Speaker numbers apply only to this recording.
The Mansfield City Council held a regular meeting on September 14, 2026, starting with a work session at 2:04 PM and a regular session at 6:05 PM after an executive session. The council discussed and voted on a range of items including public works projects, zoning changes, the FY2027 budget and tax rate, and various board appointments. Key outcomes included approval of a property sale for a new restaurant, approval of a variance for alcohol sales near a school, first readings on two zoning changes, adoption of the budget and tax rate, and multiple consent agenda items.
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I want to call the meeting of Monday, September fourteenth, twenty twenty-six to order at two oh four PM. We will begin with our discussion regarding on-site hypochlorite generation equipment and building modifications. So what is OSHG? It essentially generates a weak bleach on site that we use to disinfect the water. The image that you see here would be in the instance of a chlorine gas leak. If we still used that system, um you would you see the yellow ring that's a 1.2 mile radius around the plant, that would be our evacuation area in the event of a chlorine gas release. In this area, you see uh there's if you're familiar where the plant is located, it's right around Pleasant Ridge and Walnut Creek. Um, right next door to Whirley Junior High School. Uh, within this radius as well, there's another elementary school, heavy residential uh neighborhoods, and then also some commercial Walmart, etc. So, in order to uh completely prevent that from ever happening, we can we got rid of the chlorine cylinders. Adam, quick question just for clarification. So what they're looking at here is that the fallout zone, if there were a catastrophic event with a chlorine cylinder. Yes, uh, essentially based on prevailing winds, where that might what might be in its path. Correct, whichever way the wind is blowing, where that gas could potentially uh reach and impact residents. Surrounded by two churches, heavy residential and schools. Right, yes, another thing to point out as well is the availability of salt. So on the uh on site generation system, we use salt water and electricity to generate the the weak bleach. The availability of salt we've found, especially during COVID or um Snow Mageddon, for instance. We were more easily able to obtain the salt rather than uh maybe commercial grade bleach delivery or even chlorine. Uh sometimes those are hard to come by. We're kind of unique in the way that we generate the bleach on site just using saltwater brine and electricity. So, as part of the phase five expansion, it was determined that we needed to also expand our um our capability of generating the bleach by adding a fifth generator. The overall cost of that expansion is a little over a million dollars as part of the phase five expansion. We decided to pause the work to really look at the system itself, the building, um, see if there was an opportunity there for maybe an overhaul, and then also to modify the building to better house this uh extremely expensive equipment that we have. Um, the building that we're using currently was the building that was uh used to store the chlorine cylinder, so that's what it was designed for whenever it was built was just housing those cylinders, and we've since modified it some to house these generators instead. So we hit the pause button to really look at it and see what kind of changes could be made to the building in order to get longer life and uh better resiliency out of the equipment that we have there. When we started looking at the building, you see on the left-hand side a list of some of the issues that we face with the environment, and then on the right hand side, what we would hope to address with this project. So we do experience frequent leaks. Uh saltwater brine is corrosive by nature. Um we don't have proper drainage for it whenever it does occur to to get it out of the building and and uh potentially not impact the equipment. It's also not climate controlled, so it's kind of an open-air building currently, so it's it's subjected to the same uh highs and lows that we're all subjected to out there in the Texas heat and in the winters. Also the rectifiers, so these are the units that uh modify the power coming in to DC power, DC power, correct, um, to uh apply the electrical charge in order to generate the bleach. Right now they are separate from the generators. There's a wall inside the building. That portion of the building is air conditioned, but it also leads to issues with access and being able to maintain the units. And then as I said, it's open to the outside. So we would want to relocate some of the brine piping to curb the potential for leaks, mod uh causing issues with the equipment. Install proper drainage sloping the floors, uh, maybe some floor drains, those types of things. Um close and insulate, so air condition the space as well. Uh remove the interior wall for better access to the rectifiers, and then also remove the trolley system that was put in place for moving those original uh chlorine cylinders around. That would enable us to fully enclose the building. The