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Rainbow to speed up water meter replacements

The Rainbow Municipal Water District approved a series of measures intended to expedite the replacement of water meters.

Rainbow's board voted 4-0, Sept. 22, with Helene Brazier not able to participate in the meeting, to approve a change order in the contract with Concord Utility Services for backfill and box placement, to amend the contract with Harris and Associates to provide additional construction management services, and to approve a rental agreement with Hawthorne Machinery for a vacuum.

"This is an important project to standardize and upgrade our water services for the benefit of our customers," said Rainbow general manager Tom Kennedy.

In 2015, Rainbow conducted a water audit which compared the quantity of water Rainbow purchased from the San Diego County Water Authority with the amount of water sold through customer meters to determine the amount of water which was purchased but not sold. (That process also accounts for water placed in or withdrawn from district reservoirs.)

Approximately 7% of the water Rainbow purchased was not accounted for through sales or storage addition. District staff theorized that the average lost volume of 3.5 acre-feet per day was due to meter inaccuracies rather than leaks, and random testing of 333 meters in 2016 and 2017 determined that approximately 6.4% of water delivery was not recorded due to inaccurate meters.

New meters register near 100% accuracy and, in August 2018, the Rainbow board approved a contract with ABM Building Services to purchase the meters and manage the project. ABM used Concord Utility Systems, which has an office in Murrieta, as its vendor.

After the ABM contract was completed, Rainbow contracted with Concord directly while also using in-house staff to prepare the work site for Concord and collect specific information about each service, limited-term temporary employees before the Concord installation, and a high-power vacuum excavation system to clean out and excavate the meter boxes. A $1,528,492 contract with Concord was awarded at the December 2019 board meeting.

The original estimated total cost of the meter upgrades was estimated at $10.7 million with $5.5 million of that being for the purchase of the meters and $5.2 million covering the installation of meter boxes along with replacing pressure regulators and installing customer ball valves for services which do not have a backflow regulator. "When we started the project certain costs were unknown," Kennedy said.

Unknown conditions will affect labor and therefore cost. As of September 2020, approximately 16% of the meter replacements, specifically 1380 meters, have been completed.

To prevent disruption in the scheduled work, Rainbow must vacuum between 150 and 300 meters ahead of Concord. The district obtained a trailer-mounted two-behind vacuum from Ditchwitch and assigned one full-time employee and one temporary employee to vacuum ahead of Concord.

Unknown conditions such as roots around meter boxes and double deep meter boxes the vacuum could not reach forced those meter boxes to be dug out by hand.

By June 2020, Rainbow was fewer than 50 meter boxes ahead of Concord, which stopped exchanging meters for one day so that the vacuum crew could obtain a further lead.

District staff found a Ditchwitch vacuum which was available for long-term rental. Rainbow likely will not need a second vacuum after the meter replacement project is complete in late 2021, so renting the vacuum from Hawthorne Machinery will save between $20,000 and $40,000 compared to purchasing a new vacuum.

The rental vacuum will only be deployed when additional resources are needed to keep ahead of Concord. The vacuum rental will be billed on a time and materials basis, and the rental authorization has a limit of $60,000 which may be increased upon board approval.

Rainbow staff has been handling customer service matters and also coordinating field activities with Concord. The district has an as-needed construction management contract with Harris and Associates and, in April 2020, Rainbow utilized that contract to have Harris and Associations handle daily inspection of Concord's activities. Rainbow's meter services supervisor moved to Idaho and left the district July 27, so a Harris and Associates representative has also taken over that work with regard to the Concord installations.

The Harris and Associates contract budgets six hours a day at $165 per hour, and Rainbow will also pay for any materials needed. The contract limit in the absence of subsequent board action is $400,000, which covers 2,424 hours.

Harris and Associates' duties include communication with Concord, daily coordination with Concord for work and locations, document review of Concord's work for concurrence, review of Concord's work for adherence to district standards, verification of all quantities, notification to Concord if any corrections are required, and working with customers to resolve issues on their property.

The process of backfilling and setting meter boxes after Concord exchanges the meters has involved two to four Rainbow employees with two trucks and two trailers.

Up to six construction crew members may be working on the project during backfill days, but more urgent work such as leak response and maintenance can render sufficient staff unavailable for backfill activity which ensures that each service is set properly and is not affected by rain, burrowing rodents or other factors.

Some backflow devices are tied directly into the meter without a valve separating the two and must be relocated, and other backflow devices are set partially in between a fence or other locations. In some cases a cross-connection between the backflow and meter requires relocation of the backflow.

A $50,000 contract change order to the contract with Concord was signed March 18 so that backflow prevention devices which conflict with the meter upgrades can be relocated. At the time, the exact number of backflow devices needing relocation was unknown, and Concord has subsequently relocated more than 220 devices.

Approximately $200,000 more will be required to complete the additional backflow relocations.

The change order approved Sept. 22 will pay Concord $83 per box for the labor to place boxes and lids and to backfill the existing excavation. Concord will also provide a small dump truck costing Rainbow $2,900 per month, which creates a total cost of about $90 per service based on a production of about 450 services each month.

Rainbow staff has backfilled 400 meters at a labor cost of $114,092, which is $292.50 per box. Rainbow will provide fill materials and special landscape materials and will also provide a skip loader or load dump truck as needed.

Rainbow staff will also install special materials such as sod, bark mulch, and topsoil if special materials are needed. Concord will relocate any waste mater boxes or spoils to Rainbow's laydown yard.

Author Bio

Joe Naiman, Writer

Joe Naiman has been writing for the Village News since 2001

 

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