September 9, 2024 — Water Resources Advisory Board Regular Meeting

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

[0:18] Take you up there. Steve, can you hear us? Okay? No, it's fine. Yeah, I. Right for his. I think she, too. we don't see anybody here from the public, so we can skip my read through on your preference sure call, or the Monday, September 9, th 2024. RAM meeting. No one. I guess we're gonna approve of the July minutes

[1:03] I read through and didn't have any edits or comments anything else. Nope. their emotional improvement motion to approve. Second, all in favor. Alright! The time meeting minutes are approved. We're gonna move to virtual public comment. But no one is still there, Rick, just triple check. We do not have any members of the public except for those in the room. When do you want to provide public comment on this? Yeah, okay, so I don't trust her, but don't need to press the button. You can just program and then share the camera. 4 of them, right? So it will be relevant it will. There's a room. Stand up and speak. It'll hear you. Right? Okay, I'm upset, as Joe mightn knows very well about my water Bill being a hundred dollars a month.

[2:05] you know, like and I and then the 1st part and I don't even irrigate, and I know we have these things and sewer, you know, and storm water and flood water. I get all of that. But there's gotta be a better way of like being more equitable with elders. I'm 71, or with lower income people or fixed income people. but proportionally they could pay less of those fees which make make up 90% of my bill. It's all these loops. I mean, we're always pushing for Dei involved. Right so and and for better, you know, with the housing crisis, like everything like the the insurance going up, the property tax going up, and the shared pulse thing isn't even get. Do you know what that was? 260 or 280 million savings rather than 3.4 billion savings is what it could have done. It seems like that's kind of a cheap fix

[3:17] on the part of Jared for our property taxes, and so they settle out of court, the court being public opinion and the battle, you know. But it's pretty crippling. It's kind of like, you know, upping the minimum wage, you know it, and and the people want it like delay it and not bring it up too high. But you know what? That's an overnight bang! As soon as you give people free money they spend it like break, and then your economy goes bang, you know. So you know, there's ways to solve these problems. The other thing, I'm thinking is you you could or should. I don't like to be pedantic? I come from a family of educators, and I hate when people educate me. But, you know these micro apartments and efficiencies are very costly for water, the water that it takes to make things

[4:20] to make toilets, to make, you know, for a house to have 5 or 10 toilets, you know, like they should have to pay for having more toilets than they have. People like. It's utterly ridiculous, and the same for washers and dryers which now might make like brand new. 2,000 probably doesn't have the parts anymore. It will spin the clothes dry at the end. But what laundry facilities, you know, to take a lot of water to make every water is water is life. My daughter's a water artist. You know what she's a a. She takes geographical data and transforms it into a structural.

[5:05] you know, three-dimensional boards to demonstrate to people what they're how they're using their water and so, and and I couldn't ask for more, because my name needs water. When my brother was a water treatment guy with the city for his career. You know he's a water chemist. Excuse me, I'm sorry time is up. But okay, so thanks. Just Try to branch out to the broader picture of what's happening, because water gets used so much everywhere and so inefficient. Thank you, Andy, thank you for coming in person. Oh, yeah. Well, I'm coming on the signature. It sounds so sick. But understand?

[6:10] Okay. you know, we can move the matters from the board. Anything. We have some new pets. Steve, anything on your end. and thanks for joining Christian. Yes. Okay. With that we can move to the matter from Staff. who's effective production? Say that for the photography? Well, good evening, everybody. I'm Joe Tadenichi. I'm the director of the utilities department, and just the the run of the meeting tonight. We have a really brief business meeting, a a couple of things to touch on under matters, and and then we can close out the meeting and go out for a tour. So, rather than talking about projects and and the

[7:05] the funding and everything that we usually do with the board. I'm excited that you're going to see one of our our critical projects. So for matters just wanted to mention that in the packet tonight there was a letter from City Council they outlined to all the boards across the city, the the priorities that they landed on the 11 priorities on our retreat, and so they wanted to communicate back to the boards, because certainly some of those priorities would have been set from feedback that they received from boards. and then, this past weekend on Saturday we have the What's up boulder community event. And it was at the East Boulder Community Center. and a beautiful warm day, and from one to 4 I believe it was, and city departments had boots set up to kind of be able to talk to the public and demonstration things. We had our utilities maintenance team out there, and they had this water maintenance or water leader Demo hooked up to one of the electric vehicles. We have

[8:15] our flood team was there. If information on projects going and our water resources. We've been had a lot of really good engaged conversations with community members. So it's a good event. So the last thing under matters. We thought just to give some context for the tour that we're going to see. We do a brief presentation here. While we're in municipal services, Senate. It's kind of a nostalgic place for me. This is where we used to have all of our board meetings when I 1st started. They were in that in that room in there. We've moved around a little bit, but it's good to be back here. so Chris Olson is

[9:03] senior project manager in our utilities engineering group. And he he oversees the team that does the engineering projects he's leading this project. Chris will do the presentation tonight, and then we also have Chris Douglas, who oversees the whole utilities engineering group and help out, you know. So with that over to Chris he'll do the presentation, and then the only thing would have after that is just to run through the upcoming agenda. Chris. Okay, thanks, Joe. Chris Olson, wastewater engineering Supervisor. I'm gonna share. I'm gonna try and keep this as brief as I can, so we can spend as much time in as possible site. Hmm! Grabbing the right screen. Think I'm like such a stormwater when I was introduced?

[10:05] Oh. excuse my camera. Alright. Yes. So yeah, we're gonna talk about the main sewer Improvements project. this is a project that's been going on for a very long time. So. But before we get into kind of the project specifics. Just a really brief overview of the wastewater collection system. Utility. Part of the utility. Boulder is very lucky in that the western side of town is so much higher in elevation than the eastern side. So we're able to take advantage of a lot of the the downhill topography in the city, and so we. We only have one lift station within a region. Our entire wastewater collection system, and the rest of the system is all by gravity. and the way that the system works

[11:00] is local sewers kind of collect wastewater that flows to some of these larger, larger diameter trunk sewers and those larger diameter trunk sewers are all collected on the east side of town in our main interceptor that runs all the way down from The southern side of town north all the way up to the water resource, recovery, facility that's located at 75th and J. The gun barrel area also has a similar setup, where everything comes from more to the south and flow, either goes over an aerial elevated crossing near the treatment plant or under Boulder Creek in an inverted siphon. So of that you can see just a little bit of flow from southern side of town, and as as you continue and progress north, you're picking up more and more flow. And the area that we're really interested in is kind of once you get to Belmont Butte mill area and in terms and goes east to the treatment plant. We're carrying a pretty sizable amount of flow. At that point in the system.

[12:07] So this this project actually it has a very long history in that. There are references to a pipeline in this general area dating back to the to the 19 sixties. when a lot of the planning projections around the city of Boulder were a lot different than they are today, and there were plans for an interceptor pipeline that went to retrieving in kind of the same area. The need for that went away. after, you know, some of the some of the plans changed in those areas forever next into the city. But the existing line that is there that carries everything built in 1,968, and in 1,969 we had a major flood, and we actually lost part of that interceptor pipeline that was, had been in operation for about a year it needs less.

[13:00] So the treatment plan at 75th was was offline for some time at the time. It was still the plant that used to be here near the Msc. Was still operational. But but yeah, the the new brand new shiny water wastewater facilities operating for a little while in 2,013 that nearly happened again, but for some heroic efforts of kind of a cowboy operator got in and basically put the creek back where it needed to be, and that that kept our system intact. So there were some pretty heroic efforts back in 2,013 that really kept this thing alive, but that really brought to light some of the vulnerabilities that we have in this area of our utility. in 2,015 we did relocate a segment of the most concerning piece of that line. A little bit further away from from Boulder Creek. So we sort of helped the system a little bit by doing that. But it really

[14:04] We really didn't solve all of the concerns or issues with the flood vulnerability of this project. In 2016. The collection system, master Plan recommended a new pipe in a new location, and for the next 7 years we worked with Boulder County and worked with a lot of the property owners to come up with a design and a permitted project that that could be built and would be built in a way that would be successful for the, for the utility, and for our neighbors. So phase one of that project we'll get into which what each of those phases are that was actually constructed in 2022 into 2023. And right now we're within the the relocation or realignment phase of the project. And we're expecting that to go. sure. So some of the main drivers for this project. when we get severe rainfall events, we get a lot of rainwater unintentionally enters our collection system. And some of these areas. This, this pipeline is able to support a lot of the infiltration and inflow that we get into our into our system.

[15:14] We're good street flooding sometimes knocks, manhole covers off, and we get a lot of excess flow that we don't want in our system unintentionally gets in there. These couple of photos that you see on the screen are in the area of the existing interceptor, and they didn't result in sanitary sewer overflows back in 2,000. Project driver number one is capacity project. Driver number 2 is conditions. Again. There was a lot of thought put into where the treatment facilities was, but the materials construction that were available at the time in the 19 sixties. have have really started to show their age. There's a lot of internal corrosion that we start to see with reinforced concrete pipe. So the the figure on the light on the left shows what a brand new pipe is, and the the figure on the right shows.

[16:06] A 2,014 inspection of this line, and it shows a lot of exposed rebar, a lot of soft concrete, and there are concerns with with the structural integrity of that that part of the system. And then, as I mentioned, Project Driver 3 is flood vulnerability. This purple line is the existing interceptor. And this is these are photos from the 2,013 flood where Boulder Creek had jumped its banks to meandering stream. It's what meandering streams do, and in this case we have Boulder Creek that was running immediately over and washing out the material around our our interceptor line. So really overall goal of the project. Risk reduction. about 85% of the city's wastewater flows through the large diameter piece of this line.

[17:01] It struggles to convey flows during extreme events, and it is vulnerable to Greek migration. So the overall program and apologies for the screen doesn't show the the colors. Very well, my apologies for that. But it's essentially a 3 phase program. And we'll call phase 0 the work that that started before it came into our master plan, which was the relocation of a of a very vulnerable piece of that project. Phase. One rehabilitated the most severely corroded segment of that line that was completed in 2022 into 2023 phase 2 is moving the main line that carries most of Boulder's wastewater flow away from Boulder Creek, so Boulder Creek is is follow my mouse here. This is where Boulder Creek runs. so we'll be running the the new line along this blue corridor here.

[18:01] so it flows through. I'll get to that in a second. and then phase 3 will rehabilitate the remaining segments and strengthen the remaining segments that need to remain in service that can't be served by this new body. So you can kind of see in the background there's some green lines that come up from the north here, up down 63, rd and then some also some flows from the airport road area. Those will remain in service on the old pipeline because by gravity we weren't able to get them down 61st into the new to the new main. So phase 3 will rehabilitate those remaining segments and add some reinforcement to them in case something happens with the creek in the future. So this is some photos of phase one installed the liner in the existing pipe. So bypass that went over Boulder Creek. And essentially, it's the it's the same or similar technology to the sanitary sewer lining program. You know the ones that are in residential streets just on 42 inch pipe instead of 8 inch pipe.

[19:05] So the end result of phase one started with a pipeline that looks like this and ended with a pipeline that has a brand new pipe inside of it. So phase 2 again, we're we're building a new line away from the creek. and that main will. Traverse city and county open space. This has all been built. It goes through the keeter properties. The this is this is called boulder recycle, aggregate. It goes through some of the I understand the gravel facilities. A few private residences here and then through the concrete batch plants that's just east of 61st and then in front of the kind of the community on Belmont Road and eventually ties in at the north side of Western disposal. So one of the spots we're going to check out today. Are the tie in points at western disposal as well as the tunnel location. Kind of in that same area.

[20:08] So we'll see a lot of open cut construction over at Western This is where we need to intercept a couple of existing large diameter lines. Pick them up and send them into the new pipeline. There's also some tunnel construction near Belmont Road. It's going to be very interesting to go see and on that tunnel note of you'll see out. There is a pretty impressive construction operation. It looks like a lot. But there were some very good reasons for us to approach building a tunnel in lieu of open cut along that. That that corridor. One is a lot of those homes that are on Belmont are on private drinking water wells. We were concerned with the depth of this line that when we go for construction, dewatering that we could actually affect their their water wells. So we we made a decision to extend the tunnel quite a bit further and mitigate the impacts.

[21:08] It also means there will be no closures for for local residents. limits, commuter impacts and bus routes. Boulder County was pretty adamant about working hours in this very busy corridor would really draw out how long we'd be there, and the length of time that we'd be affecting those residents and commuters coming in and out of town. There's also an Rtd crossing won't see the tracks because they're covered in in asphalt. But we still had to work through the same permitting processes with our TV that that we would for any other project. And there's also a transmission main that goes through that area. So we mitigate some risk. To crossing one of our critical water lines. Let's get those figures. So essentially what you'll I'll get the tunnel. It's a it's called a micro tunnel. So there's at the front of of this machine. There's a tunnel boring head.

[22:03] Think of it! Like a big blender big drill in the ground, and it's kind of grinding up the dirt in front of it, and it's pumping everything out as a slurry. All that slurry goes to a separation plant, and they remove all the dirt out of it, and they recycle the water, and they just keep kind of pumping it out as as a hydraulic system. And as they're doing that. They're pushing pieces of casing pipe inside of. you know, inside the whole and kind of progressing it forward. so what we'll see is is a similar setup to this jack frame that's pushing the casing. We'll see some pipes that are sitting out there, and we'll see a lot of the separation equipment and all the widgets that kind of make it work so some field photos of of what's going on out there. We'll see launch and receiving shafts that are watertight. We'll see this tunnel boring machine. We won't see the head of it, but we'll because it's underground, but we'll see where they're pushing the casing in and kind of checking out how that that system works.

[23:07] and we'll also be able to see a lot of how they how they built the shafts so pretty impressive operation there so essentially that tunnel looks like 3 watertight shafts. One is to launch the tunnel, and then the other 2 are to catch it when it gets to the end. so they'll so we'll we'll spend most of our time kind of at this this lunch shop. That's where all the excitement is. We do have one of these things already installed. We're making good progress on the second of the 2 tunnel drives. Currently, we're almost to 61, st I would say, we're getting pretty close. Oh. so active work areas on the project right now. again, I'm already and butte mill over here at the western disposal site. Tunneling operations appear, and if there's time, and if we still have daylight we can go check out the inverted segments of the water. Resource, recovery, facility.

[24:08] We can see our time. Time works out and with that I will quickly maybe turn it over to Craig to give us a little safety briefing what we have. Okay. are we going to the border side? First? st I think we probably go to Western 1st and then walk across or drive across. Okay. there should be enough parking on site, or if you want to send out an address or just have a. We've got a city vehicle. We can fit almost all of us that looks perfect. That makes it easier then. So typically before we go out on any job site, we go through a job hazard analysis that's just acknowledging what kind of risks or hazards there are out of control for obviously no work going on right now. But there are still hazards of walking around construction site.

[25:02] the main ones that we're gonna look out for slips, trips and falls their cables, their hoses. There's rocky areas at the entrance to the site. It's supposed to knock dirt off your tires. All that stuff is really easy to trip on. Just watch where you walk in. hopefully, everybody's got some closed out shoes. I don't think we need a full Ppe setup for tonight. There won't be any equipment operating or anything like that. We're going to be looking at some open excavations. There's some cool stuff going on down inside of those excavations. Try not to lean on the handrail that we have set up around us. That's really just their safety. It's not great if everybody's leaning on them at the same time all the time. It's really tempting, and I'm sure I'll do a little bit, too, so trying to avoid it. And then the last thing is, we've only got about an hour of sunlight. So all this stuff, especially being unfamiliar with the areas. Just take your time getting around try to stay off your phone when you're walking around. If you need to take a call or send a text

[26:04] unsafe place to step off to the side and do it and if we run out of sunlight it's probably a good idea to call it a day. Maybe we should run to the tunnel 1st one, just in case already. I guess it is 6 30. That's really all I got for you guys. just gonna ask everybody to put their name down here just saying that it's run through the basic hazards of the dot site. Go check anything out. Oh, thank you. First.st I'll open it up for questions when we get there. Sounds good. I was actually there in the field when Chris was describing the flooding and having to use excavator to reroute. That was me and his cowboy operated

[27:05] some pictures from classical. We. We can leave it here with you. It's back in. Might might need a second one. Yeah, because I don't need to see her negative. Oh, I'm good. Thank you. Yeah, we can make that work. Joe. We talked about. I removed on. Where is it? So in October we will have an information on some code updates related to the back flow prevention program. Just some updates on fees and things like that.

[28:03] And we'll also have a project up as an information item on the News Creek flood project for November. I have noted here a retreat, I think, because of when Council has their retreats. That's very likely gonna move to the 1st part of the year. Maybe February, like it was last year. I believe November will potentially have an action item related to wastewater iga for town of Neverland. and could be very similar to what we've got going tonight with a short business meeting and a tour of some of the 63rd Street upgrades or the 63rd Street Water Treatment plant. And then it's looking like in December. We won't have a meeting. So that's something we're shooting up. Great, thank you. With that. Is there a motion to adjourn? The business meeting

[29:01] can do it. Kind of you say. Steve? Sorry you can't go into the tour, but when I said travel we'll see where you're back. Right. Thanks, everyone, and thanks for taking. Be sure.