them in a linear way, you would have the context of the urgency and the time scales that driving this project.

So when I came on board uh three years ago, I did a physical inspection of the treatment plants, of course.

And so all the infrastructure that I could see pump stations, water treatment plant, wastewater treatment plant, uh were in a severe state of disrepair and neglect.

In fact, the utility had been underinvested in years.

The average CIP for the utility going back to like 2017, with some with two notable exceptions for the big project of the deep injection well, the average utility investment for water and wastewater was $25 million a year.

That's entirely inadequate for utility, especially a regional utility of this size and responsibility.

So what were the outcomes of that underinvestment?

Well uh influent gravity line as the entrance to the plant was a 48 inch gravity line that failed in in uh December of uh 22 and that was a six million dollar repair.

It took a year to repair that served all of Dania Beach and northern part of the city.

The bar screens however were the tipping point for DEP regulation.

The bar screens failed in November November of 20 and then again in May and June of 22 those failures caused the DEP to begin to develop a consent order which they would ultimately deliver to the city in 24 what what the bar screens do is they screen out all the sticks, twigs, rags, things that come to the wastewater plant that would clog up the treatment works.

When those when those bar screens failed the only option was to remove them that removal allowed all that debris to get into your treatment plant and clog up all of the treatment works.

So starting with your clarifiers I'm sorry, starting with your grit chambers the crit chambers were completely clogged so they were now unable to capture sand and grit in the treatment plant before it got into the treatment works.

That meant that sand and grit got into your sludge, your biosolids, all of your oxygen treatment equipment, all of your clarifiers and cause disrepair and excessive wear and tear throughout the plant following that the clarifiers then failed about nearly half your clarifiers failed the oxygen aerators the we what you have is a small footprint for a wastewater treatment plant normally the plant would be twice as large and land area wise than you have.

What allows you to keep a small footprint is that we're an oxygen plant and we we we basically supercharged the treatment process with oxygen and that allows you to keep a smaller footprint but the oxygen mixing chambers were all jammed up with debris bending propellers, bending equipment, jamming nozzles we're in the process of repairing those the oxygen plant itself failed in April of 22 and then again in April of 23 where we had to ship in liquid oxygen to augment that plant while it underwent uh very intensive repairs we just passed a change order last commission meeting for to bring in more liquid oxygen that's to support an uh an unplanned outage as well the outfall pump station okay all right so the core investment what we're calling the core investment uh thank you thank you commissioner the core investment not not including septic desorb consideration is 780 million dollars and that has to be done in the first five years why that has to be done in the first five years is everything on this table on the right hand side is the wastewater plant and all that green are required by regulation uh consequence of regulations uh or consent order uh everything else uh is been risk evaluated and and shown a very short or over its useful life and needs to be replaced immediately or will be in consent orders for that failure for those failures here's a breakdown of in detail but I'll just go back quickly of the $780 million 222 million of that is water system improvements and those would be shared by all customers all water customers including accepted customers and the breakout component of that is the 560 million dollars is the wastewater component which would be shared by large users as well as our wastewater customers these two slides are detailed breakdowns of the composition of the 222 million in the 560 million I won't go for them in detail but we'll touch on one major initiative that we need to consider and that is biosolids we have been land applying our biosolids since the inception of the facility over in the right hand corner of that slide you'll see that uh the the number of land application sites uh for various reasons

These two slides are detailed breakdowns of the composition of the $222 million in the $560 million.

I won't go for them in detail.

But we'll touch on one major initiative that we need to consider, and that is biosolids.

We have been land applying our biosolids since the inception of the facility.

Over in the right hand corner of that slide, you'll see that the number of land application sites for various reasons have diminished since 2019.

There was 140 and in uh 2019, 130 in 2021, and we're down to 58 currently permitted sites.

Senate Bill 290 ended Class B biosolids land application.

Most of the utilities in Broward County use uh develop a Class B type sludge.

It has certain restrictions, but they generally had no issues with land applying other than the reduction in the sites due to competing economic interest for the land.

The states now officially outlawed that of as of this year, and the land application will end in 2028.

So they've initiated a regional biosolids facility, and it's incumbent upon us to join that facility, and I'll get into the reasons why.

Senate Bill 1470 74 and Senate Bill is 1294 are looking at the Class A sludge.

So the window for even our land application of our sludge is closing.

The regional biosolids facility has a deadline, they're starting design this year.

We either need to buy into that facility or lose our place in that facility, and that's a tremendous opportunity to share costs with as many uh partners as possible, not just our six municipal partners, but broadly across the county.

Um the reason for the diminished land uh sites is just competition for the agricultural land, it's just more lucrative uses for the land other than livestock raising.

And lastly, EPA is beginning to turn their attention to the PFAS concentration in biosolids.

And once they do that, uh biosolids land, any type of uh biosolids land application will uh likely be outrolled.

So when you consider all of those uh factors, the nexus of it, it just draws us to the conclusion that we need to drone the regional biosolids facility.

So here's the total program broken out uh by septic desor expansion, broken out to 17,000 accounts.

The total water wastewater master plan is 2.7 billion dollars.

We took uh we took a main use case uh of 66,500 cubic feet of water per month just to get a general sense, and we and we use this, we will call this the reference use case throughout the presentation just to bring the numbers down to a scale that's digestible.

We have a cross-section of all the use cases, but just to kind of have a common reference point throughout the presentation, we'll use this use case.

So just the core program, the required investment with no there's no options, is $780 million.

And what that translates into is uh uh uh over a five-year period, and we are discussing a five-year rate here, but this is just a five-year rate plan, is you know, it will go up by 24 percent a year for the first three years, then sort of level off.

But the net cumulative effect is that five years from now, if you're paying the $98.96 a month for water and soar today, five years from now, that same rate will be about $209 per month.

Then we factored in various durations of septic to SOAR, and what we found is you know, you're in this, you once you've escalated the rates for a little bit more, you can have the septic to SOAR program and tie the entire city in.

Here are all the use cases.

Um this is available once we once you zero in on uh on a rate that uh in a program that you that uh you are interested in, or there's a consensus around, so we can dial back and we can look at what the whole use cases across all of the customer base.

We've also factored in uh the bottom line of people's utility bills uh is that there's sanitation and stormwater on there.

So we've taken all the use cases of this reference use case, and we've added the $49 sanitation charge and the $22 per ERU per month uh stormwater charge.

And so you can see uh on the core uh charge today would be $168, and just the core investment would be $289 and then following all the way up.

So we've we have those those numbers available for the discussion later on.

So what we've done here is cash float the program to show how all of this work can be fit together uh tightly uh for an effective and package and effective use of time.

So when we if you were to move forward with septic to sewer, you would it would take about three years to carefully layer these the septic to sewer basins with the various stormwater improvements and integrate them, design them, get them permitted.

During that same three, so that's at the bottom of the screen, the stormwater and the septic to soil, that's all design work.

So if we can stage the design in the first five years so that we have shovel ready projects, while we're doing that, we can leap, we can utilize that time and leap immediately into the urgently needed repairs and the water and the wastewater uh plants and pump stations.

So that's the upper curve there.

So there's no waste of time.

It's all utilized and it all uh actually dovetails quite nicely for an effective program.

So as the work on the water and core work uh tails off, the septic to sour and the stormwater would go into full tilt production uh on through to conclusion.

The advantages of of uh structuring the program in that way is we can allocate uh a modest 40 million dollars to fund the first phase of septic design that would be constructed between uh that would be designed between 2027 and 2031.

And construction would start thereafter.

Starting at the design, up we could uh also update designs of previously designed sewer expansions, such as Beverly Park, Driftwood, North Central.

We can update those with the stormwater programs for those areas, we can update them with any changes, uh modifications that need to be in and so get those permitted.