MINUTES OF HANKSVILLE TOWN COUNCIL MEETING and PUBLIC HEARING
MEETING HELD AT HANKSVILLE COMMUNITY CENTER ON THE 12th DAY OF JANUARY 2017 AT 6:00 P.M.
The Hanksville Town Council convened the Public Hearing on the 12th of January in the Hanksville Community Center in conjunction with its regular session of town council meeting. Meeting commenced at 6:00pm.
Present: Mayor Kim E. Wilson, C. Chylene Whipple, C. Susie Hatch and C. Molly Keaton
Absent: C. Celeste Sellers
Employees: Clerk Lisa Wells, Treasurer Jessica Alvey, Maintenance Jeff Pei, and Eric Wells
Public in Attendance: Kelly Crane with Ensign Engineer, Terry Smith and Greg Johnson with RWUA, Bertha Robison, Robert Hoggatt, Joe Caligiuri, Kenny Wells, Sarah Wilson, Dennis Alvey, Sam Brown, Curtis Whipple, Sue Fivecoat, Bill Wells, Dale Sellers and Keith Hunt
Meeting to Order: Mayor Kim E. Wilson
Pledge: Mayor Kim E. Wilson
Prayer: Kenny Wells
Roll Call: Lisa Wells
Approval of minutes: Motion to approve minutes of December 2016 council meeting: C. Chylene Whipple; Second C. Molly Keaton Aye: All in attendance
Mayor Wilson summarized the water project that has been approved by the Utah Drinking Water Board for a loan/grant in the amount of $186,000 grant and $415,000, 0% interest loan to be used for the construction of culinary water system improvements for the town, including replacement of fire hydrants, placement of auto-read meters and telemetry system. A rate increase will be required to fund this project. The mayor made some recommendations to Ensign Engineer regarding the sample site SS-001 that has been required by DEQ for the blending program since 2012; a new blending program with a different site to take the water sample is needed and could alleviate the arsenic compliance issue. The arsenic is sampled quarterly and in the last 12 quarters the town has been in violation 5 of those quarters which now requires a mitigation plan to show DEQ how the town will address the arsenic levels and bring them in compliance. Currently the mayor has instructed maintenance to shut down the 1991 well and use the Navajo/Sandstone #4 well and blend with town well #3.
Dennis Alvey: The only problem with this is it’s a gamble; the first Navajo well was drilled to fix the arsenic problem and now all you’re doing is making it bigger without a guarantee that it’s going to work so why don’t you go with treatment plant to begin with? What’s to say that in 5 years you come back and say are arsenic levels are still high and now we have to put in a treatment plant?
Terry Smith: What have we done here that we don’t have to do otherwise? You are replacing some water lines that need to be replaced, you are really not putting a lot in. Mr. Smith stated that he has had a little experience working with a couple of systemsthat had an arsenic problem and it’s very intense as far as maintenance and you have to have someone with the knowledge, and it is a concern. EPA keeps moving the acceptable arsenic number around but from what Mr. Smith is hearing about our system the one well is quite low in arsenic and it’s a running annual average and so you can be high three quarters out of the year but the fourth quarter can bring your average down. Treatment system is very expensive.
Mayor said another alternative that has been suggested is to study town well #3 and deepen that well #3 into the Navajo sandstone. A few of them are checking to see if that was tested back when it was drilled. Kenny Wells added information to this alternative, Mr. Wells was hired to drill that well, at the time well #3 was drilled they did a test well down into the Navajo south of well #3; it proved to be inadequate at that time.
Kelly Crane: There is a second phase to this project that RD maybean option (for money) if we time it right, that may be a really good option, and with the violation in place that the mayor has talked about, that actually opens the town up to a potential of up to 75% grant for the second phase.
Rural water is available to evaluate the town’s fire hydrants; the town could buy internal mechanism for each hydrant instead of replacing the hydrants and the cost would be significantly cheaper.
Kenny Wells: The mayor talked about future growth and basically we are taking one more step. Is it possible that we can take two steps? Our community has opportunity to grow to the northeast and southwest, for growth why do we only go from 6” to 8” why don’t we go from 6” to 10” or 12” water lines? If we are going to replace something in here, why do we take just one step? Kenny stated he is a certified State of Utah water well driller and has done a lot of test pumping, and was a part of the test pumping for all three Hanksville town wells and also the drilling of them, so he does know quite a bit about them and what they are capable of. The Navajo well out of town here is equipped for 145gpm, but when it was test pumped it produced about twice that much so it has the capability to increase twice to what it is doing right now. If the expense for running that well is a concern, if we could increase the water pumped even by 50% on almost the same amount of power we could penny pinch some by increasing the system. The reality is everybody hates that well, nobody likes the way it tastes because it’s not as sweet as the 2 wells in town; they taste different. The mayor talked of eliminating the use of the two in town wells, we have invested a lot of equipment in these systems, why don’t we allow our town to have a secondary water source which means we water our gardens or grass with this secondary water from these in town wells. They could be run on a pressure supply system as you wouldn’t have to have a tank to operate them. This secondary system could even be subsidized by our irrigation system from the river. We don’t have to throw away the old system and we might be able to utilize it within the town and that in not uncommon for rural communities to have two separate water systems, one for their irrigation and one for their culinary uses. Ensign said if there are growth corridors that we know about he could plug them into their model and see how the system would react to this growth. Ensign needs to understand where growth corridors are, that would be key to understanding the model especially as we replace sections in town. The mayor mentioned that the loop on the model that would connect 100 east, going south and then over to center and also the proposed line from the Navajo well connecting in to 100 east would open up some areas for growth in the system as well as assist in the arsenic issue by blending the water.
Dennis Alvey: What is the second phase? Mayor responded that it entails the Rookie tank expansion to increase the actual capacity that the city holds which also increases the pressure and the blending capability of the system. Then we could pump more water out of the Navajo well into the bigger storage and it will blend better with the other wells and balance the system a little easier with a larger volume of storage. This is the biggest portion of the second phase with some upgrades in the town. Mr. Alvey asked what the time frame on that project. Respond by Ensign Engineer – Depends on how well this first phase fixes some of the problems with the arsenic readings. If we are still bumping up past the 10 parts per billion then phase two needs to come within a year or two. If it doesn’t and we are able to solve our problem and get the readings down where they are supposed to be then we can probable hold that off for 5 to 10 years. Mayor said the existing 100,000 gallon tank is old and we may have issues with it anyway. This tank appears to be leaking and needs to be inspected.
Jeff Pei: The state regulations say we have to have 220,000 gallons of water storage at all times for a reserve. Currently we have about 275,000 gallons capacity available for storage. There have been a couple times when a water line broke and the storage was used up in a few hours. If we grow anymore and sell any more water than the fire hydrant pressure changes to supply it and we would have to keep more gallons for storage. The benefit of the second stage is allows us more storage for growth. Terry Smith suggested we revisit those numbers as he thinks they are incorrect. They have lowered the fire storage by half from what it used to be about a year ago. Mr. Smith is not trying to discourage us from putting in more storage but at the same time growth should pay for itself through impact fees. Sometimes a town doesn’t want impact fees because they want the growth and you have to balance that too; how bad do you want people to move in here? You don’t want to chase them away with impact fees but at the same time they should pay for growth.
Curtis Whipple: That brings up a point that I want to make, I know that the idea that there is a plan for growth on this system upgrade but why do the 86 current users, why are they paying for that? The line that closes the loop and that is brought in from the Navajo well along the red hills road is close to elevation of the tank so there is a chance that that line is not going to have water in it except when its pumping anyway so what is the purpose for that line, that’s not looping anything. Why is the community paying for that and not development paying for that. That’s the way it should be. Ensign Engineer responded that the Division of Drinking Water doesn’t allow us to build for growth. The connection that Mr. Whipple is talking about puts more water on the west side of town and balances the model out, to push the lower arsenic water into the other side of the system. That’s the reason they considered that line. Mr. Whipple – If we are talking just growth for that line that’s not correct. He is not against growth at all, in fact he is probably more pro-growth then a lot of community members, but the people doing the growth need to pay for the growth, not the people who are already here.
Jessica Alvey: I have some heartburn with a 30 year loan; I think that’s not a good idea. My thought is why don’t we do this a little bit slower, why don’t we say okay we are going to do what we can afford to do with cash every year and fix our system as we can afford to fix our system. I don’t see that we need to do this huge project and take a 30 year loan out for it. For instance, this last year we have about $25,000 come in from Nielson Construction buying water, and that’s money that ought to go right back into the water system. Let’s do $25,000 worth of work, then do it again, get money from Gerber and do $25,000 worth of work and pay for it as we go rather than get into debt. Is it possible for us as a town to dig our own water lines and put in our own pipe as we can afford to do it? Greg Johnson responded that 500’/year is allowed and you wouldn’t get funding because they want to see an engineered plan and a licensed contractor. Mrs. Alvey made the point that our town purchased a lot of equipment and we have people that can do a lot of stuff.
Curtis Whipple: The plan was we bought stuff in the past, when I was part of the board, part of the proposition that started with Greg Johnson, the proposal was we would upgrade to with back flow preventers on the water meters and we would do 10 or 12 per year, and that hasn’t happened. If we were doing that all 86 of those would already be done. Terry Smith responded that backflow preventers aren’t required, they are recommended. Greg Johnson said when the town got the money to drill the Navajo well and put in the 200,000 gallon tank there was enough money to purchase valves for the town and enough setters for all the setters that didn’t have it, they were all in storage at the old firehouse. There was enough to do every service in town at the time so there should be some sitting around. He didn’t get through them all, only about 35 of them down. Jeff Pei said there 2 boxes left, 5 to a box so about 10.
Bill Wells: In phase two do you plan on repairing the old tank or putting a new one in? Instead of pumping the water all the way over in the new proposed line, what would happen if we abandon the old site and put the new tank on the Red Hills? I have a couple of concerns with that old tank, a few years ago we had an earthquake in Hanksville that put a crack in my house and shortly thereafter I notice that the (Rookie) water tank was leaking. So to put another water tank in the same location is questionable to me and I think it would also serve better on the Red Hills as far as hydrology is concerned but also the growth and private property goes out to the south. It might be possible to negotiate something for the land. I think the tank is now on BLM ground. Sue Fivecoat said that it is a right-of-way granted by the BLM for the tank.
Mayor added that one thing to remember about phase one and phase two, and the reason that the council has altered the engineered plans or asked for these changes, is that phase two also requires and additional grant/loan money and rate increase. The bottom line is if we can’t take care of our arsenic issues then what are they going to do with us?
Kenny Wells: We might consider getting a proposal from Garkane to run power out to dry valley. The farther south the well the better tasting water, in my opinion.
Sue Fivecoat: So what numbers have you come up with regarding phase two because the last year to year-and-a-half I drive that road to the BLM every day and I have been seeing that wet seepage underneath where that tank is more and more regularly in the last year. That may be something that needs to be addressed sooner rather than later even if it means piece-meal some of the other parts of the project. Maybe not new meters for everybody right away or some of that type of thing.
The tank can be looked at and it depends on the age of the tank and what is happening to the tank, if it has cracks in it from seismic movement that is very concerning. The water has been showing around there for a long time, over 15 years according to Sam Brown. Some of that is caused by the over flow on the tank. Jeff Pei recently replaced the air vac valve and it’s still doing the same thing at a higher level now. It has not been inspected recently for cracks, rural water have inspected tanks and could help formulate repairs needed.
Dennis Alvey: Maybe what we should be doing, the things that we can do with our maintenance guys, they should be doing and the things that we need contract, like the tanks, maybe that is where that money should go.
Kenny Wells: If we go to a single well source that is compliant is the looping of the water system necessary, if we don’t use the 2 wells is there a need to balance the system? What if our primary source is capable of providing everything that we have now and beyond that. If it can produce 100% overwhat it is equipped to do now, which covers well 1 and 2 which are only capable of about 60gpm between the two. We don’t have to increase that much to accommodate taking those other 2 wells off line. We should be able to pump more water at less cost and just utilize one pump, where now we are utilizing 3 pumps and sometime all at the same time.
Dale Sellers: What is the backup plan if one well goes down? If we blew a pump out and couldn’t get a pump in service what then? We can’t close them all down. Kenny responded that the 2 wells aren’t completely eliminated from the system, they can still serve as a backup.
Kenny Wells: We would not be in this position if the blending would have been managed .
Mayor Wilsonbrought the public hearing to a close and moved on to the Town Council meeting.
Report of Officers: No reporting of officers
Councilmember Chylene Whipple:
The town sewer rate is at rock bottom for rates and the water is about midrange compared to other towns. So when we do price increase we may as well increase our sewer rate because our sewer system will need to be upgraded eventually.