Well, friends, I have five o'clock. So let's go ahead and call our meeting of the utility services board
for March 23rd, 2026 to order. And we'll start with the mission of the city of Bloomington utilities
is to enhance the quality of life in our community by providing safe, sustainable and high quality drinking water.
wastewater and stormwater services in a cost-effective manner, promoting public health, economic vitality
and environmental stewardship. And our vision is to be the leading municipal water utility organization
in Indiana. And just a reminder that if any board member has any personal or financial conflict with
any issues or individuals on the agenda, then please be sure to recuse yourself during those portions
of the meeting. All right.
First item on the agenda are any petitions and communications from board or the public? All right, seeing
none, we'll move to the approval of the minutes of our previous meeting on March the 9th. Everybody
had a chance to review the minutes. I'll entertain a motion that we approve. It's been moved and seconded.
Any discussion further? All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? All right, the minutes are approved. Next
item is item four. Four A is standard invoices. We have a nine page list there totaling $844,502.01.
Questions on the invoices? Yeah. I have a couple of questions. So the first one's on page one. The 502
equipment monthly rental of the mechanical sweeper, I think that's the first time, I know I've missed
a couple of meetings, but is that the, are we renting? There are new vendors, yeah, that need to work
on our back trucks. Okay, so we have to- They come on site and do repairs and maintenance. Okay. Yeah.
I think you're asking about the rental. I'm asking about the rental. Oh, OK. Yeah. I'm sorry. We are
renting a mechanical sweeper? Yes. Do we need this long term, or it's an awfully expensive rental? Yes.
So what we're doing right now is it's a different kind of sweeper than the sweeper we have. We are seeing
if it's more effective kind of picking up larger matted debris than our regenerative sweeper.
It may be useful in certain situations that a regenerative sweeper is not the best tool. So we're kind
of seeing how effective that is through renting it before thinking about any decisions on buying new
equipment. And what type of sweeper are we talking about here? Mechanical street sweeper. So then that
goes to ask my other question about, I've got several questions today. So we also have some insurance
claims on page eight with the incident with the street sweeper. So is that the reason why we have to
have this? Are these completely unrelated? Completely unrelated. Okay. So let me just get this straight.
Number one, we're testing out some new equipment. Yes. To replace the sweeper that we paid for, no,
a new sweeper. To have an addition as an additional tool because it sweeps a little differently than
the one we have. Perfect.
So then my other questions, since I brought this up on page eight, are the various insurance claims,
if we could get just a little bit of information. First of all, was anybody injured in any of those?
So you said page eight. Page eight. Travelers indemnity. I just want to make sure everyone was okay
on our team. Nothing happened. And then probably just a little bit more information about what happened
to the street sweeper that
I'm not sure what happened with the street sweeper damages, but nobody, we didn't have staff injured,
no external public injured, no injuries. But those are four different vehicles, correct? Yes. That we've
had claims with. And again, I guess, is there any other information about what has happened with these
accidents?
I don't have specific on the incidents. I do think that these incidents happened over a broader span
of time and that these are all just getting built at the same time. So it's not like we just all of
a sudden had four incidents. I think they're just all being built at the same time. Okay, all right.
Then my other question is,
on claim page number two, the Leonard's Linen property. Is it more? This will have to give you some
background on that one. But are we getting any closer or is this just? I noticed that came out of the
stormwater account. I just didn't know if that was. They're spreading the cost of that settlement across
departments? There's some background on all that.
that we could share with you. Yeah, well, where do we start? I guess, Leonard's site, remember third
and Lincoln. Third and Lincoln. So when we did the next phase of the Big River project, we found a lot
of contaminated soil.
And so Chris is joining us to take over the legal side. I'd be happy to discuss this with you offline.
It's in litigation, and I don't think we should be discussing the merits of the case. And I'm not saying
you're going to get into it, but I just want to get us off that slope before we find ourselves in a
tricky spot. I'd be very happy to have a full length conversation with you about it. Bottom line is
there's some litigation going on over contaminated soil we discovered during a
a project that was taking us up through Lincoln and Third Street. And so there is some additional expenditure
occurring because we are trying to go through discovery and ramp up towards mediation and then litigation.
So that's what I was asking for. We're just an update where we are. So great. All right. I think the
part of it is that we cleaned it up. Now we've got to see what we can do to recoup our costs.
Those are my only questions on the claims. Just for my own education, I assume that this cost for printing
postage and mailing is just like our average monthly costs that you would just about average. Thanks.
Good discussion. Anything else on our standard invoices for today? All right, I will accept the motion
to approve those.
Moved and seconded. Any further discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? All right, motion carries.
Next is our utility bills, your utility claims list, totaling $206,714.83. Any questions about the utility
bills? I entertain a motion to approve.
we approve the utility claims list. We moved and seconded. Any other discussion? All in favor say aye.
Aye. Opposed? All right. Next then is our wire transfers totaling $583,288.27. Any discussion? Questions?
I entertain a motion to approve. I move that we approve the wire transfers.
We moved and seconded. Any other discussion? All in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? All right. That is
carried and approved. And next are the customer refunds. Wait a minute. Do I need to approve a special
check run? Oh, that's further down. OK. There we go. I passed it already. OK. Customer refunds, totaling.
$16,069.03. Yeah, Jim. Yeah, thanks. Because I live in Renwick, I noticed that there's a rather large
amount of the Renwick HOA. Can you explain that? Now what? They overpaid us, and so we just refunded
the difference.
But when they made their payment, they paid the wrong amount. And this is just us refunding the difference.
So that's for the, I don't see that they use a lot of water in the park. I don't believe so, not. I've
never seen it irrigated, so I'm just wondering. It's interesting. All right.
I'll ask around and now it's around. Okay. That one and several others use the reason for refund as
adjustment refund. I don't know if I've just noticed that different today or if that's different language.
And there were several that had in the several thousand dollars in the adjustment refunds. So when people
have water leaks and it doesn't go down the wastewater system, we give them
refund for the sewer portion under bill okay so they were able to demonstrate that we have a whole process
for it good okay thank you any other questions on customer refunds okay ready for it's been moved and
seconded any other discussion all in favor say aye aye opposed all right customer refunds are approved
Next is the special check run in the amount of $1,888.93. Any discussion on those? All right. I move
that we approve the special check runs. Second. Moved and seconded for the special check run. Any other
discussion further? All right. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries for the special check run.
That brings us up to the approval of the consent agenda. Director Zager. Good evening. I'm Katherine
Zager, utilities director. I'm presenting tonight's consent agenda, totaling $20,651 for nonchemical
contracts. There was a last minute update. One of the contracts was removed, so it may differ from the
agenda you currently have.
The first contract is with Water Solutions Unlimited Inc. for $4.72 per gallon for the 2026 supply of
hydrofluorosilic acid, which is fluoride for the new bulk system at Monroe Water Plant. Next is with
Harrell Fish Inc. for $5,470 for maintenance, repairs, and replacements of the heating system at the
service center.
Next is with Electric Plus Inc. for $11,960 for the PD blower number three electrical reconfiguration
at Dillman. Next is with Alliance of Indiana Rural Water for $2,500 for confined space entrenched safety
training. Next is with Corson Fire and Security for $721 for service center sprinkler system inspections.
Is there any member who wishes to consider one or more of these items individually? Hearing none, if
there's no opposition, these items will be approved as recommended by staff. Hearing no opposition,
the consent agenda is approved. Thank you, Kat. All right. The next item is item seven, requesting approval
of amendment number one.
to the agreement with SSW Enterprises doing business as Office Pride. And, whoops. Did we take one out?
Wait. I don't have a six. Okay. Now that happened, okay.
All right, we have a request for approval of an on-call service agreement with Flow Solutions. Matt?
This is a usual on-call contract, and this company does work on our air compressors at the plants. So
we just wanted to be available to come fix things for us. All right. Any discussion on that agenda item?
Okay it's been moved and seconded to approve the on-call service agreement flow solutions any other
discussion all in favor say aye opposed all right motion carries thank you now we're ready for the approval
for agreement with services with SSW enterprises doing business as office pride
is for the service center here and they clean three days a week, Wednesday and Friday. What we discovered
was if we were closed on a Monday, they would come Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. So they're cleaning
two days in a row, which we didn't think was needed. So we're changing the contract to have them not
come in if the office is closed. Okay, so is it a reduction, Matt?
Yeah, because if there is a holiday, they will only clean two days a week. And it'll be, I think it's
about $290 a clean. So it's, since we're shrinking from three cleanings to two cleanings, does the dollar
amount of the contract reduce from what we originally? Yeah, for every clean that would have been on
a holiday would save us about $290. Okay.
And let's say right now it's Monday, Wednesday, Friday. So work Friday, leave, and then the office is
not fully staffed over the weekend. So then Monday, so it's basically like clean it two days in a row
with a Friday, Monday clean, correct? That's what we have now. But what we're saying is that they're
contracted for three days a week now. Sure. They would clean when nobody's here. Correct. I guess. Right.
And so if we were closed on a holiday on a Monday, we didn't want them to come back Tuesday and Wednesday.
to clean two days in a row? Sure. I guess what I'm saying is, do they need to come three days in a row,
or would it be good to have two days? Like, do a Tuesday, Friday, instead of Monday, Wednesday, Friday,
just on a regular week. I'm not trying to say. I don't know what your cleaning needs are, so I don't
want to say no cleaning services. That's just asking. We are not fully staffed on the weekend, so Friday
to Monday does seem back to back.
So that's something we can look into. This is not an amendment, this is the overall agreement. It's
an amendment. Oh, it's an amendment to the agreement, okay. Okay, any other questions? All right. I
move that we approve the agreement for services with SSW Enterprises.
It's been moved and seconded to approve the agreement with SSW Enterprises. Any other discussion. All
in favor say aye. Opposed. All right. Motion carries. Thank you. Next is the request for approval of
the amendment to the service agreement with Lane Christiansen Company.
Good evening. Hector Ortiz, Assistant Director of Operation. I'm here to request the approval of this
amendment. It's about 4,200 more from the original price. When they quoted, they quoted with some amount of copper
the winding of the motor, and when they took it out, when they took it to the shop and pulled it apart,
they found that the one that they quoted, it was the wrong size, so they're going to use a little bit
more now. Happy to answer any more questions. Any questions for Hector? All right. I move that we approve
the request for contract with Lane Christians & Company. Moved and seconded. Any other discussion?
All in favor say aye. Opposed? Okay, motion carries. Thank you, actor. Okay, next on the agenda is requesting
the on-call approval of the on-call agreement with Marshall Security. Wow. That's what I give her taking
notes with my phone call today on an old agenda. We'll switch to the new one.
All right, so we took that one off, right? Okay. All right. What number is that here? Okay,
here we go. Yes, here we are. Request approval amendment number four to the Monroe Water Treatment Plant
chemical feed line replacement with Donahue and Associates.
I'm Dan Hudson capital projects manager for the city of Bloomington utilities And I'd like the board
to consider amendment number four for the Donahue design project for the Monroe water treatment of plant
chemical feed project this has been a long project a lot of Changes in the design and we're finally
pushing to the last part here. We've extended the time to end of December so
Wessler is asking for an additional $51,500 to do that. Donahue? Donahue, I'm sorry. Donahue. All right,
any questions for Dan on this one? All right. I move that we approve the amendment number four for the
chemical feed line with Donahue.
It's been moved and seconded. Any other discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? All right. Motion
carries for that contract. Thank you. And so next then is request approval. The service agreement with
T. Lai Tai Lin Electrical Engineering Consulting on upgrades at Dillman. All right. Where am I?
All right. We have too many versions of agendas here. Take this one. All right. That one away. All right,
next then. Cocosing Industrial, request approval for change order number three for the construction
services with Cocosing Industrial for Dillman Road wastewater treatment plant site safety process
improvements. Yeah, this is another big project.
that is on the verge of closing, but we need to finish it up by going through a change order process.
They have like 12 different items that we've gone through. Most of them are added, some of them are
deduct, but they've all been listed in the back there. They're asking for a $62,534 addition to their contract.
Any other questions for Dan on this one? All right. I move that we approve the change order number three.
Second. All right. Moved and seconded. Any other discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed?
All right. Motion carries. Thank you. As an addition to that, I just want to say probably there will
be one more change order.
coming in before the end of the project, so anticipate that. Got it. Things change, we understand.
They do, yes. All right, I think the next item is requesting approval of a service agreement with TY
Lin Consulting, Dan Hudson. Yeah, this is TY Lin, formerly known as Grayley Hanson.
And this is a consulting project for $59,284. And this is for in preparation for the rate evaluation.
Usually the board of rates wants a hard cost to know exactly what we're gonna do and back it up. And
that's what this contract is for, is to give us a consulting cost for the capital that's coming up.
Okay. Any other questions for Dan on this? I move that we approve the professional services agreement
with Thailand. I move and second. Any other discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carried.
All right.
Then we have the next one is approval of a service agreement with T.Y. Lin, electrical engineering consulting
on upgrades at Dillman. This is a design contract for the large electrical job that's been sitting out
there for a couple of years. And T.Y. Lin is asking $445,096 for this. This is a big job.
and we expect it may take over a year of design. Is there any questions on the job that opened the question?
We just say the summary of the contract is providing electrical engineering consulting on electrical
upgrade project at Dillman for the improvement of the substation main switch gear and emergency generators.
Yes. That's a lot.
That's a lot, and it's mostly, it's gonna be a high dollar job for construction, but that's mainly for
the equipment. The transformers, the switch gears are all very expensive, but the design to do that
is typically a little less than a normal civil engineering job. And as I was discussing earlier today,
this is a situation where
we maintain the substation, which is a little unusual. I think here and there we do, I guess. It's been
questioned several times, and we've gone back to Duke and so forth, because we were wondering if Monroe,
it turned out Monroe Water Treatment Plant, they own the substation, they'll maintain it, but at Dillman,
We own the substation, and we maintain it. And right now, it's approaching 40-some years old. You don't
want that to fail? No. We don't want that to fail. Everything goes. Yeah. What is the lifespan
for substation? It could go 40 years, maybe 50. And if you look at it, it looks OK. Yeah.
If it was okay, there would be a lot less companies and business building them, right? That's true.
But we did have a failure at one of our medium voltage switches in the last couple weeks. So that could
be an indicator that we need to get on it. And then does this improve our emergency generator capacity
there or does it maintain it? Both. Right now we have
two outlets for emergency generators that will run the whole plant. We have one emergency generator
that's in place now that runs the headworks, but it doesn't run the blowers or anything else. So we
have outlets, but for us to do that, we have to rent generators. And these are big generators that
take a long time to get in. And so in an emergency situation, it would be tough to receive these. I've
looked at different places. And I think the only place I found one that we could get one was in Connecticut.
So just to get one over here would be tough. So we're looking at putting in permanent ones. But when
we get to that point, which would be the end of the project, let's see what costs we have left and money
at that time. Good.
Well, that's a good direction ahead. Yeah. At least we'll have a design for it, and it'll be shovel-ready
in case we get a grant, some house of money, possibly. Is this project something we would anticipate
in our rate case, then? This was in the rate case last time. OK. But it's not only the design, but the
construction as well. Yes. And I have to refer that to Phil.
He's the expert on that. Thank you. Good evening, Philippine Engineering. It was in the last rate case,
but there was other projects that have moved forward since then. And this cost has went up substantially.
So it will be included in the next rate case, this part of the project. Thank you. I would like to also
note that Dan was talking about having, so this is for the engineering.
I think it's really important for us to have shovel-ready projects like having design for these generators,
because these are the kinds of projects that can really attract external funding. And so if we have
something to present, we're a lot more likely to be granted, you know, to be accepted to grants or have
that external funding. Great. Okay. Any other discussion or questions?
agreement. Okay then moved and seconded all in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay motion carried.
Thank you. All right next is the request for approval of the amendment number two to the agreement with
VET environmental engineering and looks like Chris will present on that.
Good afternoon again Chris Wheeler with city legal and this is an amendment to the agreement that we
have with vet at the moment which we're covering expenses for their work on the Leonard Lenin's litigation
they went they are
integral in the information that we're sharing through discovery right now with the Leonard's attorneys,
um, providing them with information on the work that was done there, the remediation that was necessary,
uh, the methods by which we did the remediation. They have a lot of the information. And so, uh, as
we're moving through the different phases of discovery, we're continuing, continuing to incur some cost
with vet as they continue to do work for the city as we prepare for litigation.
And that's what this one is, and we would ask that you approve it. Okay, any questions for attorney
Wheeler? Yeah. So it looks like it's increased six times the original amount. So that's a lot.
Just saying. Well, it's not unexpected. We don't know what amount of time it will be spent trying to
get together documentation. They're going to also probably have one or two of their
employees be deposed at some point, which will also cost additional money. We don't know whether that'll
happen because we might find a way to get it resolved beforehand, but that's why there's no way to anticipate
the total amount of the cost of having them serve as these expert. They're not really our expert witnesses,
but they certainly have expertise in the field and they are rather critical to the case.
says not to exceed no lawyers no that's not gonna work and it's not gonna work in this case we're gonna
we just have to pay as we go okay all right with that environmental okay it's been moved and seconded
any further discussion all right all in favor say aye opposed all right motion carries thank you
Next is the presentation, the USB application to the Indiana Finance Authority for the Special Revolving
Funding, State Revolving Fund, I think, for lead service line replacement. Good evening. I'm Erica Walker.
I'm with Arcadis. Yeah, and I'm Justin Master, Water Quality Coordinator for Utilities.
Okay. And we're here to ask for your approval to submit a funding application to replace lead service
lines and deteriorating mains across the water system. So in this presentation, we're going to talk
about why this needs to happen. Some of the policy public health drivers and then CPUs needs, then we'll
talk a little bit about the funding opportunity. Why, why now? Why we think that the,
see if you should take advantage of this moment and then get into the proposed project and some of the
estimated cost. So the biggest thing is public health. Lead is the most widely studied neurotoxin in
world history. I mean the Romans used it for their
water system, and some people tie that to the fall of the Roman Empire. So we've known that it's been
bad for a long time, but not until Flint, Michigan did we as a country understand that leaving lead
pipes in our system posed risk to citizens. And so you can see there on the bottom, this shows you a
policy change. It's called the Lead and Copper Rule Improvements, and it's following the Flint, Michigan
water crisis.
And EPA over the last eight to 10 years has been evolving the regulation a lot. And the CBU has a lot
to do in the next 10 years. Starting in 2027, they have that nice long list of things to do, including
updating an updated inventory of every service line material in the system. And it starts the clock
on a 10 year timeline to replace all lead service lines in the system.
And it gets them into some other nuances that you might hear about over the years, like offering to
sample school and child care facilities for lead in the system. So this is a big change, comprehensive
change, and a lot of work to do for the utility. They've been working, as you will see, to prepare for
this for many years. And this is just the next step in the preparation that they're taking. As we move
along the timeline here, you get about halfway into that 10 years. You have to have completed all
the school and child care facilities in your system and then get over to 2037 and zero unknown service
line materials. So knowing every single one and having to at least try to replace all of your lead service
lines. And as I said, the utility has been working on this issue for a long time. I was actually an
intern here in graduate school and I worked in a cubicle over there.
we were looking for lead service lines in the same neighborhoods that this project is centered on. So,
you know, over a decade ago, Justin's predecessor actually suspected this, and we started going out,
and sure enough, they are there. And Justin can talk a little bit more about what they've been up to.
Yeah. Again, Justin Mesher with Water Quality. I won't try to cram everything we've done over the last
five to seven years, more in particular, because that's kind of more related to this project.
But just a couple of things we've done. We did a deep dive into our records here, talked to a lot of
our, I won't say more experienced employees that had better field knowledge of kind of our practices
going back many years to try to put together this inventory that we originally submitted two years ago
now, which was kind of our initial inventory. And if you don't know the exact number, it's over 27,000
services. So it's a lot of services to try to go identify.
Along the bottom there, you can see that we still have over 9,000 that are unknown. Even since we put
this together, we've brought that down under 9,600. So we kind of evolve every day of trying to identify
some of our outreaches, trying to ask people to call in if you know what your service line is made of
or to help us identify those. So it's kind of an everyday effort to reduce those unknowns and find that
service lines. On the top there, you can see we do offer water sampling now.
Everybody that received our notifications that went out last year, if you have an unknown service line,
a lead service line, or certain types of galvanized lines, I'll just lump those in with lead for now.
You receive this notification and the offer for us to come collect a water sample for lead testing.
We do have a new instrument or new-ish instrument out at Dillman where we do run these samples in-house
now free of cost to our customers, which has been a big benefit because per sample at, you know,
Outsourcing to lab we were paying quite a bit for that So we are trying to get a lot of use out of our
ICP for doing that in-house free of charge, which has been great You know as I mentioned we do have
done a lot of outreach to consumers trying to get More involvement, you know, I think you know we get
20% Return on some of these efforts. That's pretty good for us You know, that's high for some utilities.
So, you know people calling in to identify or filling out our online
portal for if you know what your service line is, I think is a new tool for us that's been very helpful.
And then replacing lead lines, previously we've been doing what was called find and replace. So over
the last 20 plus years when we found lead service lines, we were replacing them at the time of finding
them, whether it was through other projects or if somebody had a service line break and we found lead,
we were replacing those as we found them. More recently with this inventory and the funding options,
they've asked us, you know,
inventory room from now and then when we hit this next deadline start to replace them. So this project
is kind of just giving us a head start on that to try to get the known lead lines that we have now out
of the ground. And then as Erica said you know a lot more goes into this with some of the school and
child care facility samplings but that's you know down the road for us as far as sampling goes.
And then of course we're seeking your approval to try to get some some funding for CBU to replace these
service lines. This is part of the bipartisan infrastructure law, which for the first time.
in American history made specific funds available for lead service line replacement and targeting it
as well in disadvantaged communities including grant funding and giving that to the state revolving
funds around the country. This is the last year that those funds are available unless other states don't
take advantage of them then IFA and other states that SRFs that have communities with lead will be able to
to get some of that. So we might see a little tail end, but this could be the last year of funding.
And as part of that, for IFA, there's a portion of that money that can be given out as a principal
forgiveness loan, which is essentially a grant. After you complete, you issue into the paperwork for
a loan, but then once you complete the project, the entire principal of that portion of the loan is forgiven.
And then for any project that involves work in disadvantaged communities or lead, they offer zero to
low, very low interest loans or longer payback terms. We've seen, usually they're 30 years, but we've
seen it go upwards of 40 for projects like this. And then just to let you know, for a community like
CBU with this current MHI,
that the city has, looking at an interest rate, a standard interest rate of around 2.38%. That's what's
published on IFA's website. That's subject to change. You learn about that more in the loan closing,
but those are the rates they're advertising. In terms of the requirements for getting this funding,
you have to put together an application, which is what we've done as part of this project, and a preliminary
engineering report, which is a long document that goes into the project area.
IFA wants to understand CBU's needs, what their priorities are, so we've gone through all that and put
together that document. And then, of course, you'll see after this, there's two resolutions before you,
and one is to allow us to submit that PER and then to give us an authorized signatory to sign off on
the loan if the funding package, if CBU is selected.
terms of next steps. So this is actually also part of their public comment requirement. So we're waiting
to see if anybody from the public requests the PER wants to see it, has any ideas about the project,
they would reach out to Justin and give us comments and then we would update our approach. Then we would submit
all the materials to IFA. April 1st is when it all goes in. We get some comments back from their engineers
and then move into the pre-closing steps. And here's the project. So we've selected four segments of
deteriorating mains. And this is from the condition assessment work that CBU has done. And so all four
of these segments have a rating of two of five.
deteriorating mains, and then on those service lines, there are about 70 that we think are either lead
or galvanized. The galvanized part's important because some of these mains have leaded joints on them,
and so the galvanized pipes are downstream of lead, potentially accumulating lead on the surface, and
so CBU wants to update
efficiently update those deteriorating mains and then any potential service lines containing lead at
the same time. And it doesn't look very efficient because we're zoomed way out, but at the same time
they want to knock out any known
lead, leaded service line. We'll just use that category more broadly. Anything EPA would call a leaded
service line, we just want to get it out of the ground as part of this project, take advantage of the
funding, and then set the community up for success in terms of the compliance rate. So that's our plan
there. The estimated cost of the entire project for construction, actually all in, would be 4.9 million.
And of that,
up to $1 million in that principal forgiveness or grant just for the lead service line replacement work.
And it's possible, too, because you see the thatched area there is our disadvantaged community tract.
And so you can see most of the project is in what IFA would consider to be a disadvantaged community.
And so they may offer additional principal forgiveness for the main work as well. So we'll see.
And then for the rest, they'd be eligible for either 0% interest or low interest loans for the remainder.
And overall, so our goals for the project are we want to maximize that grant funding for CBU. We want
to replace any lead we know about. And then as well, get rid of those mains in areas that have high
concentrations of lead service lines.
Other parts of the project, and this is our last slide, and then interested to hear your questions or
thoughts, but, so CBU is part of this. They're gonna have to do a lot of customer outreach. One of the
trickiest parts about this work is that customers own half the line, so you have to go, you have to
get their permission, and it's actually really hard to do that. We do a lot of lead service line projects
nationally, and it can take between eight to 10
Attempts just to get people to sign and say yes I will take a free because this would be free to all
of the customers that are in the project area so that'll take a little bit of work from CBU and then
providing picture filter kits after replacement the the work can dislodge leaded particulates so the
law will require it but CBU would go ahead and provide those to customers now as part of this project
and then do some post replacement sampling with that ICP mass spec
instrument that they purchased. And we talked about some of the ongoing inventory work so there's still
a lot of unknowns and so as part of this project and over the next two years CBU is going to reduce
their unknown service lines through meter pit inspections and then testing out an emerging technology
device that could really reduce the cost of inspections. And then as Justin mentioned there's lots of
other compliance nuances to take care of, and so they'll be preparing for those other things starting
in 2027. And with that. Any questions? Thank you for that presentation. And do we have questions from
the board? Jim. Yeah, thank you for all that. So. You haven't yet finished with the magic wandering
in the city.
It's still going on. It's a wonderful instrument. I still have a hard time getting my head around it.
The other question is, is it difficult or expensive to dispose of the leaded stuff once you take it
out? Not difficult or expensive. Where do they put it? Nowhere where it could be near groundwater, I assume.
As of now, we've kept a lot of the lead that we've taken out of the ground. One of the stipulations
was we have a compliance sampling. We were on a reduced schedule, so we were doing it every three years.
But during that schedule for sampling, if we were to go over what they were calling the action level,
we would have to make process changes down in our treatment plant.
to make sure that our water was less corrosive. So part of that was we were hanging on to a lot of that
lead just in case we did get close to that action level or exceed that, we could use that for some of
the test studies to see what changes at the plant we would need to do to try to get that water to be
a little less corrosive. But as of last summer's compliance sampling, we're still well under the action
level. So we'll probably still hang on to it until we hit that 2028 change in the next step of the project.
Okay, thank you.
Is the action level already decreased until it hits? Uh, 2027 fall. Yeah. Um, so our, our 90th percentile
went up a little bit last summer to 5.3. We were around 3.3 or 5.1. We were around 3.3. But we did with
this last sampling have to make some changes to our sampling sites. Um, some of the older sampling sites,
they just carried over from sampling to sampling. This one we had to go back through.
and make sure that all of our sites work, because they're tier one sampling sites. For compliance reasons?
Yeah. 30. Okay. Cool. And I get, you know, I got this, I brought it today as well, and it's very clear
that any of these weird goosenecks are city-owned. Do they look like anything that connects to the main?
I know that's kind of a funky thing with people. Yeah, those will be part of the next steps. They will
start to look at goosenecks as, you know, like connectors will be a real pain in the butt to try to
figure it out in systems like ours.
And it does seem like it's a hodgepodge federally with what municipalities are doing with this in terms
of the costs and cost sharing. So you said it would be free to the consumer or customer that would include
schools and daycares. Is this regardless of this funding opportunity?
Just this funding opportunity. As far as the contingent on getting this opportunity. Yeah, exactly.
Because that would be a no-brainer, I think, and a big win to be able to get there. Yeah, and that's
one of the big problems facing utilities is trying to tell somebody without that funding, hey, you need
to pay $2,000 or $3,000 to replace your service line to help us fill our needs for the inventory process.
Right, right.
And then with the 9,600 or whatever we have yet to go, would this funding be able to be used for any
of those, or would we need to identify future funding to replace those? That'd be future funding. OK.
Thank you. Other questions? Great question. Go ahead. Yeah. Well, two things, I guess. Number one, I
know you've been doing a lot of work for this in a roundabout way. I heard about it from a township
trustee that a customer had reached out to them.
about the opportunity to have their line tested at their home. So thank you. I know you've been dealing
with a lot of folks. If we are to be funded, what's kind of our timeline on this? I know it's 2037,
but I don't anticipate these lines would take that long. Is that something that we have the capacity
to do in-house or that we would seek other folks to help with it?
It's going to be a mix of CBU and contracted out. IFA likes to see the funds spent within two years,
but they're flexible. Things come up in projects. And so CBU would be doing all of the admin construction,
admin inspection, and some of the other elements I talked about, like water testing, picture filters,
things like that. But then they would have to contract out the actual construction
Okay. Work and that's just part of the EPA funding requirements. They want to see like a public procurement
and they don't reimburse for utility work. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Did you see a heavy increase in water
sampling requests or phone calls when these go out? Oh, yeah. Yeah. This year we definitely saw more
than last year. I think we're up to close to 600 requests. And our ICP just kind of came online in the
last month or two.
a little bit of a slow process for us, but we have started to run samples on that, so we're gonna start
working with you on that list pretty quickly. But we're doing it all in house, so it does take a little
bit of time, which I stress to people, but the list does grow daily. Well, you get a lot of good data
out of it, too. Oh, yeah. I saw on the slide that for a project described here, you're anticipating
about 4.8 million, is that right? Yes, if we're winning.
get about a million of that forgiven, maybe? Okay, so then the rest of it would be coming out of water
budget, I think. Yes. Okay. And let's see, do we have that in the rate case?
water main replacement funding that we do have in our rate case. So that line item, that was, I believe
it was four million and then three million and another three million over another three million over
the course of four years. That's where this would come from. So yes, it's in the right case. Good. Other
questions? So we would, we would get that 1 million
back or was it just that we were to get that 1 million interest free. You would get it. Your yeah, the
principal would be forgiven the principal. So yeah, so we would still so we really would still 0 4.9
correct. Well, as soon as the project is complete, then that million would come off. Okay, I understand.
Thank you. Okay, I missed that. Thank you. The interest rates really low there. Right.
And the other good part I noticed is that, you know, obviously we'd be obligated to take care of the
line up to the meter. But this goes a step further from the meter to the residence. And that's a good
fix. Yes, it is. I hate to not be able to do that, too. Great. OK. That's the presentation part. Yep.
Now we have.
two action items. The first is the resolution, that's the signatory authorization, resolution 26-06.
And I think this is the one that gives Arcadis authorization to make application for us. So this is
the first one. Any questions on that?
Ready for a motion? I move that we approve resolution 2026-06. Second. All right, it's been moved and
seconded. Any other discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, great. We have that one done.
And next then is the resolution 2026-07, the SRF Loan Fund Preliminary Engineering Report acceptance.
Any questions on that? All right. I move that we approve a resolution 2026-07. Second. Moved and seconded.
Any other discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? All right. Motion carries. Both resolutions
were in business. Thank you. Okay. Next on the agenda then is
Let's see, old business. And do we have any old business from the board? Old business from staff. New
business from the board. New business from staff. We didn't have a subcommittee today or any subcommittees
in the past two weeks, so we're good there. Staff reports.
up and give her staff report on her E. coli study of Clear Creek sampling fellow it's a graduate internship
position here in the environmental division at CBU I'm here today to discuss some information and findings
on a E. coli study we are wrapping up on Clear Creek right now
as well as some implications for future like institutional steps that CBU could take. If we could go
to the next slide, please. So just like a really broad level overview before we dive into things, this
is a sampling and analysis project that started in October 2024, looking at E. coli loading into the
Clear Creek Jackson Creek system. It was done with support from a federal work study position, jointly
administered between CBU and IU's O'Neill School.
And so just some context for why we're looking at Clear Creek Jackson Creek specifically, as well as
E. coli loading specifically. The entire system is currently designated by IDEM as impaired on the basis
of elevated E. coli concentrations. And since the MS4 under the umbrella of CBU is the primary regulator
at the municipal level for stormwater pollution in Bloomington,
we felt that we were in kind of a unique position to respond to those impairment designations, try and
analyze the problem at a local level, and then identify some potential next steps to respond to existing
impairment. So just before we get into the project itself, just some brief reminder background on the
Clear Creek Jackson Creek system, which you can see on that map there.
With the watershed that drains to the system marked in black, it's a 25 square mile catchment covering
I think 64% of Bloomington's land area. There's 34 miles of kind of main channel perennial stream, but
that doesn't include all of the stormwater infrastructure that drains to it, as well as a lot of those
smaller tributaries you see, which a lot of them only experience like seasonal or post rainfall flow.
It's a pretty developed basin. The majority of it, if we could go to the next slide, is covered in this
red here, which you can see is various intensities of urban developed land. And then as you get further
south outside of the city's municipal boundary, there's more of a kind of patchy mix of forested and
grassland. But this really dense clustering of urban developed land obviously comes with an increase
in impervious surface cover, which
could be contributing to this problem. So we thought that this would be a useful area to study and determine
more about potential hotspots or things like that that are happening with pollutant loading into the
system. So a little bit of regulatory background. So like I said, we chose to focus specifically on
Clear Creek and Jackson Creek because they have existing impairment designations from IDEM.
So sections 305B and 303D of the Clean Water Act require state environmental agencies to assess, identify,
and report to the EPA impaired surface waters. For the purposes of that section 503B, 303D assessment
item divides the system into those 10 attainment units that you can see there. And in 2015 to 2016,
this watershed was selected for sampling
And the results of that sampling suggest that the entirety of the system has elevated E. coli concentrations
that bring it out of adherence with water quality standards. One unit in there has an impairment designation
for PCBs and fish tissue, and two have impairments for biological integrity. We chose to only focus
on E. coli in this project because we don't necessarily have in-house capacity for fish tissue testing
at the moment.
And IDEM is also currently reworking their methods for the biological integrity metrics. So we thought
that E. coli was sort of an obvious first step to kind of try and respond to that. Yes. Can you just
explain what the biological integrity is? Yeah. So right now they use, it's called the macroinvertebrate
index of biological integrity. So they're looking at basically insects and crustaceans and other really
small animals that are in the creek.
And a lot of those are really sensitive to pollution, whereas a lot of them have pretty high tolerances
for pollution. So if you're trying to look at the integrity of the system as a whole rather than testing
for a specific pollutant, you can kind of get an idea. If you're only seeing pollution-tolerant species,
then it might be impaired or something like that.
And we do some work with that in our Hoosier River Watch program and other related areas, but hasn't
been a major focus of this project as of yet. One thing I do want to touch on with the existing impairment
assessments for the system, which you might be able to see on the map here, those three blue dots are
where IDEM performed their sampling in 2015 and 2016. And then they essentially extrapolated the E. coli
data upstream to designate the entirety of the system as impaired. And so our thinking was if we were
looking to respond to those impairment assessments, there's a clear need for like finer scale localized
data to figure out exactly where in the system we're seeing really elevated concentrations and where
we're maybe not seeing quite as elevated loading.
All that aside, based on the designation of impairment in the system, the Section 305B and 303D of the
Clean Water Act requires state agencies in collaboration with local partners to develop total maximum
daily load reports. So basically these are studies that figure out for specific pollutants how much
of that pollutant can enter a waterway such that the waterway can still meet those
water quality standards at the state level. And so based off of what item found with existing levels
of E. coli concentration in the system, as well as the health standards that are in place, which we'll
get into in a little bit, the Clear Creek Jackson Creek watershed needs a 90 to 98% reduction in the
amount of E. coli entering the system. They followed that up with the 2022 watershed management plan
for the Lower Salt Creek system, which established a 2053 as the year
by which that, as the target year for that load reduction to be achieved. Other things worth noting,
this is the most extreme load reduction target of any sub basin within that entire mapped area, which
is not necessarily entirely surprising just because we have a higher level of development than a lot
of the surrounding landscape. And it also gave some preliminary ideas on potential sources for the sea coli,
and then best management practices that we could use to respond to them. And I'll get into those a little
bit later on in the presentation. But before we dive into the project itself, just a quick kind of primer
on E. coli in the context of water quality. So it's a species of fecal coliform bacteria, which means
that it essentially originates in the gastrointestinal systems of all warm-blooded animals. And so this can make
source characterization particularly challenging relative to other pollutants because pretty much anywhere
where there is waste being deposited from a warm-blooded animal, there's going to be some level of E.
coli contamination. Most strains of E. coli are relatively harmless. There are some that are pathogenic
and can cause some pretty serious infections, but its real value in the water quality world is that
it's a strong indicator for the presence of fecal waste in the system.
And then it can also trend quite closely with the presence of other fecal-related pathogens. And so
getting back into the regulation side of things for a second, I'm going to be referencing these two
standards throughout the discussion on the project itself. These are the standards that IDEM used for
the original impairment classification and the load reduction targets, and they're
under this category of what they call full body contact assessment. So the idea is that they've crafted
these standards to kind of reflect risk of infection if you are fully submerging your body in a waterway.
So it's mainly focused on recreation. For that reason, it's also not listed in the slide here, but they've
established a recreational season for sampling. So everything is between April 1st and October 31st
essentially. And so basically the way these two standards work is they will have
An agency will collect five or more E. coli samples from a given water body or a given site. The average
across all of those, if it is above 125 colony forming units per 100 milliliters, then the water body
will be classified as impaired, even if the mean, or it's a geometric mean, so it isolates some outliers
and stuff like that.
Even if the geometric mean is under 125, if any single sample in a set is above 235, then it'll still
be classified as impaired. And I know those numbers don't mean a whole lot right now, but it'll make
more sense as we move further along. So that brings us to the project itself. So we set out,
like I said, with a couple key objectives. First, we wanted to provide finer scale local data on E.
coli loading than is currently available from IDEM and other sources.
Alongside that, we wanted to identify physical, spatial, or meteorological factors that are regulating
the loading and transport of the pollutant in the system throughout the year or across sites, identify
potential sources for E. coli contamination in Clear Creek and Jackson Creek, and then provide some
sort of guidance for future response by the city or other actors.
And so the methods employed, we used a combination of a rotating set of nine sites, which I'll show
in a second, where we performed weekly sampling at those sites to both get those geometric mean results
that I had mentioned, and then also to understand how E. coli levels were varying over time and across
different weather conditions and flow regimes in the system. And then we augmented that with some ad
hoc sampling where
We had known problem spots or trying to go up tributaries to see is there differences in this part of
the watershed versus another. All field sampling was performed pursuant to IDEM's field technical standard
operating procedures for E. coli. And then once those field samples were obtained, they were delivered
to the wonderful lab folks down at the Dillman plant for enumeration to figure out the concentration
in those samples and then
both in the field and in the lab, we used some pretty robust quality assurance guidelines to make sure
that the data we were getting was actually reflecting what we're seeing in the stream system.
So like I said, this is the combination of a rotating weekly sampling and then kind of one-off or follow-up
ad hoc sampling. So anything you see up here in red,
is a site that was sampled weekly throughout the majority of that recreational season to identify how
these things were changing over time. And then all of the other white dots there are for kind of getting
a closer view into more local dynamics that could be valuable. And I should say, too, I forgot to mention
that's the start. If anyone has any questions throughout, feel free to just jump in. But if we could
get to the next.
So project to date, we have 211 samples from 32 sites, nine of those rotating weekly ones, and then
23 from the ad hoc. And kind of unsurprisingly and consistent with IDEMS findings, we see elevated E.
coli concentration system-wide. Nearly 80% were above that mean standard, whereas a majority, 63%, were
above the single sample standard.
But what is particularly concerning to us is there are quite a few that are not just slightly above
the impairment standard, but pretty significantly above. Most particularly the 14% of samples that maxed
out the undiluted test sensitivity for our standards. I should note this is not necessarily, it is cause
for concern. It's not necessarily like out of, you know, it's not extraordinarily out of the,
realm of possibility for a normal urbanized creek system like this. And then we also saw a lot of inter-site
variability in terms of concentrations as well as intra-site variability across different weather conditions
and stuff like that. And I'll get a little bit more into that as we continue. So this map is a little
bit difficult to parse through at scale. And we have a full report coming on this that provides some
more clarity on that.
But you can see here the main takeaway is just that we have pretty elevated concentrations across much
of the watershed, and at individual sites we're seeing under different flow regimes smaller and then
much greater concentrations of E. coli, including some well, well above the standard. Go to the next
one. And then these next two slides are going to show you
how the E. coli concentrations that we obtained compared to those single and multi-sample standards
that I mentioned. So this is that 79% that were above the mean 125 standard. And I should note here
that there is some overlap with the markers. So there are some sites there where you'll see elevation
on one day and then not elevation on another. And it's not super clear at this scale, but just a caveat
there. And if we continue on, it's the same visualization, but for the 235 single sample standard. So
you can see it's not constant, and it's not across every single site, but it is pretty serious across
the watershed. If we could get one more.
So then kind of honing in on those nine rotating weekly sites specifically, and we have like a full
breakdown and list of those in the full report that's forthcoming, we see pretty substantial variation
across sites. So all of them had mean values that were pretty well above the health standard.
But we see, perhaps unsurprisingly, in like these more forested sites, like on the west side over near
Woolery Mill, we don't see quite the same elevation that we see
up in those two sites clustered in Switchyard Park, which receive a lot of discharge from heavy and
pervious surface cover downtown, and also from some of our older neighborhoods where the infrastructure
has been subject to deterioration for longer. And then across all sites, this drainage channel near
College Mall Road and Buick Cadillac Drive was pretty far and away the most
extreme elevation that we saw across sites. And I'll get a little bit more into potential causes of
that variability as we continue. And then if we look across time at these single sites, I've got them
visualized here with the red bars being the E. coli concentrations and the blue lines being the inches
of rainfall in the past seven days. So trying to get an idea of is this a case where a bunch of waste is being
brought in by surface runoff or are there more kind of like chronic gradual transport of E. coli into
the system. And what these generally indicate to me at least is that we are seeing a lot of episodic
loading after big rainfall events which is kind of consistent with outdoor waste like pet waste or anything
like that being
flushed into the system after a heavy rainfall. But these bars where you see really elevated results
when there hasn't been a really substantial rain event in recent days are particularly concerning because
they suggest that there could be some sort of dry weather source that might be infrastructure related
or something else. If we could continue on one more. And then this is kind of the similar takeaway but
a different visualization.
It's just a scatter plot of past two weeks precipitation in inches and the E. coli counts that we got
from sampling. And so the ones that are of particular concern up here would be those in that kind of
top left quadrant where there hasn't been a ton of precipitation in recent days, but we're still seeing
really heavy transport of E. coli containing contaminants into the stream body. Let me go one more.
And so based on all that,
and this work is still ongoing a little bit, is preliminary insights into potential sources of elevated
E. coli concentrations in Clear Creek and Jackson Creek and potential municipal responses for it. So
this kind of category is just like outdoor waste deposition across livestock, pet and wildlife,
and human. On livestock waste,
Just because we don't have nearly as big of an agricultural footprint as most watersheds, the 2018 TMDL
report assumed that there was no major contribution. There's nothing we've seen in the data since then
that would dispute that. But continued action could just be monitoring of those kind of concentrations
around any known sites where people are doing domestic livestock or poultry operations or things like
that. Yes?
It's pretty ubiquitous Yeah, a big a big source to is is when people will apply Manure for like fertilizer
and stuff like that. So that could be a contributor It's difficult to quantify The challenge I think
is is going from the concentrations that we're seeing towards like Since we don't have like strict counts
of how many
livestock or pets or stuff like that are in the system. We do have a couple avenues where we could try
and parse out how much of it is contribution from human versus pet versus livestock, which I'll get
into a little bit right towards the end. But yeah, it's challenging to, especially when you think about
people reusing manure or other things like that. Moving on to pet and wildlife waste, this is a known
contributor.
especially considering the high populations of like urban deer or raccoons, other sort of urban familiarized
animals, and migratory waterfowl are a known contributor in a lot of areas. This is one that's kind
of outside of institutional control for the most part. The city performs deer coals annually, but it's
really nothing at the scale that would be an effective response to this sort of thing. So continued
outreach and education on like responsible
pet waste removal and stuff like that would be one avenue for continued improvement there. And then
the last one to touch on in this category is human waste. So specifically there's been some scholarship
on the contributions of homeless encampments or things like that where people don't necessarily have
access to indoor plumbing or things like that and might be sheltering in areas that are near streams.
This is a potential contributor and it's another one where it's really difficult to assess that in a
local context. What we do see from other study areas is that it does have some contribution, but it's
often like orders of magnitude less than other sources. But activities here that the city could pursue
would be just continued monitoring specifically towards that dimension of potential loading and then
targeted outreach towards those communities and stuff like that.
So this brings us into some more of like the kind of infrastructural areas of potential contribution
that might be more within the city's purview for response. So the first one here is sanitary sewer overflows.
So a major source of E. coli in a lot of urban settings is combined sewer overflows where they don't
have a separate storm and sanitary sewer system. We obviously have a separate system, so that makes
things a lot easier from a response standpoint.
but we still do during heavy rainfall events or line blockages. We'll occasionally see sanitary sewer
overflows at specific points. So during project duration, there were 19 SSOs across the watershed. Four
were related to blockages and they're marked in white there. And then the remainder were related to
rainfall, extreme rainfall events on two days, April 5th and 6th and June 30th of last year. And so,
Just from a physical standpoint, these obviously do contribute. I mean, it is waste that is directly
entering the environment. And so we expect that this could be a contributor to episodic loading, but
we don't have any evidence yet that it's a major contributor. Although, of course, continued action
is continued assessment, monitoring, and upgrading of our system, which we perform on a routine basis.
If we go one more slide, we can see a little bit of the investigation we did trying to determine whether
SSOs were a significant source.
So based off the timing of sampling at that June 30th event where we saw a lot of SSOs, we had some
good data where these six sites were sampled immediately before and immediately after the rain event.
And so those first three did not have an upstream SSO, whereas the bottom three did. And you can see
here there's no real visible relationship yet that would suggest that that's like
a major driver relative to surface runoff or other sorts of things, but continued investigation in this
area could be useful. Next slide, please. Another sort of infrastructural potential contributor is failing
or poorly maintained septic systems. So we know that there are still septic systems citywide. This map
here is kind of one attempt to map those out at the county level.
septic system records are associated with the individual address. And so getting like one compiled list
of every location was not super feasible. Although I have heard that they're doing some overhauling
on their records right now. So that might be available in the future. So instead we've selected here
for CBU customers who are only receiving drinking water service. So they're not being charged for wastewater.
And our theory was that that could give an approximation since they're having their wastewater handled
by some other system.
We do know that this is not fully accurate and that gets at what I had put there about assessment challenges
but generally we still see this kind of clustering down there near the central stem of Clear Creek.
That's kind of between Winslow and Gordon Pike and we also see some clustering up in the areas up in
the northwest. We haven't seen a
super meaningful relationship between proximity to septic and elevated E. coli readings in the surface
waters, but continued analysis is ongoing in this one. If the city does identify that this is a major
contributor to E. coli impairment in the system, public outreach is one avenue.
There are also models for policies that we see in mostly the nonprofit space with like Friends of Lake
Monroe, for instance, runs a cost sharing program for septic maintenance or things like that. That could
be something to pursue way down the line if we determine that that's a serious issue. And then also
the last thing I wanted to know on this side is you do see some pretty heavy clustering south of town.
And so that gets at something that's kind of in the background of all of this is that
We can do a lot to reduce E. coli loading from within city boundaries, but obviously we're in a watershed
that straddles a lot of jurisdictions, and so there's still limited opportunities outside of our area.
Next slide, please. And then this brings me to the last potential source that we are considering as
a contributor to the E. coli elevations that we're seeing, which is sanitary sewer exfiltration.
So the idea here is during heavy rainfall events, a lot of sanitary systems nationwide that have any
sort of cracks in the pipes or gaps at joints or things like that will have groundwater that enters
the sanitary system. And just based off of the influence that we see at our wastewater plants, we know
that this is kind of a fact of life when it comes to sanitary systems of this scale, but recent scholarship
suggests that during dry weather, there could be significant contributions of E. coli out of the pipes.
So the idea would be when the soil around a pipe is saturated with water, there's nowhere for the wastewater
within the pipe to go outward because the pressure is forcing it back in. Whereas if you see this sort
of drying out of the water table or like the water table goes below the sanitary pipe, then
that pressure differential is reversed so the water, wastewater could come out of the pipe. This is
a really difficult phenomenon to quantify or to pin down and especially in a system of this scale. But
continued monitoring on that front and continued, you know, maintenance and improvement and repair of
our sanitary system is one major avenue for response for the city.
And that kind of brings us to next steps generally. And I've divided this here in terms of like analytical
steps relevant to this project and then institutional opportunities for response at CBU or the city
writ large. So analytical, we have a full report forthcoming that ideally will be available for public
view on our website just so that we can present those findings and have them serve as information for
future response or just public knowledge and things like that.
One thing that the leadership at CBO has been supportive of is there's emerging technologies in what
they call microbial source tracking. So this is what I was talking a little bit about with the livestock
question was you can do characterization of E. coli in samples that you obtain because there's some
genetic markers in E. coli that are specific to human hosts versus cows versus pigs versus, you know,
waterfowl and stuff like that.
And so that would, there are some contractors who do that service in the region. And so that could be
one step to determine, you know, if we look at that and we see that it's mostly from animal contributors,
then we might shift our focus towards public outreach and education and stuff like that. If it's mostly
human, we might need to devote more resources towards assessing the infrastructure in our sanitary or
septic or other systems.
And then institutional opportunities. We have this Clear Creek Corridor renewal project, which is planned
to enhance infiltration and all sorts of improvements to drainage. A lot of co-benefits with this project,
but one of those could be enhanced buffering for E. coli entering the system, continued assessment of
infrastructure generally. And then there's a whole host of recommended best management practices
Um, contained in the 2022 watershed management plan, um, put forward by IDEM, as well as just things
that we know and implement in our regular practice that, uh, could be effective. Um, things like enhancing,
um, stream bank, vegetative cover and stuff like that. Um, and then of course, public outreach and education,
particularly on pet waste or livestock waste or other areas like that. With all that said, that is the
only updates we have right now on this project. Uh, if you go to the next slide, um,
ready for any questions or discussion, and I would welcome thoughts either today or if anyone thinks
of something later, feel free to email me. Wow, thank you. We appreciate that. Jim? It sounds like really
good science. What's your training? So right now, I'm a master's student in environmental policy and
natural resource management. Historically, I've done a lot of water sampling with the
IU has a limnology lab that runs a program for the state where they do multi-parameter testing on 80
lakes across the state every summer. So a lot of my background comes from that. And I, of course, am
not doing this in a vacuum. I've got a lot of support and guidance and all that stuff from some really
talented folks with a lot of specialized knowledge at CB. Sounds good.
You mentioned early on that E. coli in and of itself is not particularly dangerous to humans, but it's
indicative of other things that might be. Is that accurate? There are some, the caveat I would say is
that there are some strains of E. coli that are quite dangerous. When you see food poisoning outbreaks
and stuff like that can lead people to hospitalization or death even in some cases.
The majority of strains of E. coli are relatively harmless and the majority of those that do have like
a pathogenic impact are mostly just kind of like minor gastrointestinal illness. But it is still a public
health concern. And then like I said, yeah, you're correct in that it trends quite closely with the
amount of waste entering a system.
And then also, it can be indicative of other things that can come from waste, like giardia and other
sort of waterborne illnesses. Yeah, so finally, I noticed in the presentation that the concentration
at College Mall Road was pretty high at Jackson Creek. And from there, it flows down through Sycamore
Knolls and Renwick.
when the creek is flowing and the weather is okay, there's lots of kids that are playing in Jackson
Creek and I just wondered is that not recommended? So yeah, this is something that I think discussions
are ongoing on within the organization and I don't necessarily want to say too much. The one thing I
will say is that there is a set of stricter standards for how frequently you have to sample
and things like that for designated recreational swimming spots. So Fairfax Beach over at Lake Monroe,
for example, if they get an E. coli count that's too high, they'll have to close the beach. We don't
have any designated swimming spots in the city. So I don't know if it's something that we have any sort
of authority to recommend or not recommend. But it's also, I think, difficult to strike the balance
between saying that this is a cause for concern
I wouldn't necessarily characterize it as a public health crisis or anything like that. Exactly. Don't
go swimming in the creek and consuming the water, certainly. But a lot of impressive data and information.
It's a bigger sampling and watershed area than I think I thought I was going to be looking at. Evelyn,
do you know what portion of that watershed is on septic you kind of showed?
quite a bit of that, but I mean, is it a decent percentage? I'm talking maybe like 20% or so less. I
was under the impression at least just, and this is kind of speculation just based off of background
knowledge of the city, but the areas where we see that clustering are pretty low intensity residential
development. They're not super dense relative to most of the other city or parts of the city. So,
I couldn't hazard a guess on a percentage, but I don't think it's super significant in the grand scheme
of the population. Yeah, I was just wondering if that does play a role just in my former lifetime of
showing up and investigating septic systems that we're failing. With those though, I do really agree
with source consideration. I think it's a great way to go. And as you said, that can kind of drive maybe
your efforts or next steps if you can subtype it.
find that out. It sounds like we would have to outsource that. I don't think it's terribly expensive
necessarily, right, to do that kind of sampling. I've only seen a few quotes so far, but nothing egregious.
And I think, you know, if we are seeing high levels of human waste too, we could want to be cool to
see if we are seeing a lot of sugar toxin producing E. coli, but that's just out of my own interest.
But perhaps, you know, if we think that those are sources, you know, I think certainly
partnering, it sounds like you've already connected with Monroe County Health Department. Obviously
they have the jurisdiction of on-site wastewater in Monroe County and might be able to work with us
or assist you in helping do dye testing or investigating some of those sources as well. So maybe another
consideration. But yeah, thank you for all the information. Other questions for Evelyn? I was going
to ask about Monroe and then you mentioned like Fairfax.
But would there be other non-beach parts of Lake Monroe that might, if you're testing at Fairfax, can
we extrapolate that that is the same for the whole lake? I am not 100% sure, in all honesty. I believe
that there's a requirement to
publicly post results or, I mean, there's obviously the requirement for the notification of closure,
but I bet I could track that down and email it to you and see if. Okay, thanks. Thank you so much for
all of your work on this, outstanding the time you've put into it during your time here and then the
presentation today. Thank you. Thank you. Very good. Thank you so much. Thank you.
All right, anything else on staff reports? We have two congratulations. First to Josh Fox, Dillman Wastewater
Operator who just obtained his class four license. And then to Hannah Bretz, one of our Monroe water
operators who just received her operator in training certification. That's good news. Thank you.
Do we have any petitions or communications from the public? Anything else from the board? All right.
We will stand adjourned. Thank you very much.