– St. Martin Parish President Pete Delcambre expected a tentative agreement on a 50-year lease of property for a new water well to be reached this past week and a lease agreement to be drafted, he told the board of Consolidated Water District No. 4 at its July meeting this past Tuesday.
The agreement was expected to be at a fixed rate of $1,650 per month for the first 25 years, with the payments going up 3 percent every five years for the next 25 years of the lease, Delcambre said. Sellers & Associates, one of the engineering firms working on the consolidation project, gives the well an estimated life of 50 years. The parish is negotiating with the Billeaud Companies for the water well.
Delcambre also said that all of the sections of the project, which was divided into five parts, have been put out to bid and contracted with the exception of the new water well.
Because the project involves combining three separate water systems — the City of St. Martinville, St. Martin Parish Water District 4 (the Catahoula area) and the St. Martin Industrial Park — some parts of the project such as billing will remain separate until the district is fully consolidated and controlled by the board, Delcambre said.
The consolidation efforts include installing new electronic water meters and software that is compatible with those meters, so billing won’t be consolidated until all the meters and software are up and running.
Liability insurance The board also heard from Coy Duplantis of Brown & Brown Insurance about liability insurance coverage for the board.
St. Martin Parish Director of Administration Raymond Bernard Jr. told the board he had met with Duplantis to discuss liability coverage for the board and asked him to explain the coverage to the board.
Board members stressed that the insurance coverage was not health insurance for the board members.
Duplantis said the insurance is to cover board members for any decisions they make as a water district board, such as if a well the board votes to drill a well and a nearby neighborhood is flooded as a result of the well being drilled.
The insurance would also include employment practices insurance that would cover lawsuits for wrongful termination.
Employee theft would be covered up to $100,000, he said. The board opted to look over the proposal and make a decision at a later meeting.
“I sit on many boards and they have similar coverage,” board member Don “Tuffy” Resweber said.
The limit could be increased, Duplantis said. Operating water districts average about $2 million coverage with some opting for coverage as high as $5 million. Duplantis suggested $1 million coverage until the district is running fully.
Engineer updates The contract for the rehabilitation of the two water wells was awarded on July 12 and construction should begin in early September with a finish expected within six months.
Contracts for the elevated water tank rehabilitation also was awarded on July 28 with submissions made to the state and approved for all but one phase. Construction activity should begin in a few weeks.
Distribution system isolation valve installation is expected to begin Aug. 21, engineers said.
That brought up a question about the City of St. Martinville’s efforts to find all the isolation valves currently in the city. The city had two recent water line breaks, of an 8-inch line and the main 16inch line into the city but some of the isolation valves are not operable or cannot easily be found or accessed because they have not been maintained or mapped properly in the past, according to Jonathan Vining, who will be the consolidated water district’s water foreman.
He currently works for the city’s water department and said city employees are tracking down all the isolation valves in the city, but some or under roadways and others seem to operate until they are shut off and water continues flowing, meaning a stem inside has likely broken off because of their age and prevents the valve from shutting off water in those areas.
The city has located many of the valves because it wants to be able to shut off quadrants of the city’s water system rather than the entire thing, but age and disuse have led to some not being accessible or working properly.
Pam Granger of McBade Engineers & Consultants said that there are companies that can be hired to map out the exact geolocations of all the isolation valves in the consolidated system.
The city is not making any proactive investments in the water system because the entire system will soon be moved over to the consolidated water district’s control, and is doing only reactive work on the water system, Vining said.
“There’s a lot of isolation valves (in the city), but they have to be located and exercised and if they aren’t working, document it, give it back to us and we can create an electronic map like that,” Granger said. “There are some pretty extensive mapping things that have been done for St. Martinville, and for some of our other water districts we have it to where they have their little iPads and they can go out in the field, they can hit it and it gives them all of that information. It’s all about a the community (water system) wanting to do that, and paying to get that, and then to give us the information.”
Board members said they might consider paying a company to mark the locations of all the isolation valves to help the water system isolate areas that need to have work done in case of water line breaks or other issues, rather than shutting off the entire water supply for the system.
Resweber said he thought it important for the water district to know where all of the valves are and whether they are working, before the consolidated district takes over.
Resweber also asked if the district should have a second transmission line, given the shutdown of water in the city during the recent break in the water line.
But that would cost about $6 million, Delcambre said he learned after asking that question before the project started. That puts the cost beyond the scope of the grants that the project received.
In other project news, notice to proceed on the water line crossing project and the fire hydrant replacement and meter project also are set to proceed in the next few weeks.
Vining expressed thanks for the help that St. Martinville got from the parish in providing water when the 16-inch line into the city broke.
