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HomeMy WebLinkAboutH1 Water Facility Plan Commission Memorandum REPORT TO: Honorable Mayor and City Commission FROM: Bob Murray, Project Engineer Chris Kukulski, City Manager SUBJECT: Water Facility Plan MEETING DATE: October 9, 2006 BACKGROUND: The City has undertaken the task of updating its facility plans. The team of Allied Engineering/Robert Peccia & Associates was selected for the Water plan. The draft plan has now been completed and is ready for review and comment. This meeting will be for the Commission to conduct a public hearing on the findings of the plan. As requested during the previously held Commission informational presentation, we have also prepared a report detailing the efforts made to date on the recommendations included in the water conservation study. A copy of that report is attached. RECOMMENDATION: Conduct public hearing, motion and vote to adopt the plan. FISCAL EFFECTS: N/A ALTERNATIVES: To not adopt, or adopt with recommended changes. Respectfully submitted, _________________________________ ____________________________ Robert J. Murray Jr., Project Engineer Chris A. Kukulski, City Manager Attachments: Water Con. Report Report compiled on 10/26/2006 City of Bozeman Water Conservation Implementation Report Prepared For: Bozeman City Commission Prepared By: City Engineering Department August, 2006 BACKGROUND: This report has been compiled as per direction given by the Bozeman City Commission in preparing to adopt the new Water Facility Plan, 2006 Ed. The information presented herein is in direct reference to the City of Bozeman Water Conservation Study prepared by Aquacraft, Inc. in March, 2002 and formally adopted by the City thereafter. This study intended to guide policy making decisions regarding water conservation practices by projecting the affects recommended conservation programs would have upon future planning and capitalization of Bozeman’s water supply and distribution systems. WATER CONSERVATION IMPLEMENTATION REPORT This water conservation implementation report addresses each bulleted recommendation outlined in Section 11 – Recommendations of the City of Bozeman Water Conservation Study. Study recommendations are presented with specific responses following in italic font. 11.1 SYSTEM RECOMMENDATIONS • Continue the projects aimed at improving transmission of raw water to the water treatment plant from both the Sourdough and Hyalite Creek systems, which will reduce or eliminate the need to waste raw water in response to changes in short term demand. Both the Sourdough and Hyalite intake and transmission main projects are complete and operational, though these projects do little in preventing raw water waste associated with changes in short term demand. The main contributor to the waste of raw water is the 24 hour notice required to change the release rate of water from Hyalite Reservoir. • Construct the Lyman Creek Filtration system in order to maximize the yield from Lyman Creek. This is estimated to provide 1 to 2 MGD of treated water in addition to the output from the Bozeman WTP. The filtration system referenced above would treat surface water in the Lyman Creek drainage as opposed to the spring source currently utilized by the City. A new surface water treatment plant may be constructed if necessitated by future water demand. Future Lyman Creek treatment options are discussed in Section 4.A of the new Water Facility Plan. This section provides alternatives for maximum utilization of the City’s 3.7 MGD water rights (spring and surface) in the Lyman Creek drainage. • Insure that all water treatment plants and water users are accurately metered and continue to perform annual audits of the system to evaluate unaccounted water in the system. Perform detailed audits when unaccounted water exceeds 10% of treated water output. Water metering devices at the discharge end of the Sourdough and Lyman Creek treatment plants are professionally calibrated approximately once a year to insure their continued accuracy. The City has implemented a customer meter replacement program that calls for the replacement of 10% of older meter bases a year with anticipated completion in 2008. The newer meters will then be scheduled for replacement every 15 years thereafter. The City does not currently perform a formal water audit, but will implement a basic monthly audit program once the new Water Facility Plan is approved by the City Commission. The program will likely utilize spreadsheets to track and monitor the City’s finished water output and consumptive water usage. In the past the City’s water auditing mechanism has been provided by the Finance Department through alerts in unusual peaks in consumption. Also, the City will be purchasing a leak detector unit to provide detection capabilities for the water distribution system, a service that was previously contracted with a consultant on an annual basis in order to locate and repair leaking water mains. • Replace the Bozeman WTP at a capacity of 15 MGD with provisions for expansion to 20 MGD when needed. The current design capacity of the Sourdough plant is 15 MGD. The plant experiences a production loss of up to 30% when high raw water turbidity is encountered. Due to current water use and future demand projections, the recommendation of both the new Water Facility Plan and the Water Conservation Study is to upgrade the Sourdough WTP to a capacity of 22 MGD with future expansion to 35 MGD. Implementation of the plan can begin upon Commission approval with the initial plant upgrade recommended for completion between 2010 and 2013. • Continue to hold on to the Sourdough Creek reservoir site, but make no plans to construct the reservoir for the foreseeable future. The City continues to hold development rights to construct a reservoir in the Sourdough Creek drainage. Construction of the reservoir may occur as necessitated by the City’s future raw water storage needs. 11.2 ADMINISTRATIVE RECOMMENDATIONS • The flat rate billing system should be abandoned in favor of one that at least charges a seasonal rate for peak period consumption. If we assume that the peak 10% of water use drives the need for expanding the water plant then a rate should be developed for the June and July period that assigns this cost to the large users. In that way it would give them an incentive to reduce their peak use, and help raise the necessary funds to pay for the expansion from the users who are creating the need for expansion. The City continues to utilize a flat rate billing system for the City’s water users and does not charge a seasonal rate for peak period consumption. • The City should institute a program of every third day watering, where customers will be directed to water in three separate groups based on the last digit of their addresses. These programs have been found to reduce peak day demands and should be effective for Bozeman. The City has not implemented a watering program. • If the City wants to have any type of demand management program it should identify a staff person as the conservation manager and make that person responsible for implementation of whatever program is selected. If the program is successful and grows, additions can be made to the staff. The conservation manager should be responsible for updating and refining the conservation models prepared as part of this study and coordinating them with the financial and planning departments. The City has not established a demand management program. • A system for tracking customer demands more accurately should be developed that can be used for establishing baseline conditions and assessing the effectiveness of future conservation programs. This should include breaking customers down into more categories and collecting key information on customers for assessing their efficiency (such as irrigated areas, type of sprinkler system and whether or not they have conserving fixtures and appliances). The City has not been collecting detailed and categorized customer water-use data for the explicit purpose of updating or revising the conservation baseline estimates established in the Water Conservation Study of 2002. Future water conservation efforts can be measured against the baseline information presented in the Water Conservation Study to evaluate program effectiveness when the time comes. 11.3 PLANNING RECOMMENDATIONS • There seems to be some uncertainty about the actual yield of the City’s water rights. The City should perform a separate raw water master plan that would make careful evaluation of the yield of the City’s rights based on updated hydrological studies. The City has hired a consultant to perform an exhaustive water rights study as well as acquire water rights as they become available. The purpose of the study is to determine who owns water rights within the Middle Creek (Hyalite Creek) hydrologic unit and also provide historic yields of these rights. This information will be utilized by the City in acquiring future rights and directing planning efforts within this hydrologic unit. Acquisition of future rights is of high importance to insure that an adequate quantity of raw water is available to satisfy the projected demands of the City. • The recent records that show decreases in both total and per-capita water use should be checked to verify their accuracy. If they are accurate, studies should be done to determine the reason for these decreases. The new Water Facility Plan provides current total and per-capita water use estimates. The facility plan verifies the downward trend in water use observed in the Water Conservation Study of 2002. Decreasing water usage is likely attributable to recent advances in water efficient fixtures and appliances, replacement of older customer meters, and the continued maintenance of older sections of the distribution system more susceptible to leaking. • The population and growth estimates on which the water demands have been based should be updated and verified periodically. The new Water Facility Plan updates population and growth estimates provided in the Water Conservation Study of 2002. The values presented in the new facility plan will direct infrastructure planning efforts for the 20 year planning horizon of the new plan. • The City should conduct a baseline use study of its customers to collect local data on end uses of water and efficiencies of use in Bozeman. This study should begin with single family residences since these make up the bulk of the demands and then move to multi- family and commercial accounts. The City has not conducted further study of customer end-uses beyond that provided in the Water Conservation Study and new Water Facility Plan. 11.4 CONSERVATION RECOMMENDATIONS • The City should adopt the combined conservation program from Scenario D described in this report. This focuses on insuring the best available technology is used both for indoor and outdoor water uses. Outdoor use is also to be managed with programs to increase the efficiency of irrigation use and to reduce the amount of high water using turf on individual sites. This program has been shown to be economically viable for Bozeman, even if no value is assigned to the saved water. The City recognizes the Bozeman Water Conservation Study of 2002 as a policy guiding document, but has not formally adopted any ordinance requiring the creation of sustainable water conservation programs and/or practices. The City has though put money annually into budgets to implement water conservation practices, beginning with educational brochures distributed with customer water bills. • A program of local building codes and/or rebates should be used to encourage every new home and business to use the most water efficient fixtures and appliances. These go beyond the requirements of the 1992 Energy Policy Act. The City Building Code currently requires water saving devices to be installed for new construction as mandated by State law through adopted City codes. Generally, as federal codes continue to change, manufacturers must respond to meet the stricter regulations, thus continuing to further the efficiency of water- using devices for future construction. • Existing customers should be encouraged to upgrade to more efficient fixtures and appliances through education and rebate programs. The approved FY ’07 budget for the Water Treatment Plant includes the allocation of $50,000 to create a “community toilet replacement rebate program”. This is a one-time allocation, but may lead to future rebate programs if embraced by the community. • The City should set up a revolving loan fund to assist existing customers in retrofitting their fixtures and appliances and upgrading their landscaping? The City has not created a revolving loan fund to assist retrofitting. A one-time allocation has been approved for toilet retrofitting as described in the previous item. • Limitations on sod areas for new homes could significantly reduce future water demands without reducing the quality of the landscapes. The Bozeman Unified Development Ordinance rewards the use of low water demand landscaping by assigning higher point values for drought-resistant landscape features during review of Landscape Plans. • Large water users should be offered audits to insure that they are not over-irrigating their landscapes. Education programs and literature should be developed to help water users apply the correct amount of water throughout the season. Large water users are not offered audits. The City encourages the use of landscape wells for projects requiring large landscape areas to prevent the City’s finished water from being utilized for large-quantity land applications. • ET-based irrigation controllers are becoming available; these should be used in Bozeman. Some are based on historical ET curves for the area and others on real time ET data beamed to controllers via pager networks. ET (evapo-transpiration) based irrigation controllers are not required for new landscaping sprinkler systems. • Pilot studies, in conjunction with the baseline study recommended above, should be used to demonstrate the effectiveness of these programs on small scale, but representative, groups of customers. Subsequent pilot studies have not been done because the City does not have a conservation program in effect. • Long term tracking and assessment of the conservation program should be established with reports included in the annual utility report. A long term tracking and assessment program has yet to be prepared and adopted by the City. • The City should continue to discuss water conservation options for Montana State University with university officials. Cooling water and domestic uses offer the best prospects for on campus conservation in the short run. The City has not initiated formal discussions regarding water conservation options with Montana State University officials.