The July (2021) samples have been tested and PIWD water is once again positive for Total Coliform.
There’s not much to say about it that hasn’t already been said… the cross-connection control plan did not put an end to contamination of the water, nor did all of the corrective actions from a handful of Level 2 Assessments. DOH is still demanding disinfection; stay tuned for more on that.
The official results are in, and I was sworn in as a new board member on July 17. Thanks to all who voted for me, despite the other fine choices on the ballot. (To summarize the ballot for those who missed it, it could best have been paraphrased as “Please choose 3 of the following 2 candidates”…)
Before my first board meeting on July 17, I had carefully written out my plans and vision, sort of an “acceptance speech” if you will. This became obsolete alarmingly quickly once I realized the severity of financial and accounting problems and received the next round of communications from the state regarding a revised consent order.
Despite the financial challenge, and some additional requirements the state wants to add, I still hope we’ll see a plan to address water quality plans developed somewhat quickly. In the mean time, I’m pleased that the board passed several motions with the goal of improving public outreach… we’ll certainly need your support for our plans.
Thanks again. Please feel free to ask questions in the comments, talk to me on the ferry, drop by, etc.
A long time ago, human activity was only possible where sufficient water was present and naturally accessible, in springs, streams, and shallow wells. Reliable springs were quite desirable, as the water is naturally filtered by the soil and is much clearer than the surface water found in creeks and ponds. Prudence Island was likely once this way; the Indian Spring (below) may have been used for hundreds or thousands of years as a source of (relatively) clean water.
The Prudence Island Historical & Preservation Society can probably tell you much more about the old days, but the focus of this article is on much more recent technology; events and incidents remembered by people alive today. People of course desire running water in their homes, and at some point, technology permitted electric pumping of water. The Indian Spring Dug Well was the facility that previously got the job done, sporting a variety of pumps of various flow rates and fuel sources.
Several people on Prudence Island recall that the water came from this well when they were younger, and that it seemed cleaner than the water we experience today, and naturally wonder why this well is no longer in service. The short answer is that in the late 1980s, the federal government passed the Surface Water Treatment Rule. Water taken from the streams, ponds, or shallow wells is “surface water”, or “ground water under the direct influence of surface water”, and must be extensively treated to prevent waterborne diseases such as giardia lamblia and cryptosporidium. Water regulated under the less demanding “groundwater rule” must be from a depth of at least 50 feet, and Indian Spring Dug well has a depth of approximately 8 feet.
Rather than deal with “surface water” treatment, the Prudence Island Utilities Corporation (predecessor to today’s Prudence Island Water District) decided to drill deep rock wells, and in 1995 the current Indian Spring wells were brought on line.
Initially, the wells produced plenty of water, and the water was of good quality. However, it was soon noticed that nuisance levels of iron and manganese were appearing in the water.
To alleviate the problem with iron, in the late 1990s the PIUC investigated and piloted a process called “sequestration”, which was not intended to remove the iron and manganese, but to sequester it and keep it dissolved in the water. This involved adding a chemical called “CalciQuest” to the water. Anecdotally, this sequestrant caused skin rashes and other problems among islanders, especially those near the well field. Due to these problems, and concerns from state regulators, the use of CalciQuest as a sequestering agent was ended.
And here we are today, without much having changed. As much as possible, water from the Army Camp well is used, as it is of high quality and does not contain so much nuisance metal. In winter, the system can often run entirely on water from this well. But in summer, Indian Springs (particularly #4) must be switched on and iron enters the system, announcing its presence with the orangish brown color we all know.
What does the future hold? Hopefully, in the near term, filtration can be used to solve the problem (and perhaps, in time, we can develop a new water source). The engineering firms have recommended greensand filtration as a good candidate; it is a technology with an established track record that is simple and economical enough to be put to use by the PIWD. Let us hope so.
Saturday’s election was for 3 board members, with term running from 2021-2025. Preliminary election results were shared with the meeting attendees: 39 votes for Ann-Marie Lockwood, 41 votes for Charles Bear, 12 write-in votes for Chris Brown, and a handful of votes for other write-ins. Turnout was quite good compared to prior elections. (Almost 50 ballots were cast, compared to less than 10 in 2019.) It was mentioned that the election was not close, thus these are likely to be the official results as well. Members will be sworn in at the July meeting.
Overall, the tone of the meeting was quite encouraging.
1. Board Meeting Call to Order
All board members were present. Two members of the public were present.
2. Approve Minutes of May 15, 2021 Meeting
Minutes were approved with minor changes.
3. May Treasurer’s Report & 4. Accounts Payable
Backhoe rentals are a major expense. The board will reevaluate the situation, with regard to acquiring a backhoe, or somehow working out a deal with the Town of Portsmouth, to see if there is a more cost-effective way to dig holes, and to make sure that things that are “fixed” stay fixed. Other than a large payment associated with the audit, other items were routine.
5. FY 2020 Audit
Much work remains, some accounts need to be created so that items can be associated with accounts.
6. PIWD Annual Reports
The 2019 Annual Report has been sent out to customers. It still needs to be mailed to taxpayers; this is now underway, although the process highlights the need to better maintain the customer list. The 2020 audit needs to be completed before the 2020 annual report can be generated and distributed.
An update on the income survey:
As a reminder, this is survey is not an opinion survey, it is a survey to see if the financial condition of full-time residents qualifies the district for hundreds of thousands of dollars in money to fund much-needed water infrastructure. We need 80% of full-time islanders to respond to the survey for it to be valid. At this time, 71 surveys have been sent out, 41 were returned, but only 34 were accepted as complete. We’ve missed our chance at money this year, but, because the PIWD is still a priority funding recipient for next year, the board will continue to try to get the survey completed.
7. OPEN FORUM (30 minutes)
Two members of the public complimented the board for their hard work. A few questions were asked, but no major issues were raised.
8. Organizational structure review / staffing needs
Board member Melo met with Will and reviewed the water infrastructure and staffing. This is a good step toward reviewing the needs on the “water” side of the organization. He left us to assume that he’ll meet with the “money” side of the organization soon, and then “paperwork”.
9. Updates to Emergency Response Plan (Cyber Security, Corona Virus)
Few updates are currently needed or underway.
10. Consumer Confidence Report
The draft is largely complete (though maybe it shouldn’t have Robin’s home address and phone number as the contact information); next it will be printed and mailed.
11. General system status updates
The system manager produced a list of leak hot-spots; this is quite useful.
As mentioned, the district will review its options for backhoe access, in hopes of cutting cost.
Due to high consumption and low rainfall, the district is likely to move to Stage 2 water conservation.
Employee training needs were reviewed.
12. Update on Capital Projects
a. New Water Source (DEM & private property access; Options & Next steps)
Apparently there were discussions with DEM and the attorney generals office. (This website has been asking DEM for their records for months now, without success yet.)
b. Allen Ln / Hillside Rd distribution line upgrade
This item was not discussed.
13. Implementation of Cross-Connection Control Plan (CCCP)
a. A RIDOH letter dated June 10, 2021 (which we will get it for this web site at some point). The letter supposedly says that a new consent order is in the works, with reasonable timelines to improve the system. The timeline would accommodate getting funding in the next annual cycle. This could be a really good outcome.
b. Status report (e.g. funding, timeline)
The PIWD also received the promised memo from RIDOH explaining why the PIWD didn’t meet the CCCP compliance schedule, and at some point we will receive and post the memo, but we’re definitely beating a dead horse here, because while we may improve our cross-connection control, we also have to make improvements to the water system going forward, and the focus should be on making them judiciously.
The PIWD was also in contact with Senator Reed’s office; this seems to be another promising path to money if the PIWD can get projects attached to the federal infrastructure bill.
The PIWD, perhaps with help from Portsmouth, may have to provide 20% of the money under some funding schemes. It was encouraging to see the board calculating out the financial impact of this, about $40/year per customer in a scenario where we put in $337k of the money. (This seems to be a very reasonable price to pay for dramatically better water.)
14. Executive Session RIGL 42-46-5(a)(1): Annual Performance Reviews (cont.) & Compensation
15. 2021 Election results and future elections
The PIWD election will be held at Hope Brown Center, Saturday June 19, from 8am to 1pm. Please vote if you can. Also, there will be a board meeting following the election, at 1pm. It seems the board has decided to grant a small time for “open forum” discussion at this meeting. We hope to see you there, and we’ll definitely bring our “piwater.org” ginger ale and iced tea.
Why are you running for the water board?
The water on Prudence Island isn’t very good. It’s brown with iron, and the state department of health is on our backs about fecal coliform bacteria contaminating the water every now and then. I’ve watched the current board over the last three years, and I think they could use some help. They work amazingly hard sometimes, but they don’t have a vision, they aren’t always doing the right thing, and they end up getting in their own way and going in circles. I’m willing to try to help straighten this out by pushing things in a consistent direction.
What is your background?
I’m a computer engineer by trade, and I still work a full time job for a large software company. My wife and I have two gradeschool kids.
How long have you been on Prudence Island?
My wife has been taking vacations out here since she was a child. 15 years ago we started renting down here for a week in the summer, and then in 2013 we finally bought a place on Pier Rd.
Do you have any relevant qualifications or experience?
No, I don’t have any qualifications. Other than attending the board meetings and reviewing the public records, I don’t have any experience either. That said, I’m willing to do the research, ask the experts, and learn whatever else it takes to get things pointed in the right direction. I’ve applied to take the exams for water systems operation, but that’s a long road. I think I can help out immediately just by killing of some of the bad, self-defeating ideas that have taken root with the current board. Anyway, if someone qualified for the job runs for election, you should strongly consider voting for him or her.
What do you think about the other board members?
I respect the current members for their strengths; they do a lot of hard work as volunteers. Ann-Marie is helping get the finance systems in order and get the books done; those kind of skills fetch a lot of money in the private sector so we’re very lucky to have her volunteering to do it. Robin does a lot just to “keep the train on the tracks”… without her the tax bills wouldn’t go out, the income survey wouldn’t have gone out, and that only covers part of her work in the month of April. Helio has useful connections in the state government. Chris has dutifully kept the meeting minutes and handled employee performance reviews. The problem is that none of them know what to do about the water situation, so they’ve worked incredibly hard on things like the “Cross Connection Control Plan” that hurt a lot of feelings and left us right back where we started.
What are your priorities for the district?
The first priority is to come up with a cost-effective plan to clean up the drinking water. Instead of speculating about it and writing hostile letters to the state, we’ll get real proposals and then try to find funding if that makes sense. We’ve got to take a look at the plat map one more time to see if there’s a spot for a new well, or whether we have to clean up the Indian Spring 4 water, or if it would be easier to desalinate bay water. Looking over the distribution map and the books is also a high priority at first. A lot of other fiddly things like the virus on the web site, the curb stop campaign, etc., are important but they’re just not urgent and they’re going to have to wait until after we can drink the water without boiling it.
Will you promise that water prices won’t increase?
I wish I could promise that, but I can’t. What I can promise is to spend your money wisely. I don’t think there’s a lot of wasted money in the PIWD right now, but I’ll take a hard look at the books if I get elected. I know of a project idea on the agenda right now that would cost money but won’t solve anything; and I’ll make sure that gets killed off. Rates have gone up 50% in the last 8 years, even though the water company is basically doing the same thing it was then, so we’ll review the operations to make sure they stay lean, make sure we’re taking advantage of the current rock-bottom interest rates, and so on.
How much time do you expect to spend working with the PIWD?
I think it’s going to take a lot of work at first to figure out what the plan for the district will be over the next 3-10 years, and to handle a few other things that have been neglected. Hopefully after that things will slow down to the point where I’m only putting in a day or two a month.
Do you have anything else you’d like to add?
Please get involved if you can. Vote. Come to the meetings. Talk to a board member. If you hear a rumor, make sure it is true, and share it with the people you know. Thank you!
For May 2021, the PIWD meeting will return to the NBNERR Learning Center on Prudence Island. A fresh batch of “Prudence Island Water” iced tea and ginger ale will be on hand. We hope to see you there!
Because there have been a number of questions and concerns raised on Facebook, let us try to explain the income survey, who is doing it, how, and why.
The short version of the story is that if Prudence Island is classified as low income, more infrastructure assistance money is available from the state. This is determined by an “income survey” of full-time residents. An 80% response rate is required for the survey to be valid. It does sound like a tall order to get that kind of response, but hundreds of thousands of dollars may be on the line, so if you receive the survey, please complete it.
Our legislators basically asked “why should we give financial help to a bunch of rich people who have summer homes on a private island”? But, as you know, Prudence Island is home to a number of full-time residents, and some are on fixed incomes. The income survey is only intended to reach full-time residents, as their income level is what determines the status of the district. (While the needs and beliefs of all ratepayers, consumers, taxpayers, etc., of the district are very important in most other matters, they simply are not involved in determining the economic status of the community.)
The PIWD did its best to create a list of people who were eligible for the survey, and passed that list to RCAP. (RCAP is trusted by the state to administer the survey and anonymize the results.) Most PIWD customers who did not get a survey are not eligible to complete it, however others may have been inadvertently missed. The good news is that this survey doesn’t have to be perfect, it is just intended to get an aggregate picture of the district, so being off by a few surveys is OK. To the best of our knowledge, there is no way to get a survey if RCAP did not send you one.
So what happens if the income survey isn’t completed? Well, we still need to make the infrastructure improvements, but the PIWD ratepayers and taxpayers will end up footing the bill for them. This easily runs into 6-figure numbers.
References:
This post is the raw footage of the meeting. The numbering indicates the agenda item for the video section.
Note: This is my (Chuck’s) written commentary on the board meeting. If you just want to watch a replay without reading my commentary, go to the video page.
Thanks to all who attended March’s board meeting. After many months with no public participation, it was nice to see a crowd, and it’ll be interesting to see if people continue to attend. The board noticed and appreciated the public interest (though I suspect the Facebook posts encouraging attendance, rather than the 6pm Thursday time, were the reason).
Perhaps I shouldn’t assume that everyone knows the board. They are:
Agenda Item 1: Public meetings start with a call to order, and this was no exception. It is up to the moderator to decide if any public comments or discussion are allowed at the meeting, and as is typically the case for PIWD meetings, they were not allowed. (It does occur to me that we could host our own Zoom meeting after the official meeting if we want to.) The moderator also said that the PIWD “did not have the technology” to record the meeting. But the public is allowed to record the meeting in a non-disruptive way, and we did.
Agenda Item 2: Minutes of the prior (February) meeting were accepted. They’ll end up on the state’s web site in a week or so. (This has the unfortunate consequence that you couldn’t have read the February minutes, not even a draft, prior to the March meeting.)
Agenda Item 3&4: Treasurer’s report, and accounts payable. We don’t have a treasurer’s report this month. Accounts payable are $8,438.95. If you want to know how much PIWD actually spends on backhoes, electricity, and so on, this is the place to look right now. To put that number into context, $8k/month is about $100k/year, out of a district budget of about $260k year.
Agenda Item 5: Audit. We don’t have a 2019 audit yet, and it’s almost time for the 2020 audit. This does make it a bit difficult to do an analysis of the finances and the budget of the district.
Agenda Item 6-7: Apparently skipped
Agenda Item 8: 2021 is an election year. There was a good discussion of the mechanics of the election, but exact details on how to run and how to vote will be a bit longer in coming. I’m personally a bit more interested in who’d be willing to run for the board seats, especially Phil’s, since he is not running for reelection. At the February meeting, I did say I’d be willing to run (though if someone with water experience or other useful knowledge wants to run, I would defer). (If you see me at the ferry dock trying to collect 8 signatures, that’s why.)
This web site is keen to host posts by anyone, especially anyone who wants to inform the public of their intent to run, and their positions on important issues… just fill in the contact form.
Agenda Item 9: Lab RFP. Not much occurred here.
Agenda Item 10: Staffing. The backstory here is that Bob Marshall resigned his role as “operations manager” last year. He was part time and relatively expensive, but did some of the operations, management, planning, grant-writing, etc. The ongoing discussion is about what skills the district needs to replace, and what the district can actually afford. For context, the district budget is $266k/year, only $93k/year is for salaries, and this money has to cover the front office (Judy, who answers communications, billing, collections, etc.), and the water system and operations (Will and Alton). The challenges are:
Thus the issue has been stalled on Helio’s task list for the last few months. If you know of anyone who might be able and interested, please forward to the PIWD board.
Agenda Item 11: Emergency response plan. No interesting updates.
Agenda Item 12: System status. Some curb stops were installed. There were no positive coliform test results this month. There’s some discussion of the processes (chlorination) to follow when doing leak repairs to make sure that the system is not contaminated during work, and whether training is needed. The final topic was the condition of a homeowner’s property; apparently PIWD placed a rock upside-down during the course of work.
Agenda Item 13: Capital projects. This discussion was mostly rolled into item 14. Of primary interest is a new water well. There is a lot of background material here as to why the district needs a new water well, and what attempts have been made to secure one, but that story deserves its own article.
Agenda Item 14: Corrective Action Plan, RIDOH consent order, etc. This is the main discussion of interest to the public, as it concerns the status of the cross-connection control plan, the directives from DOH, and the corrective actions to be taken to move forward. While the outcome is relatively easy to summarize (they’re going get the help of Bob Ferrari at NWSI to develop the facilities improvement plan, and to try to schedule another meeting with RIDOH and whoever else they can get), the discussion itself is much more difficult to summarize succinctly. I believe they did make and pass a motion to engage with NWSI, as there was a motion and 4 yes votes, but it devolved into discussion before we heard a yes/no vote from Helio.
Here are some time points in the video:
Agenda Item 15: Executive session. This added to the agenda to discuss Will’s performance, but was tabled as there are no updates.
PIWater.org 