Environmental Services Commission - Regular Meeting

It is 6.31 p.m. and I call the September 3rd, 2026 Environmental Services Commission meeting to order. Next, I will do a roll call. Commissioner Margolis? Present. Commissioner Hynosh?

Here.

Commissioner Tyson?

Present.

Commissioner DePertis. Present. And Commissioners Wan and Laxon are excused this evening. Good evening and welcome to the September 3rd Environmental Services Commission meeting. At this point, I will entertain a motion to approve the agenda. I have a motion to approve.

I second.

Hearing no objections, the agenda is approved as motioned. First item on the agenda is oral and written communications are now open. Remember, there is a three-minute time limit per person and 30 minutes total per meeting. Public comment shall be limited to matters relating to the City of Bellevue government and to subject matters encompassed within the powers and duties of this commission. Persons participating in Commission meetings must not engage in speech or conduct that disrupts, disturbs, or otherwise impedes the orderly conduct of any meeting. Disruptions may include, but are not limited to, failure of a speaker to comply with the Commission bylaws concerning public comment. Joe, do we have anyone registered for oral communications? I see we do. I have the list. And on there, I see... Make sure I get the correct one. Okay. Mr. Zimmerman, you're up. If you'd like to make a comment. Yes.

Yeah, guys.

I think it's a pure discriminatory and harassment because this chair is different from your chair.

We can get you a nice chair.

There we go.

That was easy to do.

Us is all equal. I love you guys for 40 years. You freaking bunch of idiots. Yeah. My name is Alex Zimmerman. I'm president of Stand Up America. Guys, you look to me like, what is this? Oh, yeah. What a civilized world I need to come to you here. Oh, like bandita, yeah. Crook and bandita, yeah. About an environment, what is he talking? Consul together with you, you know what it means? Acting like a bunch of fascists, you know what it means? Bring Bellevue to total collapse. Environment, what is the environment you're talking? Look what has happened around. Building, building, building, building. People, people, people, people. Transportation, it's a nightmare. What is talking about environment? Right now, Bellevue have so many gas from car, you know what this mean? Because traffic huge. People staying for hours.

Yeah.

It's a nightmare, but I cannot understand who did this. Oh, you did this? Absolutely. Because I've been talking about this for many years. We need something fixed. How we can fix this? There's only one chance to fix it. Clean all. Consul, together with you. Because by definition, you are a killer, a bandit. I remember Bellevue for a year here. I remember Bellevue, a nice, beautiful place. Air, clean air. No traffic. But this go worse, this don't go better. And I never see one word from you, you know what this mean? No from council how we can stop this. No one. It's a nightmare, you know what this mean? You don't care about people. You don't understand this? We have right now traffic what is probably don't have analogy with small city like Belvi for 150,000 people. Why are you doing this? They cut and cut speed, cut and cut speed, cut and cut speed. Each time you cut speed for five miles, the engine is working 25% of its work. You understand what I'm talking about? You're not an idiot, so why are you doing this? Yeah? Oh, maybe you're mentally sick. Oh, this is a problem. Yeah, absolutely. You possibly maybe need to go to a mental institution. Yeah. And doctor will help you. Little bit make situation better. Viva Trump. Viva new American revolution. Stand up slave and happy cow. Guys, it cannot be forever. It's supposed to be stopping. Stop and destroy Bellevue fundamentally. A Nazi dirty pig. Viva America. Thank you for my ass. From my ass.

Okay, I see no other names on the sign-up list for the oral communications. Are there other members of the audience that would like to make three-minute oral communications at this point? Okay, Joe, do we have any written communications?

No written communications outside of the public hearing at this time.

Okay, thank you. All right, and then we'll move on to staff reports.

I do have a short staff report. Just wanted to touch base. You'll recall Dave Beisch, our engineering assistant director. Dave took a position with North Shore Utility District to be their engineering manager. I don't know if we, I don't think we covered that back in, it just was announced in July. So he left in late July, early August, and he's starting up over there. Very happy to be closer to home. We'll miss him. Thank you. That's it.

All right. Then the next item on the agenda is approval of the minutes. The first being the June 18th minutes.

Motion to approve those minutes.

I second.

Any discussion or corrections? Hearing none, those minutes are approved. Next, we'll look at the July 2nd meeting minutes.

Move to approve the July 2nd meeting minutes.

I second.

Any discussion, corrections, alterations, additions? Elaborations. Hearing none, the July 2nd meeting minutes are approved. Unfinished business, there is none at this point. So new business, we will have a presentation on the 27 and 28 utilities budgets and an update and then launch into a public hearing after that.

Good evening, Commissioners. With me tonight, as you know, is Matt Hobson, our fiscal manager, and we're here tonight to continue the Commission's review of utilities' proposed budget and rates for the next biennium. One moment. Just a quick preview. So the action for tonight, as you can see the Commission will hold a public hearing on the utilities department proposed 2027 and 2028 operating budget the 2027 to 2032 capital budget and the rates needed for the next two years to fund the proposed budgets. Looking at the agenda for this evening, since we last presented to you, we've made a handful of minor updates to the proposed budget and the rates to share with you. And the updates come in two essential flavors here. First, there were a series of technical adjustments made to citywide expenses like medical benefits, general insurance, and indirect costs. And then second, we have the proposed budget and rates include the direction provided by the Commission on July 2nd, which was to revise the annual transfer from the Water Utility Operating Fund to the Water Capital Renewal and Replacement, or R&R Fund. This funding strategy preserves the long-term asset management strategy for the water utility while also creating some near-term rate relief for customers. Following the recap, we will segue to the public hearing, and that will include a brief overview of the proposed budget and rates. And next, I'll turn it over to Matt to actually highlight the updates to utilities' proposed budget and rates ahead of the public hearing.

Good evening, Commissioners. So the proposed rate increases for 2027 and 2028 as well as the projected rate increases for the following four years are shown on screen. These rates have been revised downward since our July 2 Commission meeting. The revision is due primarily to the Commission's direction to redirect a portion of the water utility transfer from the R&R program. Generally, the rate increases have been adjusted downward each year of the financial forecast by about two-tenths to three-tenths of one percent. I want to just pause here for context. The figures on this slide represents the overall rate revenue increases required to support each utility. Due to the sewer rate equity adjustments, the actual bill impacts to single-family, residential, and non-residential customer impacts will be slightly higher than shown here. And conversely, the rate increases for multifamily residential rate increases will be slightly lower than these estimates, or than these percentages. I'm now going to turn it over to the Vice Chair to start the public hearing.

Oh, okay.

Then we will start into the public hearing. The purpose of this hearing is to allow public comment on the 27 and 28 utilities proposed budget and rates. I want to remind all those who wish to speak at the public hearing to please sign up on the sheet if you haven't already registered and I have that sheet. I want to remind the audience members that you don't need to sign to speak. However, those who sign in on the sheet will get to go first. The commission's role is to consider the requested budget and rates as well as the comments received and provide a recommendation to city council for their consideration. A summary of the public comments and the commission's recommendation will be provided to city council. This is tentatively scheduled for the council's October 13th meeting. Scott Edwards, Utilities Deputy Director, who just moved closer. Okay. And Matt Hobson, Fiscal Manager, are here to present a high-level overview for the requested budget, which they just did. Thank you. Do I have a motion to open the public hearing?

I move that we open the public hearing.

And a second? Second. The date is September 3rd. The time is 6.44 p.m. And the public meeting is now open. We will start with the testimony here of the sign-in sheet, Mr. Zimmerman. You are up first.

You're very polite to me today. Yeah. I'm very happy. Two people are happy in my face.

Oh, yeah, I'm sorry.

Yeah, my name is Alexander. I'm president of Santa Barbara. Guys, what is figure I see? I'm spending school 20 plus years. I cannot understand. I prefer cash. Where is cash? You can show me cash. I don't show me cash. Because these figures, these percentages confuse me. Are you an idiot? Why don't you show cash? Make this idiot look better? Who is in this room, in a for-all Bellevue, 150,000 idiot? Where is cash? Show me cash. If you don't want to show cash, I will show cash now. So last week, two weeks ago, approximately, I am budget hearing here. So situation so unique, so idiotic, only pure degeneratively idiotic can do it with Bellevue what has happened. So Bellevue budget $1.2 billion. So people from room ask questions. budget director, you know what this mean? What's going on in city? He told me, yeah, we don't have enough money. Yeah, I totally understand that. So I'm stupid, you know what this mean? And I prefer cash. So a little bit come to my head and I thinking, my gosh, GDP in Bellevue, $150 billion, $150 billion. And City budget, $1 billion. So you freaking degenerative idiots, bandito and criminal, you know what I mean? Don't understand difference between $150 billion and $1 billion? Who, who have this $149 billion? Where is this money go? You don't understand? Bellavie situation absolutely idiotic. Consul pure cretina, bandito. Kill people, kill city, doing everything. $150 billion GDP, $1 billion value budget. Budget what is here? Cash, cash, cash only. Exactly. Why are you doing this? Can you explain to me? Amazon, Microsoft, there's 120,000 slaves who are working for them, make a ton of money. We have people, ordinary people like me, who live in Bellevue for 40 years, low-income senior citizens, you know what this means? Have only $1 billion. My question to you, you freaking creatina, what is different between $150 billion and $1 billion? To doing something, you know what this means? Maybe you need another $20,000. Maybe need another 20 millions. Maybe need another 20 billions for make us life better. You understand? Viva Trump. Viva new American revolution. Stand up, slave and happy cow. Stop and steal us money. Thank you very much. Have a nice day.

Can we reshare our screen now? Afterwards.

Yeah. Okay.

The second name on the list, and forgive me if I mispronounce this, Al Dieterman?

Al Dieterman, I live in the Vassar neighborhood. Matt and I have exchanged e-mails concerning the low-income utility rate assistance program. As you all know, a major driver for rate increases is Cascade and King County wastewater rate increases. While both of those agencies have shown a lot of sympathy for low-income customers, I don't believe either one of them has stepped up to the plate in terms of trying to provide some assistance. Many low-income customers have problems that they can't really solve. Leaks, both in the service lines and in indoor plumbing fixtures. There's really no helpful assistance that they can obtain that's going to help lower their costs unless the utilities, and I include the wholesale utilities as well as the city, step up and offer some kind of assistance. And I think that program would be best driven through the contributory rate assistance program where those other two wholesale utilities and the city could contribute funds. And private citizens could also contribute funds to assist low-income customers to get plumbers or to get repair broken fixtures, toilets, appliances, so that they get on track to reduce their consumption. My suggestion was that you look at the high-consumption customers that are already on rate assistance. Those are the folks that really could use the help. Maybe set some kind of a threshold, target those folks, and offer them some type of additional financial assistance. Not that... You know, some kind of subsidy is not appropriate for them. I think it is. But I think they need a helping hand more than just a handout. And I'd really like the city to consider offering a program like that to their low income customers, particularly the high consumption low income customers. Thank you.

All right. Thank you for your comments. There are no other names on the list. Are there members of the public in attendance that would like to comment? All right, seeing none.

So at this point, we'll provide a high level overview of the two thousand and twenty seven to two thousand and twenty eight operating budget for the utilities department as well as the two thousand and twenty seven to two thousand and thirty two six year capital improvement program. And then finally, an overview of the two thousand and twenty seven and two thousand and twenty eight utility rates. And the slide up on screen shows the proposed to your operating budget for the four lines of business provided by the utilities department, it would be for water for sewer stormwater and for solid waste. In total, the two year operating budget is about $508 million. And once again that represents the funding necessary for the next two years to pay for our operating and our capital support needs. The Commission has seen this pie chart before, but just as an overview, starting at 12 o'clock and moving clockwise, wholesale costs, which are in the red slice, total $175 million, or about one-third of the total biennial budget. Local and state taxes total $48.8 million, and support services total $34 million. Together, the wholesale services total the taxes and support services comprise just over half of the total operating budget for the utilities department. The next pie slice in teal is CIP support. That's capital improvement program support and totals $176.7 million, which is about a third of our operating budget. And then finally in the light blue pie slice is the local operating costs, which total $74 million or about 15% of the operating budget. The next pie slice is now we're moving into the capital improvement program over the next six years and this pie organizes the capital improvement program into areas of investment which align with city council strategic target areas. The primary funding source for the capital improvement program over the next six years is the annual transfer from the operating fund. Which makes up about 90% of total funding. It is also funded by interest earnings on fund balances, grants, and in limited cases, connection charge revenue. Due to the city's strong financial policies, which proactively plan for the replacement of utility infrastructure, no new debt is required to fund these capital projects. The utility continues to invest over 75% of the CIP dollars for renewal and replacement of aging infrastructure, which is shown in the blue slices, and they're broken down by each of the three piped utilities. In addition, the proposed capital improvement plan includes $66 million in the capacity for growth category. That's the orange slice. And this is to fund the new reservoir serving the downtown area and associated infrastructure needed to provide drinking water storage for downtown Bell Red and Wilberton areas. And then the proposed CIP also expands investment in environmental preservation. The budget focuses on flood reduction and water quality improvement programs while continuing to fund fish passage and stream improvement projects to preserve and protect our natural resources. And finally, some of the smaller slices. We have proposed to renovate East Gate Yard as well as continuing to fund for land acquisition for construction of a new north end operation and maintenance facility. We would also continue funding projects that rehabilitate and improve existing groundwater wells and associate infrastructure for emergency supply, which is shown in green. Annual rate increases are proposed to support the operating capital budgets from the previous two slides. Once again, this is a recap of a previous slide in this presentation. You're being shown the overall rate revenue increases as proposed for the next two years by utility. In addition to that, a four year projection from 2029 to 2032. bill impacts associated with these proposed rate increases will vary by customer type as well as by the level of water use level of sewer flow and the drainage intensity for each customer to give you an idea of a typical bill impact we have two slides one for single family residential and one for multi-family residential so we look at the top left corner of the screen there if these rate adjustments are approved by city council in november The typical single family residential monthly bill would increase $21.51 per month next year from $229.52 to $251.03. A little less than half of that increase is to support pass-through cost increases for water supply and wastewater treatment services from our wholesale partners. Expanding the city's utility bill assistance program would increase the monthly bill by about $1.93 All other local rate drivers, which include utility operations, capital program funding, taxes, and city support services would add $6.23 per month. To preserve fairness in utility rates, the typical single family residential bill would increase $2.84 next year. This increase is part of a five-year plan to sustain fair sewer rates for each of the different sewer utility customers groups. And then finally, beginning next year, the city would expand its utility assistance program to be available to approximately 10,000 more households. These customers would be eligible for a 35% discount on basic utility services, low-income seniors who are currently enrolled, or who are currently eligible for the existing assistance program would continue to receive a 70% discount. And then if you move your eyes to the right of the column there in 2028, using the same layout, the typical single family residential bill is projected to increase about $23.55. You can see in the middle of that right column.

And then just to clarify, those are monthly amounts rather than bimonthly bills? Correct.

The city does bill on a bimonthly basis. Similar layout just for the other half of our customers or households in Bellevue live in multifamily complexes. And so for a multifamily residential household, the typical bill impacts from these proposed rate increases will depend largely on how the property passes through these costs of utilities to its tenants. So these figures are on screen are more for illustrative purposes. Looking at the left side of the screen again, if these rate adjustments are approved by Council in November, the typical multifamily residential monthly bill would increase $10.15 per month. Generally, the rate drivers are proportionally similar to those shown in the previous slide, with exception to two key differences. First, there is a downward adjustment of $0.95 per month to sustain fairness in sewer rates. And even though many multifamily households do not receive bills from the city of Bellevue, they are still eligible for a rebate from the city if they qualify for low-income assistance. The eligibility and percent discount levels for this rebate are the same for our single-family residential customers. The next steps in this process are later on this month on September 17th. The commission will be asked to consider the information presented today as well as the public feedback received to develop a recommendation to city council on utilities budget and on the rates. Then on October 13th, the commission chair would present that recommendation to city council and council would then review the proposed budget and rates. And then we are anticipating action by city council on the overall budget that's citywide plus in addition to the utilities department on November 17th. And just as a point of reference here, we also anticipate at that time that the city council will consider the adoption of municipal code changes that would support expanding the bill assistance program, as well as the improvements to the utility connection charges that the commission reviewed earlier this year. With that said, that concludes the brief summary of the presentation and rates. And so I hand it back off to Curt, I think.

May I? Chair, just before we conclude the public hearing, I did want to acknowledge the comments, written comments that we included in your desk packet that will be included in the official record. With that, I think we can close the public hearing when we're ready.

I will entertain a motion to close the public hearing.

Move to close the public hearing. Second.

Hearing no dissent, the public meeting is closed at 7.01 p.m. All right, thank you, Scott and Matt. And our next order of business is on the wastewater remote sensor monitoring program.

All right.

Good evening, Commissioners. I'm Chad Beck, the Assistant Director for Operations and Maintenance. I'm here today to share an exciting new maintenance operations program in our wastewater utility that has provided valuable insights, prevented damaging overflows and reduced maintenance costs. Here with me today is Richard Peckler, a senior engineering technician in our wastewater maintenance section. He has been with the city of Bellevue for 25 years, starting as a maintenance worker and promoting through the ranks to become one of our most knowledgeable subject matter experts on the city's wastewater utility.

You know what I'm saying? It should be on this one.

It's a second over. You got it? Right there. This one? Yep. Okay. Thanks. Sure. Sorry, I thought she was writing it for all of us.

No, no, no.

That's no problem. Let's share.

Yes.

There we go. All right. Richard, you're going to be driving. All right.

Okay. So right here.

Yeah.

All right.

Thanks for bearing with us. All right. Next.

Next slide.

This presentation is informational only. The purpose of the presentation is to provide the Environmental Services Commission with an overview of Bellevue's wastewater collection system maintenance program, explain how the level monitoring technology works, and how the pilot was implemented, and highlight the operational, financial, and asset management benefits observed to date. All right, so the wastewater preventive maintenance program is one of three maintenance programs, along with our condition assessment and corrective maintenance programs. So the wastewater maintenance section is broken up into three teams that align under those three programs. The preventive maintenance program is comprised of a team that goes around the city and basically jets the lines with high-pressure water to remove blockages that could be caused by a number of things, including roots, what we call fog or fats, oils, and grease, and other things that get flushed down the toilet, like rags, etc. sanitary wipes, all kinds of different objects, wedding rings. Anything can be flushed if it can fit through the pipe. So they'll jet those lines to remove those blockages and ensure that the flow is as designed. Our goal in general is to try to jet those lines every 10 years. So every line in the city, and we have over 600 miles of wastewater pipe, is the goal to jet those every 10 years. However, there are some lines that need that maintenance more often. And we do those either on a monthly, quarterly, semi-annually, or annual basis. In addition to jetting, we also use either specialty saws or in some cases a foam solution to clear roots in particular. So they'll send, it's like a circular saw that goes through the pipe and it'll actually clear the roots and then push them down to the next manhole where we'll remove them. Or The foam will basically just sit within that pipe, and over time, it will just break down those roots. And then again, they'll flush them down to the next manhole where we can remove them.

So recurring maintenance of specific sewer lines is based on limited data.

We really did have a lot of...

So the recurring maintenance of specific sewer lines was based on limited data. Routes and intervals were created as reaction to overflows or observations in the manhole. So basically, if they had a line before this technology, if it was blocked by a root, then they'd watch it. If it did it again in six months, they'd just put it on a list, and every six months they'd just go out and clean it and jet it and jet it and jet it because they didn't have the technology available that we have today. So that's how these lines, these maintenance lists were done. Or they'd see the stuff coming, the roots coming through the manhole while they were jetting, and they'd say, okay, we've got an issue here. Historically, there wasn't any records kept why these lines were added to these maintenance lists, and these maintenance lists grew over time. As a result of maintenance frequencies are largely inherited from previous generations. So, you know, when I started here, There was a gentleman that worked for us named Mike Burbridge, and he grew up here when there were strawberry fields. So he's seen all this change, and he used to tell me about the stuff that they found, and it was literally observation. In 2021, we began evolution of technology to gather, evaluation technology to gather system data. As time has passed, the data that has become available and the sensors that have become available for us to monitor our system. These are the sensors that we're using now. They use sonar. It's like a submarine. This is the unit here. This is the one that we're using right now. They're mounted below the lid. So I can mount this in a roadway manhole, a sidewalk manhole, any pedestrian path. They're never going to interfere with this, and it's not ever going to be a hazard for them to worry about.

They'll never even know it's in there.

So we can measure the depth. And what it does is when I program it, I program it to where the bottom of the channel is, and then the sonar bounces off the water and tells us the depth. And it will actually give us live data as it goes through. And it's all done via 5G cellular from this antenna. They've actually improved these antennas. These newer ones that we have now, this is an actual better antenna. The software that comes with these things that we can run a dashboard on allows us to define our own parameters on our end. We don't have to interject with anybody else, okay? We do it ourselves. I do it right here on the computer, on my computer that I have back there. The software, which here's an example of our page, that right there, I can program that so that it sends out an email. There's three people on the email. There's the supervisor, the crew leader, and myself. And it also sends out one to our wastewater standby personnel. And it sends them a text message saying they need to check the system. So it's 24-7 live monitoring. The one you're looking at here is actually one that will never move. It is on the lake line down at Burroughs Landing. And what you're seeing there is actually at night when they flush that line. That's the flush cycle coming through right there. And in fact, that little bump is when I asked them to test it to make sure everything was working right because there was a little bit of a problem and it caught that bump. Those two lines up there, those are the threshold lines. The yellow one is the early morning one, early warning. And the red one is you've got an issue. Come on, get out here. So that one is just a series of you got something going. Hey, it's moving forward. You need to react, not just monitor it. And like I said, all this is programmable. So the implementation, we initially purchased 10 sensors, and the sensors were deployed on the mains that we had the most cleaning on, which was the monthly ones, where we would go out monthly and clean these lines. Again, those were being cleaned with high-velocity pressure. So there's 3,000 PSI at the pump. It's one foot drop per foot of hose. We have 800 foot of hose. So that's 22 PSI. So anybody that's familiar with using a pressure washer, that's what we're doing to the inside of pipe. Where that becomes really important is the degradation to the pipe. I'm sure that you've all seen old curves that got the rocks on them and the smoothness is gone. Well, that's what happens inside of a concrete pipe. That smoothness goes away and then the pebbles show. And what that does is it reduces the volume that can flow through there. And that's caused by overjetting. And that's one of the reasons this program was implemented, okay, to slow that degradation down. The maintenance activities, once these were put in, the maintenance activities were deferred. So they put one in a monthly, they didn't touch it, and they monitored it for a prescribed amount of time. When they decided, you know what, we don't need to do this monthly anymore, they put it on a different rotation. Because it still needs to be done, but not as frequently as monthly, okay? The staff monitors the sensor and the data and analyze plot flow behavior. There's three of us that had the ability to look at this. One of the things that came up is there's one up there on the top of that screen on that map way up top right across the Redmond Technology Center. That one we found, I found that every once in a while there's a blip at night where there's a high flow spike and that goes away. There's nothing wrong with the manhole, I think they're just dumping something, but it's data that we didn't know was happening before. Now we know it's happening. See, so when the sensors go off, the manhole levels indicate pipe blockage and trigger cleaning. So what happens is we're watching them, and if it says, hey, it's getting up to this level, go clean it. Well, that's the frequency that we'll start cleaning it now. So some of them might sit for a year before you have to do anything, but then we got to, hey, now is the real time frame. Some may come off the list completely. And that's the idea is to reduce the overall maintenance by implementing it the way we did. Once the data identifies optimal cleaning frequency, sensor is usually moved to a new location. That is true with the exception of three locations so far. There's one in front of Overlake Hospital. We have problems with some of this stuff that comes out of the hospital. Okay. You got a lot of people working there. They don't all know the rules. They're going to flush something eventually. So that's a critical site, right? It's on 116th. We don't want that one to overflow. In fact, we had a response to that this last week. We got an alarm and the Our crew was able to go out there and take care of the issue and it never even hit the street. They were able to clear the manhole and move on and not cause any environmental issues and we didn't have to go out there previously just to jet it just because. So these frequencies are slowly coming down to a more manageable level. So again, once it's identified and they'll sit there a long time, then we can move them. But it's a long process. But some of these cleaning routes are annually. Like the ones down at Factorio Mall, they're quarterly, so they're going to sit there a while. And then we'll be able to move them.

One thing to add too that's nice is that when they, in a lot of cases, when these were put on those different maintenance frequency lists, it was the result of some incident that happened. It could have been a blockage, but it was probably a blockage that resulted in an overflow. And in some cases, maybe it was an overflow that had an associated claim. And so we would put it on a list in order to try not just obviously to maintain the system better, but also to avoid having to pay out a claim of a similar nature. But what you don't always know is what caused that and how often do we actually need to go out. So as Richard said, we're able to reduce the maintenance frequency, which then allows us to redirect that labor hour towards something else. But also importantly, it's defensible from a risk perspective. So we can actually point to... the the updated frequency and it's not just because we haven't had any issues it's because we can show the actual data and say we're you know we're basing this cleaning frequency on the historical data that we've seen from that manhole so uh there it's not just the maintenance benefits it's also you know the risk and financial benefits that come or the risk avoidance i should say So some of the benefits that we've already realized since we implemented this, I know that we previously came to the ESC back in, I want to say, 2022 when we were first started. really initializing this pilot project with the sensors that we had initially selected. And we've actually updated our technology over time and tried different vendors just to get a sense for what the different capabilities are and the different cost models associated with different services. But regardless of the vendor, we have been able to uh make significant changes to those frequencies so almost all of our monthlies were moved into either quarterly semi-annually or annually and now we're at the point where we're rotating amongst the different uh month or sorry quarterly sites to better evaluate those right so we were able to put all of the monthlies on a six month sort of test phase and see how often we had to clean and now we've moved on to those quarterlies So as Richard said, one of the main benefits in addition to reduced maintenance is we're extending the life of the pipe. Every time you scour it, as he said, you're removing some of that wall thickness. So we're extending the life of the pipe. We're also improving the performance over the life of it because, again, we're not making the pipe rougher. So it's going to stay smooth, which is going to improve flow. um we've been able to redirect the staff who would have been doing that monthly cleaning to other activities so uh we are progressing from what our old goal used to be of about 80 repairs per year to defects that were found through our cctv program uh we're we're migrating towards what we think is an eventual goal of something closer to maybe like 100 repairs per year and that will definitely help with working through our backlog of repairs or sorry, of defects that we have found through the CCTV program, many of which are just sitting waiting to be repaired. But we just don't have the staff capacity to address them, you know, all at once. Right. We have to work through them over time. We are importantly avoiding overflows. So Richard brought up a great example. If you've ever been to Burroughs Landing, which is a really small, it's actually maintained by Parks Department, but it's really just more like a small water access within a neighborhood. It's just south of Chisholm Beach Park. But the manhole that is there is, I don't know, five feet from the waterline. And it's where the lake line comes in to the shore. And if there was a blockage downstream of that in the lake line, that would cause an overflow from that manhole. There is no way that we would, by the time anybody sees it, By the time we get there, we've already put water in the lake. This is one of the locations that Richard talked about where we will always have this sensor because it allows us to see that overflow or the potential for an overflow before it actually occurs. We can set the level so that by the time the line is starting to surcharge, we can already dispatch a crew immediately. or our standby person can. And we can be on scene to mitigate that overflow, hopefully, or at least find out what the cause is and greatly reduce the chances of an overflow. So it's not just the maintenance improvement. It's also protecting the city from illicit discharge. And then finally, it's we are We have not just the initial 10 that we talked about in our deployment, we have now doubled that. So we now have 20 sensors throughout the city, which is important because we want to continue to rotate them through different sites to better learn what's happening in those areas, but we want to still keep some at those critical locations. One of the things that was important to us is that we were able to justify the costs during this pilot phase with some sort of ROI. And the ROI we used was the maintenance that we were able to avoid. But with those ones that are left in place, that ROI kind of goes away. In that case, you're really just paying for it with risk avoidance instead of deferred maintenance. So there's a balance there where we have to decide, okay, which ones are going to be for learning and which ones are going to be for preventive overflows. So what are we looking at for the future? We are planning to install additional sensors in the coming years. Our hope is in the 27, 28, we've budgeted as assuming, you know, it's always hard to know how the vendors costs will go up, but assuming that they progress what we think we are, we're hoping to double again, the number of sensors that we have in the system. That is our goal. And we've budgeted for that. In addition, we're also looking at other places within the utility that we can employ these sensors. And the most logical one is actually the storm and surface water system. Now, it's a little different. We don't have the same type of preventive maintenance, like rigid preventive maintenance schedule for the stormwater system that we do in sewer. So the ROI would be different. But from a risk avoidance, there's a lot of really good use cases there. The example you see here is in the downtown area. There are some pipes, because of the development that we've had downtown, there are some parts of our storm system that when we have these large rain events that are unfortunately more common, you see the system surcharge and you see flood, like localized flooding. And so at least having earlier indicators, there's probably some things that we could do to help mitigate those surcharges. And then also it provides really valuable information for our engineering team as they try to do system modeling and I&I. And then lastly, we're also, I would say one of the cool things is that this has also, in a sense, kind of changed the culture within our wastewater utility. Our maintenance staff really saw the benefits that these sensors had, and they're now looking for other things that they can bring in. And one of the cool things is we've, Instead of sending like the superintendents or the managers to the trade shows, we've been sending the field staff. And they come back and they, instead of the manager trying to sell the guys or gals in the section on this cool new thing they saw at a conference, they're coming back and telling their boss, hey, I really think this could help us. And that helps with implementation because they're buying off on it. And so two really cool examples would be that I hope to come back maybe in a year or two and tell you about our implementation of. is the first is a UV cure balloon. So when we slip line a pipe, which means when we put a fiberglass uh you know a sock kind of in and then inflate it we usually put in a catalyst uh to cure that epoxy that has to sit for maybe an hour with that balloon inflated pushing against the pipe to repair like a crack or a break of some sort but there's a new system where they actually have inside the balloon a uv light that will cure it almost instantly so instead of our crews having to sit there for an hour and wait for this thing to cure they can put it in inflate it turn the light on Turn the light off, pull the balloon, move on. So imagine how much faster you can work. The other piece of technology that we're buying is something that's called a reinstatement tool. So when we use that slip line in any sections where there might be a T that goes with a stub to a house, that would be an area where if there was a defect there, we couldn't slip line that because we don't want to cover the T going to the house, right? So in those cases, we would actually have to dig that section up and replace it with a whole new T. But now they've made a tool that allows us to find exactly the center of where that covered area is and then drill through it with like a perfectly sized hole and basically reinstate that connection. And so not only does that make the repair faster, but now we don't have to dig up either the street or the person's yard to do that repair. So both of those were brought to us by members of our crew who went to these trade shows, found these things, and are excited to be implementing new tools or technology, however you want to look at it. So it really is a great attitude that we have right now in that section of just looking for ways to improve.

Anything you want to add? I honestly say this is one of the things that I've been most excited about lately. My job has gotten kind of boring because I've been doing it so long. So it's literally, I can do it so easy that I just do it. I don't even have to think about it. But that's fine with me. But this kind of stuff coming into the industry, it helps us so much, this technology. One of the things I didn't show you earlier is when this is mounted in the manhole, this stays in the manhole. If this unit goes bad, I can take one from not another critical area, bring it over, drop it back into the clip, put my computer next to it in the truck, connect to it by Bluetooth or satellite, and reprogram it for that spot. That's one of the greatest values of this. It's completely hidden from the public. It's not a hazard. It's movable. It's easy to put it in another spot. I'm excited about this stuff. In fact, I've been pushing their system pretty hard, and they've had to make some changes to it. So they're actually quite pleased because I'm using it differently. We, the city, are using it differently than they envisioned. So they just actually did a paper on it, a case study on it, and put it out for the water-waste-water world as bringing new technology in.

I'll also highlight, Richard was recently invited to present at the Smart Water Conference, conference down in Portland this year in combination with Caliper, the vendor. And so it's not just that we're excited about it. The industry is as well.

Congratulations. It is really exciting. It is. It's infectious to hear you tell the story and we're excited just before hearing all the details. Really exciting. like a great success story. So thanks for sharing.

It's a really great adaptation of technology for our work. And that's what's starting to happen, right? Wastewater has always been the stepchild off in the corner, right? I mean, that's the truth. You can live with fresh water coming to your faucet and you can live with sewage not going where it's supposed to be. It's not the most pleasant, but you can't live without good water. So as water quality and all this stuff and regulations come in, more people are paying attention to what we're doing. And this technology is rapidly being applied to our industry. And it's wonderful and it's exciting. These things, I'm really excited about these things because we're going to be able to change our business line to a lot better efficiency out of it.

So, yeah, echo what Commissioner Thiessen said. It is really exciting to hear about this new technology. And I'm really excited because I focus on workforce transitions and our workforce here in the water industry is really we're struggling to keep people interested in water and wastewater. And so when we have these kinds of tools or toys, right, gadgets, I think the younger generation is going to go, yeah, that's really cool. I want to do this, right? And so your remarks about the culture and everything, I really appreciate that. And I hope to see more. One question I did have, you sort of already addressed it. I was wondering about and, you know, the direct customer impacts of technology and what are we going to see, you know? And I wasn't sure if this particular tool was helping, you know, from a customer standpoint, but it sounds like you've got other things that you're going to be deploying to really help customers figure out when their, whatever, 60-year-old lateral is going to fail. I have a neighbor who had to replace their lateral, and then they had to dig up the street, as you...

and wow was that expensive right do you want to address the laterals i mean as far as what this well as far as the laterals themselves as an individual we don't have a way to monitor those yet there's no way to monitor a lateral yet that's something the homeowner would have to do however what this does is there's a backup in the main that's going to affect multiple people We can get ahead of it before it actually happens. There's one sensor that's behind Sammamish High School on the trail that runs behind it. And our standby guy got pinged by that one and was able to get out there and get response to it before it became a real issue. Because that's back there on the trail, right? Who's going to see it? It's just like Burroughs Landing. If it's overflowing in the winter, no one's down there. I've only seen two people down there all the time that went down there. Neither one of them lived in Bellevue. They were here visiting. And so, yeah, it's exciting for this data-driven responses to stuff. So, yeah, I like it.

I would say the one thing that the other tool I talked about would probably be more likely to benefit people the homeowner with respect to their lateral, just because instead of those T's and maybe the problems that are up from those T's within the stub being avoided because we don't want to do, you know, a major dig and repair project for a T, now we can slip line it, we'll do the reinstatement. And then with that, we're more likely to see problems that might be within the stub as we, you know, video and reinstate that connection.

This is super cool.

I remember, I think it was probably when I first joined the commission hearing you guys come in. Three years ago.

Yeah, cool toys. So very cool that you're doing it. I was just curious, kind of the business arrangement with the vendor. So obviously you're buying the hardware from them. So are you then dependent on them for all the software or how much... What's the relationship? Which parts do we take over? Do we own? If you can just explain that briefly.

Yeah. So the initial cost for the unit, there's a hardware purchase cost. And then with that, there is a small SaaS fee. But It's nominal compared to actually the purchase cost of the hardware. And they kind of put you into tiers, right? So if you have like zero to 10 devices and then 10 to 100, and it kind of goes from there. So obviously as we deploy more, they will probably... we may go into different tiers and then we'll have to reevaluate. And as we've shown, we're also not afraid to look at different vendors. This is our second vendor, but we've evaluated a number of them and we're always gonna be looking for what the best deal is from a stewardship standpoint. I will say too, if Richard keeps pushing them to add new functionality, we might see our costs go up as well.

I wanted to let you know that we don't have to worry about software because it lives on the cloud, so we never have to update our software. It's on their end. We just access their cloud. There's no software that actually lives on ours, on our system at all. It's just a web access.

Right. Now that makes sense. I was just wondering, it sounds like it's their software that we're using. We're not using any kind of internet. No. We're not building anything.

The reason Richard highlights that is because our video trucks have the software that we use to collect the CCTV footage lives within those trucks. And then like any system, you've got to update them. It can be painful at times to keep those things up to date. So it's a big deal to them to have a cloud-based system because it's such a breath of fresh air compared to what they deal with on the video trucks.

Yeah.

I'll just add that and not having to clear blockages reactively when you can proactively get it just in time. Uh, the crews are a lot happier. I haven't seen Richard smile like this in a long time. So, so it's, it's, it's very valuable on a lot of levels. Um, I do think like on the condition assessment, the video inspection will be coming back probably in five or 10 years talking about AI and some of the things and how that can help our, our inspection processes as well. Um, We're just going to be careful here. I'll be getting into contract negotiations with staff because you hear all this all the time. It won't replace anybody. This stuff needs to happen. We need to get out there and make sure we're looking at our infrastructure, making sure it's maintained properly. But doing stuff proactively in all the field sections is always preferred if we can do that.

I think one of the phrases that you use that resonates is reduced risk. And that can be a tough sell, but I support investing in reduced risk.

Just to piggyback on what Mr. Herbert has said about personnel and contracting stuff out, we have so much work to do. There's still system-wide cleaning that has to be done. They have to still go through the whole system every 10 years, no matter what we do with this. There's so much work for these guys to do. We're not taking anything away from anybody. We're just making it so they can focus their efforts in a more strategic manner. Maybe we get one or two more repairs a year, something like that. Maybe we can not have so much staff out on the jetting program and they can do other things that are just as important.

And I think what might be really interesting is taking the analysis that you do and then tying that back to the budgets that we see. And it could be that there's a blind spot in the budget where you actually are going to come back not with a cost savings, but with an investment that we need to make. I'm open to that. But don't be afraid of that scenario as a department. You may find that we've underinvested in certain places, and that's valid.

All right. No further questions. Thank you for your presentation.

Thank you. That was fun.

It's not that I dislike my job, but I've only got two more years to go.

Wow. Is that your replacement?

I do like my job. It's just this has been exciting out of the way rather than just work.

Yeah, thank you.

All right, next item on the agenda. Joe, you want to review calendars? Okay, we will take that.

You're welcome.

Well, let's try. So in early October, we had an ESC meeting scheduled, and it was going to be covering the stormwater system plan update and another session on budget. We don't believe we need to come back. We will be looking for your recommendation in two weeks. And so what my plan is, what our plan is, is to cancel the October meeting for the ESC The chair will still be going to council. I believe it's on October 13th. It's a Tuesday, obviously, on behalf of the ESC and making that recommendation to council. And so with all the double meetings you had this year, we do want to offer that up as October would be canceled. We'll move into November with the ESC hitting on the stormwater system plan and a water system plan update. And then in December, we would be having our annual planning retreat to recap on 2026 and plan for 2027. Council, we have some normal types of consent items going and then on I think it's again October 13 where Commissioner Juan would be going to council to touch on the recommendation from the ESC on budget and rates. With that, I'm just going to say that's what I got off the top of my head. I hope that works for you.

Thank you. That means no further opportunity for input into the budget?

Correct.

Well, in two weeks. meeting in two weeks to provide the official recommendation to council. So that is another opportunity. Yeah. All right. That comes to the end of our agenda. I will entertain a motion to adjourn.

I move that we adjourn.

Second. Hearing no dissent, the meeting of the Environmental Services Commission is adjourned at 7.36 p.m.