Sanitary Sewer Board - Regular Meeting

Good morning, everyone.

Welcome to the regular meeting of the City of Charlestown Sanitary Zoo Board. Today is July 16th, 2026, and it is 9 a.m. This meeting is being live streamed by city staff. We'll begin our meeting with the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. that all board members are present, as well as Clerk-Treasurer Donna Coomer, and we have our attorney with us, Brad Vincent. Sorry, Brad. We almost said Beau, but I don't want to do that to you. We have an agenda that's been provided. Entertain a motion to approve.

I'll make a motion.

Motion made by Michael Grayson. Second. Second by Nathan Grimes. Any edits to the agenda? Hearing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That's unanimous. We have our standing business, which includes the approval of our meeting minutes from the regular meeting on July 2nd and the executive session on July 2nd. I will note that there is one error in the July 2nd executive session minutes to be corrected, and that is that Bo Zeller was the attorney present at that meeting instead of Brad. Then we have our current claims and our payroll allowance docket from June 28th to July 11th. With that edit made, I would entertain a motion to approve. I have a motion to approve. Motion by Michael Grayson. Second. Second by Nathan Grimes. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? I'll let you in. Does anyone have a public comment? None. No old business. We'll move straight into new business. First up, we have our operators report, Tim Crawford.

Good morning. Good morning. Typically on the second meeting of the month, I'll have before you the monthly reports. circumstances. That report has been done. I did not get it in to Randy but for the deadline to get it to you. The plant was run totally in compliance during the month of June. I will have that paperwork supported to you and Donna at the next board meeting. Pardon me. So but other than that there has been a lot of activity in the utility primarily with the staffing. months ago I would say has been filled with the new gentleman that started this Monday so things are going well with that we have with this board's approval and recommendation and approval by the City Council starting Monday we will have an administrative assistant we're very very fortunate to be able to have Don might not look like this but I'm not talking to you laughter We're getting one of her staff members to come over and work with us, and we're very excited about it. So we've gained two and a half people. The one I haven't talked about is the half person yet. And trust me, this young lady is not a half person. She came in on our summer work program, and she has done a phenomenal job. We have extended her a part-time position. The construction continues at the plant, primarily in the base two. We're working on, we're continuing to work on some issues that we're having. With that being said, unless you have any questions to the information I've presented to you at this point, I have asked Mr. Jim Haggerty to attend with us today. He has a couple of items. and he'll he'll explain but understand the presentation and change order are two separate items that we'll be talking about today so uh i'll entertain any questions you have on stuff that i've given you if no questions i'll ask mr hagley to come up uh no questions just um just a comment that we've done this summer works program now for i think three years and um it's it's been

been really great and i know sometimes staff can get a little bit frustrated with having to bring part-time people in it's something we don't pay for the southern indiana works program pays for the summer works program it gives young people an opportunity to explore career paths and we've met some really outstanding young people through that and so thank you to your staff for taking that young lady on through that program and training her because it sounds like she's really been an asset and it's gone there's been a reciprocity there she's learned a lot from you guys and we're benefiting from that for the plant and as hard as it is to find people that are interested in wastewater as a career it's nice to know there are young people that are still just nerdy enough like us to want to to be involved in that so thank you for you and your staff you're very welcome it's been our pleasure it truly has so we can welcome jim up to the presentation

Your presentations are on your tablets. I believe that everybody should see them. Good morning. Glad to know that I'm nerdy.

Well, I mean, I'm putting myself in that basket. I was out there exploring the plan again yesterday.

I love the interns we have with you. It gives you a great opportunity to see the interns and get them interested in our Field of interest. Thank you. My name is Jim Haggerty. I'm with Prime AE Engineering, formerly JTL. I've got two items to discuss with you today. One is the additional sludge disposal costs that we're incurring at the plant. That is not included in the change order six that we're presenting to you. It's kind of an informational for future reference of why this will come to you at some point. And then I have kind of a summary of the past change orders as well as change order six to present to you today for consideration. So I will start with the sludge. You have a small presentation in your package. So the original contract scope of services that we developed with the contractor was the city's responsibility. We had two sludge storage tanks. The city was responsible for emptying those sludge storage tanks. We provided some piping arrangement to allow them to discharge that to the Pace's responsibility, the contractor, was to dispose of two feet of sludge in your bi-lac or your aeration basin. So that's how we prepared the contractor to bid this go to work. When we got to the point of looking at the sludge storage tanks, sludge which was the city's responsibility there was a lot of debris we didn't have good screens at the plant there was a lot of debris rags applicators trash and that type of stuff and we were concerned with two things one was pumping it into the new dewatering equipment that equipment is you know the presses are four hundred thousand dollars the pumps are half are fifty to seventy thousand dollars So we were, with all the debris, we were very conscious of the issue of possibly damaging equipment we just installed. As well, there was a time issue with that. Right now, I think Pace is in two plus months of trying to dewater all this sludge. And the other concern, and Tim, you'd correct me, was the time. If the city did it, you all have additional responsibilities. You had to go out. If there was a sewer break, they would have had to leave. And we were concerned with delaying the contractor. So the decision was to pump all the sludge from the storage tanks. And I guess I should have had a diagram of it because I don't know how familiar you all with the treatment plant. They were the old... clear jester tanks that we destroyed. That's where the sludge tank. So we ended up pumping it in into the aeration basin and put it on Pace's responsibility to look at processing it. There's a couple of pictures, well, next down here on the disposal options. So we looked at several disposal options. Obviously one was with the city to do it. I think the cost of disposal would have been in the $30,000 rate. 30, 40. 30, 40,000. Disposal cost. Just disposal cost. But we were also looking at the time for staffing to do it. We possibly would have needed other equipment besides the equipment they had. Typically pump rentals about $20,000 a month. Plus the time issue was out there. So we looked at three other options. Option one was the geobags. That's what Tim has been using for many years now to dewater sludge out of their base. They're just basically big bags. We pump the sludge in. They're a mess material. They let the water go out, but they keep the sludge in the bags and deep in water. Pace looked at portable presses, too, to come in and use that. That cost was about three-quarters of a million dollars estimated cost. And then we looked at liquid hauling, and that cost was about a million dollars. So we ended up deciding to go with the geobags. And then a couple of pictures after that. I'll show you these here very quickly. those are the tanks with the geobags in it you basically put them in a dumpster you fill them you let them do water and then they're hauled off this picture here is of all the sludge that was in the basin in there and you really can't you can see some of the debris in these bases but these this thing was full of debris that's not organic matter Then the final picture here kind of shows you they had to bring in a crane in there to mix the basin continuously. You see they had one, two, three, four, five, six geobags in there. That's how many they would fill at a time. And they've been working on it about two and a half months now to try to get the sludge out. And we're asking for an additional time extension, mainly related to the time it's taken them to get the sludge out because they can't, until they got the sludge out, they can't finish work on the phase two part of the project. If I'm going too fast, let me know if you have any questions on that. And I feel that they were very diligent in their efforts to do this work, that Pace has been a good partner with us throughout this job, been looking at keeping costs down. Initially, we thought the cost would be $70,000 to $100,000 maximum, but the amount of sludge in these basins and the concentration was a lot greater than we anticipated. We had some experts come in. estimate on it. Blue River technology, they provided the bags. They came and gave us an estimate on the number of bags and it actually has taken us twice as many bags as we thought originally. And they have been dewatered in well. They're not sloppy with the sludge that they've sent out. They've had good solids concentration. So we've been watching it and we feel PACE has performed very well. So right now what we're looking at is a potential change order down, last change order down the road once they finish the work of about $175,000, the city cost. And they're looking at about $350,000 in total cost. And we've calculated the amount of sludge and the city sludge is about 50% of the total sludge. but half the sludge. So we looked at it. Pace is very agreeable with that split. So this is kind of letting you all know what's coming down in the future and why.

So we are anticipating this $175,000 portion of the city will be a future change order. Yes. Question, are we going to, is it? Scheduled to replace the liner of that I like as a retention basin once all this sludge is out Yes, it was probably damaged in the process It's actually said pace has been very diligent about it.

They haven't Damaged lighter we believe at this point we got one other person to come in and look at it But we believe that will be a credit to the city that we don't need to replace it.

We don't need to replace

Right, that's correct. Yeah, I think we're all in agreement that Liner is in good enough shape to do that. So Pace is going to, they have to do some welding. They have some cuts they have to make into it. They're going to weld it. They're going to give me the total bid package that they did at the beginning of the job and any remaining budget they're going to credit back to us.

When it's empty, I would like very much to have that documented formally that it was inspected by the engineering team and PACE and the contractor and wastewater staff and that it doesn't at that time need to be replaced. I would like to have that on record just for part of the order and everything else that we have going on. everything we've seen and i'll document it the liner looks in very good shape honestly with the status of the plants away whether i'm not surprised there was you know um significantly more driving debris in both the clear digesters and the violets yeah pace actually had to bring in what we call a chopper they just

many rags, everything was clogging up so they had to bring in a chopper pump which is basically a pump with a chopper blade on it to grind this all up to get it even into the bags.

I'm not terribly surprised about that. Do you guys have any questions on the sludge disposal presentation? Very thorough question.

Next, I'll talk about change order six. First, I would like to talk a little bit Tim's handing out a summary of all the past change orders that you all have approved, we've recommended and you all have approved. So I've kind of outlined where the cost of the So change order one, that was just a change order for updated Davis vacant wage rates. There was no cost related to that. That was just, we didn't have the right amendment, but the costs were the same in that. Change order two, we bid this job prior to getting the final comments from IDEM, the Indiana Department of Environmental Management. We had a few minor changes that had to be done to a couple of pipes And that cost was $7,361.95 that you all approved.

Excuse me.

Change order three, this one was related to two items. One was a diffuser manufacturer change based on my recommendation to the board. And then cascade aeration system expansion. We felt that it was important to go ahead and build a second the diffuser manufacturer won't go into specifics. I am so glad we recommended and you all did that. I have another project down in Florida where I'm actually, after three months, having to take all the aeration basins out of service to redo the diffusers. So I think this is providing you all, will provide you all real value by going with the different diffuser that we recommended. Change order four. We purchased for you all the Knox boxes for emergency access to the plant and the power line relocation. That power line relocation had two purposes. One was for the expansion of the road. for that. And then we had some electrical field order changes. Always in these types of jobs, when we get shop drawings in, there always are new updates and changes, especially on electrical areas. So we had to do some of that. The wet weather pump station, we had to reconfigure that design because the pumps that we had bid weren't going to work properly. So we looked at that and changed that. Indiana American Water wanted some different changes to how we were connecting to their water system to the new plant, as well as paving concrete changes. That was actually a credit to the city. But those costs were $202,115.13. So those were design coordination changes that were done during construction. Change over five for $447,237.74. Those related $313,867 of that was due to River Ridge Development Authority. They wanted to bring some new pipelines in. They had a new pump station. So we had to reconfigure two 16 inch pipes plus Two 16-inch hives. They're going to 18, they're 18. They're 18, yeah, going to 18 inches. And we had to modify our influent box where everything comes into with new valves and stuff. So that was related to a request by River Ridge for new lines coming into the plant. We had the furniture package for $58,850.10. And then the blower 2 wrapping, that was $90,000. that was more part of that was to replace the windows that were bad but we wanted to the lower building we had kept it as a block building this is a separate building that was existing everybody wanted it to look the same as the other buildings so we issued that part of it was some things that we needed to do to the then that one we actually had some design changes as well as credits so that ended up at fifteen thousand five hundred fifty four dollars and forty nine cents of credits back but there were some there were some ads and some credits in that change order five so that's kind of where we are with the change orders today we're presenting to you change order number six where you're modifications to the feed line to the dewatering building. We, after talking with Tim, there's a real long line from the storage tanks down to the dewatering building. We wanted to put flushing connections on that line because when they don't We made some changes to the Gorman RAS pumps to make them work better. With the head conditions that we had, that was like 9,000, let's see, that was $9,000, $9,347.75. On heat tracing in the headworks and at the clarifiers, we did not have the electrical portion of the heat tracing Effluent samplers were relocated from the UV disinfection structure to the cascade. We had the effluent samplers in the UV disinfection structure, but because of the depth of it and stuff, it wasn't a very functional option, so we ended up moving it to the cascade. Then again, as typically, there were multiple electrical field changes we had to make to accommodate shop drawing changes as we get it in. And those things are just, that's part of what happens. Electrical system codes, all those things change all the time, and we had to update. And those electrical field changes were at $40,362.11. And then the biggest one is the 138-day time extension. That's a no-cost time extension from Pace, and that's really related to the sludge. Until they got the sludge out of the basin, they can't finish the phase two work because they got to do some big digging around the biolac basins, the aerated lagoons. So that's their request is for 138 days. I talked to Pace, Tim, I talked to Pace, they're pretty confident that's the last extension they'll need on this project and again it was all related to the sludge here so right now we're looking at a substantial completion that didn't get changed may 16th i have to correct that that should have got that didn't get changed but october the final completion is a october 31st 2026 is what they're projecting at this point time to be out and unless there's some issues with excavation i don't see why all the equipment's on site and ready to go the electrical is there so we should be ready to finish this project out in a short time frame some questions yep oh please um the doctor's response line makes sense

Keep it clean. The pump modifications, I understand. Headwork heat tracing, I get that. And even the effluent, I was out there yesterday, even the effluent pump sample, the relocation to the cascade makes perfect sense. It's much easier to access, probably safer even. The electrical stuff though, I have some questions on the electrical stuff. understand the orders issued to address the equipment control changes we change equipment if there's a change in electrical work I understand that especially with the decision to relocate the sample pump and then the layout what I don't understand is the

conduits for power I mean the heat trace I understand some of this I don't understand because I don't know I feel like it should have been accounted for but then I heard you say something about maybe a code had changed a lot of ways so if you could address that what happens with electrical so we got a lot of major equipment here what the electrical engineer does is we get chopped we get proposals from the con from the equipment suppliers of the contract equipment suppliers during design they develop their systems based on those submittals to us during design. Once we get into shop drawings, and I don't know if you all, the difference between When we design something, we reach out to the manufacturers that we're looking at using for pieces of equipment. And we get information on how the electrical system is, how the circuits are running, all that type of stuff. And we design about around one system. But when you bid it, you have multiple systems that are allowed to bid. If somebody else bids, And also, these people are always changing electrical designs in their system because of codes, safety, different types of relays happen. There's just so many electrical design requirements, construction requirements are changing almost, I would say, almost monthly. on it so when we get shop drawings in from the contractors on actually how they're building their panels, how do we need to wire it, there's always changes that have to be addressed because of the difference of what we did during design. As you gotta remember, design was started almost three years ago and now we're into bidding and actually construct and there's always changes and most of these are related to i can get you more specifics on those i'll be glad to do that just curious because there's a heftier of the yeah increases through here so i'd like to make sure yeah i think over over to yeah what weather pump station i would say we're about a hundred thousand to a hundred and ten thousand dollars total of electrical in the heat tracing, but we're about $100,000 to $120,000 worth of field orders on electrical. And in my experience on a project to this size, that is well within the norms for our projects.

And then I have another question kind of on unrelated to this, but also looking forward to anticipating any potential other increases outside of the 175 that you talked about from the sludge removal. When I was out there yesterday in the building where the hydropneumatic tank is, one of the pumps was out and I asked Tim about it because it was sitting outside and he said there was a manufacturer flaw with it that was causing the bearings to go bad or something. And one of the recommendations have been potentially to downsize that pump. And if that cost comes to us, so my question to you is, if it's a faulty piece of equipment, if the bearings are going bad, would we not have a warranty on that? Would we not want to get the company that provided it to replace that at cost rather than us having to downsize and then incur additional costs?

There's a couple elements to that. One is the bearing cost. So the manufacturer is telling outside of preferred operational range. So that's one thing that we're still in this discussion on that. When we designed the plant, we looked at the plant water system needs for a 4MGD facility. Obviously, we're a 4MGD facility, but we're not running at 4MGD. So what I'm thinking, and we're still, we're not complete with this, So we're talking with PennAir, which is the supplier, about bringing in a smaller pump so that we can more match the existing flows today. Like right now, you're only running one screen, one belt filter press. You don't need both screens. Those demands are 60 GPM. So we're looking at the potential of putting a smaller pump in to better match today's flows and then having the larger pump for the larger flows.

So you would keep the larger pump in place and install a smaller, but you wouldn't replace it with a smaller pump?

Smaller. And the other pump is to look at getting it repaired and then put that in as a spare.

Okay.

So for the future, so we're not there yet, but it is something we're looking at. We've been talking with Penn Air, which is the pump supplier for the past six weeks trying to figure out and we're still waiting on a proposal from them. So when I get to that, we'll get with you on that. We're also having troubles with the The Kohler blowers, no, the Atlascock coat blowers. So we're still tracking that down. That's all under warranty. So we're working with the contractor. Pace has always been pretty reliable. Also, we have some control issues with the UV that's coming in. So those are the three major issues we have Today I believe with the phase one construction that we're still tracking down and coming up with solutions and getting thing as well as I The emergency power, PACE is electrical, missed all the search suppression devices throughout the entire plan. They are gonna be starting to be installed. They are in. They are in? They are in. Okay, that's good. Because every time you would go off on an emergency generator, Tim would have to come out and restart equipment because he wasn't. Okay, that's good. Yeah, so.

So, where our original contingency was four million,

Well, it's about 4.5, 4.9 million. depending on some of that cost I think was for repayment of past bonds so I'm quite not sure but it's somewhere around the four million dollar was a contingency amount so with this change order and then even the future anticipated with this flood removal we're still looking at having about 2.1 and some change remaining in that contingency if my numbers on the total contingency that are correct It's a little confusing, I think. Now that you know that, it's a little confusing.

And the percentage of this, though, is 4.12% of the overall construction costs. Right, yes. Everything for a change order six.

Yes, for a change order six. And again, like around 3.25% of that has been for CCTV trucks. Right. Things we needed. Yeah, things that you all needed, which I'm glad we were able to get all that equipment.

Any other questions for...

Jim? Thank you, Jim. Thank you all.

Tim, you heard all this.

Yes. Yeah, just a couple of quick comments. Going back to the sludge cost increase, I concur with everything that Jim has said. Obviously, going through a learning period, if we had it to do over again, hindsight's easy. We might do something a little different, but based on the options that Jim presented, we all worked together on, we chose the best option. It just comes with a cost.

When you're dealing with something of this magnitude and as old as it was, that's why we have contingencies in place. Right. Exactly. Yes, ma'am. It's not like it's over what we anticipated in the sense of we have this built in. Right. Okay. Great. All right. If there are no other questions, I'll entertain a motion to approve change order number six as it was presented. That includes the extension of time. Yeah.

And we're going to, before you sign it, excuse me, I'm sorry, Mayor. I'm going to have to finish the substantial completion date. It's May 16, 2026. So I need to update that before you sign it.

Okay. Okay. So with that amendment to the actual paperwork as well. Okay.

Make a motion to approve as presented with the amendment.

Nathan Brown makes the motion.

Michael Grayson seconds. Any other questions? Hearing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. That is unanimous. Let's make sure there's not another extension needed, though. I'm ready to have this done.

Me too.

Okay, with that said, I think that's everything, unless Brad has anything for us, or Donna has anything additional. All right, just need a motion to adjourn.

I'll make a motion to adjourn.

Michael Grayson makes a motion. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed?