Town Talk: A Discussion on the City's Water Systems & Drought Readiness

[Music] well welcome i'm brad avery and we're going to be doing a series of talks about the really the inner workings of our city and uh it's a it's a it'll be kind of an amazing journey as we go through uh different departments uh so residents become more aware of what it takes to run this great city of ours and the challenges we face and then i think as most council members have learned just how well run the city is and what a great team we have here in newport beach protecting us making sure everything runs correctly and fixing what goes wrong is as quick as possible so today i'm here with mark vakoyevich he's our director of utilities but he's been with public works many years before that and uh good morning mark hi brad good morning good morning and uh just tell me how did you come to the city and then eventually wind up from public works over to utilities oh sure great thanks for inviting me to be here too so yeah my background is a civil engineer and everything from roads to utilities and things like that too and of course seven years ago i came to public works from the city of anaheim where i was the city engineer there and and had a lot of focus on on utility work and um and so i ended up uh um uh becoming the utilities director you know thanks to the selection by the city manager and uh boy it's really a fascinating job all aspects of kind of the city and this engineering world that's there in terms of how we build and maintain the city is really fascinating and then utilities is that that specialty specialty group and and and i've had a lot of experience in there and that's really what civil engineers love doing right i always think of and i've had a tour of the utilities department and i call it the most interesting department in newport beach for sure and we're going to learn more here from mark but it's there's a lot going on and it's more than meets the eye that's for sure so uh just circling back so and i just want to ask you you have some experience with eagle scouts could you tell me about that sure well i have two uh two boys that are in the scouting program right now and really close to becoming eagles and then i'm of course an assistant scout master with our troop as well so i've been scouting and camping for for many years now so yeah that's right that's on the fun side of things such a great program yeah it's so good for for boys and girls and to go through the program it's amazing i've got a number of friends who's whose kids became eagle scouts and uh it was it was quite a journey and it was great to be at their awards their what do they call the ceremony the court of honor court of honor court of honor and uh yeah it's uh i've had a couple mentors mentees that have gone through that it's something um so along the lines of the most interesting department in newport beach you probably want to know what we do there about the scope of the operation yes well okay it's it is uh certainly interesting i don't know if it's the most interesting but uh thank you for that um so a lot of things a lot of things associated with water so the entire water system for the city in terms of you know all the water that's delivered to your door uh through the pipes of course to our fire hydrants all of your waste water your sewage our whole department manages that portion of it which is taking all that wastewater cleaning those lines and then sending it off to the county uh drainage has been a big topic in in the community news recently too we manage the city's drainage system and it's it's more uh let's call it tricky because we have these tied valves and where we have to open and close tide valves because of our beach and harbor elevations another thing that we also uh manage is our street sweeping program so which is because that's tied in with our storm drains we want to make sure that we sweep our streets and get all these things out of the streets before they end up um in the storm drain pipes and right into our harbor and ocean and another one is street lights too we have six thousand some street lights we operate and maintain and own all those street lights and so we have electricians on staff doing that and and lastly kind of one of our unique ones is we operate the city's oil system oil oil pumps we have 16 oil wells that we manage as well too so that gives you kind of the the umbrella of utilities here in newport that's uh that's really something and i imagine the oil business is doing okay well it's much better than it was yesterday so uh yesterday excuse me it was much better than it was uh last year and uh you know so the fund is and is stable and we're producing oil and oh you know oil is a continuous thing you always got to keep working on maintaining your wells and and uh but it's been really productive and and uh um we stayed pretty actively involved in that and the wells are located uh right there off of coast highway behind cappies right and where the seminic slew is right there you can see them that's where we have all of our wells right at that corner yeah um so water is cropping up in the news that people have been paying attention and that it appears that we may well be entering into another period of drought we're sort of been in a period of drought but we're below the rainfall average rainfall considerably and some from your perspective what's the future of our water supply and what what i know we we get water from several different sources so i think and residents i think would be very interested in that sure sure um so there's a couple different ways to look at our water but i'll stick with where we come from and then what are we doing to protect that too so 75 of our water comes from groundwater wells that we have in the city of fountain valley so we pump that water almost seven to eight miles from fountain valley into our system and then the other 25 comes from metropolitan water district of southern california and that either comes from northern california state water project or comes from the colorado river and the colorado river aqueduct so that makes up about 25 percent our groundwater is our primary source this year through some special incentives we're probably going to be pumping 90 to 95 percent ground water which is exciting and the reason for that is is that we have a really well managed groundwater basin so the agency orange county water district is literally counting how many drops go in and how many drops go out and they've done a great job of managing that so we have some extra water now that we could pump out of there and we're taking advantage of that and a lot of things in southern california there's been some great leadership in terms of you know filling up our reservoirs and and trying to prepare us for you know for an upcoming drought and and we can talk about that too uh if you'd like some more and so having a local groundwater source puts us in a very very good position our history which we have some of our history books here was based on groundwater and then back in the 50s and 60s we went away from groundwater and went to more of that imported water from the colorado river and northern california but back in the 90s the city leaders really had tremendous vision in getting us back into the groundwater business and that's been outstanding and groundwater is you know super high quality and uh you know we're and there's a lot of people that envy the water that we're getting um out of out of our groundwater basin and so do we get water from the uh sanitation district and the the groundwater replenishment system sure sure part of it that's part of it so what you know the future is all about water recycling too and the county orange county sanitation district and orange county water district partnered along with all of us cities too to take as much of that wastewater recycle it using reverse osmosis and all these other filtration techniques and then they put it back up into the ground in the aquifers and then the basin itself refilters it all again too and it adds water to our portfolio and it's not direct reuse but it's indirect reuse and that's really the future and you can see all across the state now other agencies are trying to replicate that model right so we're very fortunate to be a part of that early on and that's visionary leadership in doing that and and and putting us into a good position moving forward with future droughts right and then the i didn't realize but the replenishment system uh is actually defending the aquifer against salt water intrusion that's right that's right you know being so close to the ocean here there are certain pockets where the sea water wants to push back and go into our our ground water basin and the system that they developed which is back from the 70s now they're using this same water and it has all these series of groundwater wells that inject water back in hold back the sea water to make sure that our groundwater basin stays fresh so we can use it and pump from it yeah it's really something else and if people are ever interested going to the orange county water district website to see a visual virtual tour of it it's something else you'll be amazed yeah it's extraordinary the resources and then all the uh do all cities participate in the the aquifer not all i mean it's really kind of a north orange county um basin so all of the cities that are in south and uh south orange county don't have a groundwater basin like we have so there's there's 19 agencies that pump from that groundwater basin and we're one of the 19 okay and so we're very fortunate to have that right yeah and so you can look you the way you can visualize it is the santa ana river when you see a river as i've been told right below above that river below that river there's usually ground water there and that's the idea that whole basin as we get across from fountain valley all the way up to anaheim is a big humongous uh groundwater basin it's a big huge underground bowl and then you know maybe one of the good things about our newport inglewood fault is that's one of the dams for our south facing basin we didn't have to build it no it was there naturally [Laughter] what about you know i know a lot of residents go oh i i don't think i even drink tap water in newport they buy all their water but obviously the tap water is is very much drinkable and what about water security and how does that work there must be i'm sure you do a lot of testing we do we do we do thousands and thousands of tests every year and and as a test even get more and more sophisticated we keep adding those different tests to find out what's in the water if anything and then we mail out a report once a year which is going out in june to every resident that lists out everything that we find in our water but it's it's really high quality i drink it myself every single day and and i have a high confidence in it and so does our staff and we have all these automated systems you think about back in the day you know we would pump and and there'd literally be a person living there checking on things and some you know rudimentary tests and things like that but now we have so much sophistication with our pumping and our detection systems where we're continually detecting different levels in this in the actual water as it's leaving as it's leaving our site and then we go out to all these different neighborhood locations and we take samples and we're checking and verifying and that's what it's really built upon a kind of a redundancy system where we can go and check and verify everything and we're doing really well and we have some great water yeah that's uh we're just so fortunate to have such a department uh in the city and then have you know these bigger public agencies you know filling and making and protecting the aquifer but still even with all of this with a continuing drought and if it continues on we're going to need to do more to conserve right that's right that's right i mean you know i think conservation as a way of life is is kind of an important motto uh and you know our job our responsibility as a utility is to provide water i mean that's really kind of as a core mission we're here to provide water now what we're telling everyone is hey use it wisely because it does all add up in terms of how much we have and there are literally very simple things that people could do right i mean if you see your sprinkler spraying your your sidewalk that's that's a simple fix right and you could save water that way too i brought a little a little timer thing too that you know some people have these in their showers you know i think they're really good for kids but but the idea is is you know you push this button and you can buy these things some of them are digital some of them are old-fashioned and you can time your shower right and and you know hey can you get your shower done in five minutes yeah i think that's a great goal to to have yeah absolutely i've always thought that i would love to have in my home like in the kitchen um you know three meters right just showing it digitally quite large you know the what you're burning at that time so water gas and electric yeah and then comparisons and you know i think it would really help with conservation because people would look at and go whoa what's going on i'm the the the wheels are turning here and nothing's on i think right exactly exactly well we have one thing that we're working on right now that's going to help with that and i brought this to show you as well too so we're in the process right now of installing these digital water meters and it's a digital dial screen and we're replacing them right now as we speak and we'll be done by sometime next year but the neat thing about this is is that this thing sends a signal this is a battery that lasts 20 years and it sends a signal every day and from that we're going to have residents have the ability to see their actual water use in near real time maybe not real time but near real time and the cool thing about that is is you can go back and say like oh yeah okay let's see well i was cooking dinner from four to five i wonder how much water i used for that in the dishes or you know different toilet flushes in the middle night but the other thing which is the key thing on water conservation is fixing leaks right you would be surprised how much a leaky toilet can use use up and this this this is going to detect that right if it finds that water is being used continuously through the night it sends an alarm and you can go and find that leaky toilet you know an average house uses about eight thousand eight thousand gallons a month of water you think about that right i mean that's that's uh you know your big fuel tanker truck that you see you know it's about that much every month is what most houses use right and so if you use it for what you need use it wisely and then if we could find where these leaks are happening you know that saves everybody water yeah i know from uh on boats most the water goes down the galley sink the kitchen sink and if you put up a a square pail if you will on the sink when you're washing dishes and just contain it all there and really that you save so much water it's incredible and so i think those kinds of things can can go a long way it's a tremendous amount of water 8 000 gallons a month but you know i think certainly the meter that'll help tremendously so when will that be finished do you think well we're about 20 done and we'll be done by um probably the end of 2022 so we've still got another year and a half to go but as we change out your meter um we're going to be like you'll know you'll know that and people will start having access uh to see their water use uh as they go on yeah and then and then help with um with any of their water conservation and and trying to fix their their leaks if they find them right you know we hear heard a lot about uh desalinization as well and i know that's very energy intensive it's expensive but uh poseidon is still is it still on track or or yeah uh so the plan is is you know to build some sort of desalinization plant right there in huntington beach and so i mean my last uh understanding of it was is that it's still kind of working its way through the process in terms of getting permits and so on and it's uh it's it's it's kind of a polarizing topic there's a lot of people that support it and then there's a lot of people that are adamantly against it and then but there's a group in the middle too and and you have a lot of uh positives and negatives i think you know one of them that being positive is hey it's additional water supply if we need it the negative is is you know the cost and then there's some environmental impacts and things like that right and those are what what are all the state agencies right now are weighing to see if it's worth it and uh but it could be part of our future it's definitely in use quite a bit uh throughout the state and other areas and uh so it's just a matter of is it the right thing for us and our location that's still being worked out right and if if the aquifer especially with gwrs pumping treated water back into the aquifer and topping it off that makes a difference too yeah definitely uh definitely and that's why um that's that balancing app because we have such a great aquifer system and we already have this built-in recycling that that adds into the you know the weighing of of is this something we should pursue or not right and that's what really those elected officials are trying to weigh and discern what's the best decision for the future and uh you know because decisions today you start thinking about you know 20 years down the road and that's you know just like uh us you know having our groundwater wells too that was a visionary decision and you know of the past to think about the future and that's paying great great dividends right right yeah so what about pfas which is something i knew nothing about about six months ago and now it's a hot topic it definitely is pfas that's the acronym and it's made up of these different uh chemicals it's kind of a new uh emerging uh contaminant uh it's been around for a long time it's really the way i kind of visualize it it was the the ant the teflon coating back in the day from the 60s and the 70s and they used it in firefighting foams but just all of these different protective teflon coatings and they don't use it anymore but that chemical seems to somehow last and it's entered into our water systems and it's something that that we're tracking like for example some locations where they've detected it they've had to turn off the water turn off their groundwater wells and build a treatment plant now to remove this we're not in that situation you know fortunately but other agencies are and but what we are in is a kind of a very high vigilance in terms of making sure we test for it and try to find it and then if we do find it then to take action to remove it from our water yeah right i think some residents are not aware of kind of going back to the infrastructure side of the connection from their home to the sewer line so the they have the line from their house and then this it's a city line and how does that work if there's an issue sure sure so um the city generally owns everything that's in the street and usually under the sidewalk too or if you have an alley goes right up to the alley property line and so we'll have our main pipe and then we have what's called services little laterals that stick out one of them is providing fresh water and then it stops at a water meter like this and it has a water meter box and so we own everything in that box including that and then including the water meter and then beyond the water meter it all becomes private property and that owner owns that and we get called out oftentimes when you know plumbers have a problem or something's going on in the house and will so what i would say is never be afraid to call us you know 644-3011 and we'll send somebody out there especially if you have a plumbing or plumber problem we'll look to make sure everything on the city side is good that's on the water on the on the sewage wastewater side you know when you flush your toilet you have your piping system that goes through your house and then right when it gets to the sidewalk area or the alley area then it turns into public uh public pipes and we own and maintain those pipes that are in the street and in the alleys and same thing if you have a sewer blockage and you think it might be on the city side you know just call us and we'll send out a crew out there we would rather know and try to take action or guide you with where responsibility lies or fix whatever is ours than to find out later on that there was some sort of problem that we didn't know about right right so homeowners uh they own their sewer line to basically the curb uh to the curb or to the sidewalk to the sidewalk yeah yeah yeah great and then if it's in the alley which we have a lot of alleys and it's right up to the alley line is where the homeowners own and then after that it turns into the city property and a lot of times you'll see a clean out you see it's a triangle shaped lid that's in front of their house or uh or in the alley and that's where our uh you know city sewer pipes begin great yeah but don't be afraid to call us i guess is what i would say too is because we'll go out there uh evenings or weekends we go out all the time we always have somebody that's uh we've always have two people that's on our own call you know that's how protective we are of the system you know make sure so we always have people ready for emergencies on call to to be activated there and we can remote access a lot of things as well too do you think we'll ever get to uh recycled water for gardening in a residential application or is that just too much infrastructure to to put in i think it's going to be very difficult um to get to that level of that small homeowner use of recycled water i think a better bet is is you know people can work with our building department to do their own water recycling systems in their own house right you know i mean just like uh just like we were talking about in terms of boats you know you can reuse some of your own gray water you know this non-toilet water there's ways to do that you just gotta work with our building department on so you can maybe reuse some of your own you can definitely put in the rainwater capture devices and things like that but recycled water works best in kind of larger landscape areas so in terms of you know bigger parks which we have several of those medians sometimes homeowner association landscape areas and things like that that works really well and we have some of those we have a portfolio of recycled water and it's important to maintain that and we're actually looking at ways to expand that as well right but at the micro level of each home uh it becomes difficult there's ways to do that but the cost of getting that infrastructure there is very expensive right right so well you know interestingly enough this is water conservation month right and i'm participating and we all are in the national mayor's challenge for uh water water conservation and we're competing against our neighbor to the southeast laguna beach they're in a different category but and we're competing about it's really about people signing up to take the water challenge and just pledging to do more to conserve water and that's online and it's uh all started with uh the artist island down there in laguna beach and it's really important at this juncture in california we're going to continue to have these droughts and it's most likely going to be sort of the future and with that in mind i suppose we'll be potentially go back to and we are now at a tiered water system in terms of rates well our rate structures is a uniform rate but as we get into droughts then some of those rates will change and so that's what we've been working on as well and uh you know i think we were kind of touching upon you know in terms of a future drought and and you know we had a dry rain year this year we filled up you know a lot of our reservoirs and things like that uh but you know the future is kind of uncertain right we need we need another good rain year next year so we'll be hoping and praying for good rain but if there's a good chance that we might go into another drought cycle and and doing things now uh you know make a difference and those are the things that that people can do i think taking that challenge you know think about what does that challenge do that challenge um brings a conversation to yourself and to your family members about using water wisely and that's really kind of the main purpose of that is making it make a commitment not to waste and i think that's a that's a noble effort noble commitment and people could really get around that pretty reasonably yeah right it's just the uh the awareness factor and people really clueing in and taking it seriously and i think this the metering is going to be huge i think you'll see a real difference in consumption as people become more aware and you just could have it it's going to be on an app and on your phone and you can just see and certainly checking it to make sure you don't have a a leak definitely definitely and some people may not want to check their own but our system is going to detect leaks too so then we can send you a notice saying hey we think you have a leak this is how many gallons that have been you know flowing through all the pipes in the middle of the night and uh and of course that doesn't mean you can't flush your toilet at night but it just you know maybe it's it's it takes a couple days of where we notice what's called a continuous running of water right and we'll save save water and save you money at the same time and uh yeah that's a good thing yeah it's great i'll just show one more thing brad i brought you here just kind of a maybe a little paperweight here too but you know fire hydrants you know which is a uh i would say kind of a very universal symbol for uh fire departments you know are something that we're heavily involved in and that's one of the other recipes of a water system is to provide that drinking water it's the first thing which we've been talking about but the other real main purpose is to provide water for firefighting and that's why we have all these fire hydrants that's why we have to make sure we're pumping to these pressures and we have all of this redundancy in place so that when the fire department needs it for a fire it's ready to go and that's really our second handed purpose is firefighting flow and anyway so i just thought i'd bring you a token uh of that symbol so as we continue to grow we've got to deliver fire hydrants and and the amount of pressure they need for all this development continuously that's going on every day right we're increasing we're just reaching out i mean there's you know thousands of square feet being added residential commercial uh in newport beach almost every day definitely and it all needs to be defended it all needs to be defended and all gets calculated in terms of how much water each property needs for for potable use and for firefighting flow right and so we're heavily involved in that too we're the back of the house right making sure that we make sure that the the pressures are there right so when when when it's called upon it's ready to to serve and ready to activate and our pumps are on standby so if one pump gets overwhelmed the second one kicks on all those kind of systems in place in fact i'd like to invite you on a tour one of these days and maybe we'll get you back there i'll show you up on it turn a few wrenches as well too great us measure engine not metric yeah yeah right so yeah standard 100 inches yeah yeah exactly so when there's a big housing development or a big commercial development i imagine quite often they'll do a pressure test and figure out whether they can use existing infrastructure or whether they have to bring more a bigger line something across the highway something and that would all be on the developer whoever's putting that together that's right that's right so when they propose a new development then they have to calculate how much water they need and then we test the pressure and we test what's called a fire flow to see how much water we can deliver to them in a fire scenario and if they match up they're in good shape if they don't then they'll have to upgrade a piece of pipe that's probably in our system to get them the flow that they need right and that'll be on the developer to do and and they upgrade it and we work closely with them public works and the building department that's when and the fire department all of us agencies get involved that's really i think the neat thing the partnership between departments where it's not siloed where we talk and work with the whole purpose of serving you know what that business or that homeowner needs because even on homes they need certain fire flow requirements and things like that because he's thinking any new home being built now has fire sprinklers right right yeah then i imagine you've got a uh a list a plan for replacing infrastructure there's probably some old pipes you'd love to replace and there's a ranking and ordering of all that and what comes up and budgeting for it and looking down the future definitely definitely i mean the other part of our world is planning for the future and that is analyzing what you have now and how long is it going to last and when you need to replace it that's what we call our capital improvement program our master plan so that's a partnership between the utilities department and public works and the key is is that we do need to keep reinvesting into our system by replacing the things that have been uh are out of service or or just out of their useful life and we're doing a lot of that i mean we're pumping in over seven million dollars a year in pipe replacement or pipe rehab right sometimes you can use different technologies to rehab something as opposed to replacing so we're doing that and we have a lot of challenging areas too it's not it's not easy if you think of your if you think of your let's say you live in an alley situation too i always think of all the things that are in the alley are basically a big spaghetti of pipes and so when we when it comes time to replace those and we got to thread the needle through there to replace those pipes right one of our other big challenges is all the pipes that are under our harbor so when you think about the islands in the peninsula you know all of these things have to inter intertwine and connect through redundancy so we have many pipes that are under underwater in the harbor and a lot of those are scheduled for replacement and we're working on those right now in fact city council just approved um you know a design of of replacing a bunch of those pipes too and they're not easy to replace but that's the future and i think a well-managed system includes replacing what you have you know especially as it gets old right and you see some cities are better than others doing it and those that aren't so that are experienced quite often uh failures definitely and it's really disruptive definitely and then you know one of the other benefits when you think about a city uh owning its own water utility is the partnership that's created with other projects that the city has an interest in so for example we're doing a lot of undergrounding projects or we're doing street replacement projects so when we own and maintain the same us as a city we own the water and sewer we can partner better on those projects and so let's just say we're going to pave this street but that that pipe maybe is not due for replacement for three more years but then again when we start thinking about it saying hey well what if we maybe that it's a good investment to replace that now because we have a street project in place so you imagine the amount of synergy that we create right with with uh owning our own utilities and trying to do it once and better for the community that's really gives us a lot of satisfaction boy if we can do you know three or four things under one umbrella it's it makes me smile [Laughter] so this is why i say all the time we we live in an incredible city and i think all residents know that but i'm really speaking of of in that comment the people that work at the city our management of the city uh just we're just so fortunate to have these these departments that work so well together and they've been created because they've been carefully planned i believe by previous councils and previous administrations and it's just been continuous uh quality of life improvements all the time and looking forward and and this is the bottom of the pyramid that makes a city great and protects the quality of life for residents and obviously supports um to a huge degree of home values because people recognize that they they see it you literally see it and in the case of utilities a lot of times you don't see it but it's there and of course the water supply is so important to the city for its safety its reliability and mark thank you so much for leading the department and doing such a great job you and your team how many employees we have 55 employees in our utilities department and uh yeah a great group of people and and uh you know i always like to throw out this little comparison in a lot of sense you know a lot i know we have a lot of pet friendly people out there too so in a sense we're like dogs like good dogs a lot of different varieties but you know some of our best work you know we like to bury just like the dogs like to bury a bone and we like to bury this work and you never see it and that's a good thing you know and yeah that's what makes it exciting and fun for us because it's uh we know where all those bones are buried yeah we're very lucky to have those good dogs on our side thanks so much you're welcome thanks for inviting me thank you [Music] you

Channel: City of Newport Beach

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Id: qdXdZz3EXtQ

Length: 37min 24sec (2244 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 29 2021