03-17-2015 ERMU MIN - Laserfiche WebLink

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pulling and reconditioning the well, replacing old pipes, sandblasting and painting the filter,painting the floor, and installing a new VFD. In addition to the contracted work, the water operators put a great deal of effort into the project. They were responsible for either repairing or replacing the following: chemical feed line conduits, chlorine booster pump, filter isolation valves, backwash valves, pressure differential gauges, chemical feed lines, and plumbing supply lines. In addition, one of our electric technicians replaced all the old T-12 fluorescent lights with more efficient T-8 fluorescent lights. 5.5 2015 American Public Power Association Legislative Rally Troy Adams provided an update on the American Public Power Association(APPA) Legislative Rally that was held in Washington D.C. He joined with staff from Minnesota Municipal Utilities Association(MMUA)to talk to legislative officials about topics such as EPA's clean power plan, captive rail, and tax-exempt financing. Troy will email out MMUA's 2015 Federal Position Statements which summarizes the topics. Troy Adams noted that overall it was a good trip. 6.0 OTHER BUSINESS There was no other business. 6.1 Staff Updates Troy Adams shared that the State Senate received a bill from Senator Dahle to remove the exemption to the open meeting law for power agencies;this would put us at a huge disadvantage. Troy explained that we were able to kill that bill,largely from the work of Bill Black from Minnesota Municipal Utilities Association. There may be a time when this bill is brought back that we'll need to reach out to our elected officials to share our story. Mark Fuchs shared that we that we had an unplanned outage at one of our data centers due to a gopher chewing through an underground primary splice.Mark showed the commission a portion of the damaged wire. He explained that the rubberized protective coating they put over the splices sometime attracts rodents. He's been researching some alternative coatings that we may want to consider for future splices. Mark said that there are typically only two reasons why a splice would fail;workmanship or material defects. The fact that it was caused by something that was out of our control,an animal,was the best case scenario. Tom Sagstetter commented on how quickly Mark and his crew got the data center up and running on a backup feeder,and eventually on their original feeder once the ground was thawed for repairs. The data center has asked to borrow the damaged cable to show their board. There was further discussion. Eric Volk added that the cleaning contract was approved at the city council meeting last night. Perfection Plus cleaning service will begin cleaning the Field Services Building on April 11th. Page 5 Special meeting of the Elk River Municipal Utilities Commission March 17,2015