The Utilities Committee met 12/13/2022. The meeting was only 14 minutes long and none of the items were contentious. All action items were approved unanimously without any questions. The information items, however, resulted in more discussion, particularly the joint chemical consortium quotation awards item because it was yet one more example of the city facing extremely high prices due
I’ve prepared a full transcript of the meeting.
The wastewater treatment plant utilizes a number of treatment chemicals. In an effort to get more competitive quotes, Appleton, Neenah, and Menasha have sought quotes jointly as a consortium. Appleton had expected we would have to pay $200,000 more in 2023 than in 2022 and had budgeted a 12% increase. Unfortunately, the overall cost of the chemicals they need to use increased by 18% overall. Beyond that, the cost of some of the chemicals they use the most (calcium oxide, ferric chloride, and potassium permanganate) increased by 30%. The actual increase in cost to the city ended up being $400,000 rather than the $200,000 they had been expecting and had budgeted for.
Per Director of Utilities Christ Shaw, “there is no working around not adding chemicals to the process.”
They have been looking at ways to cover the increased cost in chemicals. He told the committee that they have some tank maintenance with a fairly large dollar cost that they were hoping to defer for a year or two, so that they could stay within their budget. Unfortunately, the tank maintenance is something that is required by the state. The state may allow them to postpone it for a year or two, but because the city would be deferring the maintenance they might end up having to disinfect the tank and extra time which would cost between $5,000-$10,000. That would be an extra cost that they wouldn’t incur if they were able to do the maintenance now as they had initially planned.
Director Shaw was hopeful that prices would come down in time, but he couldn’t predict when that would happen.
Alderperson Brad Firkus (District 3) wanted to clarify that, although the prices were high, there was not a shortage in the chemicals and the city was able to secure what it needed. Director Shaw said that the city was able to secure the chemicals. The last year, however, had been unusual in terms of costs. The consortium locks in costs for the year, but in spite of having locked in costs, some companies still walked away from contracts because they could not afford to provide the chemicals at the price they had locked into.
He said that for 80% of the chemicals, the price had stayed at what it had been locked in, but for 20% they had not.
The committee moved on to the Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene Covid Report. Per the report, Covid rates in the wastewater were up, even if testing rates were down. That was probably due to people with Covid not going to get tested.
Director Shaw reported that the Wisconsin State Lab of Hygiene was going to start paying Appleton for the work Appleton staff members were doing. Although Appleton was not spending anything on materials or consumables, it did cost them a little bit of staff time to produce the samples and send them to the lab for processing.
Finally, the committee reviewed the Water Main Break Report for October 2022. Year to date, Appleton was quite close to where they were in 2021, and October numbers were actually lower this year than last year. A staff member told the committee that most of the broken pipes were cast-iron from around the 1960s which was not surprising. “That’s just been a problematic vintage of pipe that we’ve been dealing with for many years.”
Alderperson Alex Schultz (District 9) noted that the estimated durations of the leaks were relatively low with the exception of the one that lasted for 290 days; however, he thought that in that case catching a crack that was only 1/32 of an inch was probably pretty challenging. He was glad to see how low the estimated duration of the leaks were as compared to some of the numbers the committee had seen in the past.
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=997401&GUID=3EC2E629-E137-4466-B39A-8AB1794D6C72
Be the first to reply