By BILL CHAISSON
[email protected]
NEWPORT — At their May 6 meeting the select board heard the first of three-part report on the status of the town’s water infrastructure. Project manager Peter Pitsas and project engineer Margaret Blank described the condition of the drinking water system last Monday and in the future will give presentations on the sewer and storm-drain systems.
The assessment is a necessary precursor to developing an asset management plan. In order to qualify for many grant opportunities, towns must have these plans in place.
“We determine the age and life cycle, figure out a repair and replace schedule, and the plan helps you with your decision-making,” Pitsas told the board. The system is divided into vertical assets, like the pump station, and horizontal assets, which includes all the pipe.
In Newport, the horizontal assets account for 94 percent of the system. This is unusually large and is caused by the relatively long distance from Gilman Pond in Unity, the primary source of drinking water, to the treatment plant in Newport.
The town’s water infrastructure was originally built in 1895 and those original pipes still make up 36 percent of the system. The life expectancy of water pipe is about 100 years, Pitsas said. Forty-one percent of the pipe is between 50 and 100 years old and 22 percent is less than 50 years old.
Blank outlined the work that had been completed by Underwood to date. The engineering firm collected data in the field and added it to data that had been collected 10 years ago. They assessed the condition of all the vertical assets and interviewed the Newport staff to get a waterline-break history.
They were then able to produce a map of the town’s assets and estimate the impending replacement costs.
Underwood has estimated the value of the vertical assets at about $4.2 million and the horizontal assets at $77 million.
There are two parallel transmission lines from Gilman Pond. The Underwood engineers proposed building cross-over pipes, so that in the event of a break, water can be diverted to a parallel pipe while making repairs. “You will lose capacity,” said Blank, “but you won’t have to shut down entirely.”
Pitsas noted that during a break last year, the town had to pay $10,000 for “insert valve” and the entire repair cost $40,000. “If you build the cross-overs,” he said, “you’ll save money in the long run.”
Blank showed the board a slide that outlined a system that would help the town decide what parts of their system to fix first. “Because a lot of work needs to be done,” she said, “you have to identify critical assets and their probability of failure.” The latter has to be weighed against the impact that a particular failure would have on the whole system.
One suggestion in the plan is to develop a second, closer source of water north of town.
The replacement values for assets include Gilman Pond structures ($35,000); the slow sand filtration treatment plant ($246,000); the sodium silicate building ($36,000); the Pollard Mills well facility ($253,500); the Summer Street storage tank ($0); and the water pipe ($28,860,544). Blank cautioned that the costs have all crept higher in a more recent draft of the plan.
Some cost-saving measures going forward would be to abandon maintenance of parallel pipe lines. The engineers said that pipes could sometimes be relined rather than entirely replaced.
The price tag
Blank introduced the affordability ratio, which is calculated by dividing the annual water bill by the median household income. The latter is $58,193 in Newport and the typical water bill is $513.35; both of these are lower than the state average. It yields an affordability ratio of 0.9, which would qualify Newport for forgiveness of 10 percent of any loans from the state that were used to repair the water system.
Pitsas told the select board that they could consider raising water rates in order to increase their affordability ratio and qualify for forgiveness of 15 percent of every loan. Board chair Jeff Kessler expressed doubt about the popularity of this idea.
Blank outlined a long-term funding strategy. In the first decade of the plan the town would have to spend $30 million because of the backlog of necessary repairs and replacements. In the second decade they would only have to spend $7 million.
Blank suggested taking out a loan that would be paid back in installments of $1.5 million for 30 years. After the backlog was paid off $910,000 installments would be necessary to keep up the replacement schedule. Her estimates were based on a cost of $325 per linear foot for horizontal assets.
The town was also urged to adopt an application called Access GIS to help the water department staff keep track of breaks and generate reports for the board and the public.
Blank suggested educating the public further about the water system, which most people do not tend to think about.
The engineers asked the board to make their comments on the report as soon as possible because the final version of it is due into the N.H. Department of Environmental Services by May 31.
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