Bangor Infrastructure Committee reviews sewer abatements, biosolids crisis

[0:12] Susan Deane: Okay, good evening, welcome to the regularly scheduled infrastructure committee meeting. It is Wednesday, February 18th, 2026. I am sitting in for Counselor Fish, who is the chair of this committee. I am Counselor Dean. On the committee we have Counselor Walker, Counselor Leonard, Counselor Beck, also joined by Counselor Mallard, Counselor Hawes, Counselor Balloon, and we are joined by Amanda Smith, Director of Water Quality Management, and our city engineer, Jefferson Davis. We're going to start with some sewer use abatement summaries for the calendar year 2025. [0:55] Amanda Smith: Yes, good evening, Amanda Smith, Director of Water Quality Management. The first item is, excuse me, [1:01] Susan Deane: we also have Carolyn Fish. I think she was only going to join gaba. She's not here. Okay, I just wanted to do something. We're going to change that. Never mind, I won't leave anyone out. [1:22] Amanda Smith: Yeah, this first item is a summary of our annual sewer use abatements. According to our sewer use ordinance, we do offer abatements for sewer usage for certain purposes, usually accidental purposes like leaking plumbing, and also according to our ordinance we bring summaries to the committee, and any abatements that are applied for in excess of three thousand dollars also individually come to the committee for approval. So there's no action needed on this item, it's just for your information, and if you have any questions, any [2:02] Susan Deane: questions from Council? I think my bill looked like it needed to be abated. [2:14] Amanda Smith: You may want to look into that. [2:16] Susan Deane: I might have a running toilet or something. [2:18] Angela Walker: Just a general question. Now like for DES properties, it says they have $13,412.72. What's their normal charge for a period of time? [2:31] Amanda Smith: I don't have theirs in particular, but the way that their abatements, these abatements are all calculated is when they receive a high water bill, they'll get a water bill from the water district and notice that they have high usage. Generally their sewer bill will be even higher than that. We go back and we look at their prior four quarters and take their average, and that's what we have baited down to, down to, no, we don't go below the minimum bill, but we will, no, I understand [2:56] Angela Walker: that, but I'm just saying it seems to me if I got a thirteen thousand dollar bill I would have been jumping up and down trying to figure out what happened. Does this run more than one quarter? It's my question, because as far as I'm concerned, if you've let your bill accumulate more than one [3:13] Amanda Smith: quarter then you don't deserve an abatement so our super use ordinance does limit it generally to one quarter okay so you're saying this 13 000 was for one quarter this 13 000 actually came before the committee because it would it exceeded the three thousand dollars threshold so i don't recall the specifics on that one the instances that we would abate more than one quarter generally are if the property owner was taking action to remedy it and it took them in fact one of the ones we're going to go over tonight rolls into two quarters, but they had a plumber working and took action, and then there's a period of time that they need to wait to see and have the water district make sure that their usage went back down to normal, and sometimes it doesn't. So they might find a problem, do a repair, we have the water district come do another reading, and find out that they, it didn't remedy, they're still in a high use situation, and then they have to have [4:10] Angela Walker: a plumber come back out, do more repairs. We don't have a way of checking to see if they have a leak. [4:17] Amanda Smith: This, the city does not. No, that we don't require them to do that either. Yep, the property owner, yes, and they would not qualify for an abatement if they weren't pursuing generally hiring a plumber to find. I just can't figure out how anyone could go two or three months and not realize they were having an issue. Oftentimes that's more the case with okay buildings where there's multiple units because it becomes more challenging to track down every plumbing issue. That's why you have managers. Thank you. So we can move right into the next agenda item are two abatements that exceed three thousand dollars. The first one is 468 Mount Hope Ave. It's fairly run of the mill, it meets all of the criteria in our sewer use ordinance. It's just that the consumption was high enough to push it over the three thousand dollar mark when we look at their average consumption, but our recommendation, and we provided all of the backup, is to approve the abatement and [5:23] Susan Deane: do you need a motion on this? I believe that's a motion. Yeah, do you have any questions regarding this [5:33] Joseph Leonard: house debatement? Just a question on this one, so Priscilla here, what stuff we're taking to repair the cause of the water loss says no repairs for water damage, just excessive water usage. [5:43] Amanda Smith: I think that was a case of someone misunderstanding what the application is asking. So we're not concerned about what they've done to repair water damage, we're only concerned that [5:54] Joseph Leonard: They've repaired whatever the cause of the water loss is. Okay, so let's, they fix it, then this is not an ongoing thing, right? Okay, this is a rental unit, right? Yes, I believe this is a rental unit. [6:06] Angela Walker: I think we need in the future to look into management of rental units because, you know, I'm not in favor of abating it. If you had a toilet running 24 7, you have an issue. If your manager doesn't check things out on occasion and he sees something like that, you [6:26] Amanda Smith: know, I don't understand why we forgive and forget. So that is also a condition in our sewer use ordinance is that if we find that we are getting multiple requests from property owners, we can then, that will trigger code enforcement to go in and do a property maintenance inspection [6:51] Joseph Leonard: for this particular property owner they don't have a history of this is like a [6:55] Amanda Smith: the first time? That's right. If there were a history, that would be noted here for you in [7:05] Susan Deane: all fairness to the property owner. I mean, sometimes you have young kids that are renting, they don't have any idea what's going on. I mean, they could hear something running and they wouldn't even, they don't pay the bill, they don't know. So I would be in agreement that this is a one-off. Hopefully it won't happen again. Any [7:28] Joseph Leonard: other concerns? Oh, sorry, I'll just make a motion to accept staff recommendations proposal for an abatement on this property. [7:40] Susan Deane: One second, we have a second. Let's go to council. No, this must, will just be handled. Very good, we'll go with staff recommendation. You have another? Yes, the other is actually a business [7:57] Amanda Smith: and this is a situation similar to what you mentioned earlier where it went beyond one quarter. So the abatement amount total is four thousand three hundred and fifty three dollars. The reason that staff recommends approval is because they have provided evidence that they had a plumber out there to make repairs and repairs were made and then found as we moved into the second quarter that they still had high usage, had a plumber come back out, found additional issues, had them repaired and we were able to confirm with the water district that the usage [8:34] Joseph Leonard: usage is back to normal. Any [8:39] Susan Deane: questions? I'm [8:43] Angela Walker: not as forgiving as you are. I follow the ordinance. [8:49] Joseph Leonard: Staff recommendation. I'll second. We have motion, we have a second. [8:55] Susan Deane: Any questions or concerns? We will move staff recommendation for the second debate and now we have exciting bio solid review. It is exciting. All right, this is now something [9:10] Amanda Smith: Something completely different. I'm not going to read everything that I put in the memo verbatim. Biosolids is a very technical, detailed, and long history topic. We're going to need to talk about this a lot in the next year. The state of Maine and really nationally, we are headed toward a clip when it comes to biosolids. So tonight I just want to make sure that we start at an elementary level and talk about what biosolids are, where we've been, and where we're at right now, because I'm going to have to start bringing options to the committee one at a time as far as what potentially we can do about biosolids. So without further ado, I know the weather has not been warm enough for you to come take a tour of the treatment plant since you've, since the new counselors have come on board, and some of you just haven't had a chance to, so I've brought the treatment plant to you, and I brought it to you for a reason, because I want you to intimately just take a look at this and take note of the texture. It's very important to understand the texture of biosolids. You know, it's easy for me to come in here without this and just say we operated to a treatment plant and we have to remove solids and those solids need to be landfilled, but there's, this is such a complex issue, and we're going to talk about a lot of options for what to do with this. Actually not a lot of options, a few options of what we can do with this, but it's going to be very important for you to just understand what the consistency is of biosolids. It's completely [10:56] Susan Deane: completely sterile on the outside. Just don't crack the John, that's, that's been looked into. [11:10] Amanda Smith: It has been looked into, so there, and it's, there are so many challenges because it is something that has so many potential beneficial uses, but then there are some issues with it that we'll talk about. So bio supplements our wastewater treatment plant for Bangor, we treat everything from Bangor, Hamden, and Herman, nine and a half million gallons a day of raw sewage, and essentially that is what we have taken out of it. So that in that jar is everything that all of us sitting here at the table have done. To our drinking water, and we're down there by the river to catch that and stop all of that from getting into the Penobscot River. So that is what biosolids are. It's everything we've taken out of it, but it's also, there is a big component here of our treatment system is a biological system, so there's a big component of our own biological population that we keep down at the treatment plant. So it's very active on a microbial level. There are a lot of beneficial nutrients in here. There is a lot of phosphorus, a lot of nitrogen. It has been used for a very long time as wonderful fertilizer to replace everything that we've been stripping from the land for generations. This has been highly regulated since the 80s. The EPA has regulated what we can do with this. The options according to the EPA are landfilling, incineration, or land application, returning it back to the land, which has always been the preferred disposal outlet for this until now. So since the 80s, that's, that's our, that's been our options. That's still officially the options on a federal level. Rules have changed. This has always been highly screened. We sample, we analyze because we know that it's not just, you know, nature in here. There's also everything else that we interact with us as humans every day. We test it for heavy metals, we check for lead, we check for mercury. There's traces of everything that humans interact with in here, and we leave it up to our regulatory authorities to say how much of every little thing is safe and how much is not safe. So it's always been highly regulated, very scrutinized, constantly analyzed, and those things have changed as science has progressed and as we've learned of new things. And one of the hot topics that has been on the agenda for the last 10 years really has been the PFAS or forever chemicals, and these are compounds that we are washing every day and most things we do. We're all sitting here essentially bathed in these compounds right now. Science isn't, hasn't really landed anywhere on which kinds of PFAS compounds are safe, which ones are not safe. There are thousands of variations of these compounds. There is a consensus that at least a couple of them are quite concerning from a health standpoint. As far as how concerning, again, the science is they just haven't, on a worldwide level, agreed on what is safe, what is not. And so the result of that is different countries, different states have all come up with their own rules and regulations on what to do with this stuff, because it ends up in here. Everything we touch and interact with ends up in here. The state of Maine in 2023 took the most strict legislation when it comes to biosolids, and they banned land application altogether, regardless of how much PFAS was in these biosolids. They started screening for biosolids probably, I don't know, five or six years before that, so we all started screening to see what was in there. There. Bangor was high to begin with. So Bangor, long before they enacted that ban, already started landfilling all of our biosolids. Now most of the wastewater treatment plants in the state of Maine are not high. They have background levels. They have levels that you would find in your living room in their biosolids. But Maine decided to ban all land application of all of those biosolids, so even though some biosolids were already starting to divert to the landfill, pretty suddenly all of them were required to go to landfill, essentially like that. And we all know what kind of position our landfills are in with capacity. I mean, we, it was just adding to an already problematic capacity issue at landfills. So that's kind of where we've been recently. Now Bangor's biosolids are high in PFAS. I mentioned that we volunteered to partner with DEP to do a study to find out why. We had an idea that they were high, in part because Pine Tree Landfill in Hamden is connected to our system, so all of the leachate, all of the water that trickles through that landfill and is captured, comes to Bangor. Again, we are protecting the Penobscot River from receiving that leachate, so we're cleaning that leachate. What we found, though, in fact, was the majority of our PFAS is coming from the contamination of the old Dow Air Force base, mainly from their big network of old sewer lines that are private lines that they own, and the groundwater infiltrates into there. So we already know that our biosolids are not a candidate it for land application even if the laws were changed even if they came up with screening levels these are never going to be spread on someone's farm for example but we are running out of options so in maine back in 2023 when that law was passed in combination with another law that impacted landfill operations we came to a crisis point where all of this came to a head and one day we were told that Casella couldn't pick up our biosolids. Now, the reason that this is a problem is because if these aren't picked up, depending on the weather, we have between about two or three days and 10 days before this ends up in the river. It has to come out of the system and it needs to go somewhere. So that was definitely probably the biggest panic I've ever had in this industry. When I got a phone call saying they couldn't pick them up, it never happened in over 50 years. It's never happened. But they need to go somewhere and they're not going to stop coming. As far as magnitude, we remove between 5500 and 6000 tons of this every year. This is a lot of biosolids that needs to go somewhere. Currently we're in a situation where Juniper Ridge, their capacity, city right now, is expected to be full in their current state around 2028. They are, they have applied for an expansion, that expansion. Sure, many of you are aware, is held up in litigation. But even if they got that expansion, that landfill is expected to be filled without the ability to expand any further in 2040. So we're talking 14 years, and 14 years in this industry is no time at all. Other options in the state of Maine that we've explored, there are very few. There is potentially Norwich Walk. They're building some dryers to be able to dry this stuff before they landfill it. That's the only way operationally that they could put that in there. This is not stable in the landfill, so it needs to be mixed with a lot of other bulky material in order to keep that landfill stable. You can't just pile this up into a big hill. There have actually been deaths in that industry from landfills being constructed without taking this wet waste into consideration and having those slopes shear off and collapse. So, Norge Watt can only take it if it's dried. Now this is, we dewater it as much as we can at the plant. So, it looks pretty dry, but it's still 75% water, it's only 25% solids. We talked to Norge Walk, they should be getting the dryers online this year, but the cost for Bangor's biosolids to go down there is already going to be more than what we currently pay for disposal before you even add in transportation down there, where our transportation is already included going to Doomba Ridge. On the last page of the memo I also just gave you an indication of what has been happening with the cost of disposal, so since 2021 the craft is essentially doubled, and that is one of our biggest line items for our department. We're talking eight hundred thousand dollars now, where it used to be a three to four hundred thousand dollar line item, and that's, that doesn't look to be getting any better anytime soon. The other thing about Norwich Walk, if Bangor doesn't end up signing on with them at any point, is Norwich Walk is a private, privately owned landfill, they're for-profit, they can take biosolids from out of state, and essentially every other state in New England with the exception of, well, even New Hampshire is talking about it in their legislative session right now, are looking like they're gonna follow suit with the land application ban, so they're all going to be looking for landfills to put this stuff in, they'll be willing to, there are already many treatment plants in these bigger cities that are willing to pay the premium to have them shipped out of state, so we're just at a point where there's, there's a finite capacity to dispose of this in the next decade, and we've got to start thinking about other alternatives now. Council did approve a bio dry, biosolids drying study, so we do have $100,000 reserved to do that. The reason I haven't pulled the trigger on that yet is because of a few reasons, but more out of curiosity, because Portland had already started in on that, Lewis and Auburn already started in on that, and it's becoming pretty apparent that it is not economical for individual facilities to create their own dryers. As an example,, Portland right now is looking at building a facility that would take their solids, it would be the capacity would be 80% Portland solids, and then there'd be another additional 20% to offer to some of their surrounding communities. And the price tag is 200 to 250 million. And to make that, to make that work based up even Lewis and Auburn who already has digesters, they're looking at 15 million. And to make that work for, you know, a place like Bangor on the backs of rate payers only to dry it to the point that it's easier to landfill, then you still have to haul it and dispose of it at a landfill. Just doesn't appear to be feasible at this time. So I mean, I'm gonna, I'm gonna leave you with that. We're gonna keep talking about it. I just wanted to make sure that you have an opportunity to see it, to know what we're talking about, and ask any sort of high level questions right now before we start getting into nitty-gritty. How much are we importing from other states in Maine? Yes, so the Juniper Ridge landfill is not allowed to import from other states. The Norwich Walk landfill, it's because it's a matter of commerce law, and there's really as far as I know nothing that can be done about that. So they see legislation that can be done, right, because of the commerce laws it's a commodity coming across state lines essentially. It's been discussed at length in the legislative committees. They seem to be, you know, offering Maine communities some capacity as they plan to get these dryers up and running. But like I said, well, so far we ended up renewing with Casella, Portland and Lewis and so Portland's the biggest producer of biosolids, Bangor is the second largest, and then Lewis and Auburn, and all no, and all three communities declined to do business with them for multiple reasons, first and foremost cost [25:04] Angela Walker: what percentage of our biohazard comes from Herman and Hamden biosolids so [25:14] Amanda Smith: Hamden about eight percent, but Hamden pays for eight percent of all of the capital costs for the treatment plant, and they pay for their flow proportion cost of biosolids, so it doesn't cost Bangor anything to dispose of Hamden's biosolids. And Herman is very similar, Herman's closer to like one and a half percent of our total biosolids. [25:47] Susan Deane: Well, thank you, that's eye-opening, I guess. [25:51] Joseph Leonard: Did you just have a long question if you don't mind? So this is a conversation that's been going on in Augusta for a number of years now, and besides the expansion of Juniper Ridge and besides talking about the dryers, has the strategy at all in Augusta started to formulate around the idea that we as individual municipalities, it's just not feasible for us to take this on, and that the state, or have they come to that realization yet, or are they still tiptoeing around that? Yeah, so I've [26:35] Amanda Smith: Been heavily involved through the Maine Water Environment Association with the legislative, all of the legislative actions related to this, and also working pretty closely with the DEP commissioner. We've been, so there is a bill being proposed, LD 25, for a 50 million dollar bond to go toward wastewater treatment plant infrastructure, which the intention for that is to go toward like a drying facility, which we all assume would probably be Portland, because that's where the bulk of the biosolids are in the state of Maine, and they have the longest haul to get to Juniper Ridge aside from that. But 50 million dollars is not going to touch this crisis for the state. If we were talking about drying all of the biosolids, it would have to be regional facilities. It would have to probably be two. There's been a lot of investigation into what that would look like. We're probably talking 500 million in order to make that happen, so 50 million is just a drop in the bucket. And so what we've been trying to project to them is we need to continue to be having these conversations for alternative methods, alternative disposal. There still is no feasible way to destroy PFAS. So we need to have a stakeholder group with landfill operators, with DEP, with other groups like Defend Our Health, you know, agricultural owners who have been maybe impacted by PFAS, you know, get everybody to the table to first admit that this is a problem and lay out what potential options are. We haven't really gotten very much buy-in to creating that stakeholder group. So we are in the process of potentially pushing that through as a piece of legislature. [28:33] Joseph Leonard: okay how much conversation have and it's okay if it's been minimal that 's fine i 'm just saying that if we do need to have legislation to go forward to the city and we i'm sorry to the capital and we do need subject matter expertise to be accompanied with this legislation i don't think anyone on this council is going to have an issue with that it does beg the question though how many concerted efforts are being made by these other municipalities saying the same thing but our voices are just being fractured at this point. Because I feel even if somehow we were high in the skyline and we were able to get $500 million for the entire state to develop these dehydration facilities, how long does it take to even implement those facilities? I mean, you are right in saying that 14 years is really not that much time. I mean, it already takes like at least a third of that time to just develop the plan to execute it. And then with all the haphazards that come into executing a plan, we might have to adjust fire and then what happens then? So I can only speak for myself, but whatever you need in order to get the support that you need in Augusta just let me know what I can do to help because this is just going to continue to get worse and worse and worse unless we have actual state organized mutually organized efforts around us so this might even be something that we need to bring up to MMA as well I [30:29] Susan Deane: know we have to move on but I have one question for you what happens to people's if they're incinerated [30:35] Amanda Smith: does it become airborne well if they are incinerated so most of the research shows that yes they become airborne and in fact some of the longer chain ones will actually turn into shorter chain which are more concerning from a health perspective if you incinerate them so it that's another reason why a lot of a lot of sludge insert biosolids incinerators are closing down they've they've you know reached a point where they need significant capital investment to be able to continue and for the most part regulatory uncertainty prevents that because we it's assumed that air quality is going to also start imposing limits so it really is looking more and more like landfill is the only option and potentially drying that might extend the life of the landfill fill because you won't need to bring in so much other bulky waste to mix with it but it's still the end game is it is just landfilling until that landfill is full state of Maine produces 88 000 wet tons per year of biocells thank [31:55] Susan Deane: you for the presentation next up is Jefferson Davis Main dot overweight right this is not a good it's [32:06] Carollynn Lear: exciting but this is just an agreement between the state the DFD and the city for an overweight permit these are pretty typical in their in their payment projects that would be here with us and this is we're just asking for approval to go to full count our motion to go to full council for approval for city manager to sign this one is specifically for route two out of Hammond Street that we paved in that segment from the intersection of Alden Road out of Ham Street towards Herman town line to Where we where we stopped pavement last year. So again, this is just an agreement that the city manager usually signs for them for an overweight permit, which allows them a lot of the contractors when they haven't selected a contractor, but allows that contractor who they select to get their equipment to mobilize the site. There's a state statute that has a certain weight limit when it comes to DOT projects, and most of the time these excavators and equipment are over that limit, so that's why we do this. So we're just looking for a motion to go to full council. Any questions on this? [33:25] Joseph Leonard: That's your letter. I'm just going to make a motion authorizing the manager leader to execute an agreement with MDOT on corporate construction. [33:33] Susan Deane: Is there a second? Good motion, we have a second. Any concerns? We will see this and on full council next meeting. We have another presentation by Jefferson Davis, draft SS4A demonstration project, Hammond and Union Street intersection. Yep, so this is a project in conjunction [33:56] Carollynn Lear: functional backs and consultants VHB and James Assi consultant for SS4A demonstration, which means safe streets for all, and we work with backs and DOT to look at a lot of our roadways and intersections. This one has been on the list for quite a while. It's the intersection of Hammond Union Street and the fifth leg, which is Fourth Street. So this project is just a demonstration, and if you go to page eight, it's gonna, it'll show you what we're planning. So the big picket item here is temporary closing off full history from that intersection. We do that with barricades and delineate reports of the flexible port that you see how the cars can actually hit them and they pop back up. But part of this also is extending in and shortening the crosswalks for pedestrians, closing off across from 4th Street and access drive that's not needed, lengthening curbs, and just again this is all demonstration. This is, we've done this quite a few times right here on Franklin Street, you know, we narrow this across walks with the post. We've done it throughout the city, but this is just another one. The goal is this, the goal of this is to get it out there temporarily, do a study before it goes out, do a study during, do a study after, get all that data and see if closing Fourth Street and shortening these up will actually have any beneficial effect on the data center section. So again, this is just an update for the project. The plan would be to put it out in the spring, happen through the summer and fall, and then go from there. [35:56] Susan Deane: Maybe action on it, you know, that it's going to happen. [36:02] Joseph Leonard: Just a quick question on this intersection, is this still the most, is this the intersection that has the most traffic collisions in the city? No, this is, this is not. [36:17] Carollynn Lear: it is a i don't i think it is a high cross location it is it is not the most dangerous intersection did you know what that is off the top of your head i believe that's a still water so i can see the still water broadway one this there's a couple that are right in line yeah [36:32] Joseph Leonard: I don't have that. This one's been very bad. I'll definitely be interested to see how this goes. [36:38] Carollynn Lear: Thank you. Yeah, we, so since I've been here, I mean, there have been complaints from pedestrians, you know, crossing the Fourth Street, like, you know, people come down the hill and just turn, and so there, it's been, right now I think we did put a no right turn sign on there, we did put a blank out sign, but you know, this will certainly help, but I believe that's. [37:03] Joseph Leonard: Thank you. The information that you put in your presentation said 2015 there were 69 crashes. Do we not have it updated on what that is, or I don't have that in front of me? [37:17] Carollynn Lear: Two times for one, I don't know why something's being in Union, yeah, I'm not sure why. I'm going to speak for 2015. Okay, somebody just high crash here, so they're, they use the highest one they found. Thank you. [37:32] Susan Deane: Last up, a public infrastructure discussion with Jefferson Davis and Amanda Smith. [37:39] Carollynn Lear: All right, so Council Chair Hawes has brought this up a little bit to maybe start talking about public infrastructure and maybe how we capital plan and move forward. So I didn't write a formal memo, I thought tonight we could just begin the discussion. If you have questions and want more information, you know, man and I can go back, you know, whatever you're looking for, we can come back with a more formal memo and presentation. This is just to start that, you know, I think, and I'll just clarify, you know. Maybe how we do some capital planning for public infrastructure. One, public infrastructure is a broad term here, you know, we have roadways, sidewalks, sewer infrastructure, stormwater infrastructure, which includes all the catch basin and all the sewer manholes, we also have all of our traffic lights, the street lights, we have 79 in the city of Bangor way traffic signals work in the city, DOT owns them but we maintain them, we've, we have a maintenance agreement with us with the state that they give us. You know, I think when it first started they gave us fifteen hundred dollars for per signal. It's gone up every year but and we you know do assessments on those but with that so we have you know the traffic signals knows plus all of our buildings that we have all the parking facilities we have so I think the goal of tonight was maybe to talk about more of the sewer infrastructure and kind of how we go about doing assessment of that how we capital plan for that and Amanda and I here to answer any Questions but you know the number one the number one way we do our capital plan and pursue our infrastructure is through our consent decree that dictates you know pretty much what we do. We have room in there are assessments of the sewer lines you know to kind of pick and choose slightly on how that you know which is our top priority but that dictates what we do and that has since 91 I mean and it will forever so unfortunately that's how that goes but we do have a subsection of that, we Have a small projects program, which has been highly successful, which I think, you know, started in 2014, something around that, where we, you know, the council allots, you know, some nice funding for that, you know, we, of course, we would always want more. But, you know, every year, Amanda's crew, you know, videos, a high percentage of these lines that we have and we use her crew plus my crew are all nasco certified which is a pipe assessment certification you know so we have dedicated people that review that helps prioritize those small projects some of those more critical ones that we can handle we just put that out to bid we do it you know a yearly buy I guess by yearly contract final contract with that I think in the past it's been three Years but and we have a contractor on staff and for the whole fiscal year we keep them busy doing all these small projects that's and that's been a great benefit to the city and we hope that continues so that's kind of just I'm going to grab my drink real quick sorry let's keep [41:14] Amanda Smith: The topic today, and that really addresses the sewer lines themselves, and then when it comes to the treatment plant, that's all done through evaluation that is ongoing, that evaluates, you know, all of the major equipment we have. We have a very expensive treatment plant down there, and all those pieces of equipment are evaluated individually based on their remaining life left. We also look at whether or not there's redundancy, so if that piece fails, is there a way around that piece in order to prioritize what projects we bring to you for funding every year, and we also look at the consequence of the failure. If that piece of equipment fails, what is that consequence going to be to the city, be it environmentally or financially through fines or both? So that goes through a whole separate system for prioritizing capital, and then both the treatment plant needs and what the consent decree is forcing us to address when it comes to the CSO's and what we're finding out in the sewer system that just needs attention. Those all are sort of coming out of the same sewer rate payer bucket and need to be prioritized against each [42:32] Carollynn Lear: other. That's only one facet of our public infrastructure that we have to have a plan for more, you know, the other side of course public works and the roadways. Just if the council doesn't know, if this is kind of a subset of, if I'm okay to talk about roadways, or do you want to stay with sewer? I don't want to jump around too much, but okay, so public works, we have a program called biolytics, so it's actually cameras on the trucks that drive around all the roadways ways, and it does a conditions assessment of the pavement. That's how Public Works will go break down their, you know, the priority list that they do. And then they'll, they'll actually, they'll send that to every other department and say, Do you have any sewer projects here? Do you have any, you know, any, other type projects, and we all meet and kind of get the priority list to go. But the condition assessment is actually done through the biolytics program, which rates when it comes to pavement, it's a flexible accessible pavement, so what that means is when the load, your tire load hits the, you know, every tire rotation hits that pavement, it actually does flex a little bit, and that load is distributed not in the pavement itself, but it takes it to the sub base, and that's where the load, that's where the load is distributed. So unlike concrete, the load hits the, it's concrete And then it just goes vertically, but the asphalt pavement does actually flex, so we call it, you know, it does move a little bit. And every type of crack tells you a story of what's happening, either in the sub base or in that structure itself. So that's what that's looking at. You know, you have block crack, in alligator crack, in, you know, your lineal cracks, all that. So it'll, and each one tells a different story of how, if that sub base is any good, or if the structure itself is bad, that, so that's how that kind of plays out. I don't think a lot of people actually know that we actually have a program like that. It's something similar to what DOT uses, but, and then, you know, there are, I talked about public parking infrastructure, our parking garage, parking garages. We have engineering consultants that do regular condition assessments of those. And then we capital plan from that. The Pickering Square garage is an ongoing project. Every year it needs something. But just the age of that garage, and just the way it was constructed back in the 80s, of what they thought was going to be a long lasting garage, and that it wasn't. So that's just a yearly project that we always have to do. And that's kind of typical for all parking garages in the state of Maine, because of our assault use and being next to the ocean and stuff like that. So I'm kind of bouncing around, but, you know, the point of this was just to start the discussion, get an idea of what you want to see in the future, and then we can come back and go from there. [45:47] Susan Hawes: Yeah. This covered a lot of what I had in mind as far as how you did your planning for certain things. I know several years back, the big thing was pump stations. And we were finding out that many of them needed to be gone and something replaced them. It just struck me then, well, how do they monitor these so you can plan ahead to not getting hit. Now these, when you, when you share a project with your people and water, for example, is that a shared cost product as well? Or [46:27] Carollynn Lear: stormwater on the water district. So a lot of times what we will do in our big capital projects, in one of the large ones we've done in the past 1015 years, the State Street exchange street holler street project where we did pretty much the entire sewers subsection down there, we will team with the water district because they're in the same boat as we are. They have aging water lines that are continuously breaking, so we do team together and that shares the cost of the contractor mobilization. It shares cost of rebuilding the road and you know all the traffic control erosion control all that we end up sharing on all those costs so it does help the city and the water district. You know the way we break that out is you know if our project is 75 of the fee of the contractor's fee we'll take 75 of the of those large ticket items you know the lump sum items is what we call them and the water district will take 25. That's just kind of how it happens sometimes so we do we do look to team with them and we are currently working right now for cumberland street that's a project that will be out there we're going to reduce replace the sewer storm the water lines and all that so we usually have multiple i mean we meet all the time with the water district but we do have you know a yearly sit down with all the departments and the water district just [47:55] Susan Hawes: for capital planning purposes so one more great time now the wine development are you [48:03] Joseph Leonard: you is your team down there often just in case or we are down there right now because [48:11] Carollynn Lear: because the y is moving the city sewer so we are inspecting that anytime anybody touches any of the city infrastructure we like to have somebody on staff be there for that and then there are you know the main sewer trunk line through the wire project or second street park they relocated that but they're also reversing first street because it used to come down barker now we're reversing that so we do have an inspector out there daily with them for that and when we do the storm when they do the stormwater trunk line we'll have [48:45] Susan Hawes: an inspector there also and that goes all the way to west broadway when all is said and done [48:53] Joseph Leonard: the alignment they're working on right now it's only the second street [48:59] Carollynn Lear: just for this project thank you [49:04] Susan Deane: any other questions do you [49:10] Carollynn Lear: Have anything else for us tonight? No, is, I mean, going forward, I mean, just let us know if you want a formal memo or something from, you know, and we, I can, you know, a lot of times I haven't been bringing the assessment conditions of that just department garages, but we are, we are redoing the testing right now, so okay. [49:33] Susan Deane: Wonderful. Well, that, I believe infrastructure is adjourned at 7 17 p.m.