Okay, good morning, everybody.

This is the Transportation and Infrastructure, Energy, and Environment Committee today's Thursday, September 10th.

Madam Clerk, please call the role.

Chair Dinoga.

Present.

Vice Chair Olsen.

Here.

Councilmember Harrison.

I'm present.

Councilmember Hunter.

Here.

Board members present at roll call.

And I know Mr.

Adams is away on county business, so uh be excused.

So we have a relatively short agenda today, but um we have a briefing from WSSC with Mr.

Hilton with us and his team talk about public sewer capacity in Prince George's County.

And um with all the development that is going on in the region uh uh you know a couple months ago I some questions were presented to me, and I said, let me find out from the experts how yeah, how does uh sewer capacity look uh current and future demands and what I guess what are the economic uh implications of that?

So with that, I'll turn it to you, Mr.

Hilton, and then you can turn it to your team as necessary.

Okay.

Thanks.

Uh thank you, uh Chair Dunaga.

Um for the record, my name is Tom Hilton.

I am the planning division manager with WSSC Water, and I have two colleagues with me today in case uh there are questions that I'm not able to answer.

To my left is Bola Pashakun.

He is our program manager for our wastewater uh master and facility planning initiative.

And then to my right is Joel Caldell.

He is our regional water and wastewater manager and oversees all of our interjurisdictional agreements, including that for Blue Plains and uh Charles County.

So with that, I will start off.

Um can we get the presentation out, please?

Very okay.

Can we center it?

Uh Mr.

Battle.

Yes, sir.

The presentation is centered properly on the council monitors.

Is there a way we can look at what we're looking at rather than what they're doing?

I can see it.

If this takes 30 seconds, that's fine, but otherwise.

Got it.

Okay.

That's good.

All right, great.

So today uh we'd like to cover um the our master our our new initiative, which is a master and facility planning initiative, which is a major uh effort currently underway, so this is fortuitous to uh for us to uh provide information that has been coming out of that initiative, um although it's still work in progress.

And then we're going to uh discuss um each of the three uh water resource recovery facilities, and I'm gonna refer to them as WERFs for uh for short.

Uh Piscataway, Western Branch, and Parkway, and then also um wastewater generated within Prince George's County also uh is received at the Blue Plains um regional uh wastewater treatment plant in uh the District of Columbia, and another portion of a wastewater flow generated in the southern part of the county uh is received uh within Charles County at the Ramatta Woman uh wastewater treatment plant.

Um I will also go over uh some of our findings on uh capacity of our internal plant processes, uh then discuss uh wastewater treatment costs, and then go over information on what our costs are currently uh for um our cost-sharing arrangements with Blue Plains.

So, first I'd like to just quickly go over uh what this new initiative is with master plans and facility plans.

So we are preparing a 20-year system-wide master plan, one for the water system and one for the wastewater system.

And these are going to serve as long-term uh infrastructure roadmaps to ensure that we have the required level of service, not only for the customers today, but also out in the future.

These plans are going to help us manage our aging infrastructure and at the same time also support uh growth within the within the county in the future.

Um and this is all being accomplished by performing very intensive uh condition assessments, uh forecasting future demands and flows within our system, and then from there uh determining what those capital investments will be needed to accommodate those future needs.

And so our time frame for these uh master plans will be uh completion by December of this year, and soon after that, we will be um providing a briefing to our commissioners, and from there um you know entertain uh briefings to the to the county uh counties as well.

Following the um 20 year master plans, will be uh 10 year facility plans.

So the facility plans um will take a deeper dive, and there's gonna be one facility plan for each element of our water and wastewater system.

So on the wastewater systems, there will be one facility plan for wastewater treatment and biosolids management.

There will also be a uh facility plan for our wastewater conveyance system, there will be a facility plan for our water treatment and our water supply and treatment, and then uh another facility plan for our water delivery system, and a another facility plan for buildings and grounds.

Um these um these facility plans will be um again, they'll be looking at the the time horizon of 10 years.

Alternatives will be identified for those needs that um that are found, and there's gonna be a comprehensive analysis of different alternatives to mitigate those needs.

From there, there'll be recommendations uh for you know for several new projects and programs for placement into our CIP program, and that'll be based upon uh prioritization and spending affordability and what the risks are associated with those with those needs.