City Manager's Report 01/15/2007
Fire Tragedy
As you know we experienced a fire last week in which three people were lost. Fortunately, none of our fire, police or other public safety people were lost in the fire in which several risked their lives attempting to save the lives of others. Our Fire, Police and EMT services responded with everything they could and went above and beyond the call of duty trying to deal with this inferno, which was further complicated by getting a call to Rt. 110 at the same time.
The miracle is in fact that we have not had more of these tragedies given the overall condition of significant portions of placeStateBerlin’s housing stock. The City’s new housing program will certainly help and an improved economy will also help. However, the change will not happen over night. It is going to take time and we will have to stay at the task.
Meeting with the Governor
Governor Lynch called after the fire to express his concern and to offer whatever help he could. The Mayor took him up on his offer and several of us traveled to placeCityConcord last Thursday to meet with the Governor and talk about ways in which the State might be of help. Items discussed were legislation relating to housing and the City’s housing issues in general, welfare issues, power plan issues and ATV Park Master Plan.
Meeting with PSNH
Chief Morency and I met last week with PSNH officials in Manchester to work out the best way of proceeding with the Department’s Homeland Security Wireless project for which the Department has received a $238K grant. The meeting seemed to go well and we think we have a mutually agreeable approach for mounting the wireless antennae so that the project can move forward.
Pandemic Exercise
On Tuesday of last week an all day session for emergency planning officials from the region as well as some state officials and a consultant was held at the White Mountain Chalet. This was organized by PersonNameLaura Viger and the regional group she has been leading in trying to plan for all types of emergencies. The discussion was a bit of any eye opener as the questions, most of which did not have good answers, were from the type of doomsday scenario that you say you should plan for but never really do because no one really believes it could happen in this country in this modern day and age.
Well the word from this conference and presumably from health experts in this country and all over the world, isn’t “if” it will happen but “when” it will happen. Clearly, many of these experts feel that a bird flu pandemic could happen at any time in the future and when it does it will spread very fast and emergency and medical facilities alike will be quickly overwhelmed. The closest thing anyone can liken it to is the so-called “Spanish Flu” of 1918 in which 1 in every 20 people who got it in this country died from it.
Dummer Yard Leachate
We have been talking with Fraser and the State DES about taking and treating the leachate from Dummer Yard at our WWTP. The State which monitors Dummer Yard in the absence of the former owner in bankruptcy entered into an agreement with Fraser to take and treat the leachate from Dummer Yard at the Fraser Plant. That agreement is still in effect but Fraser with its sale of the Pulp Mill to NADC wants to get out of that agreement and so both Fraser and the State are looking to us and our plant as a possible resolution to the problem. We have asked for more information regarding the amount and strength of the leachate to be sure we can handle it given the pressures already on our plant as well as who will actually pay for the treatment of the leachate if we take it.