Monthly Report December 2020 – Public Woks Department

WATER – A total of 33,182,533 gallons of water were treated and delivered during September. 11,272,000 gallons from Alder Creek treatment plant, 6,589,000 gallons from Brownell Springs and 15,321,533 gallons purchased from City of Portland. Peak day production was 1.86 MGD on December 11th. 11.96 inches of rainfall were recorded at the water treatment plant site during the month with a peak of 2.9 inches on December 19th. The smart meter conversion project is at 99% completion and the installation contractor has demobilized. There are approximately 38 meters remaining to be converted. These installations require plumbing or other piping changes that will be performed by City staff over the next month or two. We had some trouble with our utility billing software processing new meter installations and customer changes which required manual entry of reads by Jayme for about 700-800 accounts each month. We expect our software vendor to have this remedied by the December billing cycle.

WASTEWATER – A total of 66,520,000 gallons of sewage were treated and discharged to Tickle Creek. Maximum flow was 6.56 MGD on the 20th, rainfall on the 19th totaled 0.2 inches and rainfall on the 20th totaled 1.07 inches. Monthly rainfall recorded at the plant was 7.92 inches with a peak of 1.07 inches on the 20th. 354,070 gallons of sludge were dewatered and landfilled. Monthly Average Effluent BOD was 8.8 mg/l, permit allows: 10 mg/l. Monthly Average Effluent TSS was 7.4 mg/l, permit allows: 10 mg/l. We complied with the requirements of our discharge permit when flows were below 2.5 MGD. We had two daily maximum violations for effluent BOD and three daily maximum violations for TSS during the high flow event on December 20 and 21. During the high flow event on 12/20 and 12/21 the influent screen was damaged and temporarily removed from service. The influent screen was cleaned by hand during this time. There was a lot of gravel in the transmission main that would have damaged the screen. Veolia staff installed a weir that trapped rocks and debris upstream the screen allowing it to be placed back into service.

STREETS – City staff continued demolition of existing, non-compliant ramps for the ADA ramp replacement project. We had to replace a stormwater manhole in the sidewalk to lower it enough to avoid exceeding ADA maximum slopes at one ramp location. This was a big job during the wet weather. The contractor followed behind prepping, forming, pouring and finishing the new ramps. About half the ramps (fifteen) were demolished and replaced in December. The City’s contract street sweeper spent 178 hours sweeping over 500 curb miles of streets while collecting 149 cubic yards (48 tons) of debris. There was a lot of debris on the streets from the wind storms in December. Work was wrappingd up on the LED streetlight conversion in December. There are still about 30 lights that need to be replaced owing to problems on the PGE side, replacement parts and other issues.

PARKS, BUILDINGS AND GROUNDS – Oregon Tree Care removed or performed thinning to reduce wind sail area on several trees in Meinig Park. Issues with these trees were identified during the City’s annual hazard tree assessment in October.