WILLMAR - The Willmar Municipal Utilities Commission elected new officers for the new year.
Carol Laumer was chosen as the commission president, replacing Dan Holtz. Justin Mattern was named vice president. Abdirizak Mahboub was elected secretary and Nathan Weber will be this year's treasurer.
The commission was a member short at the meeting Jan. 9 as Jeff Nagel stepped down from the commission in December, following the expiration of his term.
The city charter says the mayor has the right to appoint someone to the commission, with at least five affirmative votes of the Willmar City Council to approve the appointment.
Later that day, Mayor Marv Calvin brought forward Bruce DeBlieck for the Utilities Commission and the City Council approved the choice.
ADVERTISEMENT
Willmar Municipal Utilities staff gave updates on projects and utility performance during its meeting.
Willmar Utilities had power available 99.995 percent of the time in 2016. It is a little below the goal of 99.999 percent, but still shows how reliable Willmar's power is. This is up from 2015 which had a rating of 99.974 percent.
"We had some pretty good numbers this year. We shoot for five 9s, but this is awful hard to come by," said Todd Graves, line department supervisor.
When unscheduled outages did occur, 90.15 percent of the hours down were caused by humans, including five vehicle accidents and 11 dig-ins, or lines being affected by property owners or contractors digging.
Nature caused only 0.30 percent of the outages, with three lightning strikes and two wind-related outages.
There were no major transmission outages, though there were 11 power outages caused by squirrels.
The line department added 1.27 miles of distribution line to the system, bringing the total to 226.11 miles. Over 85 percent of those lines are now underground. Most of the additional line came from the expansion of the new Industrial Park and the construction of the new elementary school.
There were 41 new residential customers added and six commercial.
ADVERTISEMENT
The water department pumped 1.451 billion gallons of water in 2016, with a daily average of 3.975 million. There were 49 new customers connected to water service.
Ten blocks of water main were replaced, and there were 25 breaks. The design for the Northeast Treatment Plant is 95 percent completed and the department continues to replace the water meters.
"We had a pretty good year," said Joel Braegelman, water and heating supervisor.
Safety projects funded by a $7,000 grant from the Minnesota Occupational Safety and Health Administration to use toward projects that would reduce the risk of injury to workers were completed last year. The utilities used the funds to install slide gate operators at the service center and ballistic safety glass in the lobby of the office building.
"It looks great, it is not obtrusive," said Kevin Marti, purchasing manager.
The utilities also replaced six automated external defibrillators, made possible by the grant as it freed up some funds in the budget.
"The bulk of the recognition needs to go to Janell Johnson. She filled out the grant application," Marti told the commissioners.
