GLADSTONE — The Gladstone City Commission discussed the Stormwater Asset Management and Wastewater Program (SAW) its recent meeting. The SAW grant gives money to develop asset management plans for wastewater and stormwater systems.

A presentation was made by Civil Engineer Ashley Hendricks of engineering and architecture design firm C2AE to discuss the data compiled. “The main goal of SAW was to determine or identify what needs the most attention. From there, more detailed analyses would need to be done to identify project scopes, street by street, coordinate with the replacement of other utility replacements such as water or storm and come up with more accurate project costs. So this just kind of outlines what should be kind of looked at in the future,” said Hendricks.

Gladstone was awarded the $770,000 grant in 2018 with a 10% city match. The components studied with the grant are levels of service, an inventory on assets through a field investigation, and condition assessment.

All of the information was compiled using National Association of Sewer Service Companies standards and summarized into an asset management spreadsheet. The spreadsheet draws on information on criticality, probability of failure, and redundancy of assets to determine business risk value to the city.

In addition to the business risk value assessment, the SAW program uses a model of sanitary and stormwater systems to look at the budget, revenue, and rate structure of the city.

The storm water system had a total of 985 assets in the ground, including 500 storm manholes and 11 miles of pipe. The assessment determined the probability of failure for this system at a risk of 47%, meaning that this percentage of the storm assets have a high probability of failure or are close to the end of their expected life-span. The replacement value of the entire stormwater system was estimated at $13 mil.

The wastewater system had 1,338 assets in ground, including 650 sanitary manholes, 32 miles of sanitary sewer, 10 lift stations and 6,000 feet of force main. Of this system, 25% were assessed with a high probability of failure or are close to the end of their expected life-span. The replacement value of the total wastewater collection system and wastewater treatment plant was valued at $40 million.

“One of the things to note with stormwater is there’s not necessarily a revenue to support these projects, nor is there typically a funding source for the stormwater projects. So the one thing to keep in mind as you’re doing road projects or other utility projects is when you’re looking at those roads, try to include storm water replacement that might be getting closer end to their life,” Hendricks pointed out.

All of the documentation that needs to be filed with a Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) has been appropriately completed and is ready to go, so a motion was carried to authorize City Manager Eric Buckman to sign the EGLE SAW grant wastewater stormwater certification project of completion forms.

Gladstone Mayor Joe Thompson reminded community members, “We have miles and miles of sewer being filmed, so if anyone is hard up to watch a movie next friday night, it’s really exciting.”

In other business:

– The commission passed amotion to sign the MERS Defined Benefit & Defined Contribution Adoption Agreement Addendums, confirming that no changes will be made by the commission based upon the modifications to the way defined benefit, defined contribution and hybrid plans are administered in 2021.

– City Manager Eric Buckman’s contract will end on December 31. A motion was carried to discuss Buckman’s contract after the start of 2021, and for the current contract to be extended until a new contract can be established.

– 2021 Gladstone City Commission regular meeting dates were reviewed at the meeting, and a motion was carried to continue the meetings on the second and fourth Mondays of the month at 6 p.m. unless otherwise noted.

– The Gladstone City Commission regular meeting on December 28 has been canceled.