Water Infrastructure Improvements
(00:32:54)
Discussion on success of lead service line replacements and water main lining projects led by chief engineer Anna Crandle.
A lot of success with live service honor replacements. There's a lot of success. That, that we can attribute directly. The support that we get from the city commission, the city manager's office. And just a lot of hard work and dedication by staff, I'm gonna name Anna Crandle our chief engineer in water. As, as kind of the, the guiding light and leader of that program. That's the program that Anna Ron she's been in charge of that her whole time as an engineer here with the city. We've got when we started this program. Total lead service line replaced here in September. So we're halfway through that goal. Lead service lines either already under contract or funded. So those contracts, that's already approved by the city commission. That work starts here in November. That order is actually starting to happen. Those dollars, that still has to get bid out. That still has to come back to the city commission for award, but the funding is already there. Something unique that we're gonna do in Norwood starting this year is water main lining. You heard me talk earlier about sewer main lining. But we can, that same technology is available to us for water main. We did a project two years ago in Millwood that lined a bunch of water main and. It was a project. So there's, you know, impact from that. We actually have a temporary water main that's above ground that runs in the turb lawn. Or along the, the edge of the curb. And then there's like literal hoses that come out of that, that come into where your hose bed does your house. So they actually have little signs that say, do not turn off ho do not turn off, do not remove hose. That's how we put supply the house. And then what we do. We excavate holes and we go in and we cut open the water main. Valve ital. So it's not under pressure anymore. Cause we're up on a temporary line set from hydrants. And then a pipe within a pipe. And it's after certified, it's almost like a, a fiberglass pipe then goes inside that pipe. A robot goes into the main and then cuts out. The services where you have a service. And then we put it all back together. And then you get, it's like brand new water main. But it's, doesn't involve. Everything you see on the west edge in whites road and all that kind of stuff. So it's less impactful. It's more affordable and there's areas. We can't do it everywhere. The one of the challenges is we've gotta be in an area that does not have lead. You know, so it's something where we're not gonna change up the services and we can do all the work from inside the pipe. The pipe diameter has to be the pipe diameter. That's gonna continue to work for us. So if we're in a situation where we need to upsize the pipe, we're undersized diameter. We can't do it. So, you know, we really like to, to do it in areas that have eight inch main. And the main that was installed. After, you know, that switch over the copper. So, you and so this is a huge area, huge area of know what's gonna get this work done. Improvements are continuing to happen at the treatment plan for optimized frozen control. We've got system reliability improvements, kind of all throughout, you know, that's, that's things like generators. Things that just making stations more reliable so that when they run, they can run in all other conditions. And that this is redundancy. For those things as well. One of the things that one of the big, big, big projects that's really driving. In four project areas. I talked about the letter already. Two other areas are PFA S water main extension. Out in the township and then another project is. And then build a new station with iron removal, manganese removal, and PFAS removal. For that work. And so they're. Kalamazoo water meets all current standards for, for P F a S. PFAS we're well below Michigan M MCL. MCL, but Michigan is continuing to, to reduce T FFAs levels in response to. Federal changes that have happened. The, the feds have lowered those limits as well. So we've got a few stations that. Would be that could be potentially over. New federal regulations when those were to come out. So we know that we're gonna have to have PFOS treatment. On on some stations to continue. To use those reliable to, to reliably use those stations into the future so that project's gonna support. That work and new stations, some interesting. Facts about station five, station five is our oldest. Continuously operated station. That station has been in service since so it is Dover new one. And in that time, you know, we've learned a lot about. Station design, reliability, you know, treatment. And so this new station's gonna be built. You know, just for this years into the future.
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