00:00:11,467	spk_0:
Welcome to Bismarck Insights with Mayor Mike Schmitz, a transparent and engaging conversational dive into meaningful topics impacting local government in Bismarck, North Dakota. Bismarck Insights is dedicated to removing barriers between the city of Bismarck and the citizens we serve every day.

00:00:28,300	spk_1:
Hello and welcome to Bismarck Insights. They we're focusing on a department in the city public works utility operations, and we have, uh, recently hired new director Michael Mart with us today. Michael, would you give us a little bit of background so the citizens know a little bit more about you and all that you went through the interview process, but this might reach a few more people. So what's your background and how long you've been with the city and how you ended up, uh, kind of transitioning from one department to another in the city.

00:00:57,467	spk_2:
Yeah, absolutely, um, so I graduated from NDSU just to start with that one in 2011 and came to the city to work in the engineering department as an engineering tech one in in the summer of 2012. So I was measuring concrete in the field, taking asphalt tickets, um, doing all that stuff in the field, um, shortly after starting with the engineering department, uh, a project engineering position opened up, and I applied for that and. Um, basically took over the payment management system for the city of Bismarck, um, since for 2012 to 2023. Um, in that role, I graduated up to senior project engineer. I would design projects, oversee them, uh, work with other departments, and then, uh, so I, I spent about. 12 years in the engineering department in 2024, an opportunity with public works utility operations came up to manage their CEMA project, which was two big projects at the water plant and wastewater plant. They needed somebody within the city to help oversee that, manage it, and, and moving it forward. And so I took on the challenge to switch from a roads and streets focus to a utility focus for 2024. That then led me to where I'm at today when Michelle Closey retired um at the beginning of 25, I applied for the director and I mean here I sit today now.

00:02:20,667	spk_1:
Yes, and that you took over in March, right, as as the official date about uh that would be right and so thank you for, for, uh, applying and, and then accepting the challenge. Um, because it, it did challenge you probably a little bit moving from what you are accustomed to doing to now dealing with water and waste water and not, not something on the ground but now it's a moving fluid and, uh, and a larger operation so we we're very appreciative of that. So as you as you've moved into the utility operations portion of public works, what, what are you seeing as your primary focus what you know, your, your perspective of that department and obviously you're not making a whole bunch of changes overnight but then let's maybe what do you think we may be needing to do going forward in your in that department.

00:03:11,667	spk_2:
Yeah, so my, my focus right now is really on our continue to be on our CMA projects. We have a couple of big ones at the water plant, the wastewater plant. We have some big ones going on. Um, however, I'm also looking to focus on the staff. Um, I'm, I'm new to a management type role and so I want to get to know the staff, the team that we have that's serving in our department, what's going well, what's not going well, what are things that maybe we can improve on for the, the Bismarck residents here. So that's kind of been a little bit of my focus is understanding where everything is going in our department and what's taking place.

00:03:47,166	spk_1:
Let's let's talk a little bit about those big projects we have going on because you know a lot about it but our citizens don't and, and certainly we have an expansion really in both facilities, uh, which are not insignificant so you know water which is the supply of what we wanna use for drinkable water, how, how far along are we in that expansion and how's it going?

00:04:09,100	spk_2:
So our water plant, um, what we're doing out there is we are designing a 10 million gallon per day expansion. So to just give you a little bit of insight on that, um, our plant can produce up to 30 million gallons per day, and wintertime use, we're about at 6 million gallons, but in the summertime last few years we've hit a few days where we're getting up to that 28 29 million gallons per day. And as Bismarck grows, we have to be in anticipation of more water use. So we're adding 10 million gallons through a different process called ultrafiltration and reverse osmosis that will give us to an ultimate capacity of 40 million gallons to be able to provide that summertime usage, to be able to provide future expansion and growth in Bismarck for the next, I think it's close to 2025 years or more depending on how we see with growth.

00:05:01,166	spk_1:
And that and the reason we don't want to get so tight on our capacity is if we're using 28 million. In a day or that's uh with the usage and all of a sudden we have a major catastrophe that needs water for fire suppression that would put us in harm's way or the residents in harm's way somewhere, correct?

00:05:19,166	spk_2:
Yeah, that would, um, so one other thing that we, we look at is other communities may put water restrictions on because they are not able to produce that much. That's been something that Bismarck hasn't had to do. We, we don't have water restrictions that say you can only water your lawn on certain days or only use so many units of water. So we try to meet those needs of the public, um, but certainly a fire emergency will use a lot of water in our system, and we want to make sure that we can keep our fire rating, and part of that is producing our water.

00:05:48,100	spk_1:
And then the wastewater treatment, which is people we don't even wanna think about this, but it's a very critical component to keeping our water systems healthy throughout the country and and making sure we are returning back to that resource, something that's usable, correct?

00:06:03,767	spk_2:
Yeah, so the, the water, a wastewater treatment plant, uh, the project that's taking place there is to have, it's called flow equalization. What we're trying to do is have a constant flow through our plant which is about 7 million gallons per day, um, during rain events or high flows when, when. People are using our taxing our system. We capture some of that and we hold on to it and then we use it at night when flows go down to be able to better maintain our system. This helps us to meet those regulations. Because if you're constantly going up and down in flow, you're having to adjust processes, adjust chemicals, and there's more testing that goes on. If we can keep our rate going through our plant at a constant level, that helps us to make sure that we're meeting those requirements. And so we're taking two old storage tanks that no longer needed for our process out there, and we're going to reuse them to help store this. wastewater that comes in primarily during rain events to be able to then release back into our plant at lower times.

00:07:08,667	spk_1:
And does that help us with the overall cost of processing waste water then because we're more consistent and we're not having spikes,

00:07:16,767	spk_2:
so I can't remember the exact number of our plant, but we have a little bit of capacity above our 7 million gallons we treat per day. And if we don't have this EQ, we have to be able to handle the inflow of water that's coming into that plant. So this helps us to not have to build out a process that's only needed during rain events, um, and we're able to, you know, wait until development is telling us that we need to have a larger plant put in.

00:07:44,000	spk_1:
The whole goal being here keeping costs down to our citizens because they're the ones who are paying the rate.

00:07:49,166	spk_2:
That's correct OK.

00:07:51,000	spk_1:
So there's a besides wastewater and and uh water treatment or the our drinking water, uh what are other processes we look at as we you know we I guess maybe it's how we're paying for this and, and one of those is the utility capital charge and then the rates and, and so on. So one of the big. Things we look at I know is is how we develop and how that cost can maybe be is passed on is the upfront cost to connect to the to the system. What is that connection charge? What what's it for? What, what do you view what do we as a city view it

00:08:28,667	spk_2:
as? Yes, so you'll hear us say the word UCCs, utility capital charge um. That's the charge that we have because the city has invested a lot of money in the water plant in the wastewater plant, water towers, lift stations, we call them trunk lines. So there's a lot of costs that are put into our system for our current residents and for future residents that are going to come into the system. And so what that really does is it helps a UCC is is applied to a property at time of development when a new property comes into the city. We charge them for basically all the work that we've put into our infrastructure in order to provide them water. You know, if we hadn't done these expansions in the past, we won't be able to provide water at a certain rate to these. So that's what the UCC covers is all of this work that has taken place and even work that's going to need to take place. We're always going to be expanding. Bismarck is hopefully going to grow and we'll have to continue to expand our services to provide that. Um, UCCs aren't new. We've we've always had some sort of them. They used to be called trunk line fees prior to 2019 when we put in the UCC costs. They were at a different rate, but we've always charged new development for some sort of cost of buying into all the work that we've already done in our system.

00:09:50,266	spk_1:
It's like it's like a membership into the. The system or buying in or paying that. The infrastructure charge I guess that everybody else has already paid and and through you know either whatever the rates were before we had uh maybe a trunk line charge many years ago but we've, as you said we've always had some kind of charge to be admitted into using uh our system. Um, so, so what do we see as we go forward, um, related to Any of those charges or how that might be looking in the future or how that might apply. Um, do we have to look at analyzing that regularly, see if it's the right charge.

00:10:36,567	spk_2:
So right now we charge UCCs at time of development and there certainly is a little bit of a lag at development to when our system is actually being used. So we're looking to see is there a better time to charge this cost when a building permit is being pulled out, you know, that's when the use of our system takes place. That's when people are going to use it. So we're looking at that as an option to, to do that. The other part is our UCCs haven't been changed since 2019 when we put them in place. Um, and so, We, we've done some improvements. We're working on improvements at the water plant. We're working on improvements at the wastewater plant. There'll be a time in the future where we're going to have to look at that cost again to say, is this still right? Uh, is Bismarck growing at the rate that we anticipated, you know, back when we first did this, um, maybe, maybe it's better off, maybe costs might go down, maybe they might go up. Um, but we'll do that in the future once we have a better understanding of the costs that we put into our system,

00:11:37,266	spk_1:
right, which is because we're doing these big expansions, we don't even really know what that looks like for sure we're projecting it, but inflation or I would love to see maybe some deflation in some of those components. I don't know that we can expect that, but um hopefully inflation stays where we were hoping it to be. And as far as the timing, one of the reasons to look at that is, is if it's paid up front, there's a carrying cost to the developer and we're trying to keep land costs or acquisition costs for our homeowners. As affordable as possible and, and if there's an interest charge on that for that developer that's part of the reason that we're we're reevaluating that. Um, as we look forward to the future and the expansion of the projects, what, what do you see? Maybe globally down the road that we may need to be doing that we haven't yet addressed

00:12:27,667	spk_2:
so that's that's a good question. Um, in the next couple of years here we're gonna be doing a water and sewer distribution collection master plan, and that's gonna look at our internal piping. Uh, recently we just did the wastewater plant and the water plant. That's why those projects are taking place, but we need to look at our pipes that are in the ground. Some of these were put in in the 50s, you know, what was their projection of growth and development? They'd probably only looked out 50 years. Well, we're 75 years away from when they were installed. So some of these lines need to be upsized. Some of them need to be rehabbed, and we just need to have a better understanding of what work needs to take place. Um, so that's what these studies will do. They'll, they'll be able to tell us that, be able to say, OK, here's your focus area to be able to continue to provide the same service to all your residents, um, that they've come to expect from us.

00:13:18,166	spk_1:
And, you know, in addition to that, some of those pipes are lead.

00:13:22,567	spk_2:
They certainly are,

00:13:23,700	spk_1:
and I know we go through a process every year of trying to replace some of those, and we've been very fortunate to get some assistance from the state, uh, to do that. But do we have how like in an annual basis, roughly what how many feet because it's probably not miles, it's probably more defined better and linear feet that we're replacing what what is our kind of normal. Number of feet we're trying to replace those lead pipes. Well,

00:13:48,367	spk_2:
I'll actually go with miles because we do some in miles. We're, we're getting about that 5 to 7 miles of replacement a year. We we've certainly been able to increase what we started with and the water mains we're replacing are cast iron water mains. and we're trying to get rid of all of those smaller ones in town and and when we do that, we find these lead lines and as you're aware, there's a A federal regulation now it says we need to get rid of all these red lead lines and so what we're gonna be doing in the next couple of years is identifying any of those lead service lines that we we don't have an accurate record on. Some of them are we don't know what's from the water main to the curb stop or the curb stop into the house. And so we may have to talk to residents to say, can we, can can we see what your service line is in your house so we can make note of that so we can let you know if it's a lead line. Um, and then we're gonna start replacing some of those, and we'll have to work with the property owners, uh, on what that looks like there will be funding available, um, but it certainly doesn't cover all the costs,

00:14:48,600	spk_1:
right? And, and let's explain the curbstop concept because I don't think everybody understands that as a homeowner unless you've built the house, you may not understand what that even means. So this, the city takes water to the curb stop, which is a valve, right, essentially, yep, and then what happens? Whose responsibility is it from there forward and If there's a break and so on,

00:15:12,767	spk_2:
so the, the property owner is responsible for the curb stop and the line into their house. Um, they do own that infrastructure and so you know when we when we come out to try to figure out a residential issue with a curb stop, we want to know where it's at and and who who owns responsibility. So when you're thinking. A curb stop. Where is it at? It's usually about a 4 inch circular metal cap in your sidewalk outside of your house. That's the valve that has control over to be able to shut water on and off to your house. So if you're wanting to do plumbing work, we have to have access to that. That valve has to function and leaks do occur. Breaks do occur, and so that's where we we work with the property owners in getting those fixed.

00:15:56,800	spk_1:
And I don't know this is probably directly related to water, but there is a, a fee that I guess is collected from our residents that helps with some clean up uh probably more wastewater or related if I'm, if I'm remembering it right, but do we not have something that's like an insurance policy, self-funded?

00:16:15,667	spk_2:
So residential properties only pay into a curb stop fee and a sewer backup fee. And those funds are available to assist if a sewer backup occurs on our city water main side that then impacts the property. That fee helps to clean your property, pay for any items that may have been lost or restore the property back to pre-existing conditions. The water service line fee. It is also on everybody's utility bill for residential properties, and that helps cover maybe your line freezes in the winter time or you do have a break in it or a leak and it's causing some issues. That's where that fee helps to assist in covering those costs because when you dig into a roadway, it's not cheap. Removing sidewalk is not cheap. I mean these lines are 8 ft down. You can't hand dig them. So we, we recognize that, but that's what that fee helps to cover is some of these larger expenses when um you have these issues.

00:17:13,066	spk_1:
And my point to bring that up is to let, let our residents know that we do think about that and try to mitigate those, those instances which are, you know, a bill comes like that that's a very shock big shock to the system and, and we don't want to have our residents feeling that pain if we can avoid it. Um, do you think there's other projects besides, you know, the study that is gonna go on to determine what our growth needs might need to be or where we need to replace water distribution or collection of waste water, um, besides that, are there other projects you're seeing that that we need to look at for the city?

00:17:51,600	spk_2:
Those studies will provide us a good answer of where we need to focus our time. Um, you know, one of the ones that has been taking place over the few years and we have a few years left is the Hay Creek Formate project. You know, you've seen us in that area going up Hay Creek area. We're we're working just south of Divide this year. There's a few more sections of that that are going to have to be replaced and upsized in the coming years. We're, we're building our new Hay Creek Lift station to replace our old one this year. That should be up and operational in 26, maybe, but probably 27. And we'll, we'll have that facility already for development in that northwest side of town.

00:18:34,166	spk_1:
That's good. So there's other things that that your your services are actually providing besides, uh, it's a regional type concept, but besides the city of Bismarck, what are we doing to help our surrounding areas, kind of regionalization so that we can maybe save some costs globally.

00:18:53,300	spk_2:
Yep, so we, we're involved with, uh, providing water to other entities around us. Uh, the city of Lincoln gets water from us. Um, some Burley County residents get water through South Central. South Central purchases our water and then, um, it's, it's delivered to some of those. County University of Mary is another big one that gets water from us so we regionalize because we have a plant set up that can produce this. Um, we've taken that into account with the fees that we're charging these other entities, um, how we're expanding our plant, but it's better to have one source that's treating treating water, uh, EPA requirements and all of that meeting that and providing safe drinking water to to local residents. The same thing with sewer, you know, we have to discharge our sewer back into the river, so we have to treat it to a certain standard. And when you have other communities nearby, it's a benefit to send it to one plant that's meeting standards, reporting standards, and not to say the other places aren't, but they're using older technology. They're using lagoons, you know, and you smell it in the air, that's, that's that lagoon area. Um, so we haven't regionalized any sanitary sewer yet. We, we have conversations with the University of Mary or City of Lincoln to, to see if it works for both entities for us to take their sewer for them to be able to deliver their sewage to us, and then it's just treated at one spot and discharged back into the river

00:20:19,500	spk_1:
and there's an efficiency to that, I would imagine because as a plant. You there's certain capacity times where if it's underutilized, that's inefficient. It's over utilized as inefficient and, and that helps us as a city of Bismarck if we have those opportunities to right size for the, for the region.

00:20:38,367	spk_2:
Yep, just like we talked about with our equalization, we like to keep that plant running at a consistent rate. It it optimizes and runs well when you do that. And these other communities, they're they're primarily residential based, and residential sewage is good for our plant. Commercial sewage can be. It just depends on what it is. But these communities that are are would come into our system would certainly help the efficiency of our plant by bringing a majority of it is residential. And what, what that does is the saying is dilution is the solution. It helps to dilute some of those concentrated commercial flows down, um, to a good ga sense good product to go through our plant.

00:21:21,467	spk_1:
So I probably should have covered this before, but we'll we'll jump back to talk about waste water. I mean we have to be concerned, especially on a commercial industrial side, what's happening. So what do we do to help monitor that when it comes to the actual business locations.

00:21:35,867	spk_2:
Yeah, so our wastewater has an industrial pre-treatment program. We have ordinances in place that basically cover what you can be dumping into our system, and we want to be involved with commercial businesses as they're coming in to make sure that they understand what chemicals they might dump into our system. Um, and how it can affect us. So we work with them. We have right now, I think there's 6, we call them SIUs, significant industrial users that we monitor really closely, um, and we have good working relationships with them. Um, it helps to make sure that our plant is protected in this. Another big program that we do is called FOG, which is fat soils and grease. That's the stuff that can plug up systems. That's the stuff that can cause issues. And so we, we work with restaurants that are coming into town to, to get these um oil and grease separators installed. We educate them on the benefit. Not only benefits our infrastructure, it benefits theirs. I mean they are responsible for their sewer pipe up to the main, and that's the first place that these fat soils in Greece collect. And so we do a lot of education to people on that

00:22:46,367	spk_1:
and the goal of that is not only are we protecting our system, but If they don't clog their drains or have their area that's clogged becomes clogged, it saves them some money in the long run because they're not having to probably tear up.

00:22:58,867	spk_2:
It saves us money because then we don't have to jet sewer lines as often, so it's it's a benefit to everybody if we can, you know, work on keeping fast oil and grease out of our system.

00:23:09,767	spk_1:
So what do you see as some opportunities and threats for water? Treatment for good drinking water and then of course the wastewater collection.

00:23:20,166	spk_2:
You know, we've we've done a good job of of putting master plans in place. We're anticipating growth. I mean, obviously that is our biggest thing is, you know, we want to be ahead of growth and development because you can't have a new subdivision come in and be able to say we don't have enough water for you. So we're we're always looking into the future trying to be ahead of that and and be constructing and that takes a lot of planning. I mean, there's financial impacts that we have to look at. When do we expand? When do we add stuff and so. Um, we're we're constantly, I don't want to say shaking an eight ball. That's not what we're doing, but we look close at this and, and we try to predict as best that we can, um, what our growth is going to be and how to be ahead of that game.

00:24:05,800	spk_1:
And that means you're working with other departments within the community, probably specifically engineering and community development because they have a lot to say over that.

00:24:15,100	spk_2:
They do, they have a good handle on that, uh, community development, um, just with. Where certain types of growth will take place, and we can estimate how much water needs to be in that area and what type of sewage needs are going to come out of that. So we work very closely with them. They help us in that planning area. Engineering is certainly the ones that are there installing all of our infrastructure. They're the ones. Um, working with engineering firms in designing the pipe that we will take over, we'll manage that, we'll maintain that, um, until it gets in the ground. They're, they're the ones that are on top of it.

00:24:50,000	spk_1:
What about water analytics? Because that let's explain to our residents what that is and what it can help them do to help manage their bill basically.

00:24:58,767	spk_2:
Yeah, so what water analytics is, um, every meter in town can track how much water you use every hour. And everybody has access to their own meter. They can get this. You can log on to our website and there's a water analytics link on there. And if you don't know how to get to it, you can call our customer service staff. They'll walk you through everything and how to get logged in, how to interpret that information. Um, but what that meter does and the benefit of that, let's say you have a leaky toilet. That meter actually will notify our customer service staff and we send you a letter out. We don't want you using more water than you need to, so we want to notify you. You may have a leaky toilet. Um, I actually use it for my sprinkler system. I want to water my yard, but I want to know how much water I'm putting down, how many gallons am I putting down on my yard. And so I set my sprinkler system up to water at a time that I know I don't have any other use, and I can log in and see that because the yard only needs a half inch of water. I don't need to be putting an inch of water on, and so that tells me exactly how much I can use of it. So it can also help you in managing uh how much water consumption you are seeing in your house, where are you at in our tiered system. um is there improvements maybe that you can think of and make, but knowing that specific hour of the day that the water is being used can help you in determining what efficiencies does your house need to change.

00:26:22,967	spk_1:
And I think it's a great tool and, and really for our residents that's how you, you can help manage your own water bill knowing there's a rate charge and, and the higher your consumption is rates have an impact because it's a per unit charge after a base rate and um I think it's really important and it's a great tool. Uh, they can get to it from the city website correct and then they go to the water department. Is that is that where the best routing of you know Bismarck.gov.

00:26:50,066	spk_2:
Yep, Bismarck ND.gov look for uh utility utility operations department and there should be a link that says water analytics somewhere in there. OK,

00:26:59,266	spk_1:
well, Michael, thank you for joining me today on and sharing with with the citizens a little bit of information about the water department and the sewer collections, um, and, and just about you. So again, thank you for being with me.

00:27:12,367	spk_2:
Absolutely you're welcome.

00:27:25,467	spk_0:
Thank you for watching Bismarck Insights with Mayor Mike Schmitz. If you have specific topics or questions you'd like addressed in future episodes, email Ms Schmitz at Bismarcknd.gov.

00:27:39,000	spk_0:
Or call the City of Bismarck at 701-355-1300.

00:27:43,367	spk_0:
To learn more about the city of Bismarck, visit bizarndD.gov or follow us on a variety of social media channels by searching Bismarck NDgov. Bismarck Insights is a collaboration between Dakota Media Access and the City of Bismarck. You may find Bismarck Insights episodes on government Access Channels 2 and 602, as well as on Broku, Apple TV, and Fire TV devices on Radio Access 102.5 FM and on demand at freeTv.org.