Brian Bracey from the Huntington Sanitation Board

Announcer: This is the Tri State Time Machine brought to you by Alex R. White, pllc@suedistractedriver.com each week, your host, Vanessa Hankins and her guests share memories and stories about the past, the present and the future of the Tri State area. That's West Virginia, Kentucky and the Ohio areas. If you used to live here or you currently live here, you're going to catch yourself saying out loud, wow, I remember that. Now here's Vanessa.

Vanessa: Hey guys, it's Vanessa. And we're back with the Tri State Time Machine. As always, we've, uh, got our co host, Jason. Jason, how are you?

Jason Arthur: Good. Good morning. How are you today?

Vanessa: Good morning. We've had a busy morning.

Jason Arthur: Very.

Vanessa: We really have. Um, I'm going to let you introduce our guest and we're going to jump right to it because we've, we've kept a lot of his time today.

Jason Arthur: Yes, we have.

Vanessa: I don't, I don't want to keep him longer than we have to, so.

Jason Arthur: Ladies and gentlemen, today I'm going to introduce you to Brian Bracey. Good morning, how are you?

Brian Bracey: Good morning, sir. I'm doing great. How are you?

Jason Arthur: I'm doing very good. So first and foremost, I want to thank you for your time today. You gave us a great. Myself and Vanessa and I have obviously been already once before, a little more lengthy time period, a little more detailed, but we did a great synopsis of that today. If you don't mind, give us a little detail on that.

Brian Bracey: Happy to give you a little bit of detail. Obviously we started, um, and by the way, appreciate the time that y' all spent.

Jason Arthur: Absolutely.

Vanessa: Thank you for having us.

ting construction in the late: 1950

Vanessa: Original condition, which I was very impressed by.

the condition that it was in: 1964

Jason Arthur: Absolutely.

Brian Bracey: Um, as you remember, we started at headworks, where we originally start screening and taking trash out of the water stream that comes to us. Um, and that part of our screens that we, uh, try to capture that material and get it into a dumpster that we can take to a landfill. Um, that is at a low cost value for us. But we have. Our bar screens are wide, it's an inch in space, so a lot of material still passes through. But what we're able to capture, um, comes at a cost of about $22 a ton to be able to put into a landfill all that material from the headworks. We try to not only take, ah, that material in and screen it, but we also try to slow the water down and let part of that settle out so it can remove even more. We call that in the grit chambers. And, uh, in those grit chambers, we're removing same thing. We're trying to get more of that material out before it gets through the processing of the plant. Um, and that being able to do that comes at a lower cost value, um, when we use air to slow the water. Um, but it's a gravity system. The plant, once it comes into the plant, it all works by gravity through all the processes all the way out until it goes to the river, which is.

Vanessa: I was truly, um, in awe touring the facility this morning. Um, it was really cool to. And I love that you put it in layman's terms for me, because I'm definitely not a science guru. It's not my favorite subject at all. Um, but you put it in layman's terms of, you know, some of them are higher pressure. Some of them also operate kind of like what a fish tank does. The pump in a fish tank and turns that water and keeps the, um. What is the. The life, the critters, the bugs, the things like that, the things that eat the poo. It keeps that. That wildlife alive and thriving. And without that air, like, I never. I never once. The thought would have never occurred to me that that was part of the process.

Brian Bracey: Yeah. Most people don't recognize that wastewater. Wastewater treatment plants are biologic by nature.

Jason Arthur: Absolutely.

Brian Bracey: We use natural bugs that are found in all waterways of the US and the worldwide, um, to eat our material, the waste that we super cool down. It is super cool.

Vanessa: Science is so fun. It really is. It's not my favorite subject, but it absolutely can be fun when you see.

Brian Bracey: The positive outcomes of it. When Science comes into play, really has a huge benefit for us all. And uh, you know, at the end of the day, what we're trying to do is clean up the water which comes from the same streams that we drink from. And uh, so whatever we discharge to it, you want to be better than it came to us. That's the biggest takeaway.

Vanessa: Absolutely.

Brian Bracey: But, yeah. Ah, through that process of the, uh, primary system, uh, we also at that very headworks area off to the left is we observe the uh, chlorination. Um, we actually bring in one, uh, ton cylinder tanks that we use to chlorine to disinfect the water before it goes out to uh, the Ohio river itself. Um, that process is an old technology been around forever, but it's dangerous.

Vanessa: Right, right.

Brian Bracey: The reality of a leak of a chlorine tank, as I shared with you guys, it's. If we had a leak, it's a two mile radius of evacuation. Um, it could literally.

Vanessa: So for all of us down here in Westmoreland, uh, you guys know that Jason and I are Westmoreland people. We're out of here like quick and in a hurry.

Jason Arthur: And the Cerrito Canova, all that. Yeah.

Brian Bracey: I start thinking about all the elderly and the disabled people.

Vanessa: And we do have, we have an older, we have an older population in Westmoreland. We really do. And I think in the event that an emergency like that should occur, we've got a problem on our hands. We really do. We really, really do.

Jason Arthur: So not only the dangers and uh, just to kind of touch base on the safety aspect of this, not only the dangers of that aspect, and I know we'll get touch base a little more so as we go on through this with the new technology that's coming with the new treatment plant. But we talked a little bit about being at 98% capacity. So if, you know, things would start to fail in the flooding. Give us an idea. Without this new facility where we would be with that.

Brian Bracey: Yeah. You know, the Huntington. In our communities that serve, uh, because of the, because of the uh, regulatory, uh, constraints on our wastewater treatment plant, what we're able to discharge out to the river, that 98% capacity would mean that we had, we were close to stopping all economic development in our communities.

Jason Arthur: Absolutely.

Brian Bracey: Here in Huntington and all the other communities, I think that that's the biggest risk that at the end of the day, outside of the chlorine and the conditions of that is we were about to just completely just shut Huntington and our communities down.

Jason Arthur: Down. Yeah. Have no choice.

Brian Bracey: Yeah. With no choice Whatsoever. And that's under the current conditions. And every year there's a little bit more, uh, constraints that are placed by the epa. A little bit more conditions that actually would raise us even farther. So we could have. If we were in a stalemate of not making these improvements, um, then we were. We were coming to the end of the road of any economic development occurring in the city of.

Jason Arthur: Right.

Brian Bracey: And again, the communities that we serve.

Jason Arthur: Sure.

Brian Bracey: Um, a risk that none of us could afford. We have so much opportunity here in Huntington.

Jason Arthur: Oh.

Brian Bracey: I mean, we're on the cusp of Huntington truly turning around in our surrounding communities.

Jason Arthur: Yeah.

Brian Bracey: Um, today. And we're finally seeing all that work and the work that's currently going on and the work that's being planned by you yourself, the other council members, and all these other people that are looking at the opportunities in Huntington. These old factories.

Jason Arthur: Yeah.

Brian Bracey: That are just going. Right. Uh, are finally being demolished and being repurposed. And, uh, we need to be a part of that opportunity to be able to repurpose them. And having a wastewater treatment plan is vital for that factor.

Jason Arthur: Absolutely.

Vanessa: Yeah. We were kind of talking between facilities, um, Jason and I. And, you know, the thought occurred to me and I just kind of blurted it out because that's kind of what I do in life. Um, we're not ready. We can't grow as a community because we can't sustain it. We really can't. So as much as we're like, everybody come to Huntington. We love it here. It's a great place. We're also like, hey, stay away. Because we can't sustain it.

Jason Arthur: Have to facilitate them, you know.

Brian Bracey: That's right. Economic growth is the prosperity that we see for our future.

Jason Arthur: Yeah.

Vanessa: Absolutely.

Brian Bracey: For ourselves and for our kids. And, uh, it's the catalyst that would. Is going truly transform, um, this area, in this community and this city. Um, and, uh, having. Say, to have a community, you have to have three things if you want to have a city. To have a community, you're going to have to have water, uh, sewage. Right. Sanitary system and electricity. Those three factors will always promote a community. Sewer is a big part of that factor. Right. It's one of the three critical ones that a community has.

Jason Arthur: Yeah. And funny enough, two out of three of those, even the Romans recognized this was needed. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So if you can't kind of talk us through a typical day at the sanitation department.

Brian Bracey: Yeah. Good question. Sanitary.

Jason Arthur: Yeah.

Brian Bracey: Yeah. So the sanitary department. Typical day for us. Um, depends on, uh, what our folks are doing. So the sanitary Systems are based in two categories. Uh, the collection system of collecting all that water and transferring to a second part, the treatment plant. Um, so our collection system guys, their, uh, everyday life is going out and ensuring that all the pump stations that pump the water to get it to the wastewater treatment plant are operating constantly, having to do maintenance and repairs. Uh, just the reality of any O and M m is the repairs of those pumps to ensure that they operate.

Vanessa: Right, push the water.

system was built in the late: 1800

Jason Arthur: Uh, right.

d crew that goes out. We have: 5600

Jason Arthur: Wow.

Brian Bracey:: 5600

Vanessa: Right. Uh, you really don't think of that. You don't think about there's that many.

Brian Bracey: Of them and how many times and how often we have to clean them. It's why it's so important. Every time we tell people, you know, don't. Don't throw your trash out on the streets. Don't throw your leaves. Or when you mow, don't put your.

Vanessa: Don't put your. Your grass clippings. Yeah.

Brian Bracey: Because it ends up in a place that we're going to have to. Our teams are going to have to address and ends up at a problem for people the moment that it clogs along.

Vanessa: Yeah.

Brian Bracey: And uh, so that's a typical day for our collection side wastewater treatment plant is a 247 operation. We have folks that are 24, 7. And uh, so they're on. They have three shifts that rotate through the plant and they keep that, they keep the bugs alive and they keep the transferring of that water from one tank to another moving obviously all the waste stream, the material out of that, the sludge that gets removed, um, that gets compressed and loaded up onto a truck and sent to a landfill. Um, they ensure that the biologic process is always happening. Uh, and we're meeting the permittable levels that we're, that we're chlorinating before we discharge and then we dechlorinate to make sure that that chlorine doesn't go out and kill a bunch of things and the fish and the wildlife that sit out to our waste to our rivers.

Vanessa: Right. I've got to be honest, um, I was kind of shocked that you guys, I mean, they're scientists, right, that are working in the lab.

Brian Bracey: Oh my gosh.

Vanessa: Yeah. Like I never, I never once imagined. And I've been in Westmoreland, I think 12 years now. I could be wrong. I think it's 12, 12, 13. Um, and I'm a country girl. I grew up out Lane, East Lynn area. And where we um, did. We burnt our trash. We, we did whatever with it, you know. So moving into Westmoreland was like a game changer for me. I'm like, what do you mean you can't throw it down the trail? What are you talking about? You can't just burn it in a pile. But, um, I've kind of become, I guess what the world now calls a Karen over that. Like I really am like on top of my neighbors and things like that about those things. And I always kind of stop people when they're complaining about the street sweepers. That, that one's a big complaint. But like now, after seeing the facility and seeing your, your nets, your, your, your filters, all the things we need to do everything that we can on this side of, of the ground to keep it from having to go through that process at your facility.

Brian Bracey: Absolutely. And, and it helps us, all right. Because all that, you know, whatever, what we collect off the streets, if it ends up in a catch base and ends up in the pipes, has potential for us clogging or breaking one of our pumps.

Vanessa: Right, right.

Brian Bracey: Catastrophic. An average pump for us. We have 42 pump stations. The average cost of a pump roughly is about $12 million.

Vanessa: Wow.

Brian Bracey: Uh, I'm sorry. $12,000.

Vanessa: Okay. I was like, whoa, you threw a lot of numbers today. So we, we'll forgive you, but.

Brian Bracey: But the pumps can be quite expensive and last thing we want to do to get damaged.

Jason Arthur: Sure.

Brian Bracey: Because of something that we could, that we could prevent.

Jason Arthur: Right.

Brian Bracey: And uh, and mitigate away. Uh, you know, you mentioned street sweeping. It. We pick up on an average per year, we pick up more than 2 million pounds of debris.

Vanessa: I believe it.

Brian Bracey: Off of the roads.

Vanessa: I believe it.

Jason Arthur: And when you think, and I know our listeners can't exactly imagine this, but we'll send some pictures out.

Vanessa: Yeah.

Jason Arthur: You think of how much of it still ends up at the facility even after all of that. So imagine if we weren't doing that street sweeping.

Vanessa: Yeah. I kept thinking about that as we were looking at the different sludge and things like that throughout the facility. And I kept thinking to myself, um, I felt guilty. I told the guys I felt guilty for pressure washing my sidewalks. I'm like, oh my gosh. I was like, look what I'm putting into the gray. You know? Um, but you don't, you don't think as you're, as the everyday person, you're not thinking, oh, my house looks so nice. I just pressure washed the whole thing. But you're not thinking of all that runoff that is now having to be filtered and put back out. It never once crossed my mind. So, I mean, I think it's wild. My, um, mind is blown from this morning. It really is. Um, I'll ask you this, and we talked about it a little bit earlier, but preparation, um, for inclement weather, um, what is the program that you use for that? You showed us a little bit about that. But in emergency situations and floods, snowstorms, things like that, how does your team prepare?

Brian Bracey: Great question. You know, I think it depends on the type of event that we're talking about a weather event. But we follow, we, we get an update from our fire chief who keeps us informed about weather conditions coming up and uh, which he's involved with the state, uh, uh, state, uh, all the different agencies that emergency management that have to look at typically Noah is who they follow in the National Geographic, um, group that they follow to ensure what the weather patterns forecast it to look like. If it's a rain event, then we do a lot of things. If we look at rain that's going to be coming, we talked about those catch basins. We send a crew out to these hit the critical areas, places we know that are problematic from a catch basin being clogged up and then Flooding a street. So we have those critical areas across the town that we send crews out to address before the rain comes. Uh, I think secondly is the waste. The pump stations, they start to look at the sequencing of what pumps should be on and at what level. Based upon that rain forecast, we can only push so much water to the wastewater treatment plant that it can handle. So in essence we have to start considering, do we have to tone everything down, slow stuff down, slow and steady because there's so much water that's going to be coming and we're not able to handle it.

Vanessa: Right.

Brian Bracey: Um, I think secondly is from a preparation standpoint at the plan is you saw it, it's a gravity plan, right. That when you get too much water in there, a bunch of things start going wrong, right? Absolutely. Old equipment, because of the age of it, all those gears and all those chains and mechanisms, it's too much velocity that's running through there. Not enough air to slow it down. Things are going to break.

Jason Arthur: Sure.

Brian Bracey: Our guys start to prepare for it. You saw that we had tanks that were down, some of our tanks that were down. We started looking at how do we get these tanks back online. Because we need capacity inside the, uh, wastewater treatment plant to be able to allow that more water to come to us so that we are able to process it.

Vanessa: Absolutely.

Brian Bracey: And then secondly, when we, when we think about the other, the other sides of areas that are at risk when we, when you get in certain weather conditions that could cause electric outages, which means we lose pump stations, power.

Vanessa: Yeah.

Brian Bracey: Are we prepared to have generators which we have some on hand and some we actually buy either loan or rent. Um, but we start thinking about those, making sure that we have one available to us. We get into kind of those winter, those winter conditions, um, those ice storms and stuff that we unfortunately have had to deal with as well. Uh, you start really looking because like Westmoreland are that those, those flood wall pump stations that have their own electric lines or the substations that power our plant and stuff. You start noticing, you suddenly realize, oh my gosh, I do have some tree limbs and some trees that are pretty close to here. Is it time to go ahead and get these cut down and get these trimmed before we have an accident occur? The unfortunate side is we've had accidents occur. We've lost power at the wastewater treatment plant or at a pump station that we start looking at that it brings to mind, we talk to all the inter agencies that are also involved in when weather gets bad. So we have these conversations with hpd, we have these conversations with the fire department. Um, we have these conversations with the Cabell County's emergency management of the what ifs, and how do we coordinate, uh, together to work together to figure out when things go wrong, who's at risk, how do we get people out of harm's way, and what can we do to either help the situation or at least be a body on hand to assist someone? Um, we've had that far too often. But our folks are very much a player and a team player in that aspect. Uh, we sit at the same table with them knowing that, hey, it takes collectively us together to be able to mitigate this unfortunate weather, uh, event that's about to occur is occurring at the time.

Jason Arthur: Yeah, yeah. And that's one thing I noticed about you all, is the great communication you all have. I mean, you know, and I was going to touch base a little bit on leadership and management, but for our listeners, one thing I really, really want to get in depth with is this new facility from an economic standpoint, from, you know, all the different avenues. If you could kind of fill us in just a little bit on that.

Vanessa: Y.

Brian Bracey: Try to. I'll try to make it brief.

Jason Arthur: They're fine.

Brian Bracey: Um, the wastewater treatment plant, it's a, uh, the original plant was built in 64. Uh, a secondary processing system was added to it in the early 80s. And, uh, that's the wastewater treatment plant.

Jason Arthur: Yeah. Right.

it was incepted. Right. Since: 1964

Jason Arthur: Right.

Brian Bracey: And we're way beyond. Every time you kick the canner, don't go do just that, replace or repair it. Rehabilitate the system. There's a cost value, there's a rise in economic value that takes place on the average. If you look at the scale of construction economic values, um, that rises about 2.3% on the average, year over year. So you think about, if I get beyond 40 years, right. I've added another 2.3% for 40. The 41st year.

Vanessa: Right.

built this plant in the early: 2000

Vanessa: Wow.

Brian Bracey: And you think about that and you go, wait a second. We could have done this for half the price.

Vanessa: Half the price.

Brian Bracey: People would have just said, hey, this is, this is what you have to do. And it would ensure that we would not have been in 98% capacity.

Jason Arthur: Correct.

Brian Bracey: We wouldn't be dealing with the economic conditions that we have with, like, handling the sludge we used to incinerate and burn. Y' all saw that.

Vanessa: Yes, yes, yes.

Brian Bracey: And we, uh, used to burn our sludge. Very cost effective way of doing it.

Vanessa: Which makes sense to us outweighing people today.

Brian Bracey: Today. Um, but today, you know, you get. You get all the residual effects. Not only do you have the smells of that sludge that's happened to be processed and held and loaded up into a truck and then transported to a, uh, to a landfill, but you have a tremendous amount of it. Four to five trucks per day.

Jason Arthur: Yeah.

Brian Bracey: And, uh, that's not. That's not a pleasant. That's not a pleasant process, and it's a costly one.

Vanessa: I was going to say. And it's not very roughly.

Brian Bracey: About $55 a ton.

Jason Arthur: Yeah.

Brian Bracey: Uh, that we send to a landfill. That's a lot.

Vanessa: And you, you had said that we're utilizing several landfills. Right.

Brian Bracey: We average, Average on a monthly basis for landfills and things, when we get a lot of flow and we get really high five landfills.

Vanessa: Wow.

Brian Bracey: Um, our sludge is not in for good composition. So an upgrade to a plan. Right. Let's get rid of some risk. Let's take away chlorine.

Jason Arthur: Sure.

Brian Bracey: I'm too much of a risk.

Jason Arthur: Absolutely. It is.

Brian Bracey: Yeah.

Vanessa: We don't want that evacuation. Right.

Brian Bracey: Oh, my gosh, yes. You know, Westmoreland, all those people that have to evacuate, you have Camden park, one of the oldest amusement parks in the United States.

Vanessa: Right.

Brian Bracey: And imagine if we had a leak.

Vanessa: During the summer months when they're full. Yeah. Oh, my daughter loves Cannon park, um, more than your average human. It's. It's so weird.

Jason Arthur: Well, now, think about our elderly, too. I mean, people that may not have access to get the knowledge to them that, hey, you've got to evacuate.

Brian Bracey: That's right.

Jason Arthur: Yeah.

Brian Bracey: And then they're stuck in harm's way.

Jason Arthur: Right.

Brian Bracey: And, uh. Oh, uh, that would be devastating.

Vanessa: It really would.

Brian Bracey: Thanks. I think. Secondly, you know, you think about that in harm's way, then you think about, well, how can we improve processes taking. If you take. If you take chlorination away, then what are the alternatives? Ub is the biggest alternative, which I love.

Vanessa: Yeah. Which is going to be really cool.

Brian Bracey: Simple way, um, we pump a tremendous amount of air. Right. To slow the. Slow the water down and to keep the bugs alive.

Vanessa: Yeah.

Brian Bracey: Well, you don't have you today. Pumps are more. At least air pumps or compressors, much more efficient. And, uh, our average bill, I didn't share. I didn't share it when we were on the tour, but most people don't know is our average electric bill at the plant just for the electricity to run those big blowers. That's $45,000 a month.

Vanessa: Oh, wow.

Brian Bracey: Think about that.

Vanessa: I think I actually knew that from working with Brenda. Like, oddly enough, when I worked with Brenda during COVID when we were doing billing and stuff like that. I think I did know that. Yeah.

Jason Arthur: So you'll switch to uv, obviously.

Brian Bracey: Uh, we'll switch to uv, which will. Which will have a positive benefit. Get, um, rid of the risk factor, uh, improving the blowers and going to smaller bubble blowers.

Vanessa: Yeah.

Brian Bracey: Much more efficient. Better for the. Better for the staff on their hearing, that's for sure. And then, of course, the biggest thing is increasing capacity.

Jason Arthur: Absolutely.

Brian Bracey: Increasing the capacity. And obviously, last part of our processing is how we handle sludge. Um, that sludge, as you saw, was wet, you know, by water volume. We try to get it to a 24, 22% dry. That's what the landfills will accept. And that's hard.

Vanessa: Right.

Brian Bracey: Based upon our sludge conditions. And we're going to move from 22% solid to 85% solid. So that's a huge.

Vanessa: Which we got to see. We got to see your samples of, um, what the company came in and showed you what they're going to be able to get you to. And I mean, you're comparing, um, if you've ever pressure washed that, that slush that you get, that's like that buildup of the sand and the dirt and things like that that you can physically pick up in your hands and it stays together, is reduced to like a dust. Yeah, it was. It was. It's amazing. Yeah.

Jason Arthur: Yeah, it really is. It's just like a thick dust.

Vanessa: It's like a. It's a dust. And that's going to make, um, these places that we're hauling our stuff off to, they're going to be a lot happier with the city of Huntington at that point, you know, and dust that.

Brian Bracey: Smells organic, you know.

Vanessa: Yeah. Like soil.

Brian Bracey: Yeah, soil that you're going to go put in your garden. And instead of the Porta John Right.

've had that place since, uh,: 2003

Brian Bracey: By the way, they anticipate a 74% reduction in odor control.

Jason Arthur: That's an astronomical number for that.

Vanessa: That really is.

Brian Bracey: Especially when you and all the people in Westmoreland who've been dealing with that smell for all these years.

Vanessa: Yeah.

Brian Bracey: And suddenly it's like, oh, wait a second.

Vanessa: Yeah.

Jason Arthur: Get back to some normalcy that none of us really know. Absolutely.

Vanessa: Right, right. You really don't. Um, so how can we, as residents better support the efforts and make it easier on your side of things?

Brian Bracey: Yeah, I think, you know, uh, great question, by the way. How could you support the efforts? Um, uh, one is to be an active member. Right.

Vanessa: Yeah.

Brian Bracey: To understand what our. What our challenges are. Um, educate. Obviously, this. This podcast is a great way to educate the public on.

Vanessa: Absolutely.

Brian Bracey: Challenges that, um, that public infrastructure has. And then what can be. What can be done to resolve it, and what positive impact will it have when you res. Resolve it? You think about just the positive impact of a wastewater treatment plant. You know, you increase your. You obviously increase the level of safety for the community and reduce the nuisance Right. From the smell. And, uh, then you have this positive impact being able to allow more economic development to happen at the, uh, in the communities that we. That we live in.

Vanessa: We love growing.

Brian Bracey: Those three things are the biggest part. But you would have to understand what we're challenged by. Um, and then we get question. You mentioned street, like, street sweeping. You get question of why are we doing that? It's a waste of money.

Vanessa: That's all you hear behind the truck.

Brian Bracey: And it's like there is dust that's remains. Right. They capture a lot of it. It's not 100%. It's not a vacuum cleaner.

Jason Arthur: Like, not at all. It's for big debris and things.

Brian Bracey: It's the things that really causes big headaches at a treatment facility. And, uh, us doing that job removes a tremendous amount of other problems that occur if we don't do it.

Vanessa: Right.

Brian Bracey: Um, but to know that you would have to know what are our challenges?

Jason Arthur: Yeah.

Brian Bracey: Uh, why do we do the things that we do? I think the other side, we get this a lot from our public is, um, everything that we have just about outside of that plant and those pump stations and even those is mainly underground.

Vanessa: I found that out the hard way today. Pictures to come.

Brian Bracey: Yeah. You know, we don't physically. We're not able to see it. Even the staff that works for us all in the room, uh, and so many times we're unaware of the challenges that we're faced. We don't see the potholes that pop up throughout because we had a line that has collapsed. We don't know about a clog unless you call us to tell us we have a problem. And hey, my water's backing up in my house. I just washed clothes and it's not draining. Um, so keeping us informed is helpful, um, because we don't know it. We have, I think the other side is we have 390 miles of combined line systems. 390 miles of underground lines, some as small as 4 inches, some as big as 72 inches. So you think about that. We have some that we can physically walk through and some that we can barely get our hand through.

Jason Arthur: Right.

Brian Bracey: And uh, and. And many of these go from depths of, uh, of two feet all the way down to our. Our deepest one is at 38ft.

Jason Arthur: Right.

Brian Bracey: Our deepest line. 38ft in depth. And then we get it to a pump station and pump stations. On the average, our lift station, pump stations, they average about 40ft in depth. The one we went to today, that are partially went to today.

Vanessa: I like that wording.

Brian Bracey: It was 47ft in depth. I mean it's, it's a huge deep hole with all the components at the very bottom.

Jason Arthur: Very bottom. Yeah.

Vanessa: And I am just, I'm. I'm mind blown that your, your guys and gals are going up and down those ladders, the steps, uh, all of that. Like, I am. I physically. I don't know. Would you think I made it down like maybe eight steps maybe if that. And like I literally could not lift my right leg. Like, I went to step forward and it just wasn't happening. I was like, I can't do it. And, and you're one. I was it. Scott. Um, he was wonderful. He went down and took pictures for me and showed me what I was missing out on since I'm afraid of heights. Um, and you mentioned, you know, reporting things. Let you guys know because if you don't know, you don't know. I Think that's a really good time to remind the people at home that here in Huntington we have this wonderful app, Huntington, uh, 311. And you can literally go on there and say, you know, I did laundry today and it's backing up. Is that something that's at my house or is that something on the city side of things? You know, what, what is. What does that look like? And how can we resolve it? And the city has been so wonderful to me. I love the guys that come out with the big vacuum trucks and all the things like that. They're a hoot. I always have the best time with them. They're very helpful down at Safetytown. Um, but they're on it. They come right out. They'll let you know if it's on your side or the city side and what the solution is to the problem.

Brian Bracey: Our guys try to help resolve anybody's problem. Um, you know, the big thing on, like, if it's a home or it's a business, hopefully they have a clean out on the outside where we can get a, uh.

Vanessa: And they're great about doing that. Yes.

Brian Bracey: I mean, we're willing to go on people's property.

Vanessa: Yeah, they're wonderful, um, to figure out.

Brian Bracey: If it's on their line. Even if it's on their line, if we can clear it out for them, we're happy to do it.

Jason Arthur: Sure. And that's great communication. It helps everybody.

Brian Bracey: Sure does. Yeah, it sure does. You know, they're our customers.

Jason Arthur: Right.

Brian Bracey: But they're also our neighbors.

Jason Arthur: Absolutely, Absolutely.

Brian Bracey: Ah. And my belief in our staff's belief is we're all family here, so we help each other, um, when we can. And, uh, we do the best that we possibly can. Doesn't mean we always get it right. Doesn't mean we get it right at the time that they're wanting it. Um, And I know my wife would be if we got a clog in.

Vanessa: Our house right now. Yes. Yesterday.

Brian Bracey: And, uh, the unfortunate side of an old system and many of these lines that are deep, sometimes it takes a little bit of time for us to.

Jason Arthur: Get in and do it.

Vanessa: Absolutely.

Brian Bracey: But we have crews. We have three dedicated crews, and all they do is repair our lines. Um, they literally go out each and every day and do digs.

Vanessa: And they're everywhere. Like they really are. They're all over the place. And, um, I get lucky, um, a lot of the times. Um, some of the guys, they go to lunch at, like, Burger King and Wendy's, the local, the local haunts. And, um, I'll go in and grab something and I'll sit down with them and hang out with them and talk to them. What's your day been like? What have you guys got into? You know, and. And they're always such a good time. And they really do care about this community. They're not just people working for the city of Huntington. These are people that live here as well. And they care so much that you are happy with the job that they're doing.

Brian Bracey: Absolutely.

Vanessa: They really do.

Jason Arthur: You can tell they always take great pride in everything they're doing.

Vanessa: They do.

Jason Arthur: Um, one thing I'd like for you to touch base with our listeners just a little bit is the dangers that your guys are going through. I, um, mean, this is. And I really want everybody to listen to this. This is serious.

Vanessa: That was eye opening for me today.

Brian Bracey: You know, we talked about, obviously, the chlorine, and that presents a level of danger. All these systems, all we have, there's two utilities, as you know, the water quality board.

Jason Arthur: Right.

about this, this would be the: 1950

Jason Arthur: Yes. Some during war.

Brian Bracey: Yeah, during the wartime. And that technology is old technology that, that has a level of risk that is not acceptable today. And, uh, at any. Doesn't meet any code whatsoever.

Jason Arthur: Right.

Brian Bracey: And, uh, an example that we have that we showed you physically is we, our guys literally walk up and engage a breaker, um, to turn things on that has. That's an oil breaker. That's basically a miniature hydrogen bomb.

Jason Arthur: Yeah.

Brian Bracey: And to be able to operate the pumps, they have to engage that oil breaker standing right at it at the panel to manually engage it.

Vanessa: Yeah. I really think that a lot of people at home. I didn't know, so I'm going to assume a lot of people at home, maybe I'm the only stupid person I don't know. But, um, there's. They're not walking into these buildings that you see with the locks on them with the green doors. They're not walking into these and flipping a switch. There's levers, there's hydraulics.

Jason Arthur: Stories of ladders.

Vanessa: So many ladders. Um, just so many. And the pressure gauges that. I mean, I was overwhelmed by the amount of pressure gauges that they have to know how to read. And, and again, this is old technology, so it's not easy for them.

Brian Bracey: No. And like we said earlier, like the. Where you. Where we partially saw the Pump station.

Vanessa: Yeah.

Brian Bracey: Most of the components are down at.

Vanessa: The bottom, so they're. They're going down underground, right?

Brian Bracey: Yeah. Some of. Some of our stations have steps like the one we went in. Others just have a ladder.

Jason Arthur: Yeah.

Vanessa: Which is way scarier than the steps.

Brian Bracey: I would agree. Um, they crawl. They crawl down each and every day. Because of the size of our lines or the way in which our plant was designed, we send people into. Crawl into spaces, combined spaces, um, where they literally have to put on scuba suits, um, to have four.

Vanessa: We saw some guys gearing up for it today.

Brian Bracey: Yeah, gearing up for a, uh, dive today, um, where they have to do that to go in and check or provide maintenance on many of this equipment. And they do that each and every day.

Jason Arthur: Right.

Brian Bracey: And, uh, what people don't understand is, you know, that that toxic environment is risky for them. Um, we put a lot of monitoring and safety, um, mechanisms in place to ensure that at the end of the day that they go home to their family. Um, but there's still a level of risk that we can't take away. Like those breakers, like those switches they have to engage or they walk into a transformer and Lovely. Standing beside a transformer. Turn it on. And, uh, I. Transformer. That's as big as.

Vanessa: That's what I was going to say. And standing beside these things, hopefully. We grabbed a few pictures, um, that we're going to be sharing with you guys on our Facebook page and all of our other social media. Um, but standing beside these things, you. You feel so minute, so small. Um, I, I can't imagine the bravery, especially with these guys knowing they know more than I know. Obviously they know the risk of what they're doing, and they do it anyways. They do it for our community. And I think that says something great about your. Your people that you have working for you.

Brian Bracey: No, it says a lot about those, Those men and women who do this for us.

Vanessa: Right, right.

Brian Bracey: They go in and do their job so that we can live comfortably in our houses, in our community.

Jason Arthur: Absolutely. And they're sight out of mind.

Vanessa: Yeah, well, that's what I was gonna say. Like, we, as an average community member, like, we don't even like to, um, plunge the toilet. So imagine going down into these crawl spaces in these suits, like you said, putting their health at risk. And they're literally, they're in our feces. Like, you know, so we really, as a community, I think we need to do a better job, um, making sure that those people, the men and women, they know how appreciated they Are. Because I had no idea. I really didn't.

Jason Arthur: Well, and speaking about suits, I think about the suits they have to wear with the arc flash suits.

Vanessa: Oh, yeah.

Jason Arthur: That's when you're talking miniature atom bombs and you're talking the gauges and the way things are being. I mean, talk to us a little bit about that.

Brian Bracey: Uh, yeah. You know, for us to be able to engage our pump station, especially the flood wall pump stations and at the wastewater treatment plant, our guys have to put an arc flash suit on. Because. Because the way these were built back in the day, they thought that was the. That was the.

Jason Arthur: It was it.

Vanessa: That was the technology. Yeah.

Brian Bracey: Uh, today you're more than, you know, today you would have the same components built in a station. You would be 20ft away.

Vanessa: Right.

Brian Bracey: Hitting a switch on a wall. And not being right, instead of being right beside. Uh, to be beside it means that you're having to put on a rubber suit, wear rubber boots, put a rubber mat down and still stand beside something that could explode.

Jason Arthur: Yeah. You still have to take the impact.

Vanessa: Yeah.

Brian Bracey: You still got to be willing to take that.

Jason Arthur: Yeah.

Brian Bracey: And, uh, yet they still do it. Every high water, every time that river rises, I have men and women that go out and do that for us. Right, right. They're dedicated to their job.

Vanessa: It's amazing.

Brian Bracey: They're. They truly are servants.

Vanessa: They really are. Yes.

Jason Arthur: And these are also, uh. You know, I think about parts and things like that. These are not things you can go get anymore, so you're also losing that aspect. But more importantly, the craftsmanship of people that know how to run this stuff.

Brian Bracey: It's. It's one of the scary. Y' all met Donnie today?

Jason Arthur: Yes.

Vanessa: Yeah.

Brian Bracey: You know, not. We have two guys left that have. That have more than 30 years in their job, and, uh, they're. They're the. I call them that. I don't call them the dinosaurs, but they're dinosaurs of their knowledge.

Vanessa: Yeah, absolutely.

Brian Bracey: They're the. They're the institutional knowledge that we're literally losing.

Vanessa: You mean, Donnie's not 27 like he claimed?

Brian Bracey: Yeah, but. But that institutional knowledge is going out, and there's. They. They don't train. Even in schools, even at Marshall, they don't train. And any electrical engineers don't get trained on this high voltage because it's not utilized.

Vanessa: Correct.

Jason Arthur: Yep.

Brian Bracey: They lower the voltage down. They have better components. They move the. From a safety aspect, they move all the things that put you at risk, and they move that away from you to ensure that you're not going to be.

Vanessa: Right, right.

Brian Bracey: Um, and yet ours are not that way because of the age of it.

Jason Arthur: Right.

ge, there's this, here's this: 1930

Vanessa: High cost. Yeah.

Brian Bracey: I think the other side of it is the uh, the fact of how does the government view this? Right. Government today views they built this system for our communities like Huntington, Cerrita, Canova River, Parkersburg. Um, but they expect these communities to now foot the bill, to be able to rehabilitate them.

Jason Arthur: Right.

Brian Bracey: And I think that's a lot of the things that Palpat doesn't understand is we have a tremendous amount of responsibility to keep it operating. So every time that river comes up, in this year alone, we've had five high water events.

Vanessa: Mhm.

Brian Bracey: You know, five times the river has risen. And we've activated pump stations to pump the interior drainage out. Um, but at the end, at the end of the day, the government still expects Huntington and the residents to, to be able to rehabilitate these. And I, as I shared with you, we're planning on rehabilitating two of the sanitary pump stations.

Jason Arthur: Right.

Brian Bracey: Right now. And uh, the two sanitary pump stations, by estimate of combined is about $36 million.

Vanessa: Wow. And uh, and big number.

Brian Bracey: Big number. And they're much smaller than the flood wall.

Vanessa: Oh, much more, yes, much smaller.

Brian Bracey: And we have 17 of them. And one of those is one of the largest pump stations ever built.

Vanessa: Which is super cool that, that we have that technology right here in Huntington. Well, at its time, but we're still using it today. Still using it today.

Jason Arthur: Yeah.

Vanessa: That's. I mean today was so eye opening for me. I'm still processing. Um, I probably look dazed and confused over here because I'm still taking it all in and um, sorting it out in my brain. But um, something that you were talking about earlier today was how your guys, I had asked the question, how do you guys prepare, uh, when a water emergency is about to occur, things like that, yada yada. And you said to me, or I think Scott said to me, we're more worried about what's coming from Pittsburgh than what's here. And that thought never occurred to me. And I feel like a lot of People at home probably don't think about that at all either.

Brian Bracey: Yeah. You know, it's a. There are some times when we have to worry about the weather conditions here. Right. Four Pole's a good example. Ranch Creek, where we could see flooding occurring because of localized rain. But the bigger challenge is what's happening. What's happening north of us. And that's what the public doesn't see.

Vanessa: Which makes perfect sense. But I never thought about it.

Brian Bracey: What we get, uh, is what's flowing down not really from us, but what's flowing from up above.

Vanessa: Yeah.

Jason Arthur: Right.

Brian Bracey: And uh, and really I say that's what we. We're monitoring Pittsburgh.

Vanessa: Right.

Brian Bracey: Uh, is going to be the.

Vanessa: Makes perfect sense.

Jason Arthur: So we have to look forward to, unfortunately. Yeah. Now this is a good point for our listeners as well. Explain to them how these pump stations actually function so that everybody has an idea of what really happens. Because I think, you know, when we've had our last flooding, so many people have turn the pumps on. Turn the pumps. Because they just don't quite get it. So. And that's okay. But that's why we're here today.

Vanessa: If you don't know, you don't know. But we're here today to learn. So.

Brian Bracey: So on an average day. Right. And the river is at the normal level. Um, what comes into the city, stormwater wise or in the creeks, flows right out to the river. Um, naturally. Many of our pump stations that some of these, they flow. The water flows through the pump station out through a pipe that goes directly to the river. Or in Port Pole Creek's example, it flows right underneath the river. Um, when rain occurs in parts of our city, like in just north of the watershed, a Four Pole, um, rain occurs out in the county. Um, what ends up happening is that water, it necks down like a funnel through the city and then. And then goes out into a. Widens out the opposite side of the funnel into the. To the floodplain area of Four Poles watershed before it goes out to the river. Um, but it's still flowing naturally to the river. There's no pump to turn on. There's no way at the level of reaching the intakes.

Jason Arthur: Yeah.

Vanessa: And we got some great photos and I think the photos will help elaborate on that to, to help people understand. But because if the water doesn't get to a certain point there, there's nothing that can be done.

Brian Bracey: That's right.

Jason Arthur: You can't pump what's not there.

Vanessa: Yes.

Brian Bracey: You cannot pump what's not there.

Jason Arthur: Right.

Brian Bracey: And uh, it's Just going to naturally flow. And that's true for all of them.

Jason Arthur: Yeah.

Brian Bracey: When the river comes up, we shut gates and we stop the river from coming into the city.

Jason Arthur: Absolutely.

Brian Bracey: We want to stop it.

Vanessa: Right.

Brian Bracey: Come inside. And, uh, at that time, the water has to build up to a level that allows us to reach an intake of a pump.

Vanessa: Right.

Brian Bracey: And then we're able to pump it out. But that's high on the average. So from a. From a water standpoint, our average height of the four poles watershed is a good example, where the average height at the pump station is about 24ft. 22 to 24ft. Depends on how. If we had a little bit of rain and during dry conditions, it's lower, it's got to reach 42ft before it ever reaches the end of the pod.

Vanessa: So we're talking a substantial amount of rain.

Brian Bracey: We're talking a substantial amount of rain and water.

Vanessa: Yeah.

Jason Arthur: Over a long period of time.

Vanessa: Over a long period of time. Yeah.

Brian Bracey: We could see, we could literally. It still see because of that bottleneck, because of that funnel, you could still see an impact of flooding occurring and, uh, us being a high water event and it's still not reaching the end.

Jason Arthur: Just not quite there.

Brian Bracey: That's right. Because it goes to the funnel, goes to the pinch point and then comes back out and widens out again again opposite side of the funnel.

Jason Arthur: Just like it takes time from Pittsburgh to get to us.

Brian Bracey: No different.

Jason Arthur: Yeah, absolutely.

Brian Bracey: And that happens again all throughout the city.

Jason Arthur: Yeah.

level of height. Back in the: 1940

Vanessa: Right.

Brian Bracey: Let it run dry.

Vanessa: Yeah.

Brian Bracey: And, uh, so they, our guys and gals have to make sure that we, when it hits a certain level at a station, that's when we turn things on or when we turn them off.

Jason Arthur: Yeah, definitely.

Vanessa: So I have a random question. Um, and it's not on any of our paperwork, Jason. So I'm pulling this out of left field. Um, and I'm sure, you know, because you, you are really good with data, I've learned today. Um, how many people does your department employ, like, as a whole?

Brian Bracey: Got a little over. I got 104. Well, that's a good question you're asking. So I have 85, uh, employees recruit between the two utilities. We also have uh, we also um, have temporary employees as well. So I have a total 104 today employees that provide operations between the two utilities.

Vanessa: Wow.

Brian Bracey: And obviously because we man at the, like the wastewater treatment plant, um, you know, we're employing more than 20 something people there. Um, just because it's a 247 operation, it doesn't shut down. And uh, then we have our, obviously our collections team then you know, to get our money we have to build.

Vanessa: Yeah.

Brian Bracey: And uh, we have a whole accounting team. And then because of data, one thing that's interesting for me and the one thing that I find for the public is if you think about when all this was built, they drew a plan on a map, on a plat map.

Vanessa: Right.

Brian Bracey: And they drew that out and said here's what it, here's what it. Either here's what we're going to build or here's how it was installed and where it was installed on maps. And we have hundreds of thousands of, of sheets. I believe it's drawing maps today. We're moving all those maps and have been for almost 24 years now moving that into a GIS system.

Vanessa: So the city uses.

Brian Bracey: Right. To know uh, for electronically, where are things located the other side. And that takes time.

Vanessa: Absolutely.

Brian Bracey: Reality of all utilities, public utilities and private utilities, all, all of us is. We don't exactly know all the pipes we have. We know, we kind of, we know we can see a manhole and a manhole. Right. You see the ring and you can say all right, I know that we have a pipe that runs in between those two. Right. That's easy to know.

Vanessa: Right.

Brian Bracey: But there are other areas where we don't have a manhole. We know that there's a house over there or business.

Vanessa: We know that they've got it somehow. But uh, not sure how sure how.

Brian Bracey: We're not sure exactly where. We don't know the size or the depth. So today we have a whole team that goes out and that's what they're doing. They're called collecting all that information and putting it into a GIS format. So we can uh, we can know where it's at, what the size, what's the depth, what's the condition.

Jason Arthur: Right.

Brian Bracey: The lines itself, that, that tells us a bigger, that once you collect all that information you're able to analyze it in a very different way.

Jason Arthur: Sure.

Brian Bracey: Um, if you think about 390 miles. What. What's the first mile of line that you should replace or what's the last line that you should replace? What's. If it's not the first line? Just tell me the 27th line that you should replace.

Jason Arthur: Right.

Vanessa: Oh, yeah.

Brian Bracey: I wouldn't say how in the world.

Vanessa: That's what I was going to say. I would never know.

Brian Bracey: Yeah. Until you know your lines and then you understand criticalities of lines. If you think about a sewer line, it's. That sewer line is servicing a group of people, a group of homes or business.

Jason Arthur: Businesses.

Brian Bracey: Well, which. The ones that are obviously the most critical are the ones that serve the most amount of people. Those are the most critical.

Vanessa: Absolutely.

Brian Bracey: You have to first know where your lines are to then determine who's connected to that line and then what level of connection would determine. And what condition would that line be that you would want to pay more attention to? I think in simple terms, what line services? Cabell Huntington Hospital. Right. A critical line that you don't have a failure because you can't afford to have a backup in a hospital. Right, right, right. Devastating, I think. And I'm not saying a person's home is not equally as important.

Vanessa: Well, I mean, you have to look at like what happened with Hurricane Katrina and the hospitals and stuff like that that happened. I mean, they're still. And I'm. Oh, really did not know that. So you have to think of those examples of what happened there. I mean, there's still hospitals that are set, abandoned that, uh, you see like these YouTube explorers going into and stuff like that. And they've got the sludge and they've got all the things built up for floors. And you know, everyone's like, well, why don't they rebuild? Why don't they use that while they just let in the building. It's not usable anymore. Like, its infrastructure is done.

Brian Bracey: It devastated my hometown. And, uh, it was a catalyst. That's. That has a bunch of other factors that even here in Huntington that we face today because of examples that. The unfortunate examples that happened during Katrina and disasters that happened in that New Orleans, Louisiana area, um, and then throughout the coast. But in particular, um, but a good, good example would be today the Corps, recognizing that levees are levees and flood walls are a big protective system that that has failed has a catastrophic, uh, impact on a community. Right. For New Orleans, billions of dollars, $12 billion and, uh, you know, $12 billion, um, in a community that still to this day, my hometown is not how it was when I was A kid?

Jason Arthur: Not at all.

Vanessa: Right?

Brian Bracey: Not at all. And there's still, as you described, there's still abandoned places because it will not be able to rebuild because of this. The devastation that happened that triggered um, the corps of engineers to realize that they have to do a better job inspecting these levy and flood wall systems. Fema, who has to come to the rescue when a disaster happens. FEMA uh, needed to uh, determine well what level of risk are these systems and what basically what amount of money does the government have to foot if something went wrong in these communities that are protected. So now there's these additional levels of an inspection that happens for us annually of our system, our levy of floodwall system and a pump station.

Vanessa: Right.

Brian Bracey: And then FEMA goes uh, through a five year certification process to be certified that it's a protected system, a non certified protective system. You say well what would happen if you didn't get certified? Right. If you didn't pass inspection, you don't get certified. That triggers the protective systems are in typically in floodplain areas. If without the system that area would flood. Right. You would say okay, so if we don't have this system, what would happen? That FEMA had determined through a bunch of engineering lidar and topography views said okay, well this is, this area is going to be in the floodplain or the floodway.

Jason Arthur: Mhm.

Brian Bracey: Now that you have a protective system that's going to protect it from flooding. Well now that system is no longer in the floodplain. If you're in the floodplain or in a floodway. The unfortunate side, if you have a mortgage, if you, if you're a business, their risk factor is they want you to have insurance. They want you to have flood insurance.

Vanessa: Yes.

Brian Bracey: So everybody that's in a protective system does not have to have flood insurance. But if you're not certified, if you're not accredited by fema, then then that means that basically you don't have a flood wall. Even if it's there.

Vanessa: Even if it's there, it doesn't matter.

Brian Bracey: It doesn't matter. That means all the business. And you start thinking about in Huntington, what would that mean?

Vanessa: Oh yeah, I'm thinking about, yeah.

Brian Bracey: Um, City of Huntington.

Vanessa: City of Huntington. Yeah.

Jason Arthur: Cabell county, we're surrounded by uh, yeah.

Brian Bracey: We'Re surrounded by even their own corps of engineers.

Jason Arthur: Yeah, absolutely.

Brian Bracey: Would have to have some level of uh, protection insurance. Watts, that we would foot the bill for.

Vanessa: Absolutely.

Brian Bracey: If it won. So since Katrina, all these things, you know, it's always a disaster happens and you Learn from them.

Vanessa: Yeah, absolutely. Hindsight.

Brian Bracey: Those disasters happen that do have an effect on us today positively. But also carry some level of uh, uncertainty for us. Huntington. I mean here's the other thing. Public and I know I've shared this on our tour. Huntington has two protective systems. They have Guyanda Maltaiser and because of the Guyanda river is separated than Huntington which to Huntington they consider Huntington downtown. But the city of Huntington through. Through Westmoreland. Right. Protect the system that keeps it from being in the floodplain. Um, Guy Dot Maltizer are accredited system. They're certified levy and floodwall systems. Downtown to this day is still not. And we've been working through that process. Huntington had a problem Harris River Front Park. We had an unknown event occur. Um, a sinkhole that formed and a levee, a pump station and flood walls that started tilting like the Tower of Pisa towards the river.

Vanessa: I remember that. I remember being at like a music festival and you could see it.

Brian Bracey: That station was 49ft in depth.

Vanessa: Oh wow.

Brian Bracey: And they. That means Something below 49ft was doing. Moving.

Vanessa: Yeah.

Brian Bracey: And causing all that to tilt towards the river.

Jason Arthur: Right.

Brian Bracey: Um. And they. Ah. We had no unknown factor. We've gone through and stabilized.

Vanessa: I was gonna say there's a lot of work. Yeah.

Brian Bracey: A lot of work that went in. We. But we're at the final stages of that project. That's the last hurdle to finally get Huntington's to ensure that. Now we're preliminary from the. From a FEMA standpoint.

Vanessa: Right.

Brian Bracey: Preliminary in the system as a protected system.

Jason Arthur: Right.

, this wall that was built in: 1930

Vanessa: To protect us.

Brian Bracey: Continue to protect us. Um, but it is a hurdle for that. Then GAP brought it up on because of the Trina comment of what that meant for us today. But it's a good thing. Good thing that the government is doing better to be a watchdog over us to ensure that. Hey, it's Huntington doing its job to ensure that when a rain event occurs, when flooding up in Pittsburgh, it's happening and it's coming our way that our system's prepared to handle it.

Vanessa: Absolutely.

Jason Arthur: It's vital that we learn from these problems that have happened before.

Brian Bracey: Oh my gosh. Yes. And. And to ensure that hey, we're not having to economically speak devastate this whole area because now everybody has to have flood insurance.

Jason Arthur: Yeah.

Vanessa: Right. M. Do you have any more questions, Jason?

Jason Arthur: The only other thing I would like to get a little more insight on, just for the general public is once this new water treatment facility is built, first and foremost during construction, you know, um, what is it going to do to impact the entire city? How much is it going to not only cost, not us, but how much is it going to cost in general, but more importantly the jobs it's going to create and the money that it's going to sustain into our entire community.

Brian Bracey: Great question you're asking. So you know, obviously the first thing is it's a five to six year plan.

Jason Arthur: Right.

Brian Bracey: Because our plant doesn't get to shut down when you rehabilitate the plant. It still has to operate. We don't get to turn the water off.

Vanessa: We don't tell you don't wash your dishes. Right.

Brian Bracey: Everybody's going to be able to uh, there's no impact to the community while we're doing construction. The plant will still operate in the, in the construction phases, in phases over the years. Um, that our plant has to continue to be able to operate. It does kind of change our permits. We have some modifications to that that we negotiated with the EPA knowing that there'll be an impact by this construction.

Jason Arthur: Right.

Brian Bracey: But the plant will continue to operate. I wouldn't say as is, but it'll continue to operate to be able to work as inefficiently as it is today, um, through the construction period. The positive impact obviously is the jobs, right? Oh yeah, we're talking, we're talking about hundreds of jobs that's being created for this. We actually did a economic evaluation on the project itself. A lot of the public doesn't know is this is the largest public infrastructure project ever done in the state of West Virginia.

Vanessa: Oh, I didn't know that.

Jason Arthur: Right in Westmoreland.

Vanessa: Right in Westmoreland. Wow.

Brian Bracey: And uh, and so we wanted to understand what impact this is going to have just from a, just from a taxation.

Jason Arthur: Sure.

Brian Bracey: For the city. Right. Um, the city. That's a return of about two and a half million dollars annually during the construction.

Jason Arthur: Annually? Yeah, annually.

Vanessa: That's fantastic.

Brian Bracey: Yeah, that's fantastic.

Vanessa: It really is.

Brian Bracey: I'll turn that around over a 20 year span. Right. So that's what you typically look at when you do an economic analysis.

Vanessa: Yeah.

Brian Bracey: That returns because of our ability to handle that development, uh, impact. Right. When we're 98% and to reduce that down to roughly about 60% of an impact from a permittable levels.

Vanessa: Yeah.

Brian Bracey: That means that gives you a positive economic income of a. About $900 million.

Vanessa: Wow.

Brian Bracey: 9 I mean, take a step back and go, wait a second, in 20 years you're saying this has a 900. That's what, that's what Again, it goes back to the three critical factors. Water, sewer and electricity.

Jason Arthur: Absolutely.

Brian Bracey: And when you have those, and you have those efficiently, then then opportunities are endless.

Jason Arthur: Yes, absolutely.

Brian Bracey: Huntington, this is an opportunity, this is an endless opportunity for us. Um, ah, during the construction process, you know, the, because of the sequencing, um, we'll be as low as about, about a hundred, um, uh, staff that'll be in the construction process and subs and stuff, but we'll see as high as about 240 during some phases.

Vanessa: So listening to that at home, if you're a business m minded person, now is the time to open up those restaurants because all these people need to eat lunch.

Jason Arthur: Yep. We need you in Westmoreland. We're gonna need a place to stay, a place to eat everything.

Brian Bracey: Place to stay in a place not as thought about. You know, we were, in fact, we're joking about this yesterday, just about. Uh, you probably won't be able to get into just Camden Corner or.

Vanessa: Oh, I know. Our little, our little best kept secret is not going to be a secret.

Brian Bracey: Not going to be a secret.

Jason Arthur: Well, you know, I've tried to market this so much to our community to say you all don't realize what's coming and how hard so many people have worked on this. Uh, we've never in the entire history of Westmoreland or I mean really even look at, from a city standpoint when the last time something so economically great has happened. And this is going to be as great as it gets and it's going to have such a great impact and um, I'm just so excited for it.

Brian Bracey: Me too.

Jason Arthur: Yeah, me too. And you've worked very hard on this. I know.

Vanessa: Yeah. Congratulations.

Brian Bracey: It's not me. It's, you know, it's.

Vanessa: Well, your team. Yeah, m sure it is.

Brian Bracey: A lot of people say, well, look what you're doing. It's like, no, this is a team effort here. It takes a lot of people, a lot of coordination.

Jason Arthur: Yes.

Brian Bracey: It's a team. And that's, that's both internal and external.

Jason Arthur: Absolutely.

Brian Bracey: Council members, it takes commissioners, it takes regulatory bodies to all come together to make this happen. And uh, I'm just fortunate that I'm being, I'm m a member of a great team.

Jason Arthur: Sure. Just trying to be a part of it. Help any way we can. And we have great representation all the way around now and great things are happening and I Appreciate that. Oh, my gosh.

Vanessa: Absolutely.

Brian Bracey: And I 100% agree with you there. Great representation today. Our city's in a fantastic.

Jason Arthur: It really is. We have some great things coming. And it's funny, uh, I think about when Patrick and I were both running, um, I said. And I think he thought I was kidding at first. I said, I really think that with this great effort of team that we're putting together and all the people that are already in place, that are great, and the people we're bringing in, this will be the biggest impact and the greatest development since the beginning stages of our forefathers of this city. And he kind of laughed it off. And I said, no, I'm serious. And then the more things, when we talked, he said, you know what? You were right. He said, I really think.

Vanessa: Huh, you're always geeking out on it.

Jason Arthur: I know, but I really think that the people don't understand how great the city's getting ready to be. And I think we'll surpass Charleston. I believe in that.

Brian Bracey: I do believe that.

Jason Arthur: Yeah, I do.

Brian Bracey: I think we're. I said this before, and I'll say it again. I think we're on the cusp of greatness to come.

Jason Arthur: Yes.

Brian Bracey: Um, we are. We are already moving in the direction there's, uh, always respect. Going to be some naysayers.

Jason Arthur: Sure. There is.

Vanessa: Absolutely.

Brian Bracey: That, um, beyond the naysayers is we are progressing, um, at a pace that people don't see yet.

Jason Arthur: Yep.

Brian Bracey: Um, but the visual aspects of it are about to show.

Jason Arthur: Yeah.

Brian Bracey: And, uh, you know, you got go down to the High Lawn and go see the oacnf. Go see the tear down in the old Flint Group property.

Vanessa: Yes.

Brian Bracey: Go see what's happening over, you know, co fill development over there. Right.

Vanessa: Yes.

Brian Bracey: What. Look at all the work that they're doing. Absolutely transform this community.

Jason Arthur: Yeah. I encourage Westmoreland, city of Huntington to embrace this and hold on tight because there's a lot of great things coming. Well, we appreciate you very much. Vanessa, you got anything else you want to add?

Vanessa: Yeah. I was going to close out with, um. One last question. Um, what keeps you motivated to do this work every day? Um, I had asked you while we were on the tour how long you had been doing it. And you surprised me, me by telling me that your. Your past career had nothing to do with this. So I. And I even told, uh, Jason this on the phone in the car between facilities that we were exploring. I, um, was blown away by your knowledge and the data and the numbers that you keep straight and you're very aware of and knowledgeable of. I just. I was so blown away by it, and I just. I think that's. I think it's. It's a beautiful thing for one. But secondly, it also. How lucky we are as a city to have you, because anybody could have taken that job and just sit at a desk and not cared. They could have. They could have just been laissez faire about it and been like, I'm just collecting a paycheck. But you care about this community. And I can tell with your passion and the way you talk about the work.

Brian Bracey: My wife and I kind of laugh. This was my career, which, as you know, is farming pharmaceuticals. And, uh, this was. This was a three or four year stop in my career plan. And, um. And the fortunate side is we found a community and a home and a place that we truly feel we fit in.

Vanessa: Yeah.

Brian Bracey: Um, and if you fit into a place and you need to be an active member.

Vanessa: Absolutely. I agree.

Jason Arthur: You have to.

Vanessa: Yes.

Brian Bracey: Um, so I thought, you know, uh, the. The thing that keeps me motivated every day. I think that was your original question.

Vanessa: Yes.

Brian Bracey: Is, uh, is being a part of this positive change for a place I call home.

Jason Arthur: Yeah.

Brian Bracey: And. Yeah. And this, that's. That's what keeps me motivated. Um, and I, I feel so fortunate. I go to work with such great men and women, uh, each and every day, that are passionate about their job, love what they do.

Vanessa: They were so welcoming to us today. They really were. And, And I felt out of place because we're. We're on their way. They're at work and we're, we're touring, you know, and. And all of them are telling us they're sorry that, you know, that they're walking down the hallway and I'm like, are you kidding? Don't be sorry. You're at work. We're in your way. But they were all, um, so grateful for us to be there and to learn what they were doing. And I just. I'm, um. I'm overwhelmed with a lot of emotions about today, but I just. I feel like a better community member for having toured the place and having that better understanding of what all is going on over there. Because when I first moved, like I said, I was a. I was a country girl. When I first moved into town, I thought it was gonna be the worst thing in the world. I'm like, oh, my God, we have neighbors. We've got these trash cans. Like, we can't burn our trash anymore. Like, what is going on? We gotta pay for People take our trash, like all these things, you know, and, um. And I've settled right into it and I have. I've grown to love our community in ways that, um, are indescribable. I do so much with youth and I get out in the community and I do the neighborhood associations and I, I do all the things that I think is the positive impact in any way that I can do it. But you just don't know those extra layers behind the scenes of these facilities that allow us to flush our commodes.

Jason Arthur: Yeah.

Vanessa: Like, you really don't, like, you really don't get it. You don't get it until you see it or you learn about it. Listening to this podcast today.

Brian Bracey: Absolutely. This podcast is critical for people to understand.

Jason Arthur: It really is more that goes on.

Brian Bracey: That just turning the sink off and washing your dishes, washing your clothes. A lot happens once that water leaves your house.

Vanessa: Absolutely. There's so much science, y' all. Like, I. I'm blown away by it.

Jason Arthur: And honestly, that's the reason I wanted to have you on the show and I do thank you for coming on is because.

Vanessa: Absolutely. Thank you so much.

Jason Arthur: I wanted to get this out to the people. This is such a great message. It's so vital, the science behind it, to the safety aspects, economic development. I mean, you have so much going on and obviously you have a great passion for the city. That's why you're still here. So we appreciate you very much.

Brian Bracey: Thank you.

Jason Arthur: You're very welcome.

Brian Bracey: It was an honor for me to be here with you.

Jason Arthur: Well, thank you.

Vanessa: We appreciate it.

Brian Bracey: You share a message and, and deliver it to the public that I'm unable to. And, uh. And you're a critical part of people learn because I can tell you.

Vanessa: Thank you.

Brian Bracey: I stepped into the role. I had, as you said, my background wasn't this. I had no idea.

Jason Arthur: Yeah.

Brian Bracey: And, uh, and it was eye opening and I'm. And I appreciate you being able to share that.

Jason Arthur: Yeah, definitely.

Brian Bracey: So opportunity to be here with you.

Jason Arthur: We're glad to have you very much.

Vanessa: We're very, very glad to have you. Well, I guess that's it for everybody. Um, we thank you guys, as always for tuning in. We love the support that you guys offer us and we hope you come back next week. I guess we are out of here.

Jason Arthur: We're out of here. Thank you all very much.

Announcer: Thanks for listening to the Tri State Time Machine. Brought to you by Alex R. White, pllc@suedistractedriver.com if you have a memory, you want Vanessa to talk more about, Just send her an email@tstmail.com or post a comment on the Tri State Time Machine Facebook page. Did you like the episode? Be sure to share it with friends and family. It's the only way we can continue this fun work that we do. You can find a link in the Show Notes that you can use to share it, and be sure to let our sponsors know you like the podcast as well. Their contact information can be found in this episode's Show Notes.