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PUC wastewater capital update: digester roof work, North Shore force main and community monitoring
Summary
Wastewater Enterprise Director Karen Kubik briefed the commission on SSIP Phase 1: oxygen-generation plant construction, a 42-inch North Shore Force Main under downtown streets, digester roof stabilization (four of eight complete; remaining work expected by end of 2015), monitoring and active public engagement.
Karen Kubik, director of the Wastewater Enterprise Capital Improvement program, gave the quarterly SSIP update to the commission, describing program organization, active construction and the public-engagement strategy.
Kubik said all Phase 1 projects have started, project managers are onboard and a program-level risk register with 29 risks has been established. On construction, she described the Southeast Oxygen Generation Plant (foundation set; equipment installation planned this month) and the North Shore Force Main — a 42-inch line threading through the Embarcadero and Financial District near the Hyatt Regency and under cable car tracks — where public safety and complex subsurface conditions are key challenges.
On digester roofs, Kubik said four roofs are complete, work on the eighth roof is wrapping up this month, and four remain; she said the program is targeting completion of the stabilization scope by the end of calendar year 2015 while maintaining required storage capacity to meet permits.
Kubik highlighted monitoring and third-party review: the program deployed 95 monitors into the collection system and provides data to the San Francisco Estuary Institute for analysis. She emphasized the need to capture baseline wet-weather conditions to evaluate green infrastructure performance; early monitoring shows mixed results where some installations (for example, a San Francisco State rain garden) performed very well while other earlier green-street installations have not met expectations.
On engagement, Kubik said the program has used workshops, open houses and Metroquest online surveys, with more than 1,100 respondents and over 2,000 website hits; materials and meetings are being translated into Mandarin, Spanish, Russian and Samoan as appropriate for project areas. She said more detailed monitoring reports (installation-by-installation) will be provided as they are completed.
Commissioners asked for early access to monitoring analyses to inform future programming; staff agreed to circulate reports as they become available.
