Transportation Board - workshop

Good evening. I call to order this 03/04/2026 work session of the Board of Public Utilities. Thank you all for being here this evening. We do appreciate it. Before we go to public comment, I'd like to acknowledge and welcome our new permanent Deputy Utility Manager for Electric Distribution, Dennis Ansley. Congratulations, Dennis. We look forward to continuing to work with you for quite a while. Okay. We will move next to public comment. Is there any public comment in chambers this evening?

I don't see any. Cathy, do you have any online?

Thank you, Chair Gibson. For members of the public who are joining us tonight on Zoom, when Chair Gibson calls for public comment, please use the the raise hand function. If you're participating by phone, you can press 9 to raise your hand. Does anyone wish to make public comment at this time? Chair Gibson, there's no public comment.

Thank you, Kathy. All right. Approval of the agenda. Are there any proposed changes to the agenda? If not, is there a motion to approve it?

I move that we approve tonight's agenda as presented.

I second.

Okay. Moved and seconded. Do we approve the agenda? All in favor signify by the hand. All opposed? Motion carries five to zero. Agenda is approved. That moves us to the update from NME NMED on the chromium plume at Los Alamos. And it's listed as five by the way, is Philo online? Is he actually

Yes.

Chair Gibson.

Okay.

Can you hear me?

Yes. We can. Good. Are you gonna make the present the introduction here, or shall we Sure. Okay.

We have a this evening, we have Caitlin Martinez and Michael Peterson with NMED that are going to make a presentation regarding the chromium plume, simmer weld number three, and maybe potential next steps. And they're standing at I can see at the dais there, so we'll turn it over to them. Thank you, chair.

Okay. Thank you, Philo, and welcome. We appreciate you being here to discuss a topic that we're somewhat familiar with, but it keeps advancing and we always want to know the latest.

I know you have a presentation tonight. Would you prefer to

go all the way through the presentation before anyone asks any questions? Or would you prefer questions as we go?

Whatever is easiest for you guys. Question as we go is fine. Okay. So you don't forget anything as you go through it.

All right. Thank you. The floor is yours.

Yeah. Good evening. Thanks for having us tonight. I'm Mike Peterson. I'm a water resource professional with the Hazardous Waste Bureau. It's Caitlin Martinez. She's a water resource professional with the Groundwater Quality Bureau. And we're gonna be presenting on the update on the on the chromium plume and how it might somewhat more closely relate to board of utilities.

We gotta point it that way. Band.

Oh, oh, yeah. That that that way.

So, yeah, we're gonna go over just the our our usual updates. There's a new well that people might be aware of and some of the results from monitoring well installed on the Pueblo De San Ol Defonso property. We'll go over some screening level results and how we are how we the well construction was driven by that. Caitlin's gonna discuss adaptive site management and how it applies through Llano. We're gonna start by looking at the plume before the I'm begin.

I think it's just kind of a point that that we miss from time to time. This was this graph was or the sorry. This figure was made in, I think, 2015 before any of the infrastructure and interim measure infrastructure wells were installed or or created. We do have this there's not much of a laser pointer there. We do see that underneath our 50 in that kind of blue the blue plume area that it's it's that the contamination at our 50 was above 50 the our standard of 50 parts per billion.

And that line shows that we have a pretty, that the plume does approach the San Ildefonso boundary at that point before interim measures were installed. After interim measures were installed and ran, This is what we've seen. I know I'm glancing over a lot of the introductory information. Speaking with Philo, he asked us to basically skip that because the board's well aware of how Chromium came to be in the groundwater here. If there's any questions on that, please let me know.

But in this, we have a group of four extraction wells in the centroid of the plume and then one out to the North the Northeast. And then there are five injection wells located along what was expected to be just outside the boundary of the plume when they were installed. However, the con concentrations that came back ranged from 60 to a 100 parts per billion in the wells that are now used as injection wells. So so these are new monitoring wells that we are looking at at installing. And, also, we've got this one on the very south, Cimmer 3, that was drilled, I believe it be the drilling began in September August or September, I'm sorry, of of twenty twenty five.

We ended up doing a series of zonal sampling, which I will explain in future slides here, to help us understand with the with screening level data what kind of concentrations we might expect to see at different discrete intervals throughout the aquifer. The next well we will drill after this or the DOE we'll have drilled after this is the R 80 well downstream of R 45, which was one of the wells that caused that indicated what is the word?

Concerning trends.

Okay. Concerning trends in previous years where we saw an an increase a rapid increase of chromium concentration in the lower screen. We're also looking at R 73. We're redrilling that well, which had to be plugged and abandoned during the drilling process or well construction process. R 79 is the pad you guys might see just across shooting range on the truck route.

We haven't, obviously, know well there yet, but in the future, we do expect to see one there. And then R 77 will will be a deeper well in the centroid of the plume. So the zonal sampling process, we look at discrete discrete data and discrete intervals. So you will actually have a drive casing. In the first well, it's gonna extend all the way down.

They're gonna hang the the temporary well casing and then build engineered sands around it with a filter pack and transition sand to really try to focus the pumping on those 10 feet or so of the screen interval. So there's a method to collect the screening level data. Like I said, it's we're yeah. Screening level, we're not saying this is regulatory, but this does give us indications of what chromium con concentrations might be or where we might find more chromium versus less. So the temporary pump is installed, and then we purged roughly 3,000 gallons on average for a series of of five zonal samples.

And it did really help us define give us some very good information for how to con how to construct have the well constructed. So after the first well was built and sampled, they would pull the well casing back out. The the sands would kinda fall back in, and they would install reinstall the casing and rebuild the sands around the well to to make us another discrete interval higher up in the section. We didn't use bentonite or anything like that because we didn't wanna introduce bentonite to to the formation where we might potentially have a well screen. So we used very basically, the the finest sand for for the transition sands were the finest sand that we could use that would actually settle in the water column.

And then the filter pack was, I think, a eight sixteen standard fairly coarse sand. So there was a series of five wells, five zonal sampling locations built within this well. And these are the results the screening level that results that we that NMAD interpreted from those zones. We found a the highest concentrations in the lower two zones, ten ten forty to ten fifty and ten twenty to ten thirty roughly. And as we said earlier, the the state's action level for chromium is 50 parts per billion, and these lower two, potentially lower three zones indicate that we have that there's potential for chromium contamination.

Can I ask you can I ask you a question on that?

Sure.

I remember a lot of discussion in the past about modeling and different modeling approaches. What did your modeling lead you to think might be the case? And do you think, on the basis of that, does it continue to increase as you get lower? Or what's your

view? Well, NME D itself, we don't generate the groundwater models. But we have received reports and looked through the groundwater model that DOE had done using the FEHM model. And we had, you know, prior to all of this data, we had some issues, you know, with that model that we talked about and went through the independent technical review whole thing to kind of satisfy. And so we're still working on getting to a place of mutual acceptance on that groundwater model.

But what we will say is this is a surprise to us and what modeling things that we were given as a status didn't quite align that contamination was off-site in that manner. And the assertations we've had is that hydraulic control has been successful in the South Region to maintain the plume boundary on the facility property. So it's a tough question because the modeling's one of those. It's a DOE specific. And I can point you to documents where they cite those model results and use them, have provided those to the state to give you a direct answer on what iterations of the model and what results those give.

But the difficulty in it is they run-in different operational scenarios, right, and what operational scenario So it's kind of a hard apply straight the model straight to what the data we have here. But it's one of our issues with this is

My recollection is this tell me if this is correct recollection, but my recollection is one of the theories going in was maybe the extraction injection was actually pushing the plume down.

From the state's perspective, injection occurring above contamination has the potential to increase that migration or increase the spread of that contamination if we're pushing it. So like you said, downward is a potential, out laterally is a potential that we were concerned on. And that's what some of the monitoring data that Mike talked about, you know, with R45. Those are kind of the points where the state said, let's do a pause for cause and let's really evaluate what's happening with water movement in here and make sure that we're not causing a bigger problem for ourselves.

Okay. Great. Thank you.

Sorry. Yeah. No. Thank you. Thank you.

Yeah. Cool. So next, we're gonna move on. This is the the approved well construction rough design. We put a a 20 foot screen.

First of all, the we worked closely with the office of the state engineer while we were looking at the results of this well through geophysical logs, cuttings, and, grain size analysis provided by DOE, and then also the, of course, the zonal sampling data. The OSE determined that this was the the column we were looking at was one hydrogeologic unit. Therefore, we were able to design a dual screen well. I know you've heard a little bit in the past about how you know, some of our concerns with dual screen wells. We worked closely with OSE to create this design so it would be compliant with their with their design or with their their regulations.

Sorry. So we have a lower screen from ten twenty seven to ten forty seven, which effectively bounds both zone one and Zone two. Those were the results that were seventy three and sixty two roughly. So we have we feel pretty confident that we've got a good representative screen at those lower the lower depth and potentially higher concentrations. And then we put a screen up top because we wanted to see what what's going on up top and really see what's going on at the top of the aquifer.

So I think that's kind of it that I wanted to discuss on that slide. The next steps are to complete well construction. And as an update that I got earlier today, it actually sounds like the final surface cement seal has been in place, and production will be beginning shortly. After production, there will be a a period of rest for the aquifer, and then they'll begin aquifer testing where they do series of step tests of pumping at different rates to inform them of a final constant rate test to really pull the aquifer to to pump on the aquifer and help us understand hydraulic conductivities and other parameters that we need to understand. And at the very end of the final, constant rate pumping test, we will collect the initial regulatory samples.

So all of the results we've discussed before, nothing's regulatory here. These

are

just screening levels to help us inform where where to build this and how to build this well. After the well is is after those samples are completed, CIMR three will be added to the standard well sampling schedule. We'll be we'll be receiving monthly samples for metals and organics and others, especially during that first year. And, you know, this this finding surprised a few of us, and I think, you know, we we need to figure out what's next, figure out if this well informs that we might need more monitoring wells in the region or anything else. And we will be working closely with Pablo de Sano Alfonso on this.

I'm gonna take a pause here. That really is the end of the CIMR three discussion, and Caitlin's gonna be taking it up taking on the adaptive site management. So if there's CIMR three specific questions, I'd like to take them now.

I don't see any. Thank you.

Thank you.

I I have a comment that I don't know whether this well, I have to get this off my chest. So, you know, it's because this is what this is stuff that I'm very keenly interested in a lot of ways. Right? Like, so these sampling wells are really important. They're gonna provide important data. Right? But they're really gonna provide actionable data when they're combined in detail with modeling. Right? And used to validate models and of the plume growth and spread and so on. And I realize you guys don't do that, but, you know, if we're gonna understand this, you know, accurately and and remediate it well and efficiently, which is what I think, like, line everybody wants to do that, you know, then I think that's got to be the path.

So I don't know. Like, maybe a question involved in that is, like, is there something you can do to help improve the turnaround with models and and comparing it against data and adjusting the models and understand making predictions of plume migration and so on that are gonna be really useful. Make you could use that like to guide, oh, where am I gonna put the next well? Right over here or there or how deep does it have to go or whatever?

You know

what Absolutely. And to caveat, you know, that's where we're leading in this next part of the conversation is like similar to what you're saying, the depth of the amount of information and recommendations that were covered in that independent technical review really require us to get back to a place where we can talk it out and figure out how are we gonna make all these changes. And like you said, we agree that modeling is a critical role. And when we're dealing with groundwater remediation strategies and when we're looking at, you know, final remedy and all the things you guys wanna see, we we have to have that component there. And we have to have a level of certainty in that component as we move forward and adaptation as new information comes in.

So we're totally on ball with that. It's just the magnitude of the request. And right now, we're at this place where, you know, in line with where I'm going with adaptive site management is how do we take all of this and how do we modify our existing regulatory framework in a way that we can implement all these recommendations and we can execute where you want to be. So we'll lead into that portion of it. Hopefully that's a starting period.

But like what I was saying, adaptive site management is it's essentially like a technique that we're using to figure out how to reevaluate this. And it's it's a way for us as parties to come together and really make agreements, have a plan of action, and have an iterative plan of action at that. We can't define what's going to happen from now to final remedy effectively. Those aren't choices that we can really support. So in this type of strategy, we can make short term goals.

We can have short term objectives and execute activities and kind of reevaluate and circle back to those on an as needed basis to make sure we're making progress where we need to. And so for this adaptive site management, I'll be talking primarily about two different, you know, regulatory guidance documents that I've kinda looked at to help us figure out what is this? How do we do it? And how do we apply it to our site here? And so the first half of it is RCRA first is what they call it.

And the first stands for Facilities Investigation Remedy Selection Track. That's a lot to muster. But essentially, that's for the RCRA side of the house. And that's where the consent order activities happen as we're executing RCRA regulations and those requirements. So this is EPA's version of applying this for complex sites here. And so the whole guidance document has process flow maps that I'll show a little of. It has templates. It has a whole bunch of information in that on how they see, you know, to give a framework, I guess, to accommodate this type of process. But the goals really, and this is across all the different kinds, the goals are really to have a plan that uses metrics. We want to drive continuous progress towards improvement in the system.

We wanna kinda stop this halting a steady state operation thing. And of course, with that comes the benefits of speeding up any system with, you know, reduced cost, reduced time, all that effective communication between the parties because, you know, we've had issues with that in the past. And it also gives an opportunity for under RCRA, a lot of our public facilitation processes happen like at the remedy selection phase. And this interim measures is kind of a middle ground phase where the regulations don't require as much public involvement here. So this gives us a framework to facilitate stakeholder involvement in that process at certain points and kind of evaluate that.

So it's not, you know, a big mountain to climb when we go public with, you know, remedy selection stuff. So keep interested parties involved. And the other one we'll go through is from ITRCs. And it's called the remediation management of complex sites. And the nomenclature is a little different. They don't call it adaptive site management. They pick a different term. But the concepts are really the same. It has the same goals. We want to investigate the CSM.

We want to maximize our remedial effectiveness, both pre remedy and post remedy selection. It talks about the same stakeholder perspectives and really goes through how there's uncertainty when you deal with complex sites. And there always will be that uncertainty until we're done with the whole project. So it's a way to kind of, A, address that we know what uncertainties exist and kind of give that perspective of understanding and also a way to address them in the long term. So those are the two that will break through.

Excuse me. Could you tell us what the ITRC and CSM stand for?

Oh, ITRC, might have to Google. It's a group. That's like a group of professional. I shall Google it. But CSM is conceptual site model. So that's kind of what we use. That's like all the information we have for the site. And so for this, that includes contamination in the soils, like we care about where it came from and how it traveled to the aquifer. All of these are components, you know, extent of contamination in our conceptual site model. So it's really, it's a big picture. Everything we know, how does this dictate, how does things move and react under this.

Thank you.

Please let me know. I use acronyms way too frequently. So feel free. It's the nature of the work here.

Doctor. We're familiar with that problem. Doctor. Right?

I'm sure everybody has their own version, right? So the RCRA first process breaks it up into phases, really. And so there's three phases. I really only talk about two because the third phase is a remedy phase. And I don't want to look too far out for you guys. So the first phase is this investigation planning thing. And the way that they structure it is that you develop what we call a corrective action framework. And it's really a group of interested parties, involved parties, regulatory agencies, a facility, you know, any impacted stakeholders that need to be involved. And you hold these meetings altogether. We all mutually develop a collective set of understanding on the objectives we wanna reach.

What are the goals for the whole project and the investigation activities? And what this is mainly supposed to do, as you guys have heard, like interim measures is a work plan. And they specify work activities that need to be executed in that work plan. So what this is, is really getting to a work plan. And this whole process is saying, how do we get to a document where there's a regulatory direction for executing those actions? And so that's what the work plan development is. That's what you want to develop this corrective action framework to work towards. It's just how do we get to a work plan? And the goal is to be quick. You want to try to have one hundred and eighty days, talk it all out, make the agreements you need between the parties, and get something down.

Because the point is it's a living document. And as we need to come back, we'll revise a corrective action framework document as much as we need to in an iterative process as we go to account for that new information. So they want a first batch of it pretty quickly just to kind of get something on paper to get some kind of, you know, sense of how the framework's actually going to be executed. And then phase two is when that work plan, you have the activities and the facility executes some of those activities. Now we have new data and now we have stuff that we've to kind of function back into our conceptual site model here.

We have new information on extent of contamination like for instance, now with CIMR3, that's a new data point and whatever it is, that's something we have to incorporate back into that. So, we collect that data from our actions. The whole corrective action framework body group meets and discusses what those data are. They discuss whether that data sufficiently fulfills the corrective action requirements for RCRA. Did we meet the goal we wanted to or did we not quite hit the nail on the head there?

And then the process really is you either make an agreement together that it is not good and we need to make it make another step. But it also gives, like similarly to what we had is, like, a a process for elevation if the parties don't agree. And so you spell out a process. If we don't agree that this data gives us the same, you know, fulfills the same data objective, then let's set a process out right now so we know exactly how we're going to navigate these kind of new waters of disagreement between the parties in that process. So it really, it's good for us, like what you've heard here is when investigations get stuck, it's kind of this argument over where do we move forward, how do we move forward, whose direction on moving forward is correct.

It kind of turns into this back and forth process. And this kind of framework really helps us get out of that, you know, because we use this kind of series of assessments. We've set objectives. Bless you. We've set objectives before we even executed any investigation activities. So we kind of already know our alternatives for, you know, post investigation looks like. So that's essentially the RCRA first framework. This one is probably hard to read, but it's a little flow chart. And it essentially just goes through the process. So they start implementing the work plan that we're talking about, which would be an iteration on the interim measures work plan.

And as that work is executed, as you guys know, drilling work takes, you know, a year and a half to get wells drilled. The timeline between activities is scattered and information coming in is a little bit scattered. So we conduct that data review meeting. We decide is data sufficient? Yes. Fantastic. We love it. Let's move to the final and let's get ourselves a remedy. If it's not, then let's go back and evaluate. Are our goals and expectations for these activities understood between the parties? Do we know where we need to go? If not, let's elevate it. If yes, then let's go back and figure out what activities we need to do to get to a place to be done. So it kind of takes it out of the linear RCRA process. Was very box by box.

You go investigation, you go remedy, you're done. You know, it's a very so this kind of gives a little bit. Let's be able to go back and forth in this. So that's the RICR first side of it. And

Oh, can I interrupt and

ask a Yes? Quick Absolutely.

So how do new parties get or new stakeholders get involved in this process? So I'm thinking of the last presentation ended with the comment that to better understand the southern extent of the plume, we need to do more work with the Pueblo De San

El Defonso and, Yeah. So right now, we've identified parties. So we've identified members of Los Alamos County, the Pueblo De San El DeFonso. We've had the regulatory agencies, which I'll get into, like NMED and it's different. New Mexico Office of State Engineer, Tribal Affair.

I'm sure I'm missing people. But we're trying to cover all the big ones that we know are people who are impacted now or stakeholders that are parties that are impacted and should have at least a seat at the table for the discussions. But I'm sure we're not going to be 100% on it the first time. Thankfully, the goal is to have a living document that if the parties agree a new stakeholder needs to be included, then we'll have a process for that. But for now, I think we've at least identified the key people we've Got it.

We'll see. So for the other side of it, a lot of it's very similar. It just uses different nomenclature, like I'm saying. But the ITRC's adaptive site management approach, same thing. They want to use this periodic reevaluation and adjustment of our remedial approach.

Their aspect of it is focusing a lot on executing part of a remedy and doing something to have some type of information on how remedy will be implemented and what that means to the site, which is really similar to what we do here. We have an interim measure. We've been running a pump and treat system. We have information from that operation that could help us kind of guide the path forward for how we can do better remediation. And that's kind of what the ITRC is more about is start remedy, look at all these kind of interim objectives that you can set.

And they go through each of these. I won't list them. But there's a bunch of different routes of interim objectives you can select so it's not all becoming at once. You can kind of split it up into small pieces and have an activity meeting interim objectives that are more easier to have a party agreement on is kind of the goal. And then for their side, this is they also CERCLA, ITRC's group also does, you know, things for CERCLA, which is under a different set of regulations than us.

So they talk about how there's different decision documents that this type of process can be documented in. So you can do like a record of decision if you're under a CERCLA. You can do if you're working under a RCRA permit, you can do a permit modification. For us, we have consent orders so we can make changes consent order deliverable actions. So just kind of noting that there's different directions on a regulatory basis so you can execute these decisions.

But their process is the same. What they call it instead is an integrated site characterization, Same thing. And a lot of their document focuses less on groundwater and they do for DNAPL sites. So it's not really chromium. It's not heavy metals directly, but the process is, you know, really similar. It's the same thing. You have to spell out your uncertainties. You have to talk about what your conceptual site model deficiencies are so you can be able to fill those in and kind of know where you need to go. And through that, that means you're going to establish data needs. Objectives, you're going to do all the same things that we talked about kind of in the RCRA first as far as developing a plan for working through this.

And I won't go through the same, but it's the same loop of a cycle here. Get right back into it and gives us a process. So how are we trying to do this at Lantel? Like I said, it's a really tough process. We have so many different recommendations in so many different areas that we reasonably understand they can't execute everything in the next twelve months. You know, they can't get us to where have everything satisfied in those recommendations quickly. So we're developing this process. And like I said, where we convened a group of stakeholders, and that included Los Alamos County. Now I won't miss anybody. Pueblo De San Ildefonso, Department of Indian Affairs, Office of State Engineer, NME Dean, it's different agencies, and DOE in their respective affiliated agencies.

And so we understand the magnitude of the request, obviously. So what our thoughts were is, like, let's take it piecewise and let's apply this approach to a smaller action that we can use and kinda see how implementation of this kind of approach fits on a smaller basis. And then we can work on continuing to develop the plan. So our thoughts were applying the adaptive management process to a restart of the extraction and treatment of contaminated groundwater. And although there's the state has ceased the authorization for reinjection of those contaminated groundwater into the treated groundwater into the injection wells, we, of course, support continued extraction land disposal or disposal of that clean water using other permitted mechanisms.

So that's where we thought, let's the state's not allowing injection into these wells, but we can do something and we can treat some contaminated groundwater. We can pull some kind of do extraction and disposal through another means of that treated water.

Doctor. Sorry, can you remind me? I just don't remember exactly. I know that the injection is not permitted at the moment. The extraction continuing? Was that stopped as well?

Doctor. NME D did not

No. Right.

Withdraw any authorization for the extraction. What the the process happening now?

Or

Not right now.

No. I didn't think so. No.

That's where we wanna get to. And our our point is trying to get through there. We wanna get something. And even though there there's boundaries to the reinjection with the state's concerns until they're satisfied, there it doesn't stop the ability to extract and treat. And there are permitted mechanisms that DOE can, you know, work to utilize that would allow something. It's not, you know, it's not the solution we all want, right? But while we make these steps towards reaching, you know, agreement on the next steps and long term execution of those next steps, this is something we can do to have, you know, a beneficial impact is our goal. So we're thinking of like, let's apply that process here. Let's evaluate. So we had some meetings on this front.

And so we talked about setting goals for this particular action, just the extraction and disposal of treated groundwater. And for that, we talked about the regulatory actions that would be needed from, you know, New Mexico Environment Department's Groundwater Quality Bureau, Office of State Engineer. We kind of spelled out through that process just for clarity like we would in an adaptive site management approach. How we would do that? What's required?

What submittals are necessary? What are the timelines that the state needs for approval of those actions? You know, and how can we start developing that plan? So we want to see it converge into something written. You know, we've had a lot of talks about what that could look like and what executing this adaptive site management plan, both on this, you know, action specific basis and on the whole project basis can look like. But for us, need to get an iterative process. And we need to start moving towards drafts of these kind of documents if we want to reach agreement sooner rather than later.

Sorry. So extraction is permitted at the moment. So they could go ahead extracting and then presumably removing the chromium, right, and disposing of it. Then that I mean,

I presume they'd have to

do something with the water, right? Right. Is that all approved now from this NMED perspective?

From NMED, the only part of that that needs that we clarified, you know, in these meetings is the Office of the State Engineer does permit that action also. And they had permitted the non consumptive use where we extracted and we put it right back in. And so when we withdrew that authorization, they said let's pool that authorization. So it's a we've talked with OSC and there's a process for receiving temporary authorization to extract solely and not through this non consumptive use system. But on NMED's perspective, they have a land application discharge permit with the Groundwater Quality Bureau.

So they they have a mechanism for discharging chromium water, you know, chromium treatment unit water already permitted through them. So at least from NMED's perspective, there's a path forward. We've talked about the holdup for OSC that has a solution. So, you know, in our mind that it is an executable direction. And so that's kind of where we're starting. Like we said, there's a there's a lot to go through. It's a whole lot of process. It's a whole lot of mutual, you know, facility agreement here that we have to get to. And so that's the process that we're kind of working towards is executing all of these independent technical review recommendations in a regulatory document for us to kind of keep moving the process forward.

Are you thinking of reconvening in some way the independent technical review? Because as this evolves, you're going to need a group of technical people to look over proposals and things. Or how does that Well,

I don't think we've talked about any plan for that. But what the consent order modifications did when we did the twenty twenty four modifications to it is for dispute, if we get to a point where there's dispute between the parties on technical actions, we kind of set a process similar to the independent technical review in the consent order where we would facilitate a technical expert between the part, mutually agreed to between the parties, who would review the information and issue a recommendation similarly. Not necessarily through that mechanism of the IRT, but more it's in the consent order as a thought process that this was successful. Let's keep it going if we hit another caveat on the road. So that was really all I had.

If there's questions

Can ask you

a question?

So what magnitude are we talking about here in terms of volume and flow rate by extraction, treat, and reinject? Like, what's the flow rate in that?

And what is the target volume?

As far as what they could utilize under the land application permit? Is that

Land application or what what is possible in a day? Like, we can use Right. Like, the whole county, including land

where we can use between two and ten million gallons a day.

Right. I think when we were looking through and having our discussions with DOE, the the initial proposal was for one extraction well, so it'd be 60 gallons a minute. Their permitted capacity under at least a land application is 350,000 gallons a day. So, I mean, that would be the permitted max for that approved action.

In terms of the contaminated volume of the plume?

I I would have to go back to my I'll be honest with you. I'd have to go back to my notes.

Because, I mean

But it's not small.

How much time and and migration rate in terms of how this is gonna you know, future planning for drinking water and then what our neighbors are gonna end up seeing eventually.

That's a big concern for us. And so, our position is bias for action moving forward, and we want to see things happen. And the point of part of it is that it's going to take an iterative approach. And so we want a modification because we're seeing concerning trends for us that are showing that there could be, you know, a worse problem down the line. So our thoughts are let's modify and let's make a change and let's go through the process and let's look at the data and figure out how beneficial are we doing, how much are we pooling. Right. And you're

relying on the data from

Clay. Can you use the microphone? The people online can't hear you. Sorry.

Yeah. That that you're the regulating authority, and you're having to rely on the the models and the data to provide you I mean, you're having to to analyze that. So I guess long term, I'm the reason why I'm asking this question is because the county's gonna need to know this for, you know, future planning for well development and drinking water protection. That that's ultimately why yeah. So that that's all the reason why I have to ask that question.

Yeah. And, I mean, from all the information we've been given is that we have time till there is concern for down gradient receptors, you know, like my like your guys' production wells and so you know, like there there is time with the natural gradient that we have in the region before we have a receptor concern here. So what we're trying to do is stop it sooner, you know, and kind of minimize that Like you're saying, it's going to naturally disperse. Groundwater naturally moves with the gradient. Movement is going to happen whether we're taking action or we're not taking action. But our thought is figure out

a safe way to do

it so we know we're being protective while it happens. But we're not going to get it right on the first go. So if we think of something that's a solution for now, modify it, see where we need to make additional actions. If there's concern in a certain region with that, then we can pivot and modify. Modify. That's kind of how we see the processes. There's steps now that the state is asking be taken by DOE to make the first iteration of that modification of the interim measure. But by no means do we expect that to be a solution at all or even carry us to final remedy. It's a phased approach to go from where we are to hopefully a better place in two years from now and continuing that process until everyone's happy and we're at a good place regulatorily to be thinking about remedy.

Good. No, that answers the question. Another

comment just based on Clay's question, because my mind is kind of going in that direction as well. And I don't sorry. Don't mean to harp on models. I'm computational theoretical guy so sorry. It's just it's the way my head works. But I mean it's really the the you laid out the time scales, right, based on whatever regulatory requirements or construction time scales or whatever it is. Those are all important time scales. But the real time scale is figuring out, like, where are we now? How fast is this thing going? Where do we not want it to get to? How fast is it getting there? How much flow do we have to deal with? How much flow do we have to process? Right? Like I don't remember the numbers.

There's something like a 160,000 pounds of chromium or something. Yeah. You know, historically we're injected some large number. We've removed whatever 600 or something like that. So there's a lot left to go. At what rate do we need to get that out in order to prevent the bad whatever bad outcomes we want? You know, that's gonna be really that's I mean, mother nature is gonna give you the determining time scales. Right?

Absolutely.

And And so we need to get a sense of what those are. I know you know this. You're just making your job really hard. I apologize.

But Let's do.

That's what

we're like, dealing with this, right, is, you know, if we figure out those time scales, get some estimate, even order of magnitude estimate. That will tell us, I think, a lot about, okay Absolutely. Moving backwards, how do we get it?

And we're not the state isn't, you know, again, the DOE has a model. They have utilized that model for, you know, proposing well locations, the things you're talking about. And more our concern is when we get into predictive, like, with modeling, if you're familiar, you know, the farther out you go, you're

Uncertainties. I'm with you.

Your your really scale out when you start getting in the twenty year, thirty year. You know, when we're looking really far out in the time scale here, that's where we get a little bit, you know, fuzzy in the predictive mechanism. And that's where the state, you know, kind of has concern with buying in and making regulatory decisions solely based on the model for that. And, you know, so, like, monitoring locations, stuff like that, we support, you know, but we wanna be careful with, you know, buying into just the model and saying this is a path for the model shows we'll have success and more so pivoting when, data does not match what the model prediction have and when we have inconsistencies between site and model predictions kind of pivoting and accepting those.

Really understanding the uncertainties and acquiring data to to, no pun intended, drill down on those uncertainties, right, is really important.

Yes. Absolutely. I will I will say one more thing. We we do a lot of our drinking water testing, and it's submitted to the state. And chromium's, of course, one of the contaminants that are highly that's a that's a big focus. So we still haven't seen any elevated, fortunately, in our drinking water wells. So I will say that.

Yeah. And we did set, like, early on investigation. That was an initial concern. It was off-site migration, look for our receptors. So they threw in the r 35 a and b wells as kinda cluster wells that are an early indicator if there's something we should worry about. And some of these wells that we're talking about, r 79, r 80, is we're talking about stepping out or we're talking about finding that boundary contamination so we can have more certainty in the time that we have. And right now, you know, what I can give you is what I can give you with the data that's available, you know, and I can support that right now, yeah, there's not an immediate concern, you know, for county water concerns. But in the long term, I I can't tell you what thirty years look like yet. I would love to. And so that's the process we wanna work to.

We wanna have more solid answers when we're talking about this in in a predictive, you know, capacity.

Eric? Yeah. Thank you. Maybe a little bit too simplistic, but let's just say we have 50 parts per billion. Now, does that mean that if we wanted to process out 50 gallons of hexavalent chromium, we would have to process a billion gallons of water, a billion gallons of extraction?

No. Where you pull the water from.

I've seen Clay shake his head.

There's it's yeah. It's a very good question. But no. It's it's the concentration is a little different. But from where we pull, we pull from high concentration zones and the treatment unit removes them, you know, within 99%, you know, efficiency or something. So it's not that. It's that you pull that contaminated water and you clean it and put it. But on a massive scale, like you're saying, with a 160,000 pounds that are released, I don't know how much, contaminated groundwater that is. We know how zones in the area that we are targeting with our treatment.

So we're using the word plume. And sometimes, and I don't know if that's the right word, but when I think of a plume, I think of something that is expanding and diffusing.

Similarly, water is the same. So we have concentrated water. And if you can kind of think of the conceptual process that came down from effluent water, it's in the soil. So when water is coming down through, we're still getting contaminated contamination from soil that's coming into the groundwater.

Yeah. But

if it's a plume,

then it also means it's expanding and diffusing. Yeah. And so where is this going? Do we know? I mean, we're all asking the same questions. Do we know where this is going?

There's an the natural flow gradient with it. So it's, like, South Southeast. You know? So it's flowing across that direction, kinda following, the canyon direction. So, I mean, that's that's a natural water gradient direction. That's where the water is flowing in a natural basis. And our goal with executing remediation is, of course, to pool that water and to target, you know, when it's in the higher contamination before we see, you know, all this dispersion that occurs around the periphery of the plume.

And is it at all even a practical thought to, if you have a well that, say well number three for sake of conversation, that if we don't want to shut it down, could we put a reverse osmosis on it and still use the water and collect the exvalent chromium? Is that even doable?

Well, the injection wells, the treatment happens on the surface. So you're going to be pulling the contaminated groundwater out, and you're gonna be treating on the surface and pumping it back in.

Or if you don't pump it back in, let's say you have reverse osmosis and you're using it for drinking water. And so you're using the water coming out, but you're extracting out the hexavalent chromium from the reverse osmosis.

Think that gets in the water rights. I'll be honest with you. I like, that's that's what's a facility. It's I mean, if they can use the water in different mechanisms, that's you know, on the facility, they use a non consumptive right based on, you know, I think water rights issues and other, you know, lease stuff with the water. Because, like, OSC has amounts on consumptive use. There's there's nuances of water and pulling water out of the aquifer that, you know, you can't just use it anywhere, and you can't just, you know, use it for drinking if it's not, you know, approved and authorized for that.

But if it's already what I'm talking about is if it's already an authorized drinking well and we instead of shutting it down because of hexavalent chromium contamination, could we actually just still use the well? It's already authorized, but we would put reverse osmosis on it so that the hexavalent chromium doesn't contaminate the drinking water.

I'll be honest, we've never had that proposed by DOE. That's not something we've evaluated using. We've kind of just evaluated their system. That hasn't been something they've brought up as a as a path forward for this, you know, interim measures or to allow remediation.

Yeah. Jump in.

I was gonna add that the treatment system that's used in the chromium interim measures is a ion exchange resin that specifically treats for chromium. So we do have some, there's some other co contaminates, within the plume for the perchlorate and some nitrate, and the system does not treat for that. So there are certain treatment technologies that are related only that are purely just for one type of contaminant.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you.

So so we've kinda looked into what what would happen if we ran the you brought up Parrido Well 3, and what would it take to ensure the safety of that water. So, yeah, we would have to do an ion. And this isn't completely unknown in the water world. I mean, people who draw off a surface water have to do this. So an ion exchange type system would have to be developed, like, at other municipalities who have contaminants like this pulling off, like, out of the Ohio River or something like that. But you'd have to do something like that just for Parrido Well 3. Yeah.

Question. You this we'll start with a simple one. In your presentation, you frequently referred to the state. I thought you were the state. So what other entity of this and you talked about OSE separately, but what is the state to which you were referring? What entity is that?

Well, the DOE is regulated by multiple state agencies, so that's why I use the royal we, essentially. But the primary regulatory authority is the hazardous waste bureau within NMED, and so they are the governing bureau for the consent order activities. But the operation of underground injection control wells, so like the Crin wells, are permitted by Groundwater Quality Bureau. Same with the land application. So it's a multi permitted project.

And state

office And officer engineer. Okay,

thank you. Presumably or hopefully, you are going to be back here another year from now and give us another update. What do you hope or expect and they might not be the same thing to be different a year from now?

Well, I'm gonna be optimistic for a sec, just forgive me. But I, of course, hope that we'll have significant progress on the interim measures work plan, really. And that's where that's the overarching document that kinda guides what the investigation activity is and what we need to do to get to a final remedy for this. So I'm hopeful we will incorporate the IRT recommendations. We'll have a modified interim measures work plan that will show that recommendation incorporation here. And we'll have a process for moving forward and getting where we need to be. Where I think we'll be is working towards that.

Okay. We understand that.

I'm hoping not that long, okay.

Well, so we're hoping that too. Please. Okay. Other questions or comments? Seeing none, we thank you very much for coming this evening and filling us in. And we'll hope that next year's report is as good as you hope it is.

It's going to be glowing, I'm sure. We appreciate the opportunity.

Thank you.

Thank very much.

All right. We now move on to the DPU annual report for FY '25. And Kathy, are you going to present that?

Yes, Chair Gibson, I am. Okay. I'm double computer ing here, so give me a minute. Okay. So this is our annual report for FY 2025, which is 07/01/2024 through June 2025.

This is a requirement of the county charter, and it does seem a little late for it. We have to wait until the ACFR has been approved by the council, and then we have forty five days to get her done. So here we are. I'm not gonna walk you through everything. I put a pretty descriptive staff report in your packet, but I will highlight a couple of things.

On Philo's overview, the utility manager overview, he highlights how much financial perform performance results support effective planning and budgeting for future years. He tried to give you more of a forward looking, perspective than perspective than he may have in the past. So that you should find interesting. This page about the DPU, very high level look at our department. If you were just coming out of nowhere and knew nothing about us, this is the page you would wanna go to.

This impact by the numbers is a new spread for us. This was Philo's brainchild, so we brought it to life, And it's sort of a brag page by number. And probably the ones I wanna highlight are that five awards earned in fiscal year twenty twenty five. They're all listed on our achievements page, so I won't make you hear that. But, it gave us a chance to put that on there.

We really wanted to be able to tell you how well the Los Alamos app Los Alamos Now app is doing. So we've got some little data points about that. We've got some data points about, public facing programs and how many how many public com contacts we've made in person, about, bills produced and payments processed, and so on. There's our good looking SMT and our good looking board. This is updated with the latest version of the mission vision mission vision values with the new ethics statement in it as I'm sure you expected.

Here are all the goals that you all approved, strategic focus areas and objectives. And then here's our, accomplishments page, which we're always really, really proud of those accomplishments. So I do encourage you to read that one. I think if I was gonna highlight just one, I would probably go to the the workforce column and highlight the fact that of our 100 employees, 29 were promoted in that fiscal year, and six of them were promoted twice. The vast majority of those promotions are in our field crew areas, and they have to go through a lot of testing and certifications to get those promotions.

So it shows a lot of extra work on their parts. Let's see. And then, you have seen our safety employees for the quarter, every quarter for the last year. So there they are for the whole year. This is our performance measures section.

You're familiar with our SADI, which is what's showing right there. I wanted to point out that in this section for each utility, these are our electric distribution and electric production measures right here. But for each utility, we do have the residential comparable bills, and we changed the methodology on that one ever so slightly. In the past, we have averaged rate changes into these totals. So, like, if we had a rate change in the middle of the year, we would give you the average rate for that year.

And Richard's really good. He would break it down by month, you know, if it was 20% of the year. Yep. He's great. And he was doing that for our neighbors too, but it does get a little clunky that way. So we decided to use the June 30 rates for all our comparables to simplify. So when you look at these, if they look slightly different than last year, that's prob probably where you're gonna find the differences. Natural gas, there's our performance measures. Same with water and wastewater. And I think the only thing I would point out on wastewater is that our compliance is so close to a 100%, and we attribute that to the new WRF processing.

Here's all our rates for FY '25, number of customers broken down by class. And then as we get to the financials, this is what is required by the charter, this section going forward. And I probably don't have any answers to any questions you might have about this section, but I have people in the room who could help. And that is the end. So are there any questions?

Questions from the board? Matt?

One quick question, maybe not for you, Kathy. For all the work that goes into this. This is really good. I just had a question on page 53 or page 47 of the report. Under assets, there's unbilled receivables, and I just what it why aren't we billing everybody? Or

Believe it or not, I know the answer to that question.

That's perfect. Excellent.

They'll correct me if I'm wrong, but let me give it a step take a stab at it. The unbilled collect or receivables, you have it's under receivables. That would be what was ready to be billed, what had already been measured at the end of the previous fiscal year and hadn't yet been billed when July 1 started. Did I get that right?

Also a minor question. Page six of the document itself, after the stats, with the little bubbles for the different you know, for electric, natural gas, blah, blah, How accurate are these or how current are all the numbers shown, especially for electric, for example, for Elvato plant and utility scale Thank at the

you, member Hollingsworth. These were updated by our GIS specialist. I'm not sure what his title is this year. So anything that's GIS related is if it's changed, it's because he's fantastic and got everything super current and updated. As far as the electric production values, those are, oh, we don't even have oh, we do have Ben in the room. Step forward, Ben. Those are not what we produce. That is our capacity, I believe. Is that your question?

Yeah. Because they're the same numbers as last year. I don't know if they're accurate, if they're actually what's It's being capacity. It's just capacity. Yeah. Okay.

If we had a full reservoir

We had a reservoir, we'd have that. We had functioning photovoltaics at the landfill, we'd get one. Okay.

Never mind, Ben. We don't need you.

I got this.

Okay. I've got a question either for you or more likely for Philo on page 25 of the report, 31 of our agenda doc. Down at the bottom, it has a chart and a paragraph referring to natural gas therms per capita per heating degree day. And it implies that that 10% reduction is the department's goal. And the problem is that that isn't the goal that we established.

It's not normal or the goal we established is not normalized for population. And this was pointed out last year and acknowledged by staff, but it's back again this year. So my question is, is staff really wanting to change the goal that the board set to something different? Or is this why are we seeing a target here, you're calling it, that's different than what the board said?

Chair Gibson, that is probably a going forward and doing everything this the traditional way error on my part, but I can correct that and upload it to the it up to the web. I can upload the new corrected version to the web within a couple of days if you give me a maybe more than a minute. If you give me a couple of days, we can look at that. I think that we have been doing it that way outside of this report, but I probably grabbed the wrong data for this graphic. Okay.

Comment. This gives one the impression, in fact, states that here the target's been met. Well, if you actually look at the goal that we set, it turns out that the natural gas use per heating degree day has been absolutely constant since about 2002. Remarkably constant within plus or minus 5%. There's no trend at all long term or short term.

So that leads you to a very different conclusion. We're making zero progress towards that 2030 milestone of a 10% reduction. So that's that's a very different conclusion than one come gets from looking at this.

I'll get with Abby, and we'll iron that out. She's she's more the expert on this change in this data point than I am. And and she did not put that together. So I was not trying

to throw her under the bus.

She had nothing to do with this chart.

And everybody works together, so, you know, we're not concerned about

Yeah.

Not everybody has your eagle eye, but we're trying. We're we're getting there.

Okay. Well, anyway, the yeah, we're making zero progress towards that milestone, which is an interim milestone on the way to our long term objective that everybody is more familiar with. All right. Okay. Are there other questions or comments about the annual report here? As usual, there's a lot of information in here and it's very well presented and I know that takes a lot of work. We do appreciate it.

Thank you, Chair Gibson. And board.

Okay. Anyone else? Thank you. We'll let you off the hook and move on. Two, a review of well it said review of cash reserve guidelines, I think it's a little broader than that. Anyway, financial review, Joanne and company.

Good evening, chair and members of the board. So I'll be presenting a little bit more information on the financial guidelines that we discussed a couple weeks ago in the budget. Oh, it did. Okay. So the first few pages are just screen grabs from the financial guidelines for the ones that we're going to discuss.

The operations reserve is what we have budgeted for operations for that year for one hundred and eighty days. So we and I'll go into the different calculations a little bit more in detail when we get to the different funds. The capital expenditures is the depreciation plus two and a half percent is how it's calculated, and those depreciation numbers come from our general ledger. And I'll show you a little more detail in that as we move on. The contingency reserve is taking the replacement cost of the single largest piece of equipment for that fund that has a potential of failure.

I

think I skipped one. Debt service reserve. That is coming from our debt service schedule that we put together related to any bonds and loans that we have payments coming for the next ten years or longer. And then our rate stabilization reserve. So we'll go into this a little bit more in each of them.

Rate stabilization, we need that in our electric fund and our water distribution fund. We do not calculate it in our gas fund because we have a pass through rate in our gas fund our gas rate. So going back to the capital expenditure reserve, this is our depreciation expenses that are in our general ledger. Electric production is calculated a little bit different than the other funds due to the power pool and the cost in the power pool. And so we'll go a little bit more into that one.

But if you look at ED, gas, water distribution, water production, and wastewater. It's taking the total amount of our depreciation expense and adding two and a half percent. So you'll see, like, for the ED, it's 1,300,000.0 and it's like or 1,350,000.00 and it's 1.38. And that's kind of how it's calculated in each of those funds. So this comes from our ACFR, the annual consolidated financial what is that?

Can't think of it right now. Anyways, this is what got published in January and approved by council in January, at the January. And so the highlighted is our restricted cash. And so you'll look under the electric, that includes electric production, electric distribution. And I should have added the totals, and I just realized that.

So in the electric fund, there's 19,721,201 in restricted cash. Gas is the million, water is the 4,600,000.0, and the wastewater is the 652. So total we have 25,900,000.0 in restricted cash. So in electric production, was telling I was talking about how operational reserves are calculated. And in electric production, we exclude transmission, purchase power, the Laramie River, and debt service.

And so my next screen sorry, it's hard to see. It's hard to fit these all into one page. But it's taking on the ten year forecast. It's taking the operational expenditures. And then down below in the fund flow, it's it's excluding transmission for PNM, other purchase and purchase power plus the Laramie River.

And then it comes up with that what's circled in red, the 9,500,000.0. So we take that 9,500,000.0 on the next page and then we take that amount and that's how we calculate the operation reserves for the one hundred and eighty days. So we take that 9,500,000.0 and multiply it by point 449%, about a half a year. And then for our capital expenditures, that number will match the previous page that we went that I went through with the capital expenditures. I meant to write that page number down.

Page 71. We don't have a contingency reserve in electric production. Our dirt our debt service reserve is coming from our debt service schedule for the next fiscal year. So it's for '20 the debt service that we will have in '28. The electric production fund has a retirement and reclamation reserve.

This is fully funded and this is for the San Juan decommissioning and reclamation and the Laramie River decommissioning. That is fully funded. And then we do not include a rate stabilization reserve for electric production. And you you're welcome to ask questions as I go along as well.

Sure. Let me try. Just gonna expose my own thing. I'd be much happier just talking about flow modeling for the to be honest. Completely defeated by these numbers. Utterly defeated. So so help help me out.

Big picture.

Yes.

How are we doing? Are we do we have enough money to cover our our expenditures either through bonds or through projected, you know, acquisitions? Are we struggling? I know the debt reserve was a was a problem at one point, so we changed some of that. What's the overall picture? How are we doing? I'm totally I'm personally sorry. I'm sure everybody else is better.

I'm pretty

lost in the tables of numbers. So give me a guide post, some guide post, if you could.

Well, it kind of depends on the fund, where we're at and where we're doing well and where we're not. So electric fund, if we include electric production, electric distribution together, it looks pretty good, but the electric distribution fund is is is hurting. Our cash reserves are a little down. So yeah. So, I mean, it's it's dependent.

I mean, we're we're chugging along. We're our sales aren't as high as we anticipated last year, so our revenue is a little bit lower than expected. So we're trying to to for the future, to predict our revenue a little more closely to historical. And I we weren't here for the budget the presentation in February. So we kinda changed our how we were calculating or predicting our revenue sales, and we were using a five year historical average on all of them.

And so we're finding it's kind of more in line with what we're actually predicting to sell this year. So we're seeing that the revenues are going down in some of the funds that we aren't expecting weren't expecting. So with that previous page and per settlement. Investigating I found budget, 7.4

Somebody moved the goal You know, that

that that Do we ever Like we did with the

Have negative fund balance.

That's that's cost for

June, you know, quality of groups, but balance.

If we're interested in environmental stuff, natural gas is a whole lot better than diesel when it comes to generators.

Yeah. That there's no question about that. Yeah. The diesel well, the problem is diesel, it it has an expiration date too. So

It has an expiration date. You have fires downwind from carbon exhausts. There's all sorts of issues.

Yeah. Yeah. You can't even So

that all

all to say that it's not as easy just to get rid of a natural gas system.

Well, nobody said it was gonna be easy and we're not planning to do it tomorrow.

Right.

The yes, there's a lot of things that will have to be dealt with down the down the road, but we could start thinking about having financial resources to do it when the day comes because the day will come at some point. Anything else we could do for you tonight? I

guess I will.

I just wasn't sure if I was done.

Thank you

very much.

Thank you. All right. It is 08:15 folks. Shall we take a break?

Let's take a minute. Alright.

We're in recess for at least five minutes. No more.

Sewer, but we also have the water production division that deals with all the wells, boosters, and a lot of our non potable water. We just hired a new level four operator to replace John Fesser, who was with our group since the very beginning of us owning the water production. And we're about to interview for a new electrical technician. Next. In in water distribution, a lot of our a lot of our challenges are really faced with age and condition related issues.

The pipeline projects are just gonna continue kind of, you know, paced out over the years. And those projects typically are neighborhood projects where we're gonna follow public works and get some savings on the fact that we're not having to do all the paving and and a lot of the public works, roads and streets, infrastructure. There are there are a few little areas where we may have to to go in and do service work or something like that, but, typically, we follow public works projects. The big problem that we have really, I would say, is is the the PRVs. And it's not so much a a problem.

More it's just an O and M issue that we're confronting. They were probably left a little too long without seeing some rehabilitation work. And so I have a photo here coming up, go ahead, Of of one. It'll be a couple of slides later, but we'll talk about it. A lot of a lot of the things that our crew is doing in house to see if we can stave off having to formulate big capital projects is we're doing our own leak detections and seeing if we can find the leaks and fix things until the area that that area of concern is up for a capital project.

So that's something new. We haven't really done that ourselves. It's kind of a hard process. So I, you know, I've I've put a lot of effort into to getting the team to practice it because it's a kind of a learned skill. And and it's been successful.

We found a we found a few leaks on service lines in the old Aspen School area, 34th Little Urban, places like that where the water lines are are old. They're coming up for replacement. But until we get there, we're trying to fix the leaks. We're also going through all of the PRVs, kind of assessing the condition ourselves, seeing which ones can be rehabilitated versus having to replace the equipment. And if we can do it, we're gonna replace all of the equipment ourself.

A lot of times what happens is we go out, we inspect it, we get the pictures for curb services to start planning the project, and we realize we can't isolate the PRVs. So we'll talk about what a PRV is here in a minute. But so then we realize we've gotta we've gotta buy new valves and buy a whole new PRV because the condition of it is just too bad. Go ahead. Yeah. So here are water sales. Like we were saying, we we have seen a a drop in water sales. A lot of that it's interesting. A lot of it has to do with when we have the rainy part of our year. You can see that when we have really droughty years, we'll sell more water.

We always seem to produce at least about the same amount, but it depends on how much we sell. And sometimes we have big water losses due to waterline breaks and things like that. And we're trying to get the metering more accurate so that we have an accurate amount of what we're what's produced out of the well versus what is sold at the customer's meter. So so we're trying to balance those, match those two. We do get water losses when we have a bad waterline break, and so that that's always something that that you have to account for.

So we're trying to reduce that. But one of the things that that we were looking at as to what is happening is not always people reducing their water use, but kind of has to is related to the demographics of our town. We have a lot of people that are coming into the county and working at Lantel, they don't necessarily live in the county. And that's a lot of family people living in Santa Fe or elsewhere. And you you don't see as many big family that families are who are gonna use water.

And so we have a lot of vacant houses and a lot of houses with with, you know, like, just a retired couple living in it and not family. And the schools really haven't grown either. So, you know, there's kind of a demographic relationship to how much water is being sold as well. So so you lay over what when we get our rainy season with what the demographics of our town are. And, you know, we may be seeing just a temporary dip.

It's hard to say. Go ahead. So the physical condition assessment, something that we constantly are in the process of evaluating. We're constantly making notes about where we see, you know, geographically where we're having problems, what's happening. You know, is it just a piece of the system, or is it the whole system?

But we're constantly evaluating it, and this is where I, you know, wanna really give kudos to James Allard over the years. We have this asset management team process that he really created, you know, way back in the probably early two thousand teens because, you know, at that point, we he he and I kinda he he kinda came to work here about a year after me. And he really brought a lot of he brought a lot of he he's done so much heavy lifting since he came here. He he he was learning the system, it seemed like, for the first two years. Then he started to see what needed to be done.

And, you know, he developed all of these processes, and and the asset management team has has probably been one of the greatest things that he's really developed and something that we're gonna really need to continue on and even enhance in some ways if we can. But, you know, over the years, he's he's developed this really great process of of bringing everybody in, talking about what the challenges are, what needs to be done, what the scope of the projects would be. And, you know, it's just been fantastic. But, you know, he's gonna be greatly missed when he when he retires. And then I feel badly for the other guys who are in the engineering department.

You know? It's kinda like in the late seventies when Journey had to follow Van Halen, you know, at concerts. It was like, I'm not saying that they're like Journey, but I mean, but he is like the Van Halen of it. He he's been so great for the county and the and the Department of Public Utilities, and he's just, you know, been he he taught us all about, you know, having this sort of, like, I don't know, rational prudence. You know?

Like, he evaluates things. He has this rational approach, and he's prudent about, you know, is it what we need? Is it absolutely are we are we making making the project bigger than we need to? And he would cut it down to just what it needs to be to to to meet budget constraints. And so he's, you know, he's kinda set a really good example for all of us in in how to evaluate these things, put the project together, and roll it out. And, you know, I I just he's he's he's been great to work with. So we're really gonna miss him. But, anyway, we can go to the next slide. Alright. So here, getting to the nitty gritty.

So this this is Tatavi PRV, something we're working on right now. You can see it it just looks like like the Titanic under under the, you know, under the ocean. So it's been in service. This one's been in service since the late sixties. It's all late sixties vintage.

And and so we'll take pictures, send them to Kerb's to Bill Kerb. He'll look at it, and we'll go and test the valves and see if we can even isolate it. In this case, all those valves were we couldn't they wouldn't shut the water off. So that middle piece that you see the tubing on, we we needed to to be able to take that top cover off with all those bolts. Well, he looked at that and he said, I'm afraid as soon as I move these the nuts on these things, the bolt studs are gonna break off.

And so knowing that, it's gonna be this really expensive overhaul at this point. We just decided, well, we're we're gonna have to replace the valves. We might as well just replace that that whole PRV. And the way this this apparatus works is most of the time, most of the flows are going through the small side. So the the small one handles all of the domestic water flows.

Everybody flushing toilets, using sinks, things like that. And in the event of a fire, we'll get suddenly this big pressure drop out of the line downstream of this thing. And and if the small one can't meet the flow demand, what happens is that tubing puts pressure on a diaphragm that moves a spring and opens and closes this valve based on the pressure. It's like a carburetor, you know, and it has different different speed circuits depending on how much flow is going through there. And what happens over time is the the diaphragm starts to go bad.

The spring goes bad. It has all these little other things that are that are helping the the spring move up and down on the stem, and everything just falls apart. And and so slowly over time, what you'll get is one of them might get stuck open. So the water is not really reacting anymore. So if we operate a fire hydrant, it's no problem turning the fire hydrant on. But as soon as we turn that fire hydrant off, we get this big water hammer. And so the fire department and the utilities have been in this battle the last few years about testing the hydrants because they were breaking the water lines. A lot of the problem was actually with these things. So, you know, they've been sitting over there. A lot of them are covered with dirt.

We even had to, you know, we had to find them. They were they were covered, and they hadn't even been looked at. So the more we kind of open the hood and look around, the more we're finding these little issues. Some of them are worse than others. I think we've we've replaced or or rehabilitated the worst ones, but we're starting to find these that are the next level of of a need. And then you see over here just some of the strainers for some of the water circuits, they'll get full of debris. And so that affects how they operate as well.

So just adding maybe you said this already and I just missed it, but like do we know when we look at a valve like this, do we say, that likely won't work at all or it will? Or do we have is it a coin flip? Or how

does that work? So you have a decision tree. Once we realize, okay. We can't even isolate those valves. They you shut them and water's still passing through. We're like, we're gonna replace all of this, and then I'll get really down to the nitty gritty, and we'll look at it with Bill Herb. And so what what has happened before is we have rehabilitated some. And if only, like, two of the bolts break, we can re tap a couple of them, put them in. You know, he has to go in there, clean everything out, wash everything out with an acid and all. And we'll re tap those studs with a new a new bolt stud.

But if it's like every single one of them are gonna break, it's just worth replacing the whole thing. So we have to decide how much of a rehab project it is versus a replacement. So if if you're looking at a fairly small cost differential, we'll just replace it. But always, almost every one of them that we so most of them we've been able to rehab, but we have had a few that we were this is just beyond beyond repair. So that we've had to just go ahead and replace them.

But a lot of them, we any of them, we open up. We definitely find debris from you know, the wells will sometimes pump debris through the system. It's all it's all just, you know, standard rocks from, you know, the formation or or from maybe an old waterline break or something, but that's where they get caught. Go ahead. So this is kinda typical of what we would see.

This one's actually a newer one. It's just down here at Eastgate after we've after we overhauled it. You can see all of the new stainless steel tubing and the CRD, the the thing that that allows the flow to operate the valve to open and close. So, you know, we once we did that, we were having a lot of waterline breaks down in Eastgate, and it was because of poorly functioning PRVs. And this is a map of sorry, they don't really come out very well.

But this is a map of all the pressure zones and PRVs that we have in the system. So the different pressure zones are maintained by usually a pair, but sometimes more than a pair. Sometimes it's it's like there's a zone in White Rock that has, I think, four controlling it. But we have a lot of pressure zones because of the slope of of town. So we have eighty eighty four PRVs. Go ahead and go to the White Rock one. Yeah. So you can see that whole Northeast zone is a pretty big zone, and it's controlled by one, two, three, four. Yeah. Four four, five PRVs.

So there's five PRVs on that one zone. So that one is a fairly important zone. Had to replace

Play out of curiosity. The previous picture for the town site didn't seem to show hardly any downtown. How

No. Actually, downtown is pretty fortunate because downtown, though, has has an interesting thing because we have the community tank. It's called a community tank because it used to sit over there by the by the senior center, by the library, that little hill right there by the library. And then they took it down, and they moved it over to Western area. And so it provides a higher pressure for the middle part of downtown that that is higher, like the library and is it short drive?

The the townhomes in right there, yeah, above the aquatic center. So that little spot right there is higher. So twin tank can't provide enough pressure for that upper part of town. So the pink part to the right is the pressure zone that is perfect. You don't need to drop the pressure from the twin tank over here in Western area.

It it doesn't need any pressure drop and kind of the same with that green zone that's fed by the community tank. So it's just a it's just a a good design. So we don't really have any PRVs except for east the East Park neighborhood. You have to drop the pressure going into there. So there are two PRVs there and then, of course, the ones down on the East end of town.

Thank you.

Yep. It just has to do with elevations. Yep. And then alright. Next. Okay. These are these are fire hydrants. So the fire hydrants and the PRVs are really related how the fire hydrants work. But in in the same process, the fire department has been testing all these fire hydrants, and we've been supporting that, trying to it's I've talked about this before. It's like taking the water system for a test drive, finding what needs to be done, where our weak spots are.

And then, of course, the fire hydrants themselves, they're know, they take a lot of abuse, and just water really is a super powerful force. So the fire hydrants have a gasket way down in the ground and and sometimes it starts leaking and then, you know, it's like they don't get turned on very often. And so sometimes the stem doesn't work right or it gets warped. So the fire department will flag them or we'll we'll also assess their condition. So these are fire hydrants that have been replaced just since October 15.

That's a big job for our crew. It's a it's takes days. You've got traffic control. You've gotta coordinate all the materials. And the water crew's typically between four and six guys. Suddenly, you've gotta pull crews from other parts of the utility operation to to handle the, you know, fire hydrant replacement. So it's kind of a big deal to get these replaced in house. We've thought about farming this out. We're trying not to, but it does have an effect on our efficiency to meet our other target o and m goals because it takes a while to get them done. Go ahead. And then here are the white rock ones that we've replaced since October.

Just out of curiosity, roughly, how long does it take to replace a fire

hydrant? It depends. Okay. It depends on how complicated it is. We have three on Trinity right now that that we've kinda put off since the Trinity Drive project is gonna come through. I just went over, asked James, can you add these to the contractor's scope so that we don't because we would have to shut down 15th and Trinity. Right? The the hydrant, that's right outside of natural grocers. It's bad. And we were like, oh, what a pain to do that one.

And because we would have you know, we're it's a huge I mean, you know, it's like you bring out the cavalry and just bring out the equipment, barrels flat, you know, shut Trinity down. So we were like, let's just do it all at once. You know? It's like, if you're gonna have a root canal, might as well get that colonoscopy too. Anyway, sorry.

Let's see. Denver steals. So this is the typical kind of job where we a neighborhood replacement job where the we've seen that the condition has been as as we've known it's bad for a while, but we needed to wait for the public works funding and project plan gets put into action. And so I always laugh when these happen. It's like really a big utility project that they just pave over.

But, you know, they're like, oh, public works. But really but really the the the the big part of it is, of course, the utility work in replacing these water lines. And we've we've been out there, I think, every day having to fix. Because as soon as they excavate across any service, a lot of times, all that's holding those galvanized pipe service pipes together is the dirt, the pressure of the dirt itself. So they didn't hit it.

But by removing the dirt, suddenly the scab comes off and they just start blowing water. So our guys are just out there fixing everything. So it it was high time. The mains were not in horrible shape, but they were cast iron. So there it was just becoming a patchwork of of waterline breaks in wet in Denver Steels.

And then eventually, we'll move over to to Aspen school area over the next couple of years, I think, too. But this Denver steels definitely has I did a I managed one of the projects on the upper end of and every day, there were just all these galvanized water services. But, yeah, we pull them out, they've already have repair clamps on them. And so it was it was definitely time to to get this project done. So our o and m budgets, we we really haven't grown in size.

And it doesn't really concern me to see that the o and m budget goes up as long as we are able to meet our o and m objectives, which is, you know, being able to to keep up with the meter change outs because, you know, we we definitely wanna claim our revenue. We do have a lot of slow clocking meters, and that's revenue that's nonrevenue water going through those. So and and it it's amazing how hard those jobs those projects are. It it takes a lot of work. Suddenly, you can imagine, you know, doing a home improvement project and you're doing your little plumbing project.

You're running back and forth to Metzger's. It's like that with these water meter jobs. Just suddenly, they get in there. They start doing, oh, this pipe's rotten all the way out to here. You gotta talk to the customer and see if you know? And then they're like, this is the weirdest size. What what did they do here? And so they're, like, running back. So they are complicated sometimes. But it like I said, as long as we're getting good quality work and and seeing progress on the on our o and m objectives, which are, you know, valve maintenance, exercising valves.

Sometimes we have to replace the valves. And then the PRV coordinating and supporting the PRV project and then the hydrant replacements. That's mainly what they're doing. And then, of course, the waterline breaks that we've that we've had. And a lot of the waterline breaks are related to things that we're doing to the water system.

It's not if you didn't do anything, you might not see them. But and then sometimes you just get unlucky with shifting soil and stuff like that. But you're gonna have, you know, at least 10 waterline breaks a year if you have cast iron. PVC doesn't really our new system, the PVC, we hardly ever see waterline breaks on PVC, on new PVC or new ductile, but you see it on all the old cast iron lines. Capital budgets.

So you see that over the we so these big projects that have hit our budget negatively, you can see we started we started funding them in 2021, and they're multiyear projects. So so a lot of what you see with the budget are because of the aggressive water production capital projects that that we decided we would confront while while we're while we are still here. And so we would leave the system in a much better position than than it was in, but, you know, before we left. So, hopefully, you know, that that option two plan of of delaying a few projects is not really gonna be a problem for water or wastewater because we've we've confronted our biggest problems. But we do have this year because of the public works projects.

We had kind of delayed a few water distribution projects up from we didn't do any over the late teens because of a budget issue, and then we started bringing them back in. And then, of course, these last two years, we budgeted to follow the public works projects, and it was high time. It was time to to do those projects. So so going back, you're gonna probably see something more in between f y twenty four and '25 moving forward. There might be some years where the public works project like Walnut Street and Aspen School area, that's gonna be our next water distribution capital expenditure.

Going to water production, which are all the wells, boosters, tanks, things like that. Some of our achievements were that we've developed these potable water connections so that because they're having the water earlier. And sometimes they also when they put in new turf, they don't want non potable water for new turf because they put a they put fertilizers and things like that. They were a little they were a little were a little off base with how what they were saying was was coming from the non potable water. So we worked with a with a golf course superintendent who got an agronomist to to to do a chemical profile of the non potable water.

And they found that the water's great. The only issue is it's very alkaline in the form of bicarbonate. So if they're putting on applying, like, a acidic fertilizer that's trying to raise the acidity, it just buffers it. So it they would have to just keep putting all this fertilizer on. So when they do that, they sometimes ask that we use that they use potable water or water from the reservoir up here and down. And then down in White Rock, we didn't have that option, so we developed a potable water connection. And they're they're actually watering with potable water now. So we're selling water now, so it might help. Let's see. We've we've been upgrading all of the wells and all of the boosters.

So this is a big, huge project, and that's where the bulk of a lot of our expenditures are right now. We've upgraded the the electrical and mechanical systems and just going through and basically gutting this the wells and boosters and and and getting them back to current standards. And and then in addition to that, that includes this major SCADA upgrade. So the control systems, we don't use these old, you know, nineteen eighties motherboard RTU, you know, radio radio unit. We use like a modern computer PLC.

And and now we're integrating new data points. Like, if the well shuts down, you know, we have these heat monitors in the windings of the motor. We can tell what if we had a bad voltage situation, if the motor got hot, if it vibrated too much, we'll get that data now before you're just like, oh, well shut down. We don't know why. And and, actually, since we've upgraded everything and we're we're we're actually rewinding a lot of the motors too, we're just taking them off preemptively because they've they're getting hot.

You can tell that they're not they have a they have a a noise in them. They're hot on some part of them, which we monitor with infrared. We're just taking them off and sending them in and getting and it's amazing how much of the just the random shutdowns that we were having, it's taking care of that big time. So we have a much more reliable system. Our staff did integrate a new chlorine disinfection and injection system over at Parrido Booster two, which is on Parrido Road where you see the two tanks there.

We had that's where we inject chlorine. And we had a problem that was that used an electrolysis cell to create sodium hypochlorite from salt, and it would get electrolysis cells would get hot in the summer. It's not not air conditioned or anything, and we would start it lowers the cell's ability to create that hypochlorite solution. And so we were barely able to meet the flow because during the summer, that's where a lot of the the water flow is coming through. So we were we were running really low, and and they've even trucked some solution from another, chlorinator over to P B 2 because of that issue.

So we evaluated this other system that didn't use electrolysis to create it. It uses these engineered pucks, so it doesn't really even it's not affected at all by the temperature. And we can much with much more sensitivity, we can adjust the chlorine residual. We had no control over the other system. It was just vacuum, you know, the the vacuum that's created.

It was just aspirating into the waterline at a certain rate. But now we can adjust it, which is important on that one because we provide water to Bandelier and the Bandelier campgrounds. And sometimes the chlorine residual was coming out low over there and especially in Bandelier. But they replaced all of their water system, which took care of something was creating a high chlorine demand in their old water system. Some of it was still infrastructure from the WPA projects in the thirties.

So we were like, this probably this tank is your culprit. Mhmm. So they got rid of all that WPA water system. And so we we can now adjust the chlorine residual, and we see much better numbers all around the labs. The next phase that we're gonna start seeing, and I think a lot of the water trust board, we're gonna get grants for a lot of these projects, are replacing the transmission lines out at Lantel.

They use a lot of ice melt salts, and they've they've trickled down into the waterline trench. And a lot of those lines are steel or steel reinforced concrete. And all the steel is really kind of in bad shape. So we're we have a lot of waterline breaks on lantern. They weren't as bad this year, but we had one in particular that I'm about to talk talk about.

Go ahead, Kathy. Another achievement is this SCADA transition project. Huge project. A lot of it's done in house, but it's kind of a it kind of spawns other projects like fiber and Ethernet and stuff like that because we're using these 900 megahertz radio, and it's just real slow and latent data transfer. So now we we just have to get with the times and and put the proper communication protocols in.

Of course, we've just had a update on the chromium plume situation. We it's something that we need to keep monitoring and sometimes even brokering communication between DOE and the state. That that is not a good relationship, but we're we're the central party saying, please, can you keep working together because this is our water resources and and our drinking water, which is the fundamental issue. Right? Public health.

So we sometimes have to play mediator between them. We've done a really good job with our water compliance and all of our testing. We meet all of our testing requirements every month and reporting. And one project that we're really proud of is that we've replaced the propane heaters. We we actually used to have to buy propane out at in the Guaje wells and and boosters.

And those weren't very efficient heaters. Of course, those big, you know, propane thing up in the corner, and they use up a lot of propane. And so we replaced them with mini splits, heat pumps, and we did that in house. It's still kinda going on. But then we started once you do that, you oh, man. All this electrical stuff is out of compliance. So, you know, that also spawns a bunch of in house projects. But, you know, hopefully, we have we have a we stole the electrician from traffic, and he's been doing a good job. But we're we're about to get another. But he has they borrowed him a couple of times when they had traffic light issues, and so he felt pretty good about that.

But he's done a good job with that. And and so we're gonna continue doing that. We're actually gonna get rid of the oh, we got rid of a an old resistive heater out at Pirido Well 4. Same thing. It was just one of those big heater things, and it would only heat that upper corner and stuff could still freeze in the building. So we got rid of that and put mini splits, and it's just way better. Go ahead. Oh, and there's Dave Gomez. He's retiring in May. I put that there because he came from the pipe fitter world, and he's our water production superintendent.

And he had to we had to pull him off the bench and take him out there. So when we upgraded the chlorine system at PB 2, he and Steve So to, who's our senior operator and also just a Swiss army knife of can do everything. They had to get down there and actually do the work. So I was like, let me get a picture of that, Dave. You know?

I to come out of the office and do that. The picture here on the right, so it that that pipe isn't broken. That's a drain line pipe. So this is down at the bottom of two mile mace two mile canyon, which is in between, you know, the the parking lot at the wellness center, and then that canyon just goes straight off there toward the the Wellness Track, the the wellness trails over there. And so there's a deep canyon there, no one ever goes down there.

Well, our transmission lines go down that canyon and then back up the other side. And back in October, we had overnight, we started losing our contract tanks, which is four four a and four, the one that's up on the the, you know, the bypass up from LA Canyon up to the turnoff to the ski hill. That tank there is a con so by contract, we have to keep those tanks full all the time because they provide fire protection for, you know, all the critical facilities at the labs. But to get the water to them goes right through this canyon, and underneath that concrete block is is the big 18 inch waterline. And over time, with the fires and everything and the and the the increased fire flows, storm water flows, and movement of sediment, it's put pressure against that block of concrete and the pipes that are under them.

And and you can't tell, but there's a big crack in that pipe. Eventually, it pushed down on the pipe and blew the pipe out. And I had to crawl down in there and try to in the water to see what happened, you know, and and sure enough, that's that's where it it came out. So one night, we had to keep the pumps on because we were losing the water out of the tank so fast. So that was a huge water loss, but we had to do it.

So this is a project that's about to start. Parker Construction's gonna have to get in there and repair that line. We're gonna slip line it from the two ends. Fortunately, there was a redundant pipe that that had been put in, I think, originally, and they didn't take it out. So we were able to transfer the flows into that. It's a smaller steel pipe, but we really wanna get this 18 inch pipe fixed soon. It's gonna be kind of a complicated project. Alright. Next. Power used to produce water.

We sold less water, so we we use less less power. But it's kind of interesting to see the profile. And you can see in FY '25, we had a wet period where we actually had rain in, like, April, May, and June. And so that those are our high times for producing water usually. So that's kind of kind of an anomalistic year.

We are so we're going to the non potable system. We are currently rehabbing that the main booster station, which is outside of the wastewater plant down in the confluence of of LA and Bio Canyon. They're they're rehabbing it right now. So this is the motors pulled the pump control valves out, and those are the pump holes. So that that goes down into the into the water shaft.

So everything's being being rehabbed, electrical, mechanical, everything right now. Yeah. So the water production crew also is overseas non potable. They it's kind of a a strange system because, you know, it's it's disjointed. We have the White Rock system, the non potable system coming out of the wastewater plant down in White Rock, and then, of course, the the reservoir and Camp May even.

We did develop this potable water connection, which works really well for the parks down at Overlook when we can't provide non potable water. And it it it I I like this system because we have a lot more flexibility to meet their water needs. Like I said, the bio booster station is in progress. And then we have fixed the Camp May storm water collection system, but they and it's actually in it's actually functioning right now. But they're, of course, gonna abandon that probably with the Jemez Mountain waterline.

Go ahead. So this is always a neat graph for me to I I like putting this one together because it makes me see what who all is using our non potable water. Of course, we we have the LA ball fields that are down, the the baseball fields, and then the soccer field below it is metered separately. So we actually have those two different end nodes. And then, of course, the golf course is the major user.

And then I put all aggregate all those together to get this graph. Last year, because of the Overlook Parks project, they use a lot of potable water rather than non potable water. So we didn't sell as much potable water down there, but we did kind of meet some water sales by selling them potable water. So this is yeah. You can see that there was a big drop because Overlook Park didn't use as much.

They used potable water instead for a lot of the year. And so this is aggregated golf course North Mesa and North Mesa fields together. They did use quite a bit of water because of the golf course was watering. And now we have this high quality non potable water, so they would water more frequently during the day. And people weren't using the golf course, so they were able to water almost all day long, which is unusual.

We're looking at I'm working with the schools right now to see if we can get non potable connections for them at Pueblo Complex, the fields that are to the to the sort of the north of the school there. We have a connection that we just need to get developed and connect to their irrigation system. And then also the middle school, we can provide non potable water at the middle school as well. Alright. Next. Oh, that's it. Alright. Questions?

Here.

Eric. Thanks, Jerry Gibson. Yeah. A couple

of questions. You mentioned now the pumps that I've seen have got vertical motors. Do they are they all vertical motors?

They they are. Of course, the wells are are usually much bigger. The the booster stations are usually in the 50 to 80 horsepower range. The booster so there will usually be three in the booster stations, three of those. And usually, we run one, maybe two. It depends on the demand in the tanks.

But you mentioned noise and so I immediately think of bearings. In your experience, how long do the bearings last on the vertical motors?

Years and years, but sometimes something might happen to the shaft, and that'll, of course, ruin a bearing really fast. It has to be completely completely in alignment.

And then the the other question I have

They're all they're all mechanical seal bearings. In the old days, we had to do all that packing with the the stuff, and then you'd get water that you're pumping out would would purposefully leak into the into the lantern ring to so that the water provided the lubrication, but we don't have any of those anymore.

Okay. Then the other you know, those wells, it's kind of an interesting arrangement with Lantel because the wells are hooked up to Lantel's electrical distribution system. Yeah. And so there's, of course, the metering, which we read and send the reading to the county and they take it off our energy bill.

Yeah. Do that pass

But through evidently, some of those meters may not be working as well as they should be. And I guess my question is, does that mean that Lentil's been paying for power for our water?

Yeah. I'm not really sure how that is being accounted for. They usually send us, you know, the meter readings. Usually, they they figure out that one of the meters isn't working well fairly quickly, and they send somebody out. And I I'll tell you a story.

This we had a incident actually just the other day. They were they we had a meter at P W 1, which is one of our oldest well installations. And they sent an electrician a a group of electricians out there. And, yeah, they on their side, because it's their meter, their meter loop, but they had they had an old meter box that they then wired over to their new one and something they couldn't figure out what was going on. And they didn't deenergize the station, and and they had a they had a arc flash incident on their with their electrician.

So we're now talking about exactly how this relationship works because we you know, I had to tell them that's even though it's in our station, it's all yours. It has your phone numbers all over it. It's your infrastructure. So they do come in and check the meters, but now the I'm sure they're having a lot of meetings about how how they operate inside of our well stations. And so we're gonna have them look at all of the meter loop installations to make sure that that it's safe for everybody because we feel like, well, that part of it was old.

We upgraded our side. And so the you know, there was kind of this not really finger pointing, but they were like, why didn't you upgrade? And we're we were like, but that's the service entrance. That's yours, not ours. So, you know, we do have this kind of relationship with them.

But, yeah, it's a good question because we do have to sometimes we will ask them, you know, about the power that's coming in because we can see that we have one phase that's out of balance with the other two. And so we can see it on their meter. And and the the the motor can handle that, but the controls don't like it. So we've actually had controls get ruined by a bad phase coming in. And so we we've asked them to to take a look at that and to see if they can get any data off of their meters and things like that. So we yeah. It's interesting kind of relationship and problem. But

One and it so if they go to upgrade or change the installation, and I'm sure they're gonna wanna take power down to a well. And so they'll just have to so you can you can do that. You can schedule well outages and

Yeah. Okay.

Cool. Yeah. And so they have to pull the fuses or ground the phases if it's a but some of them are overhead. And yeah. So they'll completely de energize the station. They should. We have to if we're gonna work on on medium or even the four eighty volt. We we de energize everything.

Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Other questions, comments, thoughts? Just a minor question.

So there are other electrolysis chlorination systems throughout the right?

Yes. Yeah. We have we have the the chlorination station out at Guahi Booster 2. It's it's a it's a 480 volt electrolysis, the one down here at Sankouy right at the truck route in State Road 4. That one does the same thing. And then

So so if you keep the rooms cool, is then does that

negate the

humidity? So hot up here. And we we have fan you know, we we're moving fans, and so the fans help. But, definitely, it's gotten hotter. Yeah. And so by putting in these mini splits, we can actually keep at least and so we we're we really plan on what what is gonna help the chlorination units the most. So we'll put it nearest to that. So at least that area stays. And and it has helped.

Okay.

Yeah. Cool. Thanks. I think that's all, Clay. Thank you.

Yeah, thank you.

Appreciate it. Before we go to public comment, I'd like to check signals on availability of of members here. For the next several months, at least, we're gonna be down, oftentimes barely quorum. So I'd like to ask people to make sure that you keep cap Kathy apprised of travel plans as as they as they change, travel that gets added or subtracted, whatever, so that we maintain a current list. Right now, it looks like as long as the remotes work, that we'll have a quorum for every meeting.

But, you know, things can change. So please keep Kathy up to date as and I'd like to particularly check on the on the next couple of weeks next couple of meetings to see if if there's any changes from what people had previously reported to Kathy for the next couple anyway. Matt?

I just canceled my travel for the next meeting, so I will be here in person on the eighteenth. I think I have remote, so it's good news.

Okay. That's always more pleasant. Okay. Just please keep Kathy informed. Appreciate it.

Is there any public comment? I don't see any in chambers.

If you're online and would like to make a public comment, would you please raise your hand?

Nope. Okay. With that, I believe we have finished. We are adjourned. Thank you very much, everyone.

Recording stopped.