. The way of preventing ice forming on the weirs, right now, the weirs you've got are
like alligator teeth, okay, to control, they're V notches, that you've got water coming through these notches
and it controls the water through the end of the clarifier. Okay, water, ice forming in these in any way will
cause water to go over the top. What you've got for the clarifier, you've got a long, thin clarifier and they
come down, they come out, like that and these are, these are what all these alligators, all on this here. What
you're trying to do is get an even flow over the end of the clarifier. Okay, to get, because the clarifier is
long and thin, you've got flow going in this direction and you want to, if these are all flow arrows, you want
all to be equal. So, you're keeping an even flow and true, no short circuiting through there. Well, what can
do the same thing and what I'm proposing here in lieu of these, we put a wall and actually the wall will
probably be right here, okay, I'll draw it out here though, a little bigger. We're going to put a wall in and
put orifices, okay, which are basically like four inch pipes. So, what now I'm doing and I'm going to keep,
let the wall, make sure I can an even flow through the clarifier, take the weirs out at this end and just over
flow over here across the flat weir.
Councilman Caimano-How big are those openings?
Mr. Geiss-These are four to six inches and there would be openings and it depends on
Mr. Gidelow-A whole slew of them ...
Mr. Geiss-A whole slew of them.
Mr. Gidelow- We've got to design them.
Mr. Geiss-I've got to design for the head loss through them and I didn't run that number but we've used
them. See, the critical thing here that happens, is your clarifier is up here like this and your filter sits down
here like this and there's a, and the water elevation in each of these is like that and there's a difference and
so you got water that flows out of the clarifier like that. So, you've got to flow over a weir to get these.
See, typically, on other designs, you try and put the filter up at the same elevation here and then you just
flow through these into this channel and then onto the filters and let everything rise and fall at the same
time. Well, here I can't do that because you've got an existing facility so I'm going to keep the clarifiers all
at the same elevation so my pumps all work the same but now I've got to be able to over flow so what I'm
going to do is put this control wall in the middle to guarantee I get an even flow through the clarifier and
then I'm going to just let it flow ...
Mr. Gidelow- W e don't care anymore.
Mr. Geiss- We don't care, we're just going to flow over this flat weir because at the end here, you just got a
wall it's just going to over flow and it doesn't matter how it goes over that because I've got
Supervisor Brandt-Icing at that point doesn't matter because... even flow up to your wall.
Mr. Geiss-I've got the even flow to the wall and these are down below the ice points.
Mr. Gidelow-Put your wall in there and show them where the orifices are submerged so they...
Councilman Caimano-How far down?
Mr. Gidelow-Several feet.
Mr. Geiss-They can be down in here, you might even have two levels of them, depending but they're going
to be down in the tank down there.
Mr. Flaherty-Where have you used those Tony?
Mr. Geiss-Where have we used those, I've used them on, most recently on the Utica plant. Colonie has
them, right down the road down here back, in fact we just re-adjusted them so that we could increase the
capacity of their plant. We removed the four inch and put in six inch but this ... and other things. This is
the typical
Mr. Gidelow- This is a water plant design, what we're doing, you've got a sewage plant design,
hydraulically.
Mr. Geiss-Yea, yea, this is exactly
Mr. VanDusen-Your orifice plate wall, that goes all the way to the bottom?
Mr. Geiss-Yes, all the way to the bottom.
Mr. VanDusen-And how do you remove any sludge that settles up between that and the ...?
Mr. Geiss-... you can put an opening with a plate there to clean that out. When you drain the tank, you
would have to open, you would open that up and drain through.
Mr. VanDusen-A couple of times a year you would just drain it ...
Mr. Geiss-That's right, a couple times you drain it and move back down to the other end where you've got
your sludge collection, okay, is what we would look at. That is additional engineering which we had not
put in because I tightened the structural guys right up, they weren't my friends when I got done getting the
quotes from them.
Mr. Flaherty-The original question on the weirs was yours to start with, when you were first looking at the
plan.
Mr. Geiss-Well, I didn't include it. I didn't include it, I mean I'm honest with what I did include, that's how
I got very specific here.
Mr. Gidelow- Three thousand dollars.
Mr. Geiss-Three thousand dollars is the cost for the structural work which would go across all four tanks.
Mr. Flaherty-That's for engineering?
Mr. Geiss-Yes, for engineering.
Councilman Caimano- This is an add on?
Mr. Geiss-Yes. Okay, clarifier problem, we talked about that. There was a question here on covers.
Would covering these be better, yes, it would be a ... do you want to spend the money, I leave that up to
you. I've got solutions to protect you from ice and give you an operation here. Covers could go on some
time in the future would be my opinion on that.
Mr. Flaherty-Could we design that, how much would it cost or what would it cost to look, to do it the way
you say but add it so that we could add covers in the future if we wanted to?
Mr. Geiss-We can, I think for no cost, we can put the tank walls in so that they can
Mr. Gidelow-We'll design it so it can have covers later ...
Mr. Geiss-They can handle the weight of a cover, no problem at all, that's starts at the foundation, no
problem at all. That's what we can do, that's a good point.
Councilman Caimano-New bulk feed for soda ash.
Mr. Geiss-I talked about that, we're talking with the silo, the only feed or transfer would be into the silo
from a truck which is the blower on the truck would feed into the silo. The out-feed out of the silo would
go directly into your feeder and into solution.
Mr. Flaherty-Is there a problem with that, blow feed into the top of silo similar to what you have in cement
silo?
Mr. Geiss-You would have at the top of the silo a dust collector to collect with the bags on for collection of
dust, so you would have to have, it would have basically a bag filter at the top of the silo you would have to
maintain.
Mr. Ostrander-Okay and the makeup tank is the ... tank, the same?
Mr. Geiss-They're, yes, there's only one tank at the bottom, whatever name you want to put on it.
Basically, it comes down to, you got a silo, there's ground, what you have is you've got this dust collector
right up at the top, now inside here for the chemical wise, is only going to go down that far. And this
dimension here is you know, like twelve, maybe fifteen feet off the ground. So, I've got room for control
valves, a feeder and dumping into my solution tank right here and then even if I need a little feed pump, out
of that. Okay, so everything is going to stack right on top of one another right under the chemical feed.
Supervisor Brandt-What's that whole thing made out of.
Mr. Geiss-This is steel.
Supervisor Brandt-Steel, okay.
Councilman Tucker-And that, your ground at the bottom is enclosed from the weather and
Mr. Geiss-All enclosed from the weather, totally enclosed. What this does is eliminate the second transfer.
If you've got a transfer from here to inside, that transfer is an operator problem that's got to be done. This
way you can feed all the way right down through into your feeder.
Councilman Caimano- There's no way you can buy pre-concentrated?
Mr. Geiss-Soda Ash? No, you got to buy it in powder form. You buy either light or medium.
Mr. Ostrander-That would be sized for a one day use?
Mr. Geiss-Well, this is sized for continuous, this is continuous feed here. You got, this is a volumetric
feeder here.
Mr. Ostrander-So, we're not making batches?
Mr. Geiss-No, it's not made in batches, it's continuous.
Councilman Caimano-Is there some level of solution.
Mr. Geiss-What you've got, this tank down here gets the chemical fed into it and it gets water off of a float,
float control and you take the water out. Okay, and if you, and the only time, when this, and the pump is
here, when you turn this pump, you turn this feeder on up here at the same time.
Supervisor Brandt ..., we come and see you.
Mr. Geiss-That's right, we've done many of these and they work.
Councilman Caimano-What's the concentration level and how do you maintain it?
Mr. Geiss-The concentration level in this tank? Your well, you got much more water then in the soda ash,
so your able to get everything into solution. The solubility of soda sash is no problem here. And in fact,
what you do if you have, this pump, your carrying, you put a carrier water in here, you can make this water
come in at even higher rate and carry more water out so that you can then carry even more dilute solution
through because it isn't critical how much water your moving, its what that soda ash is there. So, you make
the water higher and then this pump comes up, okay, and that's how you control the solubility of soda ash
there. It's not a new design, it's a standard design for soda ash feed.
Mr. VanDusen-Currently we're feeding soda ash at two points, we would continue to be able to do that?
Mr. Geiss-Yes, you will.
Mr. VanDusen-Okay.
Mr. Geiss-Yes, you will, you can do that with either two pumps or one pump and two rotameters to control
your feed.
Supervisor Brandt-Okay, let's keep
Councilman Monahan-Tony, excuse me a minute Mike, the structure is large enough if we ever have to add
another module onto the plant?
Mr. Geiss-Yes, you can, we'll...
Councilman Caimano- Well, change the size of the pumps then, right?
Mr. Geiss-We can just change the size of the pumps down here. We'll make the storage here, this is going
to be sized big enough so you can get a truck load in because it's easiest to get it in truck load ... truck loads
are very ...
Councilman Caimano-Plus truck loads are bulk.
Mr. Geiss-Yes. Yes, that's why I said this total height is going to be something like forty feet.
Councilman Monahan-This comes in a tanker truck?
Mr. Geiss-Yea, a tractor trailer.
Supervisor Brandt-Okay, let's keep going.
Mr. Geiss-Flow tube, based on the, you know you have operational problems with the current. The flow
tube is basically the basic measuring device. We'll look at what the problems are and the next step up
would be go to a full venturi but we're looking at that type of meter. I'd like to look in a little further in
what the problems with the censor lines are and if we can't correct it with a new flow tube.
Mr. Flaherty-Would that be installed in a chamber or pit or something so we can get into it and maintain it?
Mr. Geiss-Yes, put in a manhole so you can access it from that, no problem. It can go, put it in a vault of
some kind but I, it can go, the flow meter needs a ... in can be up in here, it can be anywhere in that straight
run, not critical, okay. Your existing flow meters are tight into your piping gallery in here. Take those
right out here ... I'm talking a new meter out in a good straight run out here and we'll look at how you can
clean the ... out on the new model versus the others. If that can't happen, we can go to a full venturi meter
there.
Mr. Flaherty-My concern was it was in some kind of structure that we could get to it.
Mr. Geiss-No problem ... vault there just to house it. Chemical mixing chambers proposed by O'Brien and
Gere ...
Mr. Gidelow-After you mix it, then it flows straight back through. If you kind of put, split the flow four
ways, you've got to split it accurately and then you've got to split the chemical flow accurately, we're going
to eliminate all that.
Supervisor Brandt-The next one, I think we've addressed, haven't you.
Mr. Geiss-... high lift, no problem. Okay, the basis of design, the plant
Mr. VanDusen-Can I just jump back a second just to clarify my mind on the high-lifts. The last part of that
question, the existing high lifts motor control centers.
Mr. Geiss-Okay.
Mr. Gidelow- Y ou talked about soft starts, we didn't talk about that.
Mr. Geiss-... yes, the motor control centers will remain because even with the variable ... you probably will
go through the existing starters in some shape or form and then into the ... frequency drives.
Mr. VanDusen-Okay, the Board should know, for instance, in the last few months, we had a contractor go
in that motor control center, GE was not able to get us a new one shorter than ten weeks, ten, twelve weeks.
We ended up buying a used one.
Mr. Flaherty-Or we ended up, Dean Electric made one out of oak for ...
Mr. VanDusen-We had, last week we had a coil go that pulls the contacts in. We had a spare one, we put it
in, not a big deal but the pump was down for a few hours. Back operational, we called General Electrical
today to order another spare and their words were, oh Jesus, that's old too, I don't know if we can get that.
So, that's the components that you're relying on your high lift pumps and I think that's critical that we take a
look at that with the plant expansion. I'm not saying I would replace both but we need to consider the
options.
Councilman Tucker-It's certainly not going to be much good to you if you can't get the parts to keep them
rumung.
Mr. Geiss-Well, you need, we need, the contact, we need the breaker there more than anything else though
then the contractor and I can't answer fully if we can live fully without that contractor in there. I think we
can, the breaker is the critical
Mr. Flaherty-You're going to have to take a look at what's there
Supervisor Brandt-Engineering wise, is it, I mean it's really placing an order for new stuff, right? I mean,
engineering wise it's danm little. You're really saying get new breakers. I mean
Mr. Geiss-New starters.
Mr. VanDusen-New starters, yea.
Supervisor Brandt-Yea, if you need them because of ... of the ...
Mr. VanDusen-Yea, that's right, I'm just saying from our standpoint we need to take a look at doing that.
Supervisor Brandt-Well, so maybe as we go to bid, we ought to include in the bid.
Mr. Geiss-We can do that, I don't have any problem with that.
Supervisor Brandt-Is that an engineering cost extra? Okay.
Mr. Flaherty-It's a case where you either going to do it under the contract or your going to do under
maintenance because it's got to be done, I mean
Supervisor Brandt-Right, okay.
Mr. Geiss-Soft starters, they won't work for what you're trying to do there, Ralph, they're basically current
limiting devices or voltage limiting devices. The variable frequency drive I think will come on slow and
prevent the bumping of the pressure but the soft starters won't do the job, they're for another purpose. A
review of the basis design, plan and cost for the Town, will the draft map, plan and report be available?
Yes, we've laid this out in the proposal and in fact I think we plan, we've got an approach already laid out
right here that we wanted to, okay, with a couple of exceptions, we've got it all written up right here of
what we want to do. We're going to refine some of this and we want to come in and sit with the Town or
who ever they designate as the authority to review with us, either the Town Board or who ever and we'll go
back and redo it and then give you a draft of what we agreed at that meeting on and then we want to move
with it. Because I think one of the critical things that we did in pricing this all out, is we've got a schedule
that, you know, per your request that we met and that's how we tightened our price up or one of the reasons
we tightened our price up. But there is a review of the draft, we want to sit and talk about what we're
doing, then we're going to draft it up and we're going to have a review of that and then you're going to get
the final.
Mr. Flaherty-Your saying that it will be modified, it can be modified after the initial review.
Mr. Geiss-It can be modified, yes. How many copies of the map, plan and report? We'll give you ten
copies, no problem.
Supervisor Brandt-Okay, I want to keep moving because
Mr. Geiss-Okay, will the preliminary design include review by the Water Department.
Councilman Caimano-Well, actually it's up to us to designate it and probably it's going to be ...
Mr. Geiss-I need, I'll tell you want I need. I need you to designate who can review and what their authority
is and if you don't give them a hundred percent authority or it's not yourselves, who got who, what has to be
reported to you and I need that up front.
Councilman Caimano-We'll do it.
Supervisor Brandt -Yea, we can do it.
Mr. Geiss-Okay, I want it up front.
Supervisor Brandt-We've committed to do this thing, we've committed to do this fast and we'll do the work
that's necessary for the Board itself or the Board working with the Water Department or we designate
someone in the Water Department ...
Mr. Geiss-That's all I ask. Who and what authority do they have so I know who to ask questions to.
Supervisor Brandt-Okay.
Mr. Geiss-AP A, it's out. Niagara Mohawk
Mr. Flaherty-That's taken care of.
Mr. Geiss-That's taken care of, no problem. Okay, on bidding. O'Brien and Gere did not address the
assisting in bidding. We, I think my fault, it was intended to be, we'll give you assistance in bidding in
developing the advertisement and issuing addendum, and reviewing anything in the addendum. And I think
there's a second question here that is down in the middle of the page, we had O'Brien and Gere indicated
that the Town will be responsible for distributing specifications to the bidders. I wrote that up that way
because we did that on the last project we did for you, it was at the request that we turn all the plans over to
the Town Clerk and they would be distributed from your office here. We can do that, there's a cost of
mailing involved and we're talking five hundred dollars or something like that.
Mr. Gidelow-What ever it cost to ...
Mr. Geiss-What ever it cost, we can distribute it like that, just the cost of postage.
Councilman Caimano-We're going to pay for it either way, right?
Supervisor Brandt-Right, why not leave it with them ...
Councilman Monahan-Well, no the contractors, the contractors actually pay for it because they have to bid
deposits in and ...
Councilman Tucker-It eliminates one step if you guys do it.
Councilman Caimano- That's right, either way it's going to pay for.
Mr. Geiss-It can be, I'm just saying
Mr. Flaherty-But this is different from the RFP, that's why that question was ...
Mr. Gidelow- The only cost is, it's going to cost us what ever the mailings costs are ...
Councilman Tucker-Yea but I mean it eliminates one step, you've got to send it here, they've got to put out.
Councilman Monahan-But, I think Tony the advantage too, having it come out of your office, these people
looking at the specs are going to have, ask questions. You're going to get the question, you've got to send
an answer to that question to every single person that picked up the specs so they're all at a fair level.
Mr. Geiss-If you sell the books up here, we would still do that.
Councilman Monahan-I know but I think it makes it more complicated and then maybe there's a chance ...
Mr. Geiss-Normal practices, we sell them out of our office, we distribute them to all the dodge reports and
the other places, you have a setup here for review but we answer all questions and we distribute them.
However, the last time we did it the other way and that's why I did it. The last job we did the other way and
I
Mr. Flaherty-I would recommend, from standpoint, that that's the way you do it and that's the way the RFP
was set up.
Councilman Monahan-Yea, I agree with you.
Mr. Gidelow-My charge would be whatever the postage is.
Mr. Geiss-Back up at the top, the inspector, we talked about the additional for overtime. As built drawing
and if we use CAD, will that be supplied? Yes, we'll supply backup on the CAD because that's the way
we'll be doing it.
Mr. Gidelow-It will be Autocad version twelve.
Mr. Geiss-Additional land at the tank site, other than survey requirements for the ... what effect will that
have on engineering fees? I talked to the surveyor and to develop a description for you to purchase the
land, if you have existing boundaries on the property you got or existing information, it's about four
hundred dollars for him to develop a description for your purchase.
Mr. Flaherty- ... cost the same thing for Steve to do it.
Councilman Caimano-He's already being paid.
Mr. Flaherty-What?
Councilman Caimano-He's already being paid.
Mr. Geiss-Okay, whatever, we've got money to survey about a two hundred ...
Mr. Flaherty-Whatever, you're talking five hundred dollars, four hundred dollars ...
Mr. Geiss-One thing I wish to point out here, you didn't ask for but I talked about when I talked about the
additional land down at the treatment plant site, there is no survey to do the addition, this additional land
that I included, because I didn't know if you were going to go for that or not.
Mr. Flaherty-It's already been done.
Mr. Geiss-The survey has been done for that? Good, no problem then. It's flat, you just got to do the
boundaries ...
Mr. Flaherty-During our initial negotiation ...
Mr. VanDusen-VanDusen and Steves did that.
Mr. Flaherty-VanDusen and Steves did it for us.
Mr. Geiss-Okay, good, no problem then.
Councilman Caimano-Additional copies of plans and specs.
Mr. Geiss-Yea, we took care of that.
Mr. Flaherty-No, we didn't.
Councilman Caimano-No we didn't, what's the ...
Mr. Gidelow-Seventy dollars a set is about what it costs us to reproduce it. You will probably be able to
charge a hundred dollars a set as a deposit which you don't get to keep unless they turn them back in, but
our cost to produce an extra set for the size documents we're talking about is about seventy dollars a set.
We included fifty in our proposal, anything beyond that is going to cost seventy dollars a set.
Mr. Geiss-Yea and that's making, the plans we can make one at a time, that's no problem or there abouts,
but when we make the books, they got to be in runs like about ten at a time because making one copy is
very expensive but if they can make ten copies at once, that's what that's and the book is about forty-five
dollars and the plans is about ten and I look at, about sixty sheets in the plans is what I based it on to come
up with that number.
Councilman Caimano-Okay, zebra mussel.
Mr. Geiss-Zebra mussel.
Supervisor Brandt -Coating the intake screens.
Mr. Geiss-Yea, coated screens or other materials. I, in fact, I knew there was work going on and I talked to
the Sea Grant people who are the people that are monitoring zebra mussels throughout the north country, I
like to say just northeast but it's throughout the north. They're doing experimental work with coatings and
they're looking at the fouling coatings or anti-fouling coatings like you put on the bottom of boats and the
coatings, the original coatings for the boats were toxic. In fact, they've outlawed several of them already.
So, those are no longer good. The ones they're looking at right now are copper base and zinc base coatings,
they're very soft however and they tend to flake off, they haven't solved the problems.
Mr. Flaherty-Copper can add another problem too.
Mr. Geiss-Well, both could add problems to you. The other is they're looking at fouling release coatings
which are in teflon material or a silicon base. Basically, now all of these that we're talking about, zebra
mussels won't stick to or they'll release from. You still need to protect the rest of the system. All of these
alternatives still mean you have to have the chemical application in the system as well.
Mr. Flaherty-What about cribbing?
Mr. Geiss-Cribbing, new intake you're talking? The alternative there in lieu of having an exposed intake, is
to go with a submerged intake, almost like an infiltration gallery where you would then, put your intake
within a bed of stone and let it be covered and pull the water through and let the mussels form on top of it,
store on top but you wouldn't get them coming through. You're basically putting a sand over the top, as
well, sand and stone. That's an alternative. You have three intakes, okay, another thing, how much can you
pull and clean those intakes? I don't know if you've ever pulled them, have you?
Mr. VanDusen-They get cleaned once a year, but they've never been taken out.
Mr. Geiss-They've never been taken out. Do you get divers down there to clean them out or?
Mr. VanDusen-No, we reverse the flow of water and just ...
Mr. Geiss-Oh, just reverse the flow of water.
Mr. VanDusen-Yea.
Mr. Flaherty-We had a diver look at them once, if! remember right.
Mr. VanDusen-They've been inspected twice.
Mr. Geiss-Okay, ... materials are copper and brass. Just let me cover as well, which is expensive but the
copper and brass has to be kept clean to get, keep the mussels from forming on them. Okay, the alternative
Tom said, you can build a new intake system which is submerged, it's basically what we call an infiltration
gallery where your pipe will be below the river bed covered with a gravel and sand and then you're pulling
the water through there which the mussels won't come through.
Councilman Tucker-Are they there?
Supervisor Brandt-Not yet.
Mr. Geiss-They're not there yet.
Supervisor Brandt-Not far away.
Mr. Geiss-Another alternative ...
Councilman Tucker-Am I day dreaming or did I here a report that these things ain't as bad as they
originally thought.
Mr. Gidelow-No.
Councilman Caimano- You're day dreaming.
Mr. Geiss-No, you're day dreaming.
Mr. Flaherty-If you find that report, give us a copy of it, would you?
Mr. Gidelow- The way everybody is doing it, pretty much right today is by adding chemicals, permanganate
or sodium hydro chloride, some oxidant that kills them. And you're going to need to do that anyway in
your intake line itself.
Supervisor Brandt-So, you think that's enough?
Mr. Gidelow-Right today, I think that's the way you ought to do it ...
Supervisor Brandt-If that doesn't work then we have to ...
Mr. Gidelow-People are still doing experiments, they even got paint that you put in jalapeno pepper
concentrate in and painting it on and ... they don't like that.
Mr. Ostrander-We may have a large problem with either potassium permanganate or ... chlorine, either one
of the intakes. We tried to add permanganate twice, we're getting a magnesite participating in the clear
well, easy enough to prove and obviously because of THM's we don't want to add chlorine unless maybe
combined chlorine, but definitely not ... chlorine.
Mr. Geiss-Those are the only two proven chemicals, then maybe look at the alternative intake design.
Mr. Flaherty-That's a design problem ...
Mr. Geiss-That's a, yea, we don't have an alternative intake design worked in here.
Mr. Gidelow-One of the other complicating factors and it's more of a nuisance right now and I don't know
how real it is, but there's a gentleman in this world somewhere that's he's got patens that will cover every
imaginable way that you could inject chemicals and kill zebra mussels and all he's looking for is maybe,
depending on the size of your community, a thousand to fifty thousand dollars a year as a royalty fee.
Mr. Flaherty-He's collected in some places.
Mr. Gidelow-Well, I don't know but he's ... lots of them, he's probably spending an awful lot on attorneys
fees. This is a real primitive area right now. The chemicals do work, they cause some problems in some
places but I wouldn't jump right yet to look at a real exotic system, I certainly wouldn't think it would be
worth your money to look at a new intake ... program but I think we have to wait and see as to what's going
on to figure out what to do.
Mr. Flaherty-One of the reasons behind the question was that I wanted to bring to your attention the fact
that we have had problems with ..., if that was what you were locked in on ... you may have to take another
look.
Mr. Geiss-What are your THM's, I didn't think your THM's were that high?
Mr. Ostrander-Yea but we're not adding chlorine to well water either, we're adding to ... water.
Councilman Caimano-Ifyou added the permanganate prior to, at the inlet, prior to going through the pump,
that wouldn't
Mr. Ostrander-No, I don't think so. With the chlorine, there's a big difference in the color of the water, the
organics of the water in the well water versus the clarified water.
Councilman Caimano-Oh, okay.
Councilman Tucker-But we do have, are we fortunate enough that we do have some time, they're not there
at the present moment?
Mr. Geiss-They're in the Mohawk, they're in the Hudson, they're in the Mohawk River, they're in the
Hudson River.
Mr. Flaherty-They're in Lake Champlain too.
Mr. Geiss-They're in Lake Champlain. I can, I'll be glad to send a copy of where they, there's alot of Sea
Grant people put a brochure on where they're at and there's a map in it and I can show you the reported
locations and like, what's come out of Lake Erie, the pictures, they are quite prolific in Lake Erie. Now, the
temperature of your water and the alkalinity of your water, may make them not as big a problem this far up
in the Hudson, as the lower Hudson. Don't, we don't have answers on that.
Councilman Tucker-No, they...
Mr. Geiss-A very similar water is the water that Utica takes from the Hinkly Reservoir, now they've been
reported in the Hinkly Reservoir but they only are very small and very few. Now, they have very low
alkalinity water, lower then yours in fact.
Councilman Caimano-What's the well water ph?
Mr. Ostrander-The ph is about anywhere from six seven to seven zero.
Mr. Geiss-It's the alkalinity that's even more critical.
Mr. Ostrander-Which is about twenty.
Mr. Geiss-Yea, see, Utica's got down into the single digits and we don't even know that it didn't acidic at
that point at times. Okay, so but they don't like low alkalinity water. One other thing is, do we have any
freshwater, other freshwater mussels in the river up this far?
Councilman Caimano-Not that I know of.
Mr. VanDusen-You don't see them at all.
Mr. Geiss-You don't know but see, the lakes where they've been very prolific are where there are other
mussels.
Supervisor Brandt-Well, let's solve the problem when we get to it.
Councilman Monahan-Tony, do they get checked on ... ?
Mr. Geiss-Yes, we would check on everything, in ... The exhaust fan we do intend to put a new louver
intake in there. Sludge lagoons we talked about, land application.
Supervisor Brandt-That's it.
Mr. Geiss-That's basically it, there was some questions on the regs and going to larger, higher capacities on
your filters. I don't think that's real at this time. There's all kinds of new requirements coming up on the
regs that are going to hit the treatment plant and you will not be able to, you'll have to go through a testing
program and I don't think you're going to get much more out of those filters because of the new regs. I
guess I'm done.
Supervisor Brandt-Anybody got any questions?
Mr. VanDusen-1 have one additional question. We talked about installing an isolating wall or isolating
mechanism to be able to get into the existing clear wells, do to maintenance. I have a little bit of a concern
as to how we're going to install a third high lift pump in that room and make it work and I just like to have a
group discussion on that, I guess.
Mr. Geiss-Good point.
Mr. Flaherty-If we could trade our scrubber for a station, we handle that problem.
Mr. Geiss-The facility that you've got has your clear well is under the filter and under the building, your
main building and then connects over to your pumping station and everything is common underneath here,
there's no isolation of your pumps. If you had to take your clear well down, you take your pumps out, your
out of business. If I give you a new clear well here and just connect it in, it doesn't solve the problem. Also
there's vortexing with these pumps. You can only come down to, I don't know, six and a half, seven feet, I
don't know.
Mr. VanDusen-It's like five and a half.
Mr. Geiss-Five and a half feet, that's the best you can come down because the pumps hang into the, down to
the clear well there's no, they don't hang into a lower ... they just hang in there and the pumps have to be,
have to have submergence on them to make them operate. The problem being and I got some pictures here
that you can see the layout of the pumping station and the way that everything hangs down in there.
There's the way, the proposed pump and here's the way they hang down in. We included in our proposal,
when we looked at, is the pumping station being
Mr. Flaherty-This is the existing?
Mr. Geiss-The existing. Okay, you've got the two pumps like that right there, you've got the third one
going in over here and also, back here is the main building, this is the, caustic tanks here, I forget how
many. Two, okay. But this is all clear well and it's clear well over here as well. You've got, what we
looked at was, come back in here and put in a wall with a gate it in so you can isolate the pumping station
from the rest of the clear well.
Supervisor Brandt- And then your other new filters would be isolated ...
Mr. Geiss-Okay, some, yea, somewhere down here we'll put in the new clear well and filters and we'd put a
pipe up to here, okay, with a, I'll give the sequence, with a valve right to there. What we would do is we'd
set, either take the new pump or one of the old pumps and reset the pump such that, with right now the
pump hangs down into the floor with the ... on it and the existing intake like that, we would then put a piece
of pipe down here and pipe it in directly. Okay, and this is where I based the ...
Supervisor Brandt-Pipe that in to ...
Councilman Tucker-Into the new...
Mr. Gidelow-Pipe it directly into this
Mr. Geiss-To this pipe, let's go right into here.
Supervisor Brandt-Okay.
Mr. Geiss-Okay?
Councilman Tucker-Yea.
Mr. Geiss-So we would be connecting it to the new clear well.
Councilman Tucker-Right.
Mr. Geiss-That way, we could run this while we took this out of service, all this other clear well out, built a
wall in here and put a gate in and then we would have to do something with the hydraulic problems. Don't
know what and believe me, the solution to the hydraulic problems is going to be some guesses because
there's alot of things involved with the hydraulics of trying to get the vortexing stopped. Some of them
include putting rafts in there to keep the water from spinning around on the surface. The other, if you've
got the well at the bottom here and you got the bottom, some of them include putting a mound underneath
that. The only way to tell exactly what I'll, the affect I'll have, is the two options, either to model it or build
it, is how well it's going to do. I can't be sure because all the configurations have a big affect because
really, you've got one of the worst wet-well configurations. The, you've got water coming in on the side,
coming across the pumps and you're starting the water to move. The ideal, and I want to come back to that
sheet, but an ideal wet -well is to have when the water comes in from this way like you've got it, is to put the
three pumps and let the water come at it evenly, so each pump gets an even amount of water. When you've
got your configuration here where we're going to have three like this, you've got the water coming across
here, all the water comes across the first one to get to the second to get to the third. In fact, the hydraulic
book lists that as one of the no no's for a configuration as one of the most difficult ones to try and control
and operate.
Councilman Caimano- Y ou mentioned baffling.
Mr. Geiss-Okay, what I'm, the baffling, you need the, to prevent vortexing, you got to do something,
something under here as well as putting a wall in back of here. Okay, so you can keep the water from
turning, you want to just get the water into the pumps.
Mr. Gidelow- W e may also put some kind of obstacles out here to keep it from rotating. But it's sort of a
guessing game because we don't have an, we've got probably one of the worst kind of situations here.
Supervisor Brandt-Let me ask you, in your engineering proposal, are you covering it? Are you covering
your solution?
Mr. Gidelow- We've got something in there to take some good guesses at it, yea but we've got a better
solution.
Councilman Caimano-Okay, go ahead.
Mr. Ostrander-If you
Mr. Flaherty-One of the problems you have too ...
Mr. Ostrander-Excuse me.
Mr. Flaherty-Go ahead.
Mr. Ostrander-If you put the other filter right next to the filter and come through that filter and go straight
at the pumps.
Mr. Geiss-Possible.
Councilman Caimano- Tom has something too.
Mr. Flaherty-The other problem we have is, you ... stuff down in there that's going ... we don't have time to
shut the pumps down to go out of service. I mean, you're looking at four to eight hours really.
Mr. Geiss-We intended that we would have to shut the plant down probably for a day to do this and you're
looking at four to eight hours is an acceptable time and Tom, says I can't give you on the day and when I
say a day, if it goes into extra time, what kind of problems do we have and we said, well, what else can we
do. One other option to do this and it came out, this is thinking we've done since the proposal. Is, if we've
got the new filters and clear well down here, why don't we either in this area or even off to the side, build
an area that would support the pump or pumps and install a pump or pumps right there. Taking, say, one of
these pumps out, getting the new one in and up and running, taking one of these pumps out, putting it over
here and maybe even putting a new one over here, I don't, I haven't got that all worked out. But we built an
area into the new clear well, temporary, as a temporary pump station and now, piping on top of the ground
for discharge over into this point here where there's a discharge connection and we connect that up.
Mr. Gidelow-During the construction phase.
Mr. Geiss-During the construction phase, okay, we've got to get this built and operating, this is another
sequence of coordination that we've got to work out. You've got to have your filters operating, clear well
cleaned, already to go, approved by the Health Department. You got this little area and maybe even, in the
clear well or where ever, it be a similar situation that you have here. It wouldn't be a final solution but this
would get you the temporary to get your water in here, so you could then come in and take this clear well
out of service, put this hydraulic well in with a control on it, so that you can take the pumps out of service
or take this clear well out and keep this clear well in service.
Councilman Tucker-What's this line, you know you got two big circles here, that's the clear well, I guess.
Mr. Geiss-Yes.
Councilman Tucker-What's this line you got down through, is that a division between the pump?
Mr. Geiss-This is the pump room and this a chemical room, up high.
Mr. Flaherty-But you've got to remember, underneath there is the clear well that he's talking about.
Supervisor Brandt-It's one big basin, is what you're saying.
Mr. Geiss-Yea, underneath, it's just a wall down that far. Here's the pump, here's a pump and here's a pump
and here's the future ...
Mr. Flaherty-Bring the pumps down into your clear well.
Mr. Geiss-And the pumps hang down like that, okay, but it's all clear well underneath and this wall here
and that wall there are common, and you've got your other tanks up here.
Councilman Tucker-Let me ask you a question. The water coming out of the clear well now is a no-no, the
direction of the water. Is there any way that you can change the direction of the water coming into that
well?
Councilman Caimano-How does the, turn your page a minute, just to carry on what his question was. That
arrow you've got in there going into the tank, going by the three pumps, how does that connect, twelve inch
line, six inch line?
Mr. Geiss-No, right now, it's a wide open tank.
Councilman Caimano-Something has to feed it.
Mr. Flaherty-Actually your clear well is L shaped, you've only got part of your clear well there.
Supervisor Brandt -You've got a huge window between your big...
Mr. Flaherty-That's right ... and then it goes around a baffle wall.
Mr. Geiss-Your clear well is like this and then they go under the filters over here
Mr. Flaherty-Yes, and there's a wall here, it comes through a window in the wall and there's a wall that
goes across like that and there's a baffle wall like that. The water comes in, goes around the baffle wall and
down into the pump.
Councilman Caimano-And that's not enough to quiet it?
Mr. Geiss-No.
Mr. Flaherty-No because when you start your pumps up there then you start your start swirling.
Councilman Tucker-And there's no way you can change the direction of the water by piping or what have
you and have it come directly onto the pumps.
Mr. Geiss-No ...
Mr. Flaherty-... the positions of your pumps.
Mr. Geiss-See, the ideal condition, if I had my druthers, what I would give you here is, you've got this
configuration for your wet well with the three like that. The best way to use this wet well, is to come back
in and put a pump here and a pump here with the water coming at it like that and two, if I could get three
across here, I'd put three but they should be at the end wall, not here on the side.
Mr. Flaherty-Actually, Tony, those pumps are in the center, out here in the center.
Mr. Geiss-Yea, they're almost in the center, that even, see that makes an even more problem. On the plan,
see when you look at the, if you look, if they're hanging and like you just said, down here in the center,
okay, I've got to get water to one side or the other. Well, a typical design, is to build, to fill it against these
one side here so that you keep water from swirling around the back. When you're sitting out in the center,
that's alot of places to keep water from going around.
Councilman Tucker-What you were talking to over come this, was alot of maybes.
Mr. Geiss-That's what I'm trying to point out.
Councilman Tucker-If we were to move those two pumps, or move the pumps to the end of the building
from where they are now, so they're directly in the flow, would that eliminate our problems?
Supervisor Brandt-Some ... big pipes ...
Mr. Geiss-Alot of piping changes and other things and I'm not
Mr. Gidelow- Y ou probably be better off building another pumping station.
Mr. VanDusen-Actually, that was my question. Could you flip back to the other page, the one that shows
that one. Okay, under that scenario, you have a cost to design the thing, you've got a construction cost for
temporary piping, temporary electrical to get to that.
Mr. Geiss-Yes.
Mr. VanDusen-Is it worth while to take a look at a permanent? And when we do those temporary
electrical, temporary plumbing, you've got our best educated guess as to how we're going to stop or reduce
the vortexing?
Mr. Geiss-Yes.
Mr. VanDusen-Would be farther ahead or is it alot more money from a construction standpoint to build a
permanent secondary pumping station that you know will not have the vortexing or vortexing problems?
Mr. Geiss-I think you'd be money ahead and this is where, I remember that Saturday morning meeting, I
got which is right, which is wrong. The pumping station, I was pretty emphatic on then and I think you'd
be money ahead building a new pumping station. And the reason being
Mr. Flaherty-What will that cost Tony?
Mr. Geiss-We had it in there as about a million dollars in the first ... I think we can do it for less. We had
three pumps in there, I think we can just put the one new pump in the pumping station at this time.
Mr. Flaherty-What's your educated guess?
Mr. Geiss-You would be more in the half million dollar range.
Mr. Flaherty-What's it going to cost for a scrubber and a building?
Mr. Geiss-A scrubber and a building, you're talking
Mr. Gidelow-I would say eighty to a hundred.
Mr. Geiss-Eighty to a hundred thousand dollars. See, what you've got and let me just draw this out
Councilman Monahan-But Tony, what do you got in all those temporary costs too that you were talking
about.
Mr. Geiss-Yea, the temporary costs, see I did the first system, that's what I had estimated when I put my
proposal together and in talking with Ralph and Tom to get ready for this, they say you can't be ...., I said,
I've got to ..., we've got to work our way out. Then I came up with the alternative of building a temporary
pumping station, now the temporary is somewhere between a new pumping station and trying to really
build into the old one. I think you've got the old one and it's working, I'd leave it. I work this wall in here
so that you can isolate it, okay, but I'd leave it. Yea, you can only go down to five feet, great.
Councilman Monahan- I just would like to know what the real dollars difference is when we talk about
temporary, we talked about some of these corrective measures you've got to do versus going to a new one.
I'd like to see some figures on that.
Mr. Geiss-I hear you. We haven't done any estimating, I'm going on what I did before. I haven't had time
to do any estimating in developing answers here. I'm doing some developing on engineering here and I
haven't done the estimates.
Mr. Gidelow- What if we did this, what if we go back and in a couple of days come up with what we think
the, this temporary thing might cost in terms of construction and why don't we do a rough estimate of what
we think a new pumping station would cost you.
Councilman Caimano-One pump.
Mr. Geiss-Put one pump in but I'd lay it out for probably three pumps.
Councilman Monahan-Yea.
Supervisor Brandt-Let me ask you something. That depends also then where you put your new filters and
how you tie the existing wet wells into the new filters ... otherwise you really limited in capacity to two
filters and the wet well capacity ... under those two filters.
Mr. Geiss-You got the existing, you could come off of this, if you put the filters, you probably, if we did
that with pumps, I like that location because I can come out of this clear well, come out of this clear well to
a pumping station located right between them.
Mr. Ostrander-That gives you a chemical feed problem though, putting soda ash, we put right before the
filters and ... I mean chlorine and right now, we're putting it right as the water ...
Mr. Geiss-Before it filters?
Mr. Ostrander-Yea ...
Mr. Geiss-Okay, no problem, then we could, if we put the filters here, we could come off the back here to a
pumping station right there and connect out. These are things I've got to work out, I don't have ... now, I
might have caused another problem.
Supervisor Brandt-What you suggest then is, address this, look at some of the alternatives and then re-
examine this part of it.
Mr. Gidelow-Let us take a real quick and dirty look at it just to see if it's a million dollars, or we're talking a
couple hundred thousand dollars difference or just what we're talking.
Councilman Monahan-But one, you're also looking at what you think is a proven solution and the other one
you're looking at a maybe solution.
Councilman Caimano- Well, but some reasonable chance of success.
Mr. Geiss-There's some reasonable chance, I mean ...
Councilman Monahan-Well, yea but I'm talking, you know, if it doesn't work then you're going back and
doing the other one on top of it.
Mr. VanDusen-Are we ahead of ourselves at this point? Is this something that we should determine to get
ready for the map, plan and report stage? Should we be more concerned today as to how much additional
will the engineering cost be to have you take a look at that and prepare specs for which ever turns out to be
the best?
Mr. Geiss-That's a good point.
Mr. Flaherty-Yea.
Mr. VanDusen-And then when it gets ready to be map, plan and report, then you'll know where the filters
going to go and you'll know what impact this is going to have or that's going to have and I'm just, I think
we've got the cart before the horse here.
Councilman Caimano-I think that's a good point.
Councilman Monahan-All I know is before the final specs go out, this is information we need to see if this
Supervisor Brandt-Before you go to map, plan and report, you should have your public hearing, you've got
to know your costs.
Mr. Geiss-That's right, and I guess, you bring up a good point. In the map, plan and report, this, before you
get done, the map, plan and report is going to tell us what we're going to build, exactly. I mean, it's going
to be a pump and it's going to be in a building at this point and connected here and that's ...
Supervisor Brandt-And it costs x number of dollars.
Mr. Geiss-And it cost x number of dollars.
Councilman Monahan-Yea but what I'm saying is before you get to that point
Councilman Tucker-Then you guys have got to give us a rough idea on what you're talking about this other
pumping station
Councilman Monahan-Yea.
Councilman Tucker-Before you do your map, plan and report, otherwise it ain't even going to be in there.
Correct?
Councilman Monahan-I agree with you Pliney. That's, you know, we don't have anything ...
Mr. Geiss-How about if we give you a cost for doing the engineering to evaluate the alternatives that we're
talking about here as part of the map, plan and report and then if we do something different then what we
thought for design, we would come up with then a cost for doing the design of the, because the structural
design and that's biggest thing I got, we don't have any money in there for structural design of a pumping
station. So the design phase would change after that.
Councilman Goetz-Shouldn't the alternatives have been in the RFP that we already got?
Councilman Caimano- W e designed the RFP.
Councilman Monahan-We made, we designed
Councilman Goetz-I know but I mean more alternatives that you were to present to be in there?
Mr. Geiss-Yes and no. In order to get a, your RFP was price driven or more, from our view, how's that ...
Councilman Monahan-You've got to do peaches to peaches.
Mr. Geiss-And you had to go, and I was, one of the things that I was driven by was what, you know,
Kestner had, tried to work with the existing pump station, I worked out a way of doing that with the
caveat?? that we could take the plant out for a short time. I've got a second solution to do it, still do it but
you put a temporary facility in and there's a cost for doing that but I can still then leave you with your
pumping station and I can make the pumping station ultimately work, it may take a couple of tries and a
couple of adjustments. Or we can spend money how at a modeling company, where they do hydraulic
modeling, I think it's, do a couple of tries here for this size facility or we can, the pumping station, I still
feel is a better solution for the long run. You're going to build, when you get to fifteen MGD, you're going
to build a big, a pumping station there. I believe on that because the bigger you start making these pumps,
the more problems with bortexing your going to have, you know, as you get them going to higher and
higher flows and you're going to be driven into a new pump.
Councilman Caimano-But we're not going to fifteen million gallons a day right now.
Mr. Geiss-You're going to ten.
Councilman Monahan-But the point of it is you've got to, what you do today, you still got to look at the
future.
Supervisor Brandt-Well, we need a ball park handle on this because obviously we're all guessing. Can you
give us some figures fairly soon on
Mr. Geiss-We'll give you a ball park
Supervisor Brandt -Your best guess of what the ultimate costs are doing... a, b or c.
Mr. Geiss-Alright, we can do that and then we'll give you an alternate cost on what the engineering will be
to do it in the phase
Supervisor Brandt-I appreciate the efforts you put in, in really trying to analyze this from a whole different
philosophy and I think we've made alot of progress. This is a problem, nobody has got an answer to, we
need to come up with an answer and I think it's one we can address at the next meeting or ... get us some
information. And we need to continue moving this along. I have to go, I've got another
Councilman Monahan-Tony, you're talking about a construction season starting in the Spring?
Mr. Geiss-Yes, our schedule is set up to ...
Mr. Gidelow- That was really a critical thing to, no matter who you select to do your engineering, you've
got to do it pretty quickly because we've got to get going on this or you're going to miss the next
construction season ... then you're going to be in deep trouble.
Supervisor Brandt-I think this Board's view point, you gave us a fine education here of how you're looking
at this whole thing, we'll start talking to our other engineers that we want to talk to very rapidly now if the
Board's willing, I'll set special meeting for, to move it rapidly and get back to you very fast with some
answers and I, you know, I'm impressed with what you showed us, obviously we've still got one question to
resolve. But, my view point, we can move this process fast. I have to leave, if you guys want to stay,
someone else can chair it.
Councilman Caimano- No.
No further action was taken.
On motion, the meeting was adjourned.
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
DARLEEN M. DOUGHER
TOWN CLERK
TOWN OF QUEENSBURY