IronwoodInfo News Magazine

Wastewater Authority Holds May Meeting

Ironwood - May 27, 2009

The Gogebic-Iron Waste Water Board and Gogebic-Iron County Wastewater Authority held its regular monthly meeting Tuesday. The meeting was moved ahead in order to facilitate combining the regular meeting with a Budget Workshop.

After the standard business was conducted the Board/Authority tended to several issues including the matter of who is responsible for the calibration of the Hurley Flow Meter. This is the meter that serves as the numerator in the annual rate promulgations.

It recently came to light that both the Board\Authority and the City of Hurley were having independent calibrations done on the same meter. Hurley representatives wished to continue with their independent third party calibration. Today, a motion was made to eliminate the redundant calibrations and costs and to allow Hurley to continue to provide an independent third party calibration at their own expense.

In other action, the Board\Authority voted to make Kim Mattson the Vice-Chairperson of the groups. Kim is the Ironwood Township Supervisor and has replaced Rick Estola on the Wastewater Board\Authority.

In his monthly report Manager Mark Bowman advised the group of a recent event with regard to the plant's backup generator. The Generator is tested monthly and has tested ok. However, during a recent power blip in Excels lines, the backup generator kicked in as it was suppose to do. However, this time the generator under load and the wires that are usually disconected during testing, had been put back in reverse. The plants phase meters prevented serious damage from occuring although some minor damage may have been done to some of the pumps. The wires have been color coded to prevent this from happening again. The error was not the result of any wastewater employees but rather from and oversight by an independent contractor.

The Board\Authority then went into closed session to discuss employee union contract negotiations.
After the closed session the board\authority held a budget workshop. The entire meeting lasted 2hours and 35 minutes.