[0:04] We would be on. >> Can y'all hear me?

[0:07] » Yeah. >> Okay. Um I'm Tom Dark. I'm the chief

[0:10] administrative officer for the city of Shreport and I am by appointment of the

[0:13] governor, the chair of the clean water task force for the city of Shreport. Um,

[0:18] it was created by a house concurrent resolution that was passed this year and

[0:25] it was pass it was it was sponsored by Representative Walters who is here and

[0:29] we'll give you a chance in a second. Um, we we welcome you here. Um, we this is

[0:36] the second of our meetings. We met last last month. We will meet again once a

[0:41] month probably in September and October. Um, we are required to put out a report

[0:46] by I think Um, so we'll be doing that. Um, I'd like

[0:53] for the task force members who are here to introduce themselves to

[0:58] Jesse. I represent the Louisiana Department of Quality.

[1:02] » Good afternoon. I'm Kiana. I represent the Department of Water.

[1:08] » Good afternoon. Thank you for being here. Brand director of water and sewer

[1:12] environmental services. I'm Barbara Featherston, Louisiana

[1:16] Department of Health, >> West Environmental Services Manager in

[1:20] the city's water department. >> I'm Sharon Dunn and I'm a citizen of

[1:25] Streetport, but it was written into the legislation that a an administrator of

[1:30] LSU Health Sciences will be here and I'm the dean of the school health and

[1:34] science. >> We have three other members who are not

[1:36] with us, at least not yet. Um Dr. Dr. Jimmy Jones who's the CEO of Accent

[1:41] Development of Shreport was specifically named in the legislation to be on there

[1:45] and representatives of LSUS and Southern LSU's representative is Dr. Chris Greece

[1:52] who is the chair of the department of chemistry and physics and southern

[1:56] traports is Dr. John Galotus who is the dean of workforce development and

[2:00] associate associate professor of chemistry. Uh at this time it' be

[2:04] perhaps good to have representative Walters greet everyone and say hello.

[2:12] Good. >> Testing. Testing.

[2:18] » Good afternoon everyone. I am Representative Joy Walters. Uh you are

[2:23] in district 4. So uh thank you so much CEO and chair Dark for coming to

[2:30] district 4 first. uh and um I created this task force to uh to explore uh what

[2:38] is going on with our our water because in the legislature we received uh year

[2:44] after year a grade. Um and so far since I've been there it's been um an S. Last

[2:50] year of course it's upgraded to a D. Now we're back at an F. Uh and that's a a

[2:55] concern of of mine. Um my grandmother she was an educator. She retired with

[3:01] the mattress plus 30. Um, and I cannot bring an F or a D to her house. Uh, and

[3:07] so, um, I look at it from the standpoint we don't want to, um, have F or D grade

[3:14] water going into people's homes, um, either. And so, thank you all for being

[3:18] here. >> Mayor, would you like to speak for a

[3:22] second? >> I'm just here to listen.

[3:23] » You're just here to listen. All right, good deal. Um

[3:27] we were tasked as a as a as a task force group to evaluate the current situation

[3:34] in the water department water system from a whole lot of standpoints from

[3:37] infrastructure from management from sustainability. Uh the the requirements

[3:42] we have are to make recommendations to improve system reliability, water

[3:46] quality, affordability, what's called long-term resilience.

[3:51] Um, what I'm going to ask you to do, you see that TV behind you? We have a we

[3:56] have a presentation that was supposed to be on this one and the projector wasn't

[4:01] where we needed. So, I'm going to talk, but if you want to if you want to turn

[4:04] around and turn your back on me, it's okay. All right. If it needs to, I'll

[4:07] I'll come over there.

[4:16] » Time's traveling salvation show here. Um Chris, you can go ahead and advance it.

[4:22] Um we got here, this task force was actually created a year or so ago by the

[4:28] legislative session a year ago. And for a number of reasons, nothing

[4:33] particularly happened for that year. So, Representative Walkers recreated it. And

[4:38] so what it it really was started, I think, because in the late part of 2024,

[4:45] the city had a couple of water issues. one particularly manganesees in the

[4:49] water. Then a little bit later in the winter we had an issue with

[4:53] an algae form called giosa that gave us some taste and odor issues. So it was

[4:57] timely at about the time this was originally created. Um it was also

[5:02] created as representative Walter said in response to the grades we've gotten. U

[5:07] we met uh right at the end of July. We're meeting tonight. We'll meet again

[5:11] in September and October. Go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead. Okay.

[5:19] See those two bottles up there where I was sitting? One of them is quite cloudy

[5:25] and one of them is quite clear. Quite Brandon's going to hold them. That's

[5:29] what we do here. Um the one in Brandon's right hand is cross lake water. It is

[5:36] what we start out with. That's straight plant. That's what comes into the lake.

[5:42] » That's straight from the lake. And that is what comes out out of the plant

[5:45] heading towards your house. We do all that for one half of a cent per gallon.

[5:51] Um in fact, we were talking about it today. We a lot of water customers in

[5:56] the city use about 4,000 gallons of water a month. We will sell you that

[6:01] 4,000 gallons of water for about $17. Um if you bought that in gallon jugs at

[6:08] Walmart, it would cost you $6,000. So that's that's the way to compare

[6:12] this. We you know we we have our own set of issues from time to time. But what we

[6:17] are doing is taking that ugly stuff and turning it into something really you

[6:22] know palatable and for most folks drinkable. We will tell you later that

[6:27] some people have perceptions that it isn't. But everybody's pallet is

[6:30] different and by by no means everyone thinks that. I'm going to give you the

[6:34] really short version of how we treat water. It comes in uh as raw water. Um

[6:41] we it has a whole lot of things in it. It has some some organic matter, dirt,

[6:47] whatever else you might have. And so we have to to at some point pre-treat it a

[6:52] little bit to make sure that um you know we we get the pH balanced right so it's

[6:57] easier to treat later. We also do some pre-treating now that we weren't doing

[7:02] at some point early in the manganesees process. We learned that if we did some

[7:05] pre-treatment early, we were able to uh to get that out of the water better. Um

[7:13] but what really happens after that is that we we in effect settle all the the

[7:17] clumps of stuff out of the water. Um it starts out you you have little clumps

[7:23] that eventually are formed into bigger clumps and eventually are are separated

[7:27] from the rest of the water by a whole series of settling processes. Um we use

[7:34] a couple of chemicals to do that. Um, and then we're going to filter it. We

[7:38] put we our main disinfectant is ozone. Um, that's something we did not always

[7:44] do, but but have done in in a number of years lately. It is is filtered through

[7:50] carbon. It is filtered through sand. Um, what you're trying to do is get all the

[7:55] particulates out, trying to get as much of the of the biological stuff out, and

[7:59] then we put chemicals in it to make it stable and safe. We use a combination of

[8:03] chlorine and ammonia called chloromine to to try to disinfect it. And we have

[8:07] to walk a very fine balance. I'll tell you about an issue we have with that

[8:11] later. But the idea is at the end of the city's lines, we are required to have a

[8:16] certain amount of chlorine in the water to keep it disinfected. So, not only is

[8:21] it disinfected leaving the plant, it also has at least still some

[8:24] disinfectant later when it's time to uh for you to drink it. um that finished

[8:30] water gets pumped out. It's fairly complicated. Um want to change the

[8:36] slide. Um we've got a thousand miles of water, a little over a thousand

[8:41] actually. And we divide the city into four different pressure zones. We have

[8:47] lots of elevated water tanks and booster stations all all over town to try to

[8:52] keep the pressure as high as we can everywhere in the city. And you know, we

[8:58] have we have water tanks out. One right off I 49 St. Vincent. We have one going

[9:03] out I 24 Greenwood. We have one on 49 um just past Bunes. We have another one

[9:09] down at Port. Um we have another one that we're working on finding a site for

[9:13] in southeast Freeport. We have elevated We have booster stations. If you come

[9:18] offline, if you come off I49 South at at Interloop, you'll see a big round

[9:23] building. That's a that's a ground storage station for us. We have one at

[9:26] 70th in Pines out this way. We have one at 68th in Union Street. Um and we have

[9:32] what was at the old McNeel Water Plant uh in the adjacent to downtown. It was

[9:36] the original city water plant in the 1880s. Um there is a booster station

[9:41] there. Okay. Okay. Let's talk a little bit about water quality. Um we have four

[9:47] issues that we that we want to talk to you about just a little bit. One of them

[9:50] is taste and odor. One of them is safe drinking water and violations that we

[9:54] have there. sometimes boil oil bo oil advisories and notices and how the state

[9:58] grades. Go ahead. Taste and odor, which is what really tends to get the public

[10:04] most excited, is normally not a regulatory violation. It can be, but

[10:10] very seldom is. Most of the time it is caused by things that are actually not

[10:15] regulated as directly by the the regulatory agencies. They would be

[10:19] caused by things like seasonal algae. uh they would be caused by by manganesees

[10:24] and things like that. But because that is the biggest issue that we face in

[10:28] trying to make u customers happy with what comes out out the pipe, we have to

[10:34] use ozone disinfectant to try to get the algae out before it ever before we ever

[10:38] settle it into the you know get the big particles out. We use ozone to help

[10:42] settle. We one of the things we learned um and this will be a theme we use a

[10:47] couple of times when we have had a couple of the water quality issues that

[10:51] we've had over the last few years. We have learned how to treat the water

[10:54] better because of those and have really not had those sorts of issues lately. Um

[11:00] manganesees we did a different set of a set set of chemicals but the algae that

[11:04] we had in the winter was unusual for a number of reasons. You don't normally

[11:08] get algae blooms in in December or January and we did and it was a

[11:11] particularly viral v viralent one and we had to learn how to treat that and one

[11:16] of the things that happened there years and years ago the city treated use

[11:21] activated carbon to treat water. It was it was one of the things they did for

[11:24] taste and odor. Ozone is more is more is more modern is is more technologically

[11:30] advanced but it's not as good at getting algae taste and odor out of the water.

[11:34] So we have gone back to using that. We got some money from the state to to get

[11:38] new carbon feed equipment, but before we did that, the folks at the water and

[11:41] sewer plant basically built rebuilt the old system long enough for us to to to

[11:46] be able to deal with that early. We really have not had a whole lot of those

[11:50] problems. And again, knock on wood because the lake is different every day.

[11:54] And and that's one of the things that that our water folks have to deal with

[11:57] is is that it's not the same lake year after year because the the quality of

[12:02] what's coming in or weather conditions when hot like it is right now and all

[12:07] kinds of things. You go ahead and flip it. You occasionally will get a notice

[12:11] in your water bill that says we have had some sort of safe drinking water act

[12:15] violation. The most common one of those is something called total

[12:20] trihillomemethanes. And that's a long word to basically say it's a series of

[12:25] chemicals that are formed when chlorine reacts

[12:30] with organic material in the water while it's being treated. And you used to use

[12:35] raw free chlorine to do do that and that was a much bigger problem. The

[12:39] chloromine system that we use now is supposed to make that go away. We have

[12:43] had a couple of issues. The most recent one that we had we had an ammonia pump

[12:48] fail relatively briefly. Had to get it replaced. Soon as we got it replaced,

[12:52] we're back in limits. But we had we we we get sample four times a year and they

[12:57] take an average. And as long as that average is still above the limit, which

[13:01] by the way is 80 parts per billion, which will tell you how small an amount

[13:06] EPA regulates, we occasionally get um something called

[13:11] turbidity, which means the water's got a little bit more cloudy material in it

[13:15] than it should have. Um we we get that most commonly in the winter when

[13:22] everybody's pipes are breaking all over town at their house and we're trying to

[13:25] push water out of the plant. Sometimes they don't let it settle quite as long

[13:28] because they're trying to keep water pressure up. We have tried to use

[13:32] chlorine dioxide to help that to some extent. Um we also have to have the

[13:37] water in contact with the disinfectant for a certain amount of time.

[13:41] Uh LDH has asked us to make that a longer time and we we are complying with

[13:46] that. Okay. Go ahead Chris. You will sometimes hear us say we have a boil

[13:51] water advisor. Um, this is commonly done when we have a water mane break of some

[13:57] sort that requires essentially the pipe to be exposed to outside influence. It's

[14:03] not sealed for a period of time while you're while you're maintaining it. And

[14:06] if the water pressure goes down below 25 pounds per square inch, we are required

[14:12] to issue or we do at least as a matter of practice issue a boil adopt.

[14:17] What normally happens there is a day or so later, folks at the water plant do

[14:21] the testing, water's clean, no problem. We we lift the advisory.

[14:27] It is possible for you to get a boil order. We don't ever want to do that and

[14:33] haven't had one in recent memory. But if we are absolutely sure that the water is

[14:37] contaminated and we do not want you to drink it, that's what a boiler is.

[14:41] That's a whole different thing that would happen. It happens a lot of times

[14:44] when you when you have a treatment plant that gets flooded in a huge hurricane or

[14:49] something like that and you can't guarantee what's in there. You have no

[14:52] idea. So, until you're absolutely sure, you're you're telling folks to boil. We

[14:59] don't normally do that. When you get a boil advisory, you can decide if you

[15:02] want to boil the water, but an advisory does not usually mean the water is

[15:06] unsafe. It just means we haven't tested it since we did the repair. and and as

[15:11] soon as we do it usually comes right back to normal. Go ahead. State grading

[15:15] scale is a source of it. Let's be clear. Um we have gotten ratings.

[15:22] The first thing you need to understand is that a state rating

[15:26] does not mean your water is bad necessarily. It is not a measure of

[15:31] water quality. It is a measure of a whole series of grading things that the

[15:36] state department of health uses. And some of them we agree with and some of

[15:39] them we don't. We we had a meeting last time we talked

[15:43] about this. The state has a has a you can get dinged for public complaints.

[15:49] And the scale is you get dinged 1.0 to 10 for every complaint you get. Well,

[15:54] that works really well if you got a little tiny system. If you you know, if

[15:58] you're the village of whatever and you've got 200 customers, you get 10

[16:02] complaints. That's a that's a big deal. We have 70,000 customers. you're trying

[16:08] to get LDH and I think they're beginning to be more receptive to saying let's

[16:13] rate it at least on you know the size you are so that 10 10 doesn't mean 10 in

[16:19] a in a huge place like us um city of Boer has a rated water um that does not

[16:26] mean their water tastes better than ours mean they have a newer system

[16:30] they have less old pipes and a lot of times we get dinged for some of that

[16:34] we've also got dinged a little bit for stuff that we are well in the way

[16:37] fixing. Um, you've seen work going on at the big some of the big water tanks in

[16:42] town and we can only work on those one at a time. We got an order to to to make

[16:48] to do some significant heavy maintenance on them and we have done all that now

[16:53] except for the one that's on I49 at St. Vincent and because it controls so much

[16:57] of the city's water pressure, we've got to do it in the winter. And so as soon

[17:03] as we quit having the kind of summer demand we have, we'll go back to doing

[17:07] that. We believe we will we will not be a failing grade too much longer. But we

[17:12] need you to understand that the grade is not really a measure necessarily of

[17:19] whether we are doing a good job giving you water that is safe to drink, safe to

[17:23] bathe in, safe to cook with, all those things. Go ahead. Go ahead. One more. Um

[17:29] we're required to look at sustainability uh whether we have and the big question

[17:34] there do we have enough water supply to meet the needs that we're likely to have

[17:38] now and in the future. The answer to that is yes. Our water plant was was

[17:42] expanded when everybody thought street was going to have 50,000 more people

[17:46] than it does right now. So we have plenty of treatment capacity. We're not

[17:50] in a situation where we're in danger of um just not being able to treat the

[17:57] amount of demand we have and that goes up every you know this time of year

[18:00] we're we're pumping more water than we would be on a cold day in January but we

[18:05] still have enough capacity to deal with that. There are people who will ask you

[18:09] in the in the world of the data center does that does that affect this? The

[18:13] answer is one of the reasons that we were able to deal with the data center

[18:17] is that we have water to set. We're not in danger of you not having enough or

[18:23] them not having enough. And the other part is does the city have the financial

[18:27] resources to operate and maintain the system. Y'all need to understand that

[18:31] that's always going to be a balancing. The elected officials on the city

[18:35] council who set the water rates would like to keep the rates as low as they

[18:39] possibly can because it's everyone who pays it. um you have to balance that

[18:43] between the needs of the system. So far we have been able to do that. Uh but

[18:48] that will always be an issue that we have to you know deal with sometimes.

[18:52] Rates we have, you know, we we have a combined bill. You understand you get a

[18:57] bill for water and sewer service. Um the water part is actually the cheap part.

[19:01] Um you you can most people's water portion of their water bill is $30 or

[19:08] less. Um and we actually series of kind of lifeline rates where the the smaller

[19:15] consumption rates are charged a little bit less per gallon than than the folks

[19:19] that use a lot of water. Um, our sewer rates are high and they're going to

[19:23] continue to be that way. We have to do a great deal of work to keep EPA happy

[19:28] regarding a legal consent decree we have and that we're trying to get modified.

[19:33] But it's likely that that sewer rates will always be more than water rates no

[19:36] matter what happens here. Um, we try, however, go ahead to try to

[19:42] find other sources of money. Um, we try really hard to to to use sources that do

[19:48] not require being paid back as as expensively with water and sewer rates.

[19:53] In the 2024 bond issue that the mayor put together and the voters approved by

[19:57] 80%. We had, I think, about $80 million in that bond issue for water and sewer

[20:03] projects. Those are projects that don't have to be paid back with your water.

[20:08] A good deal of that work is water work. It's going to be some of [clears throat]

[20:11] it is already about to be under construction out of the Amos plant. We

[20:14] have four different projects out there. Um we've also got some sewer work and

[20:18] we've got the elevated water tank in Southeast that way. We have gotten some

[20:23] some FEMA grants. Um you know the Cross Lake dam is important to us because it's

[20:28] obviously holding Cross Lake in so we have water to treat. The dam is is the

[20:33] spillway gates are not exactly new. We're trying to get some work done there

[20:38] so it will be easier for us to regulate the level of um we have uh we've got

[20:44] some money for generators because it's important for us to be able to to deal

[20:47] with your water needs when there's no power. Um and we've got some generators

[20:53] that are in the process of being delivered and unfortunately they take

[20:56] forever to get here but we're we're working on. We have asked for some state

[21:00] capital outlay money to try to do some work inside the state inside the game

[21:03] plan because the plant is old. Now most of the equipment that treats your water

[21:07] is not it's been updated a number of times over the years but there are still

[21:12] things we can do there. We're hopeful that next next session we'll be able to

[21:16] do a little better. There are also some grants and loans. There is a federal

[21:20] program called that lets you borrow money at 0.95%

[21:25] pay it back over a long period of time. We are trying to get somewhere in the

[21:29] neighborhood of 50 to $60 million that way that will be used for water and

[21:32] sewer. Uh the state has a has a revolving loan program for for drinking

[21:37] water programs. That's another way we can get some money. Um and then when all

[21:42] else fails, we can sell bonds that are paid back by your by your revenues, but

[21:47] we try to stretch what we can as well as we can otherwise. Okay, now for the fun

[21:53] part. Um we recogize over and over and over that whether or not we have

[22:00] regulatory issues with our water, there are there there are a large number of

[22:05] people or at least some number of people who believe our water is nasty, doesn't

[22:11] taste good, smells bad, whatever. And we are not here to try to tell them that

[22:16] they are wrong. We are here to try to say we are selling water to you that

[22:20] meets public it meets all the standards

[22:24] required to be safe. If you have a particularly sensitive nose or

[22:28] particularly sensitive pallet, you may have a different perception and we have

[22:33] we have you know there are people up here who have who would have different

[22:37] perceptions depending on what on what there is. But what we have been able to

[22:41] do is when we've had a compliance issue, we've been able to fix it relatively

[22:44] easily or at least address it reasonably well. Um, we have learned how to deal

[22:50] with algae better and we're always going to have some algae in a shallow lake

[22:54] like we have. Um, but we, you know, we are in the age of anyone can post on

[23:01] social media that you are chasing and then there are a number of people who

[23:05] will like that, some people that won't, some people will defend us and some

[23:08] people won't. We're not really here to do that. But what we are here tonight to

[23:12] do is to give you an opportunity to taste three different water sources in

[23:19] this area. Um they're all surface drinking water. One of them is ours. Um

[23:25] we would like you and and Kiana can help explain how this works, but we have

[23:31] three different samples back here. We have different color cups for each one

[23:35] of them and a rating scale for them. And what we would like you to do if you're

[23:39] interested is to set it. Let's let's set it up and come

[23:44] on back and um we will let you have the opportunity to pour yourself three

[23:48] different and these came from water from household water tanks. They did not come

[23:52] straight out of the plant. They didn't come from the dead end of the line. They

[23:55] came from somebody's house, frankly. Um we would like you to taste those and

[23:59] break them. We do not know what the answer you will give us is. We're taking

[24:04] a certain amount of risk there, but we have done this test in in a controlled

[24:10] environment once and we came out reasonably well. I mean, again, not

[24:17] everybody is going to have the same opinion about which one of these they

[24:21] like better. Can you explain what they're supposed to do? So, we have like

[24:26] Mr. D said, we have three uh dispensers back here with water in them and from a

[24:33] household from different water systems. All

[24:35] surface water all have similar uh means of treatment but slight differences

[24:40] based on again the source that they're actually treating. [snorts] And so with

[24:44] each sample that you take um of course we'll give you a slip to fill out and

[24:49] each sample you don't compare it to to to the other sample. You just compare it

[24:53] to how it tastes to you. Um give it a rating of one through four. One being

[24:59] the best it tastes the best and four being the worst.

[25:05] » And so, please feel free again, we have pins back here. You don't have to give

[25:08] us your name. You can if there's anything particular that stands out

[25:11] about the uh sample, either for the good or for the detriment of that sample,

[25:16] please feel free to make that uh comment here to the side. It always helps um you

[25:21] know, if it's if it's ours, it helps us to better understand what people are

[25:25] tasting. Um again, he taste of water is subjective. I do drink the water every

[25:30] day. I try if I'm here in town, out of town, I try to drink the tap water just

[25:34] kind of get a taste for especially when I'm around town here in the city to see

[25:37] what our citizens are and I live inside so I drink water. One of the things that

[25:42] » one of the things that we can tell you is that if you have un if you see a

[25:48] specific change in your water at your house or at your business, we will be

[25:53] happy to come out and test that to see if there's anything unusual going on

[25:58] with your plumbing or there's something going on with the system adjacent to

[26:02] your house. And we can we will be happy to look at that because, you know, we're

[26:06] not going to try to tell people who tell us they don't like the way the water

[26:10] We're not going to tell them, "Well, you're draining." No, we're going to try

[26:13] to see if we can find whether there is a reason. And sometimes there is.

[26:16] Sometimes it's your plumbing. Sometimes it's it's we've got a leak we don't know

[26:19] about down the way. I mean, there's all kinds of possibilities, but we would

[26:23] like you to to see what you think. And we'll give you some time. Uh if you have

[26:27] any questions, Kiana, and her crew be back here to answer it, but please

[26:31] please come forward. Shann, >> how does how does somebody go about

[26:39] requesting their household water to be tested through the Department of Water

[26:44] and Sewage? Is there is there a number or an email to call if somebody thinks

[26:48] something might be tasting funny at their house? Yes, you can call the uh

[26:53] our water quality lab. That number is 3186737654

[27:00] or 318-6737655.

[27:04] The city also utilizes the system I believe call you can also call dispatch

[27:08] as well. That number is 318-6737600

[27:12] and that line they collect information for just about anything you see a water

[27:16] leak. Um, if you suspect that your meter is running, you know, running too high

[27:20] or or something is wrong or anything related to water, you can call that that

[27:24] 7600 number to report just about anything. I think they even take um

[27:28] other city uh department complaints and pass those along as well.

[27:33] » Yeah. >> So, we we invite you to come

[27:40] » the city folks will not do that. Would you um also let them know that I have

[27:45] the same customer service representatives here if they have a

[27:47] billing question? >> If you have a billing question or if you

[27:49] know someone who does, we have someone here from customer service. Look it up

[27:53] » and they're right here. So if you need anything, they're right here.

[27:59] » Thank you for >> because I participated in the prior test

[28:02] and I may very well recognize one of the may recognize one more of the samples.

[28:09] So I am not participating but

[28:20] I don't

[28:23] like

[28:31] » everybody gets through. We're going to have an opportunity for public comment.

[28:36] Let's

[28:44] get you.

[29:42] Everybody

[29:50] [laughter]

[29:55] need a taste.

[30:32] You should know

[30:47] Snapchat.

[31:14] whale.

[31:39] Tiana's still tallying, so this would this would be a good time.

[31:44] The normal format of a meeting like this is to ask for public comments. And so we

[31:50] would invite anyone who would like to speak about any subject related to the

[31:55] task force to come forward. We don't have to enforce time limit too

[31:59] dramatically tonight, but anybody like speak

[32:09] faster.

[32:12] » I think what you what you find when you do these is everybody has different

[32:17] preferences about what they do in their life.

[32:20] um the the the products of individual water systems are always going to be

[32:26] somewhat different depending on [snorts] what their source is, depending on how

[32:29] they treat it, depending what time of year it is.

[32:33] Um so, you know, we we try to be sensitive about that

[32:39] because really we we really believe that that a lot of our issue is simply

[32:46] people almost trained to believe that stuff's

[32:51] nasty. And you know that's what you read. If

[32:55] you if you want to spend a little time on social media, you can certainly do

[32:58] that. What we try to tell folks often as we can go back to this,

[33:05] it is a miracle of modern science [snorts] that we are able to take that

[33:11] stuff and for less than half a cent per gallon, turn it into that stuff. And we

[33:16] do it every deliver to your house. And that doesn't mean you're not if you have

[33:22] complaints about it or concerns about it, we want you to tell us what they

[33:25] are. Uh we want to be able to come out and check check what's going on at your

[33:29] house because we want to provide as good a service as we can. And we are not

[33:34] always perfect. We've had a couple of occasions in the last couple years where

[33:38] drinking it wasn't all that easy. And we have learned from those things. We have

[33:42] tried to to modify the treatment processes we have in order to make it

[33:47] less likely. And I'll give you an example. Brandon told me this week they

[33:50] had had a little uptick in manganesees in the lake. You didn't know it because

[33:55] they have learned how to treat that to where you don't see that beautiful

[34:00] yellow color we had for a little while, >> which is not uncommon, just to be clear,

[34:05] in summer months, all systems. um one in particular right now that they've

[34:11] experienced that we've just gotten better at treating it. Um and when we

[34:14] say uptick, they're still well below any threshold that would even be detectable

[34:18] to the naked eye. But it seems that we learned with that experience and our

[34:23] monitoring, we have increased that because of that process, which allows us

[34:27] better data that are trending to see the levels and how they move and flow from

[34:31] day to day, year to year, season to season.

[34:39] Almost there. >> I think I think Tom at our last I don't

[34:44] know if >> push

[34:54] it on. >> At the last meeting we talked a little

[34:57] bit about the LDH scale that that we are are getting an unfavorable grade on that

[35:05] is part of what the concern is and that LDH may be

[35:10] with reconsidering the scale that will maybe be a little more scientific and

[35:18] scientific and based on evidence less than opinion.

[35:22] » Can can you share with us where that conversation goes about?

[35:27] » Well, and I want to clarify a little bit. I don't think we necessar we don't

[35:32] agree with the criteria hall. Um the we have not agreed with other than the

[35:37] number of complaints. We kind of you get dinged over and over for stuff we're

[35:41] actually working on and fixing. Once we get it worked on and fixed, hopefully we

[35:45] won't get dinged anymore. But, you know, we we'll own the grade we got. We think

[35:49] it ought to be iron. But mostly what we want to tell you is you can get an A

[35:54] grade system and your water tastes nasty.

[35:58] That that is the way that works. Um so yes we are um we've had four years

[36:05] of the grade rule looking back that particular example of having water

[36:12] systems that have in particular I'm going to say color issues. We don't have

[36:16] a lot of systems where water has a lot of taste issues other than surface water

[36:21] systems that obviously are prone to having algae issues and things at

[36:26] different times of the year. So we are focusing on looking at the the grading

[36:32] scale which right now is heavily weighted towards federal violations,

[36:37] state violations, infrastructure that is significantly deficient. Um all of the

[36:44] measures that we have I would say besides the complaint law are, you know,

[36:49] based on actual deficiencies of the system. It's not, you know, our

[36:54] perception that something is bad. It's just we have so many things that are

[36:58] significantly deficient and we count points against them. There are

[37:01] violations that we count points against. Um so we are looking at all of those

[37:06] components and so that you know more of the water quality weighs a little higher

[37:13] um on that grade. And so that's a part of its rule making. And so we will be

[37:18] proposing we will all of that goes through public comment um where we

[37:24] really really encourage water systems will be encouraged to comment to give

[37:28] their thoughts some ideas on how we can make this better. Um but you know we we

[37:34] started with something that the legislature asked us to do and I think

[37:37] that it's it's served its purpose. It's brought attention to our water systems

[37:42] where frankly I don't think enough attention

[37:46] has been previously put. Um people just expect it to come out of their faucets

[37:50] every day and it's going to be fine. And so I I think it's been a good thing and

[37:56] we're looking at tweaking that. We have results

[38:02] and this points out I think as well as anything else how much perception is

[38:07] about water. All three of them had somebody say they

[38:13] were the best one and two of the three excuse me and one of the

[38:20] sample A got the worst score. It is from a water system near Monro but it had two

[38:26] people who thought it was wonderful and People thought it was absolutely awful

[38:31] and that is what perception means. We are second. We have a very stable score.

[38:36] We have a number we have two number ones, no number fours um and lots of

[38:41] twos and threes. The other system um the item C is the one that was rated best

[38:48] that the city of Budget um it got also a fairly stable set of scores. Um, that's

[38:56] actually fairly consistent with what you would see. I think if if you had a

[39:00] random 500 people, you would see some people love it no

[39:07] matter what system. Some people hate it no matter what system it is. Um, and a

[39:12] lot of people are kind of, okay, I drink it, but it's probably not as good as

[39:16] period. But, you know, that's the way that works. But, but that's what that's

[39:20] what we learn. Um, I mean, look, we like to be number one all the time, but when

[39:25] you're dealing with perception, sometimes you get absolutely wonderful

[39:30] scores and sometimes you just get acceptable

[39:33] and although we'll try for better than than, you know, just acceptable every

[39:38] day. Some days we, you know, some days we run into a perception that is

[39:42] different and that's just what we get. But I think that the most interesting

[39:45] thing is that we had looks like we had 10 people

[39:52] do do these and four of them thought the Boer water was better. Three of them

[39:58] thought that nasty stuff in Northb is better

[40:02] » and two thought that um you know um that's kind of the way that that

[40:08] works in the real world. >> But the interesting thing is we did the

[40:12] same test a few weeks ago and was number one in that test thing and so and Boer

[40:18] was number two. So it's again like you said it's about the pallet and what

[40:21] you're especially where you live and where you

[40:27] » and and I mean we had I was sitting next to someone at the when we did it in

[40:32] house and I thought the boer water was okay when I found out which one it was

[40:38] you know I've grown up thinking you know boer water nasty but it kind of kind of

[40:42] was and what what I saw was this is this is okay the person sitting next to me

[40:48] absolutely absolutely hated the Bojer and you know that's just that is what

[40:53] this is about some you know sometime some people like Coke

[40:57] and some people like Pepsi both of them are safe to drink

[41:00] » yeah this is an example I like the water that's my grandparents

[41:05] » I drink it

[41:09] » did you recognize it as you were drinking it or did you just

[41:11] » not that's what I like >> I usually think that's That's where we

[41:18] are. That's what we're trying to trying to get across to people is that

[41:21] everybody's power is different. And the the thing we are trying to do in in our

[41:27] work every day is not to convince you that your opinion is correct or

[41:32] incorrect. We are trying to put together water every day to your house for a

[41:37] reasonable price that is safe to drink, safe to bathe in, safe to cook, safe to

[41:44] use for whatever purposes you want to use it for. And we do that. Um, and we

[41:49] have a we have a very good team of people who work on that plant. Some of

[41:54] y'all remember back in the spring. We [clears throat] had a major water

[41:59] right right inside the water. And we were seriously afraid we were going to

[42:03] be out of water for a week in part or have almost no pressure for a week.

[42:09] Brandon and Kiana and the folks that work at the wand did an absolute

[42:13] miraculous job tweaking the system making it where we were basically low

[42:19] pressure for mostly a day in some places a little less than and that expertise is

[42:25] extremely valuable we prefer those maintenance but we are trying to give

[42:31] you a system that is dependable almost all the time that's our job

[42:37] anybody has any comments. We're almost ready to go. I think

[42:42] » I got I got another question. It's it's related to infrastructure. As as

[42:48] feathers said, much of the grade is related to infrastructure and their

[42:52] grant opportunities to build out the infrastructure. We learned last time at

[42:56] our meeting that is one of the older municipalities in Louisiana.

[43:03] New Orleans, of course, is the oldest, probably Baton Rouge. I figure we're

[43:07] behind those two as as a municipality go. So, our infrastructure is aged, we

[43:13] talked about last time, but there are grant monies and maybe legislative

[43:19] interests in water quality now that the city can perhaps go after. And if the

[43:26] idea is to replace lead and other galvanized metals, do we

[43:32] know how far along we are at this point and how far we have to go? I think the

[43:36] short the short version of that is that the feds are still trying to figure out

[43:40] exactly what they want us to do. And given the current regulatory climate in

[43:46] Washington, that's going to be a little uncertain for a while. I think at some

[43:49] point we're going to end up being asked to remove any lead service lines that

[43:53] are between the water man and your water meter. We are not likely to be asked to

[43:58] take care of the ones between your house and the water, but we'll see how that

[44:02] goes. And there will be some money for that. There'll never be enough When the

[44:05] feds do a mandate, it very seldom has enough money to to do everything. But

[44:09] there will be some money there. We are trying though to get every grant we can

[44:13] get simply because every dollar we can spend

[44:17] on construction from somebody else keeps shooting that pay

[44:22] or in the case of one of the loan programs, you know, we borrow money 5%.

[44:27] They're willing to give it to us at 0.95, which means it doesn't cost much.

[44:32] » To to your point though, the lead service what Tom's talking

[44:36] about from you know our main to your meter which is ours. If we have a break

[44:42] or we uncover that, we go ahead then and replace that. We don't just cover it

[44:47] back up and put it back in the ground. If we come across that in the field or

[44:50] when we're doing work, we we remove that, notify the homeowner, and we move

[44:54] forward. >> Yeah. So, it's incremental. So, we we

[44:57] know how much we've done and how much we have to go. Is there any kind of

[45:03] percentage on what we know we've replaced when we come

[45:06] upon it versus what's still out there. >> There's some some there's some figures

[45:10] out there. I don't have them. Um our team along with uh the government came

[45:15] in and did a a program and and they kind of studied some areas. We do have a

[45:20] older book that shows where historically and it's mainly older areas, right?

[45:25] Because you know that's been banned for many years. Um, so it's so we do have a

[45:29] a round figure and then they even did some more research to kind of itemize

[45:33] those and we also sent out uh surveys asking people questions to get it back

[45:38] to us that would help us even do that. So we do have some of that data. I just

[45:42] don't know it right off the top of my head.

[45:46] » Anybody can explain the point of the taste test

[45:50] exercise in light of the mission of the task force.

[45:54] I think it's important for us to to to deal with both sets of issues. We have

[46:02] regulatory compliance issues now again, but we also

[46:08] again we're asking people to drink the stuff every day and people have

[46:13] different perceptions of what taste is. Obviously, our goal generally is for you

[46:19] to drink our water without you thinking about it.

[46:24] It needs to be as dependable as turning on light switch. If you have to think

[46:29] about whether the power is going to be on, that's a bigger problem. And it's

[46:32] the same with our water. We want we're we're trying to do these because we

[46:36] think part of the point of of where we are in terms of community is not just

[46:43] that we have a few regulatory issues, but that we have a public which has very

[46:50] different opinions about what what tastes good.

[46:54] Nobody wants the water to be man. Everybody's real clear about that. I

[46:58] mean, there's not going to be a soul that thought that was fun. Um, and when

[47:03] it, you know, when it tastes funky like it did when we had the algae for a

[47:06] while, nobody wants that either. But when it gets down to the sort of

[47:10] acceptable range where your water tastes okay and your water tastes okay, and I

[47:15] have a preference because I grew up in Boer, you know, stuff like that, we

[47:18] simply want to be good. We want to be where you don't think about whether it's

[47:25] going to taste bad when it comes out and we don't want you to worry about whether

[47:29] it's going to come out. Those are we got to be and we've got to be acceptable. So

[47:35] that's it's a fun exercise is really what it's what it's there for. We don't

[47:39] necessarily again we don't know what we're going to get. Um when when we do

[47:44] these um I know that there are water waterworks industry conventions where

[47:50] they do these things all the time and sometimes some of the bigger cities win

[47:56] and sometimes they get embarrassed and it all depends on who your tasters are.

[48:01] That's that's Anybody have anything else committee? We

[48:07] are likely to do this again September 10th, most likely at at Southern Hills

[48:11] Park. Um we are required by the resolution created this task force to

[48:17] meet once a month and that would be our likely September date. Um we have any

[48:22] other business, any other comments? If not, we return and thank you for

Clean Water Task Force Meeting

Transcript