Finance Committee - 8/16/2017 Page 13
potentially the Vector truck. This is a very, very extensive list. Whether or not it all makes it before the Board
this fiscal year remains to be seen. Of course note that things are fluid and changing in wastewater. What’s
not on the list, what | can’t forecast are things that break. The wastewater treatment facility as you know runs
24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 354 days a year. We have a design capacity of 16 million gallons per day. A
peak flow capacity of 110 million gallons per day. We have over 400 miles of collection system and 14
pumping stations. All of those things have moving parts. Things that have to be replaced. Things that are
very, very expensive. When they are broken, we act on them quickly and we get them before the Board of
Public Works and we get them before you folks. There is no way to predict those. All we can do is do our
preventative maintenance and attempt to make sure that everything continues to work.
Chairman Cookson
Question or comments?
Alderman O’Brien
You just touched lightly on it but when | came on the Board | was amazed at much money we are spending to
fix a lot of stuff at the waste treatment plant. I’m glad to be ahead of it. We all benefit from it of course. The
thing is are you looking at a better preventative maintenance program? You touched lightly on it but to make
sure —|’m sure some of these pumps have a life expectancy. They need to be torn down. They need to be
rebuilt at a certain point. Are we going to get better so that we can get better life expectancy out of some of
our equipment now? Now we're almost it sounds like in good shape there right now. | would like to stay there
is my point.
Ms. Osborne
Yup. We are actually in very good shape in comparison to where we were |’m just going to back to September
of 2014 when a lot things came to a head just to touch lightly on that and move forward. The city has
implemented the cardiograph system. That has actually been very, very good for asset tracking, checking and
making sure that we’re doing oil changes on time. It’s just like a car. You have to do oil changes an hour
intervals. So we are looking at that. We're looking at internally how we can make sure if there’s a leak, or
you're losing oil out of something. We have our operators checking site glass for the oil inside of things and
making sure they red flag things and let foreman know immediately. So we are getting a lot better on
preventative maintenance. It’s come leaps and bounds.
Chairman Cookson
The vehicles that you mentioned when you were going down that list. How many of those are on CERF?
Ms. Osborne
Wastewater does not actually participate in CERF. We have our own separate list which is the WERF — the
wastewater equipment replacement fund. So all of them are on the WERF list. None of them are on the CERF
list.
Chairman Cookson
But they’re all on the WERF as you mentioned?
Ms. Osborne
All scheduled for replacement in this fiscal year.
