 Good afternoon and welcome to Town Meeting Television's continuing coverage of Town Meeting 2021. I'm so glad to be here with Joe Duncan. He's the general manager of the Champlain Water District and we like to talk to Joe around election time because this year there is a ballot question for a bond issue that is going to be before some of the eight municipalities and 12 water systems that CWD serves and for our communities that'll be South Burlington Essex, Essex Junction, Winniski, Colchester and Williston, although there are some other communities in the region that may be watching this. So Joe, thank you so much for joining us and we really look forward to hearing about the improvements that you're going to be making yet again on this reliable source of clean water for our community. Yeah, I'm very, very happy to be here again. LG, it's always wonderful to be able to meet with you and talk about what we're doing here at the district. And yes, we have an opportunity to continue moving our master plan forward. We've got some items that we have been looking at doing over the next several years, probably three years out. And we've found an opportunity that we believe will allow us to do those now and do it at a very affordable cost, actually no impact to the rates. So happy to go through that all and let you know what we're looking at doing. Well, while you share your screen, I'll just remind people that Burlington is not served by the Champlain Water District. They have their own standalone system. That's correct. That is correct, yes. And these the other communities form a partnership, a regional partnership along the lines of the Solid Waste District, right? I mean, it's that kind of an entity. Yes, it is. Yep, it's not a county as a whole, like the Solid Waste District, but it is a district of eight communities that came together in the 70s to form a water district to provide service in response to increasing regulations and a desire to have one source and then multiple sources. And like you said, Burlington has had their own system and they're able to maintain their service, although we are actually tied in with them on an emergency impact basis. So we have a very good relationship with the Burlington Water District. So a little history on us, kind of in that vein, is we are Vermont's largest water supplier. We did go online in 1973. We are a municipal entity. We're chartered as a consolidated water district. And our mission is to provide wholesale water to 12 water systems. And you mentioned most of them, South Burlington, Shelburne, Williston, Essex Town and Essex Junction, which are their own water systems. Milton, Nuski, the village of Jericho, and then Holchester has multiple entities in it. And we serve four of those, Fire One, which is St. Mike's, Fire Three, which is the village area, Holchester Town, which is exit 16, and Mallets Bay Water Company, which is a little section off of Mallets Bay, mounted by Wajuski. And so those are the systems that we serve. And the eight communities that they're in are the entities that will be voting on this bond. And it's a million, just to interrupt, it's a million dollar bond. Is that right, roughly? Yes. General obligation bond. That's correct. So it's a very specific number. And I'll go into exactly why it's probably sounds kind of odd that it's a very specific number, but there's a very good reason for it. But like I mentioned earlier, LG, we've got a master plan that we developed back in 2002 year plan. So over the 18 years, we've been following it. We're actually in the process of updating it. But we have some projects that haven't quite been completed yet. And we want to try and take advantage of that through this. So one of the things that we like to do is we try to take a look at what we have for debt service that's falling off. And as it falls off, we try and backfill it. And with the goal of generally keeping our annual debt payments about the same, so that as one debt service payment falls off, we backfill it with another of the same level and really trying to result in no increase in CWD uniform wholesale rate, but providing the benefit of reinvesting in our infrastructure, which is critical, because a lot of stuff that we own is buried. No one really gets to see it. But when it becomes a problem, you find out about it real quick, even though it's buried underground. So we try and head of that by reinvesting before it becomes a problem. Can I ask you just a question here? The red, does that indicate the bond that voters passed last year? Yes, you are correct, LG. So the red that you see there, and then there's a little tiny orange as well, that's barely seen there. But that's the Essex West project and the Colchester South Bank Loop projects that we're both voted on last year. They are under construction, one of them is under construction right now, the Colchester South Bank Loop, and the Essex West Pump Station is currently out of it. So we anticipate the first payment on those bonds being due in 2023, when the projects are their one year warranty and ready for the first payment. So what you're talking about is pointing out is that we had anticipated that drop in 2021, 2023, and then like you said, backfilling it again with new debt reinvesting. Excellent. Let's talk about what this bond will support. Sure, absolutely. So it is a, like I said, it's a very specific number. It's $1,090,607. And what we came to, and I'll talk about specifically what items are going to be in this bond, but the concept is that we've had previous bonds that we've done that have underrun, whether it's because we got a grant or because the money that the project didn't fully get sent out because of cost savings or bids or whatever it is. And so each year what we have to do is report that in our audit as a liability of this bond, excess bond amount that's sitting out there. We got looking at the municipal market for bonds, as well as our financial model and said, wait a minute, we've got this, I'll call it 1.1 for simple numbers, $1.1 million already built into our financial model within our current wholesale rate, but we're not using it. So why don't we take advantage of repurposing those bonds to move forward on some of those projects that we were looking at doing three years out. So do them today in today's dollars with this bond that's already built into our rate. And so this 1.09607 is a specific combination of four bonds that underrun. Yeah, go ahead. Well, I was, you're telling me here that the wholesale rate, what doesn't increase. So do the municipalities mark up the water cost when they pass it on to the tax payers or the rate payers? Do they add other costs on top of that wholesale rate so that when I get a bill in Winniske, I'm seeing CWD wholesale rate plus something else that the municipality is putting on? Okay. Yep. So if you think about it, we basically are the water source. So in any particular system, there's, you know, getting the water, treating the water, and then it's bringing it to people's houses. So we do the part where we bring the water to say Winniske, then Winniske has their own staff, their own water mains, their own infrastructure that they maintain. And so they will take, you know, they take the water that they purchased from us, and that's part of their budget. And then they also have their own employees, their own debt service, their own maintenance that they do. So what we'll see is our rate is reflected in the overall rate for a particular community. And it's basically a subset of it. But when you get billed, it doesn't get broken out that way. You just get a bill for the overall cost. So it's built in that way, that inch. Exactly. Okay. So you're the water transmission line in effect for those communities? Yep. So, you know, to give you a general sense, for a typical home, the average around the state is about 65,000 gallons a day, 5,700, I think the exact number that a typical home will use over 65,700 gallons over a course of a year, which is like a couple hundred gallons a day. Okay. With that average, we cost the typical user around $157 a year. So if you look at different communities, some communities, you know, the whole bill is somewhere around 200 or 300 dollars a year. And so about 150 of that is buying the wholesale water. And you're, are you taking this out of the lake, I presume? We are taking it out of the lake. Yes. And that's actually one of the, there's some improvements that we're going to be doing that are specific to how we get the water out of the lake and then what we do with it. So we draw out of Shelburne Bay, and we have a pump station down on Shelburne Bay in Red Rocks Park, pump water out of there up to our facility. We run it through filtering process. We disinfect it, and then we pump it out of our facility, leave South Burlington, and then fans out down to Shelburne over to Will's and up to Milton. Well, let's hear about those various capital assets that you're going to be funding with this geobond. Sure. So we've got a, we've got a variety of projects of different types and purposes. And so, but they're all aimed at improving system reliability. We've got one of the items that you just mentioned, LG, is our, our raw water pump motor and control valve replacements. We've got two pumps that we're looking to rebuild, to refinish, replace the motors and replace some of the control valves. And kind of what you see here is on the left is the, the internals of our pumps before they're, they're finished because we've done a couple of these already. And then you can see the, the refinished internals, the impellers and the internal pump can and then the, the returning of the pump unit back into the, into the pump system. And so basically what it is, is our, our goal here is, you know, the motors are 20 years old, so they're towards the end of their life and need to be replaced. The, the pump cans and the impellers they wear and the age they're drawing water out of the lake. So the whole idea is to, we can make sure that we maintain the integrity of those, those cans and impellers last longer. So kind of make sure and the biggest thing for us is if we can't get water out of the lake, we're not getting water in anybody else. So that's, that's a really critical place for us to be. One of the other ones is our particle counting system. We, we have water that comes into the plant and goes through our filters. Basically everything that you, that you get from the lake, all the sediment, the, the diatomaceous debris and everything, all that stuff makes its way into our plant because we're fucking it out of the lake. And then we have to filter it out so it comes out nice and clean. So one of the things that we use and is a particle counting system and that particle counting system enables us to identify the quality of the water coming out of the filters and make sure the filters are, are removing things at the levels that we want them to. And so they're almost 20 years old and need a replacement. So we're looking to use this pond to replace some of those. Some of the other other items that are on here, we've, we had a well, it was an old well that when we connected our system back in the 70s, used, got rid of the well and just used the meter vault as a place to, to put a meter and controls in there. It was buried underground, very wet. We wound up putting a building on top of it. And in order to get all the electrical and everything out of the ground up into that building. And now we need to finish off that project by redoing all the interior piping. The whole year is been able to get into there, clean that space up. We want to place all the, all the parts and valves that are, that are aged and also corroded and put it into a, a better environment now that we've been able to clean up the building a little bit. So that's the main question. What does a meter vault do? Sure. So for us, the way that we, we go from community to community with our water. So we start everything here at the plant. And then eventually it leaves South Burlington and then it goes from South Burlington, say to Shelburne or Wilston or Colchester up to Milton. And so we, in order to build each community, we have a meter where it transitions from one community to another. So essentially what we have is a bunch of goes in is and goes out as we monitor everything coming out of the plant. And we have meter vaults all around South Burlington. And so there between what went out of the meter vaults versus what left the plant is what would build South Burlington. And so this particular one is over in, in Colchester. And so it's a, it's actually a boundary between, between those, the Colchester or South Burlington locations and, and also provides low control in order to move the water back. You know, when you really stop and think about that there are these giant water pipes under all the streets going from Shelburne Bay to Milton. And that's remarkable. Really. When you think, I mean, you're an engineer, so you think about these things all the time, but this, this is, it's, it's quite a feat that we can depend on clean water in this way. And there's so many working parts necessary to make it happen. Yeah, we own CWD alone owns 54 miles of water mains throughout the county. Most of them are 24 inch in diameter. But we then, when, where we stop, there's then the water infrastructure for the, for the towns that we, communities that we serve, and they add up to about 600 miles. So I mean, there's a tremendous amount of, of infrastructure in the ground. People don't really pay too much attention to, but it's there when they turn on their tap. They're able to take advantage of it. And in this infrastructure just quickly, you know, I've read a little bit about the New York City water supply and, you know, these giant underground pipes and the fact that the, the fittings on the switching underground are so corroded that they don't even dare turn them on and off. So do we have the same kind of underwater vaults, underground vaults of pipes where things are happening or most of the, the levers and things above ground? You know, most of them are below ground. Most everything that, that we own, I mean, it's, it's tough to get photos of, of, of infrastructure that we own because, you know, there aren't too many buildings above ground or anything like that. So most everything is buried, you know, on our, on the 54 miles of main and the 600 miles of mains of the, that the, the systems own. It'd be interesting, I should probably get a number on this, but there's, there's, there are tons of buried valves, buried vaults. And the only way to get to them is to dig to them, to address them. We have a, we have a program where we try and replace a couple of valves each year. And it's expensive because you've got to dig down to them. And, you know, we live in an area where we have frost. So everything is six feet down. I have a, a friend who, a college maid who works in Florida and everything is three feet down. So that three feet makes a big difference in, in maintaining stuff. But it's, I mean, they even have stuff that's above ground, which is close my mind, but it's all buried because it's water and you want to make sure that it's not susceptible to freezing. Exactly. So a plant site perimeter fence is another part of this bond request? Yes. Yeah. We have, we have our facility here on Queen City Park Road in, in South Burlington, just, just on the other side of across the road from Burlington. And we, our facility is not fenced. And so when you look at, you look at the world of physical security and heightened awareness and potential for water systems to be targeted or for different events. Having a, having a fence is key. We actually, you wind up driving over here. We, we started the, the phasing of it with putting some new gates in front. So that at least in the evening, we can isolate our facility from, from vehicle entry. But really, not that we don't enjoy seeing the public, but the reality is, is we need to, we should be looking at increased site security here, just given the nature of things. So we are looking at putting a fence around. And as you can see, we have a pretty large facility. I think a lot of people don't, there's pros and cons to this. There's, it's good that a lot of people don't know what we have back there because again, from a site security standpoint, but really we have a lot of infrastructure here. And I don't think people recognize what just over the horizon when they drive down, well, yeah, you see the big white tower tank. And that's so commanding that you just kind of forget that there are probably a something behind it. So that sounds like an important security improvement. And then what's the what's the HS to the FD? Sure. So that's, that is the high service to pump variable frequency drive. So all of our, all of our water that leaves the plant is pumped out through either a high service pump or a main service pump. And that's really just a matter of main services, a lower hydraulic grade. So everything along Shelburne Road goes along main service because you can kind of picture it probably takes a little more energy to pump something up to, up to Williston because it's up the hill versus along the lake on, on main service. So our high service to pumps are 350 horsepower pump. And so what we want to do is put a variable frequency drive on there. And what that allows us to do is it allows us to to toggle that pump in response to variations in flow. Right now it just has, Don has got one speed. But what we've been trying to do with all of our pumps is have them be able to, to vary the flow and a variable frequency drive allows you to do that. So that provides us a little more flexibility in responding because you can imagine that there's parts of the day where, where everyone's got their, got their faucets on in the morning, taking a shower and we want to put out more water. And then it slows down before lunchtime and it picks up again. So having these variable frequency drives allows us to do that. So I guess people aren't running home to have lunch and take a shower at the same time. It's not the way people operate. No, no, yeah, we see a spike in the morning. And then we usually see a spike around dinner. But you know, and if that hasn't changed too much with, we thought we might see some changes with COVID, but still people get up in the morning and get everything done and then, and then seem to come back to water use again in the evening. So that, and I guess the other one, it'd be interesting to see there used to be a, there used to be a major surge during the Super Bowl, halftime. So it'll be interesting to see if that happens again this year. But that's also a very, it's amazing to look at some of the figures on that. Yeah, that's so interesting. So just a reminder, viewers, we're talking about the Champlain Water District's general obligation bond request that's going before some of the eight municipalities in our viewing area and in the water district itself. So Joe, tell us what the timeframe is for the building out of this investment. Sure. Yeah. So, you know, our plan is to do it over three years. But we actually think we can get it done in the next two years. So including this summer. So if the bond passes, we would be looking to start these improvements this summer, and most likely have them done by the end of the construction season of 2022. But there is a potential that it could flow over into 2023, although that's not our goal. And we are looking to take advantage of what our historically low rates through the bond bank, which really makes this very attractive is we're looking at a 15 year term that the interest rate may change. But right now it's sitting at 1.54%, which is for us to be able to take that and have that done within our existing, our existing rate structure, non impact, the wholesale rate for us being able to start that now and get it done now, as opposed to starting it three years from now and doing it in dollars, you know, three years, but from now, whatever inflation looks like then it's to us, that's a real advantage. And it, you know, it helps us advance our master plan sooner or later by reinvesting in our infrastructure now. So that there are two other items that are covered in the bond. One is the thermocline system. And the other is the south filtered water tank. We have about six minutes left. So why don't you? Sure. I'll do this. I'll do the south will filter water tank first, because that's pretty easy. We've got the white tank that you referenced. And when you drive up on at the end of Pine Street, that's our north filtered water tank. That's a concrete tank we put in a couple years ago. And what it is, is everything that comes out of our plant needs to get disinfected. And we put it into these filtered water tanks with some chlorine to do a final disinfection of all the water. The south water tank is our original one. It's a glass used to steal metal tank. And it was put in the 90s. And we are seeing some leaking going on with that. We've got a core foundation that needs to be rehabbed. And what happens is, is the bolt patterns that are on here, we've got to come in and seal them from the inside and the outside. Because this is what's happened recently with our ice build up and water leaking through the bolts. So that's a major project that we want to reinvest in that so we can get it to last for another 15 to 20 years. So you have to drain the whole tank, I imagine, right? To do that work, right? Yeah, that's why the north tank was really critical for us. Because we knew we had this problem here at the south filter water tank, but we always need it available. So you couldn't take it offline to make the repairs. Now we have the redundancy of this newer tank, rely solely on the north one and take this one out of service to make those repairs. That's exactly what we need to do. That's great. And the last one's an interesting one. I think it is at least. So I realized we have the time constraints here, so I won't get too detailed into it. But we have probably one of the, there used to be another one. So we may only be the only ones left with one, but we have a thermocline system. And all that is, is essentially it's a bunch of thermometers going from the top of the lake at our intake to the bottom of the lake at our intake. And so what we're doing is we're monitoring the temperature at 10 foot increments across. We sit down about 80 feet deep. And so we're just monitoring the temperature there. And so, you know, the lake, when it warms up in the, in the summer, you get a warm layer on the top and you have the cold water sitting down at the bottom. And then as winter comes along and everything gets closer to the 33, 32 degrees, you just have a constant, constant temperature across. But in the summer, it stratifies. And what that does is we monitor that. There's also to an interesting, there's a, there's actually an internal satian the lake, the lake is constantly rocking. And that's kind of what this, this blue and green and yellow kind of show on a basis, there's, but even on like an hourly basis, rocking. And there's a whole another story behind that. But what happens is, is we, we like to know what kind of stratification there is, because if there's stratification, typically any, any snowmelt rain events, if they do occur, and there is stratification, we're probably not going to see any sediment coming into our intake. But if it's not stratified, and it's all the, it's all the, a similar temperature density, it's possible that the sediments can come into our, so this thermocline system combined with a USGS gauging station that we have on the Laplac. Laplac is our major contributor to Shelburne Bay. So we monitor that and over time, we've been able to use flow data from the Laplac combined with the information from our thermocline, tell us whether or not we should make modifications to our filter system in order to adjust for what we might see. So that's what the thermocline is. And so it's a really important tool. It's a, it's an expensive one, but we'll, we'll be able to take advantage of it through this bond. So we will be voting on town meeting day. People can go to their, their poll locations in South Burlington, Shelburne, Wilson, Essex, Milton, Manuski, Village of Jericho and Colchester, and, and vote on the article that's shown here on a $1.1 million bond with no increase to the wholesale rate. And if people want to know more, we will be having our informational meeting on February 25th at seven o'clock. It'll be virtual attendance only. We'll be putting a link on our website. Access that. Wonderful. Joe Duncan, general manager of Champlain Water District. Thank you. I'll just also remind voters that you'll be getting your ballots in the mail so you can vote before town meeting day itself. And we really appreciate your willingness to present this general obligation bond information. It will be on your ballots in these participating communities. So thank you so much for watching and thanks for staying tuned to town meeting television during town meeting 2021.