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I think we're we're ready to start the study session.

December sixteenth, two thousand twenty-five.

Mayor Scott Anderson here.

Vice Mayor Bobby Buckley.

Council Member Kenny Bucklin here.

Council Member Young Kaprowski.

Here.

Councilmember Monty Lyons.

And Councilmember Jim Torgeson.

Aquorum is present.

Thank you.

We have uh two agenda items.

The first one is presentation on utilization of different pipe materials in our sewer system.

Staff presentation.

Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council, Senior Council staff.

Turn your microphone on, Ken.

How many times have I seen some people come up here and not turn the microphone on?

And then I'm the guy that did it.

Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council, Senior Town Staff.

My name is Ken Snow.

I'm your public works assistant director.

I'm here to present on a review of a couple of pipe materials that we use in our wastewater collection system.

I have two demonstrations that our wastewater team has brought forward for you to see today.

I invite you, without hurting yourself to try to lift a couple of them just to check them out.

We have some lighter uh portions and samples here just for your use and familiar familiarization with the material.

Um as an introduction, there's three primary materials we use.

There are a couple of them more, but for today's discussion, we're discussing VCP or vitrified clay pipe, as well as PVC or polyvinyl chloride pipe and ductile iron pipe.

We sometimes refer to it in the business as DIP for whatever reason we don't call it dip pipe, but it's uh we call it DIP.

And so we're going to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of these pipe materials and how we use them in our wastewater collection system.

And we'll start off with clay pipe.

Literally hundreds of hundreds of years old, probably started off in the bronze age.

It's effectively pottery.

So we take clay, we fire it, the exterior of that clay is chemically similar to glass.

Um but as you know, glass is brittle, and clay pipe uh is like pottery.

It is it is brittle.

So it is difficult to work with.

Um there is they come in shorter laying length, so the actual length of the pipe that you can purchase it in is shorter than um more modern materials.

That shorter length means that you have more bell and spigots, more bell and spigots is more opportunity for root intrusion.

Those comp those repairs can tend to be a little bit more complicated.

You can see some creative repairs there on a piece of uh pipe there on the bottom left-hand corner of the uh photos there, uh wrapping it in or resin as well as concrete repairs as well as these are fern coplings you see on the right hand side there.

The advantage of this material, it is heavy, it is brittle, it is short in length.

Um, it is corrosion resistant, it has great corrosion resistance in wastewater applications.

Modern materials like PVC do have some disadvantages too, and one of them is there's an unknown out there.

PVC has not lasted through an entire life cycle yet.

Um it has a very similar life as what we anticipate, um, but it has a longer laying length and therefore fewer bells and spigots.

Um, and it is a semi-rigid pipe.

It it can handle handling during construction a little bit easier than clay pipe can, as well as the compaction effort that fall uh that follows on top and around the pipe when we when we bury it.

It is similarly resistant to corrosion.

Umert in the in the in the presence of those wastewater gases.

Um longer term, we have we see lower maintenance costs associated with PVC.

Our crews, our equipment, our materials, and our procedures are all based around PVC pipe because it's the vast majority of our system, and I'll discuss a little bit more on that later.

That last material, ductile iron, is used primarily in structural applications.

We don't favor this material in gravity sewers because it is prone to corrosion, um, but there are certain applications where it is required.

This is in places where we require extra protection for the uh to protect our water system, where it's crossing a water line, underneath railroad tracks, underneath highways, underneath canals, specifically it's required inside of casings when we do a jack and bore.

Those are the generally the locations where you'll see a gravity system with ductile iron pipe.

The interior of the pipe is called a lining, and it's it's supposed to be lined with something called Protecto 401 from the manufacturer when in a sewer application.

It's a thin layer of epoxy that protects the metal from corroding.

It is a problematic coating, and we'd like to see a standard in the future where if we do have ductile iron in the system, particularly the gravity system, that it has a cured in-place liner put in place, which is a fully separate pipe within that pipe.

I'll discuss a little bit more on that standard in a moment.