2005 Director’s Report given to the Salt Lake City Public Utilities Advisory Committee on December 2, 2005
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He also recognized Representative David Ure, noting that he appreciated his attendance.
Stephanie Duer was recognized for her efforts in preparing the Annual Report and for the quality of the work and timely manner.
Mr. Hooton, holding up the Annual Report said that he was going to highlight the contents of the Report.
He expressed his appreciation to all of the employees, explaining that they work day and night 7 days a week to make sure that water, sewer and storm water services are provided to Salt Lake City and its service area. The employees work under difficult conditions. Many employees are working outdoors in the heat of summer and the cold of winter. Many divisions operate 24 hours, requiring shift work. The Annual Report is dedicated to the Department’s employees and for the great jobs they do.
Mr. Hooton commented on the following highlights contained in the Annual Report:
During the past year, the Department has met all of the requirements of the Safe Drinking and Clean Water Acts; and all of the standards necessary in complying with drinking water regulations and complying with the City’s NPDES permits for wastewater and stormwater discharges into the State’s receiving waters.
Not only has the Department met all of the standards, it has done it in great ways. The Water Reclamation Plant has completed another year of perfect compliance of its NPDES permit. It has won another award, now having earned 15 National Association of Clean Water Agencies Gold Awards. The plant has now completed 140 consecutive months without a violation of its permit. This is a remarkable record. Not only have plant personnel fully met federal standards, it has been doing it safely. The employees are working on their 547 day without a lost time accident.
On June 29, 2005 the three drinking water treatment plants [City Creek, Parley’s and Big Cottonwood Water Treatment Plants] were recognized for completing 5 years of compliance under the stringent standards of the EPA Partnership for Safe Water Program. Only 34 water treatment plants nationally have accomplished this standard. This is an outstanding record and the treatment plant operators can be proud of their work, and the public can be assured that the quality of their drinking water far exceeds federal drinking water standards.
All three utilities were audited this year either by EPA or State regulatory agencies. The State Division of Drinking Water audited the water utility. Inspectors made a comprehensive sanitary survey of the distribution and treatment systems with no point deductions. EPA Region VIII and the State audited the stormwater program, noting only minor problems that were immediately corrected. The only significant issue raised by the auditors related to the legal authority of the Department to enforce provisions of the Clean Water Act. [The Department has been relying on the Salt Lake Valley Health Department for enforcement action]. The City Attorney’s Office is in the process of developing City Ordinances to provide the Department the necessary powers to prosecute violations of the Act. Likewise both the laboratory and water reclamation plant were audited during the past year without any significant problems noted.
During the past year the Department’s customer service group received its highest overall rating since initiating its customer satisfaction survey program. At random, one in ten customers are sent a customer satisfaction survey. Not only do our customers rate the Department’s service, they also provided valuable feedback on the quality of their service. This feedback has been extremely helpful in making changes in how the Department does business.
In early June 2005 Envision Utah recognized two of the Department’s programs: the watershed purchase program, where revenues generated by a $0.50 surcharge on each water bill are used to buy critical watershed properties in the Wasatch Canyons, and the Water Reclamation Plant Co-generation Project.
The Department also had a very active construction program this year with the Water Reclamation Plant secondary treatment process upgrade, the reconstruction of the City Creek Water Treatment Plant and the construction of the 900 South Stormdrain Project.
After 5 years of drought, the water supply greatly improved this past year. Last year’s winter snowpack was above normal, even raising concerns about flooding. Water storage is much better this year over a year ago, when reservoirs were depleted by 5 years of drought. Overall there was a net gain of nearly 500,000 acre-feet of water storage in Jordanelle, Deer Creek and Utah Lake as measured on October 1, 2005.
In terms of new water development, the Metropolitan Water District of Salt Lake & Sandy signed a petition with the Department of Interior for 8,600 acre-feet of Utah Lake System water, which was divided up between the two cities in an interlocal agreement. This water will be made available in the future.
In regards to our conservation efforts, even when it appears that we have adequate water supplies, in order to protect the public against droughts, we need to use our water supplies wisely and not be wasteful. During this recent drought, even though Salt Lake City has some of the oldest and best water rights, it was necessary to conserve water. If it were not for the purchase of spot market water on the Provo River and an active conservation program, it would have been necessary to impose severe mandatory water restrictions. The shortages resulted from lower than normal stream flows and multiple years of 50 percent water allocations in Deer Creek reservoir.
Managing our water resources will always be necessary. The amount of water resources we have are subject to the region’s weather patterns and hydrology. Utah is the second driest state in the Union. Some years there is adequate water, while other years there are not. Just like our forefathers who depended on water to earn a livelihood from farming the land, today we are subject to the same variations in the weather. My mother’s grandfather and father were farmers in the Salt Lake valley. As a youngster she worked the fields and experienced the hardships of depending on water for irrigation. She wrote in her journal that she would never marry a farmer, that farming life was just too difficult. There were years of adequate water resulting in good harvests of ample crops to barter for the family’s necessities; and other years when there was not enough water to grow the crops for food and/or bartering. We’re not growing crops today, but we’re growing commercial centers, rooftops and population. However, we are still subject to the same variability in weather patterns and precipitation as those who depended on water for farming in past years. We have to learn to manage our water resources in order to have an adequate municipal water supply now and into the future.
Looking to the future, the Department’s senior leadership and division managers listed their most pressing concerns. The following four items topped their lists:
1. Finances: Over the years we have done everything we could to reduce operational costs by using technology, consolidating positions and outsourcing in order to have funds [net income]to reinvest in our infrastructure. We are a very capital-intensive organization with the need to replace aging systems, meet new standards and accommodate growth. There is great need for capital investments to keep this utility working properly. The age of watermains date back to 1876. Furthermore, there are issues ripening in our county service area, where we provide water to various mutual irrigation companies through exchange contracts. This area is now urbanized and conditions have changed. In our business plan we have projected rate increases to deal with these pressing issues that cannot be ignored.
2. Regulations: There are new drinking water regulations, ongoing studies of the water quality in the Great Salt Lake and other standards under consideration which raise the level in which the Department must perform. New regulation increases the cost of service. For example the new disinfection by-products rule will cost the Department $75,000 in testing costs alone. We are required by law to meet all regulations – we have no choice.
3. Workforce: We have a number of long-time employees who are reaching retirement age and we need to develop a transition plan to transfer the experience and knowledge of the older generation to the new one. We also need to hire a new workforce that can be trained to do the growing technical jobs needed in the future.
4. Increasing costs: Over the past year, we have seen increases in the cost of doing business. Perhaps some of the increasing costs in the construction side of our business for steel and concrete are more global in nature and will only last for a few years. However, increasing construction and energy costs may be a growing problem, making it more difficult to control our costs of doing business
In conclusion I’d like to mention resource protection – protection of our watersheds and water rights. It is absolutely critical in this time of change that we continue to take a strong role in protecting the watersheds and defending our water rights. There are tremendous pressures to develop and recreate in the City’s watersheds located in the Wasatch Canyons. It’s critical that living on the edge of a desert, we protect the watersheds in order to provide safe drinking water to future generations.
Mr. Hooton wished everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.