Feb 08, 2021 Public Utilities Board on 2021-02-08 9:00 AM

Okay, it's nine o'clock and we'll call to order the City of Denton Public Utilities Board meeting for February 8th, 2021. Are there any public comments for the first item? There are no public comments. Okay. All right. We'll proceed into the regular meeting on the consent agenda. Does any board member wish to pull up an agenda item? Yes, Billy. I pull item D is in dog. D is in dog. Yep. Any others? Karen? I just had a quick question on B. Okay, we'll pull it. Any others? Do we have a motion to approve item A and C? So moved. And a second? Second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. That carries. Item B, what is your question? I just wanted a quick review of the status of the landfill expansion. I don't know if this is the right place to do it, but I know that there are plans for further expansion. I was wondering if that was going to be, hey, Brian, I was wondering if that was going to be dependent on the study that's coming out a year or two from now, or if there are already, if the thing that we're voting on for B is something that was approved a while ago. Expansion wise. You're on mute. Yeah, there we go. Madam Chair, members of the board, Brian Burner, Solid Waste Director with City of Denton. Appreciate the opportunity to talk about these two items this morning. The two items that we're looking at are part of a planned expansion under our existing permit. This would have to be done regardless of whether we get a new permit or not to expand the landfill. So this is just normal everything. It's time to expand, to put in a new cell. Okay. Thanks. That basically was my question on both situations. Thank you. Thanks. Do we have a motion to approve that item? Yeah. So moved. And a second. Ed, cut the second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. That carries. Item D. My question, I guess it's for Tom, is this a portion of the total cost of this line? Is the developer paying for its portion as well? Billy, we have Pritam Deshmuth, I'm going to ask him if he can respond to that question. Okay. Pritam, if you can hear me, you're on mute. Hi, good morning. This is Pritam. Can you hear me? Yes, sir. Thank you for the opportunity to talk about this particular item. This particular cost is only a permit cost, typically all railroads have a permit cost associated with letting us lay a line or cross their railroad. So it is not necessarily a portion or a piece, it's a fixed fee permit cost for that, for this particular permit. So the work involved, does it have anything to do with private development? No, this is a water line. So this has nothing to do with private development. It's already in our CIP, I guess. Yes, I mean, these types of crossings are already included in our operation costs. Okay. Is there any upsizing involved with this? No, this is a standard six-inch water line. Okay, that's good. I have one comment, I'd like to see an additional note at the ordinances where we're applicable, of course, that tells the budget source of the monies being spent. Sometimes they're in there and sometimes they're not. So this one's pretty low dollar amount, I'm not complaining, I'm just curious. We can definitely do that, Billy, going forward and make sure we document that information. Just makes it easier on everybody, I think. Yes, sir. Okay. Well, I'll move approval for item D. And then second, all in favor say aye. Aye. Now I forgot to move on item and we're going to move the public hearing item from the end of the meeting to after individual items for consideration, item C, so that we'll end up with the management reports at the end. So with that, we'll move into items for individual consideration. The first item is approval of the January 25th meeting. Do we have a motion to approve those? So moved. Thank you. I'll second. You second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Carries. Next item is item E, consider the recommending adoption of a contract with JRD LLC for the amount of not to exceed $15,880,000. And Madam Chair, we have Mark Zimmer is going to do a brief presentation on the signing of Mark's one of our engineers over at DME and I'm sure he's getting set up. Good morning, everybody. Mark Zimmer, DME Engineering. Can everybody hear me? Currently DME has 13 transmission line projects in our approved CIP budget that require transmission line construction services. They're shown here on this map. They include rebuilding existing transmission lines, tying in new substations and rerouting existing transmission lines due to future TxDOT projects. To facilitate these projects, we assembled a RFP for the services needed, shown here on the slide, which include installation of transmission pole foundations, installation and assembly of the transmission poles, and installation of the overhead conductor. We received four responses to the RFP shown here. We evaluate them based on total cost, project delivery, compliance with specifications and probable performance. You can see Massalanka power line services was evaluated the highest. Could you go back to that slide, please? Okay. I see pricing is obvious while they were rated the highest. Some of the others weren't rated very well in project delivery. Is that from experience with your group? That's not based on experience. During the RFP, we asked for estimated hours to complete the line items in the contract. That's how we evaluated it. Okay. Well, the other -- nobody else rated low on the other ones, so I was curious as to how to do with their answers. Right. Okay. All right. Here are the projects that are included in the proposed contract. You can see three projects here for TMPA, of which they'll all be reimbursed by TMPA. There's also two textile projects for the future I-35 widening, which will be reimbursed by the state. Based on the results of the RFP, Massalanka was the highest evaluated score and it had the lowest overall price, staff recommends a contract with them for $15.88 million. Questions? What was the budgeted amount? The budget is based on the CIP, the total approved CIP budget, which is higher than the $15.88 million. This is just a service to install the transmission line. I got you, but you had a CIP and you had a budget, that's what you went in with. Maybe I'll go back here. I missed it. There it is. The right-hand column there. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. That was easy. That was a good answer. Can you explain the TMPA connection here? Yes, due to our TOP agreement, we're required to do all the construction for TMPA projects in the area. That's why these projects are included. TMPA, pardon the probably stupid question, is still a viable entity even with the closing of Givens Creek. Yes, sir. They still operate transmission facilities here in the Denton area. Okay. Thank you. All right. Any other questions? Do we have a motion to approve this item? I move. Thank you, Ed. Do we have a second? Second. Thank you. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Item carries. The next item is consider recommending the adoption of an ordinance to execute a contract with Hammett Excavation Incorporated for the amount of $3,247,947.84. Welcome Barbara. Thank you. Good morning, Madam Chair, members of the board. My name is Brian Burner, Solid Waste Director with the City of Denton. I'll be sharing a presentation here. All right. We are looking to construct a new cell at the City of Denton landfill. We're about a year from having our current cell filled up completely. And we need the additional capacity under our existing operational permit to safely environmentally appropriately manage the material that's coming into the landfill. The purpose of this is to actually construct and build that next cell under our current permit. We're really defined the need of the landfill. So review the process of identifying the contractors and the cost, and then providing a recommendation to the board here today. City of Dent operates a landfill located at 1527 South May Hill, currently has an operating permit from the state of Texas, the MSW 1590A. We are a regional facility that provides disposal capacity for local and area residents and businesses. We've been operating as a regional facility since this site opened back in the early '80s. Current cell has approximately a year remaining. And we need to prepare this permitted area for the location and management of the waste that is coming into the facility. This is a 23-acre site, and what we'll be doing is actually excavating down to the appropriate clay system. We'll be re-compacting the clay that's in the area, creating a liner, pursuing it to our permit, which includes a 60-mil smooth and double-textured geomembrane, recovering that with a geonet and two feet of protective soil cover. So basically, we're building a bathtub that all the material will be contained within, and we'll be able to monitor and manage the material and the liquids as appropriate under state and federal guidelines. We put together our engineer of record, Park Hill Consultants, formerly known as Park Hill Smith and Cooper, put together a request for proposal force under bid 5740. It was put out on the street at the end of November. We sent the request to approximately, excuse me here, this should have been changed, but to, excuse me, pull that number up, to a little over 400 companies. We had five responses on December 29, 2020. Lowest responsive company identified was Hammett Excavation for a cost of $3.2 million and a total construction time of 233 days. We do recommend awarding to Hammett. They've got significant experience constructing not only landfills and landfill liner systems, but also other heavy equipment and excavation work. With that, I'll be able to answer any questions you might have regarding the request today. Questions? I have a question. I'm just curious, how many further expansions are allowed under the current permit? We have two more cells that have to be constructed. If you'll allow me to go back to my presentation, I can show you where those are. Just a second here. Currently if you can see my cursor, this area just to the east. This cell and this little triangle area here is approximately 13 acres that would still need to be developed after this was full. Based on our current guidelines and time and fill record, based on the tonnage that we have, we have a little more than 13 years remaining in the current permitted area. Okay. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Any other questions? I have a question. We allow other, who all dumps into these cells? We are a regional facility and have been since we opened since the early 80s. So basically the city of Denton and then anyone else who wants to pay to dispose of material here. So the mom and pop that lives in the county wants to bring material here or any other commercial or private business that may want to haul the material across and pay either a negotiated rate or the gate rate to bring it across the scale. Are there any other cities that bring their waste here? Most other cities in the area have a contracted service. So excuse me, the city does not haul directly unless it's sludge. Most of the other cities through their contracted disposal company, it may be CWD, Republic Frontier, a company like that, but that's where the material would come in. What part of it, the items that are dumped out there, would you say these entities comprise 10% of what goes in there? No, it's approximately 50% of the waste that comes into the city of Denton is, is, is disposed of by a third party or a resident that does not live within the city of Denton. So approximately half the waste is coming into the city itself. And again, whether that's a direct haul or whether it's through one of these companies. I didn't realize it was that high. That's very discerning, isn't it? Especially when we only have 13 years left in the current permitted area. I remember our previous discussion when we were approving a sort of established contract with I think three entities that were going to be bringing or had brought stuff in. The justification for having those contracts signed was so we would have a reliable budget. We would know how much we were going to be making. Is there a financial incentive for accepting outside waste? Yes, there is. You know, city of Denton has accepted outside waste since we've opened, it's, you know, in, you know, about 1980 at this site. Part of what happened until we signed these contracts, these waste and revenues were not guaranteed. So we were, you know, at the whim of the third party contractor and actually at the whim of the market, if they could find a place that was closer and cheaper, then they would take it there. By putting these contracts into place, it did a couple of things. First of all, as you said, it guaranteed revenue. So we could know from year to year how much from a contracted standpoint we would have. And if we had long term debt, which really this was put into place to help cover an offset, some outstanding debt that we had, it would do that. But secondarily, it provides rate relief for city of Denton residents. You may remember over the past couple of years, we were able to reduce the rates to our customers to the tune of almost right at $4 a month. And that is directly tied to the third party waste that's coming in. Those are fixed cost entity, whether we handle a ton of waste, whether we handle a thousand tons of waste. We have to have a minimum number and amount of equipment and personnel on the site pursuant to our contract or pursuant to our permit with the state. What we do at that point is try to maximize the tonnage, which minimizes the cost. You know, a thousand divided by one is a lot higher than a thousand divided by ten thousand. And that's really what we're trying to do is to minimize the cost, but really help the residents by supplementing the cost that they are paying. There's a theory that if we run out of landfill space that that will increase the cost tremendously as well. That is true. That is true. So, you know, it's kind of like the farmer. You don't want to eat your seed corn, but again, you need to be able to sell your excess growth so that you can fund and actually, you know, pay your bills from year to year. So that's really what we're trying to do here is to maintain cost, keep costs low, but really manage the material and the space that we have. I think this points out the necessity of establishing some sort of compost program, especially for food waste, given the amount of food waste that is currently coming to the landfill and will obviously over the years increase. So I figure that anything we can do to lengthen the landfills lifetime with or without the new permit that's coming in is going to be a benefit for everyone. Yeah, I appreciate that statement, and that's really one of the pieces that we're looking at under our current comprehensive solid waste management strategy is, you know, if it is deemed appropriate as a result of our waste characterization and the information that we're getting back from our surveys and our think tank, then how do we go about implementing one that's not only effective, but also, you know, cost beneficial to the residents as we move forward. So that's what we're looking at, and hopefully, you know, here shortly, we'll be able to start significant discussions to that end. I welcome that, and thank you, and I think I sent you some information about Austin's program as well, which is they've just expanded to over 200,000 residents, so it is very doable. Thank you. Okay, and we need to stay to the confines of this contract now. Do we have a motion to approve? Oh, yes, Barbara. You're on mute. Can't hear you, Barbara. Okay. Now, do it again. You're back on mute. Okay. I've been hearing presentations on this for a while, and I realize that it's a delicate balance that you're trying to achieve, and the technology seems to be getting better and better all the time with the recycle and things that we're using, so, and I know you're being diligent about watching this because we want to keep the prices down, but we want to have a landfill that lasts us forever, so I appreciate you keeping an eye on that and trying to make it so it's economically a good thing and also just takes care of cleaning us up. So, anyway, thank you very much, Brian, I appreciate your explanations. You're welcome. Thank you. All right. Do we have a motion to approve this item? Answer group motioning. Billy, are you the second? Second. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Aye. Motion carries. Okay. Thank you. Hold a public hearing and consider recommendation of the adoption of an ordinance for the City of Denton, Texas, amending the provisions of Chapter 26, Utilities Article 5, indirect discharge into sanitary water systems of the City's Code of Ordinances, providing for severability clause and providing for savings clause and providing penalty and providing codification and providing for publication and an effective date. Thank you. This morning about which one, sorry, sorry, technical difficulties here. Let me start all over again. My name is Deborah Vieira, I'm with Environmental Services and I will be presenting this morning about the proposed changes to sub-Tapter 26 of the Code of Ordinances regarding the City's Industrial Retreatment Program. The National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System, also known as NPDES, under the auspices of EPA, requires any control authority of any public-owned treatment work, also known as wastewater treatment plans, that receive discharges from industrial users to establish an industrial pretreatment program. As the owner of the Pecan Creek Water Reclamation Plan, the City has its own industrial pretreatment division for the purpose of protecting the collection system, the wastewater treatment plan, the biosolids, and the receiving streams, I'm sorry, and the stream receiving the effluent from the wastewater treatment plan itself. Any industrial use that is considered significant must be permitted and inspected by the City. Those that are considered significant and categorical, they are required to actually take samples themselves, test them, and send us reports on a regular basis about what the levels are, the discharges are. By any chance any of those discharges exceeds the limits established by EPA, we follow up with an inspection and more sampling, making sure that they return back on their compliance. In 2005, the EPA made some changes to the industrial pretreatment, also known as the streamlining rule. That rule's main purpose was to actually reduce any overall technical and administrative burden without eliminating any of the existing protections that we provide to the environment. Even though the regulation was coined as a streamlining because that's where most of the changes are intended to accomplish, it also added some more stringent regulations to the pretreatment program, making the regulations even better. Hey Deborah, excuse me, this is Tony, would you mind advancing your slides, I don't know if you're keeping up? No, we are still in that slide, Tony. We are talking about the stringent requirements and we will be touching on flexibility. One of the changes that actually are making the regulation more stringent and better for the environment is that right now, any industrial user would have to provide a control plan for any accidental discharges or slogs that can actually cause interference at the wastewater treatment plant. It will also provide for the first time a language that prohibits the delusion of discharges as a substitute for treatment, meaning that they are required to treat their effluent no matter what and not just dilute it. It also requires customer cities discharging into the Denton wastewater system to actually adopt pretreatment ordinances that are at least as stringent as Denton, so in that way they can enforce those regulations in their own cities before discharging into our system. The regulation provides some flexibility and one of the things that people don't realize is when you are a categorical discharger, you must test for a whole slew of pollutants even though some of them are not part of your discharge. So this regulation allows the city to actually reduce the amount of sampling for those regulations that can prove that those pollutants are not part of the effluent and making them to continually test for those because the results show that they are not detected because that pollutant is not part of the effluent makeup. This particular change will benefit a lot of the small and mid-size industrial users because they will not have to test for all that. When you are dealing with a larger entity, that is not a significant cost for them, however for the small and the mid-size, it is. In 2005, as mentioned, EPA adopted the streamlining rule and that triggered all the states throughout the nation to actually make changes to the state law to comply with the new 2005 streamlining rule. That took years. In 2014, the city submitted to TCEQ our amendment to our permit to comply with that 2005 regulation and in 2020, last year, around March, April, we got our first round of comments from TCEQ. We spend the remaining of the year going back and forth and making sure that we make any necessary changes that TCEQ requested us to do and at the end of the year, we reached the stage of technically complete. Technically complete means that TCEQ deemed the city amendment to be aligned with EPA 2005 rule as well with TCEQ regulations and not further revisions are needed at this point for the final approval. The last step that the city must complete is the adoption of our ordinance, adopting those changes and providing the legal authority to the city to do any enforcement if necessary. That's the part that we are presenting to you. Exhibit 2 includes the clean version of the ordinance, exhibit 3 and 4, those are red lines and comparison between the new and the old and the proposed code. Last week, we went to the committee on the environment and they gave us the green light to actually move forward and present to the full council the proposed changes. So the public hearing at council at this point is scheduled to be March the 2nd and on March 19, the city will be submitting all the paperwork and/or before March 19, the city will be submitting all the paperwork including the approved ordinance to TCEQ to finalize the process and that is our deadline to meet with TCEQ. At this point, that concludes me -- I'm sorry, the last slide will be the recommendation. Staff is recommending approval of ordinance amending chapter 26, utilities article 5 about indirect discharge into sanitary wastewater system of the city of the codes of ordinances. At this point, staff concludes the presentation and is available to answer any questions. Before we go into the public hearing, any questions from the board? >> I have a question. >> So does Barbara. Go ahead. >> I was just curious about the chronology. Is this normal that it takes the TCEQ seven years to get this happening after the city applied in 2014 and the final document isn't done until 2021 for an ordinance that was passed or an EPA regulation that was passed 16 years ago? Is that how the red tape works? >> Any permits that we have or we handle, we always deal with a couple of years of delay by TCEQ, just keep in mind that when the 2005 amendment was made by EPA, it required the entire nation to actually get up to speed on that. So we are definitely on a delayed schedule, if you remember yourself. However, we are excited to be where we are right now and very close to reaching the finish line. >> Thank you very much and I really appreciate all of your efforts. >> Barbara, you had a question. >> This is more about the presentation that we had to read. I found it very difficult to read what was sent to us instead of being a red line had the column at the side of all the changes that you were making. I found it difficult to read. I don't know if that's the -- I just need to get used to it. But you did have some documents that were red line, much easier to follow than the one that we were sent this weekend. >> When we had a meeting with the committee on the environment, some of the members gave us specific instructions on how they like to see the revisions. That's why we provided the clean version that was one of the attachments. The following attachment was a red line version just -- and then the third version was a side by side comparison just to meet one of the COE requirements. So I tried to cater for all the desires. >> I'll get used to it then. >> That's the short answer, Barbara. Any other questions? All right. Then we'll go into public hearing. Does anybody wish to speak on this item? Does anybody wish to speak on this item? >> I'll speak. >> Yes, go ahead, speak. >> I'm in support of this. And I think anything that we can do to continue to protect our watershed and water is something that we should do. >> And I'll ask for public comment one more time. Anybody wish to speak on public comment? All right. With that, we'll close the public hearing. Do we have a motion to recommend proceeding with this item? >> I'm making a motion. >> Thank you, Billy. In a second? Barbara's second. All in favor, say aye. >> Aye. >> Okay, motion carries. Thank you, Deborah. >> Thank you. Have a nice day. >> Okay. Last item is management reports. >> Madam Chair and members of the PB, in your backup, we did include the fourth quarter of 2019-20 financial report. Nick Vincent, I believe, is on the line. If any member has any questions on that report, he'd be happy to kind of walk you through any questions you may have. >> I would just like to say we're in a very difficult year. You've managed very well. >> Yes, ma'am. I think across the board, I think the city did a really good job of controlling expenditures and I think that's really the bottom line. I think across the board, all the funds are doing well. You know, in your new business items, I believe we have scheduled for March 8 an update to you on the, you know, 2021 utility rates, budget, and fund balance, and just kind of a wrap-up of '19-'20 as well. And then the next item will be your new business action items. Again, we have a number of items here that we're still kind of working through for you on some requests. Some of them had to do with solid waste, and again, we're working on that comprehensive solid waste management strategy and, you know, hope to be coming back to you soon, you know, later this year to have a discussion with you and the council on that. And then we also have an outstanding question for DME. We're hoping that this week and to get with staff and make sure that we get that back on your schedule and address that question on the solar installations. But with that, that's all the management reports, unless any member has any questions on or requests on those. Just I think a few notes. I did that one item that I asked about putting the budget source on that would probably be more appropriate here. >> We can add that on here, Billy. >> Okay. I'm sure, you know, Ed brought up a lot of points, good points about the -- and Karen as well about the planning of the landfill. I assume you're putting together some strategy reports for the future. >> Yes, sir. We're working with an outside consultant on that comprehensive solid waste management study and will be coming back to you with just a comprehensive review. And again, I know there's a lot of interest on the solid waste or the food diversion program. And so we'll try to address all that together after we've gone through that process. I'll be later this year. >> I just wanted to put them in the appropriate place. >> Yes. >> Yes, sir. >> Okay. Thank you. >> All right. Concluding items. Does any board member or staff have any comments or requests? Yes, Barbara, you're on mute. >> Okay. I have a request. When we get something to study and read and it's real estate related, sometimes it's hard to read the plat that you sent us or you give us the legal description. Could you just locate it for us if we want to drive out and take a look? We could. We had something a couple weeks ago that I called in and I found, you know, we figured out where it was so I could go look and I know you can -- you may not always have a street address but you can give a locale that you can go out and find it instead of just the legal or a plat that just has easements and things across it. I would really appreciate that. >> I'll have a discussion with our real estate folks and see if we can get you a better description of the physical address or coordinates for those locations. >> What about the R number, Barbara, would that help? >> Sure. Then I could go and look it up, if I -- >> Okay. Very good. >> All right. Any other comments? >> Yeah. I'd just like to take a point of personal privilege. I just want to let everybody know this is going to be my last meeting with the PV and I will be leaving the city at the end of the month and heading to Fort Worth and moving. I just want to let everybody know. >> What are you doing? >> New chapter. >> Yeah. >> Who are you going to work for? >> I'm sorry? >> Who are you going to work for? >> I'll send out the information at the end of the month. It's a 24-person firm over there. >> Okay. Going back to the private sector. >> Yes. >> Well, good luck, Larry. >> I appreciate it. >> You've been great. >> Yes, you will be missed. >> Yeah. Thank you for everything you've done, Larry. >> And I want to introduce Katherine Clifton. Katherine, you want to pop your screen up. >> Hi, Katherine. >> Hi, Katherine. >> Where is she? >> Hi, everyone. >> She's up here now. Katherine is one of the two new first assistants in the office and she's going to be stepping in my role here on an interim basis until they see who's going to be doing all the utility work. So, I just want to introduce her. But it's been a pleasure. I've been here through a lot of change in the city and what's going on, but it's a time for a new chapter in the life of my wife and I. She's looking forward to, like told Susan Parker, being near a central market and a Trader Joe's. >> Yeah, it's just not quite big enough yet, are we? >> All right, well, any other items? Do we have a motion to adjourn? >> So moved. >> So moved. We are adjourned. >> Thank you, everyone. >> Bye. >> Thank you.