Planning Commission - Special Meeting

and the City Council to order on June 29th, 11.02 a.m. Do we need a roll call, Lisa? All right. All are in attendance. And moving to our first item. Let's see. Thanks, Mike. Public discussion.

How did I miss that? Anyone online?

Okay. All right. So we'll move to our first item on our agenda. Thank you. And who takes this? Kevin?

Yes, I can take this one. These are two invoices from Stantec Consulting. They're a consultant that was helping the city investigate well 19 specifically for nitrate and chromium 6 and the possibility of swaging different zones of the aquifer to improve water quality. to that investigation. That it did not make sense to swedge the zones. You have two different constituents that were of concern and the zones that they would have to swedge were so large in the higher producing zones that it didn't make sense to swedge. The chromium Six is naturally occurring. Yeah. This is the well that's just above the MCL.

Yeah.

19. It's the one at Missouli Sports Park.

So is there, I guess, treatment that we'll have to do on that well then as a plan?

Yeah. Well, the other problem is the nitrates. That treatment is a more expensive treatment. So the preferred way of dealing with the nitrates would be with surface water and blending down the, the nitrate levels. In the meantime, until we're at that point, it probably would not be used. Nitrates are right at the MCL right now.

Kevin, that well has been offline from the city drinkable water system for how long?

Months. This is a new well. It's the new well.

Was it ever plugged in? It was.

It was used for less than a year. but nitrate levels from when we started using it to when it was turned off had steadily increased to the point it was near the MCL, and that's what led to the investigation.

And the Chrome 6 or whatever it is, it's new. There was none of that to begin with, right? We didn't know about that at the time.

Yeah, and the Chrome 6, the treatment options for Chrome 6 are – or like a coagulation filtration type system that are reasonable and not as expensive. It's the nitrate and the treatment with those. I'm sorry, I said coagulation filtration. I think it's a GAC or a GAC granular activated carbon. Yeah, that's the preferred way of dealing with nitrates. No, we just don't have a...

It's not connected in to another well.

Yeah. Well 13, there's a well at River and Fulton. That's our closest well there that you would have to mix it with. That is one of the options we've discussed.

I mean, does it pump then just directly? There's services on it before it gets to the water tower then?

Or I guess how is... Yeah, it goes into the water system.

It doesn't tie into the tower directly. It's not like it's mixed in a tank and then distributed out.

The problem with the nitrate type treatment is the salt that you have to truck off. It makes it very expensive. I don't know off the top of my head what the differences are, but it's substantially more expensive to do the nitrate treatment. Yeah.

When you say truckloads, it's like truckloads?

Yeah, yeah.

There's that much salt in there?

Yeah, yeah. And they truck it to the Bay Area.

And what's going to stop it from coming back after you clean it out? It's in the water. All you're doing is cleaning the water. You can't clean it up. Sounds like maybe we ought to just shut it down.

So right now it is shut down.

I don't know if it's a possibility or whatever makes sense, but the groundwater recharge projects, typically their initial shock will push all of the nitrates from the ground in and you'll get a higher level, but Long term, it's a way of doing, you know, getting clean water into the ground and blending underground, basically. But I'm wondering if it would make sense to, in a situation like that, have set aside a couple acres and do a recharge project with SSJD water next to it to get more fresh water down into the aquifer.

Yeah, and this well was designed as an aquifer storage recovery. Yeah. So it is a hit-start well.

I mean, we can do that, too, but with the treated water. But I just mean, you know, do a... Yeah. Do a... you know, a pond out there. Well, they're very mobile in water. So, well, there's, I mean, like from farming practices and I mean, sometimes just natural nitrates in the soil, but like when you first put water on the ground, you can push them down real fast. They travel with the water really fast. So like if you're doing a recharge project, you put a bunch of, you know, river water on them. You flush it all, so you will spike the levels of nitrogen in your groundwater initially, but then if you keep putting more and more fresh water on it, it dilutes it eventually down below in the aquifer. You'll see a spike in nitrates with a recharge project, but eventually, long-term, it decreases the overall nitrates in the wells. I'm just curious, if you could get a mound of, if you did a one-acre basin site next to it and just put SSJID's irrigation water on it continuously... you could probably improve the groundwater quality that way.

The other thing that we've done, which James and I were just talking about this morning that has had some success, is looking at nearby private wells that are screened down to these lower, we're like less than 200 feet below ground. So if there's other wells that are there, they could be transporting nitrates down to that level. So if you could clean those up and either put in a correctly designed well that prevents the downward migration of those nitrates, typically from those upper aquifers above that. That helps too. We've done that within the city of Ripon and our Ripon wells. And we have two non-potable wells right now that we have seen reduction in nitrate over time. So that's the other thing to look at too, is what private wells are in there. We did a study early on when we put this well in, and we worked with some private owners to replace their wells as part of this project. So, you know, we've done that. And, you know, as this maybe gets used and not potable, maybe some of those nitrate levels do go down over time as well. But, you know, I think as much as you could do, and the groundwater recharge is a good option too, just the groundwater benefits of that, you know, but also looking at some of the private wells nearby.

Yeah.

Anything you could do except treat for nitrate is a good benefit.

Treating for it is going to be expensive and challenging.

Yeah.

Mill Joe, Kevin, I'm forgetting the number of that one. Is that one of the wells where you're seeing some improvement?

That is not. That well will likely go to a non-potable well here in the near future.

The well that we've seen.

What number is that one? 14. Thank you. The one we've seen improvement is on Mill Joe. near the Rapona area. That one we've actually seen some lowering of nitrates.

Good. Okay. Thank you. Any further discussion? If not, resolution. And do we need additional discussion on the resolution? So I guess this means that Kevin has apparently accepted the proposed wage adjustment we made for him. We're on 1B. We got to pay 1A. We got to, okay.

Then let's do that one.

I was moving on.

I know.

Gary didn't want to pay the bill. You're moving too fast.

ALL THOSE IN FAVOR SAY AYE. AYE. CLOSED NAY. STANTEC BILL IS APPROVED. AND LET'S MOVE TO 1B BECAUSE I'M ANXIOUSLY READY TO MOVE TO 1B. ANY ADDITIONAL DISCUSSION ON THIS ITEM?

IF NOT, I NOTICED ON THE MEMO ALL THE positions are moving three places on this big old salary schedule thing we have. How much is each base worth?

Is it 1%? 1% is each.

So it's a 3% adjustment.

Okay. Yeah, it's 3%, and this is in line with the memorandum of understandings with the representative groups as well.

Okay. That's what you talked about last time. Right.

What about cost of living?

That's what that is.

That's what it's considered.

Right.

So this is the same thing you already talked about. Yeah.

Is there a motion to accept the resolution adopting employee compensation plan? Thank you. Thank you. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, nay. Resolution is carried unless there are any other Items to discuss.

This meeting is adjourned.