Utilities Committee Approves Erosion And Sediment Control Changes, Additions To 2023 Water Main Replacement Project List

The Utilities Committee met 10/11/2022 and took up three action items, only one of which resulted in any in-depth discussion.

The first two action items were related, the first being a request to approve changes to Municipal Code Chapter 24, Erosion and Sediment Control and the second being a request to approve change to the Erosion and Sediment Control program.

A staff member said that the two items had been separated due to an additional step that the change to the Municipal Code had to go through [which presumably the changes to the program itself did not have to go through.]

These changes were an effort to address new permit requirements. Additionally, last year the city had implemented a new program for private stormwater practices which had added addition workload to staff, so the changes before the committee now would help rebalance things.

The committee members had no questions or comments about either of those first two action items and went on to approve them each 5-0.

They then took up the request to approve the 2023 Add-on Water Main Replacement Project List. This request was in response to excess funds becoming available after bids for a project came in well under budget. Staff was asking to use those funds to replace some water mains with a focus on mains that (a) were undersized or had extensive maintenance and break histories and (b) were in locations where the water mains could be replaced with as little damage as possible to the existing street pavement.

Alderperson Chad Doran (District 15) mentioned the Water Main Resolution he had introduced earlier this year with which he had wanted to address some of the water main issues in the city. At the time that resolution was discussed and voted on, the city had around four miles of 4” water mains remaining. The current request before only included two 4” main projects. He wondered if the 8” mains staff wanted to work on were more problematic areas than some of the city’s older mains.

A staff member explained the process they had used to develop the list of projects. One of the targets was to identify and address as many 4” and 6” mains as they could, but another target was some of the larger mains that were becoming problematic and costing the city a lot of money through repairs and water loss.

They tried to focus on 4” mains in areas where they knew water pressure could be addressed while leaving them in areas that weren’t necessarily problematic or causing a lot of complaints for low water flow. They would address those remaining ones eventually, but they wanted to also attend to areas which have had a lot of breaks and have cost the city a lot of money in that respect.

Additionally, they tried to focus on project where they could stick to the terrace areas so they would not have to worry about other utilities such as gas and the TDS fiber lines. There would, however, be areas where concrete restoration would be required such as through intersections and driveway aprons. Rather than doing temporary patches and coming back the next year to do permanent repaving, they intended to adjust the backfill requirements to make sure that settling was addressed up front so that they could repave these areas permanently in the first year.

Alderperson Doran asked if more funding became available could they potentially address more projects?

The staff member said that their goal was to get the project bid out quickly. They were currently doing preliminary surveys and street design so that they could get the bid out as soon as possible this year in an attempt to get out ahead of other communities also requesting bids for their projects. History had shown that the longer they waited to request bids, the fewer contractors were available and the higher the prices became.

If more funding became available, they would try to accommodate that.

Alderperson Doran asked if there were additional streets that had been identified which hadn’t made the final cut for this list.

The staff member confirmed that was the case. They had a lengthy laundry list which they tried to maximize with the projects they had ultimately brought before the committee. He mentioned that if the bids came in higher than they were expecting they would possibly have to eliminate one of the streets from the project list.

Alderperson Brad Firkus (District 3) noted that four of the projects were in District 3 in the neighborhoods north of Newberry Street. That area had had a lot of problems with water main breaks in the last couple years, some which were quite severe and caused thousands of dollars of damage to homes. A lot of people in his district were definitely going to be happy to see this work being done.

There was no further discussion and the committee voted 5-0 to approve the project list.

View full meeting details and audio here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=997397&GUID=6AB4DBB7-BBAE-4325-A44A-2B2E48ADEA6F