hi my name is bob riordan the public information specialist for the town of belmont here today to bring you belmont in thirty for our may episode very fortunate to be joined today by mike bishop mike for those of you who don't know is the division manager for belmont public works water  division after a few quick announcements he and i will be talking a little bit about some important things that have been happening here in the townhomes and specifically with the water division so we look forward to that thanks for joining us mike not a problem we're glad you could be here so just to start off with a few quick announcements for the month of may as many of you drivers have probably noticed it is road construction season which is something that comes along with the good weather here in town many of belmont's departments specifically our community development office have been overseeing a number of projects throughout the community that are going to repair and revamp some of our local infrastructure we do encourage you to check our social media accounts specifically the twitter account and also the town of belmont's home page for recurring updates on things that are happening within the community and some traffic advisories that may be posted as a result also on the website those you that are interested in the towns operating budget this is a very active time of the year with the annual town meeting upon us all the budget documents are regularly posted on the town's home page you'll see a rotating bulletin board on the front screen that links directly to all the budget documents that have been posted please check this regularly for updates and as we approach the june town meeting that page will become much more active also on the home page we are pleased to announce that our two thousand and fifteen annual town report has been published you can download a free p d f copy from the town's website this document is if you wish to look for individual sections and it's downloadable as a standard p d f you can also view any reports going back to two thousand and eight on the town's website for earlier editions of the annual report you're encouraged to contact the office of the town clerk or the belmont public library who do maintain a record with may upon us this is also the month of memorial day the if unofficial kickoff of summer as many of you know belmont has a great memorial day parade this year it will be held on monday may thirtieth we see some footage from prior years behind us we have a lot of good things to look forward to i know our veterans service officer bob upton has been working very hard to put together a great parade for us this year anyone who is interested in being involved in the parade is encouraged to contact bob he's always looking for help and feedback and some suggestions he works in the office of the health department registration is also now open for the summer activities with summer coming upon us through the recreation department all residents are encouraged to contact the beaumont recreation division at their office or on the web site which is belmont  a dash for recreation registration for all activities is available in till they are filled but you are encouraged to do so sooner to make sure you get a spot another big event in belmont this may is town day the belmont center business association has bonded together to once again host this annual event this year's rendition of town day weather permitting will be held on saturday may twenty first we do have some clips of some past years events running behind me and this year we hope for some sunshine and we hope it's going to be a great day as it has been in the past couple of years just going back to flash at a couple of events that were very positive popular in april belmont for those you that missed our april episode was recognized as a purple heart community there was a ceremony at the belmont public library to commend this i want to just give a shout out to bob upton belmont's veteran service officer who worked very hard to bring this event together and congratulate him on an event well done so well deserved honor for the town in our community to catch the presentation and the ceremony in its entirety you can log in to the b m c website and check it out as it was taped in its entirety another great event that happened last april was the belmont cert which is the community emergency response team a part of the belmont emergency management agency partnered with the american red cross and the beaumont fire department for a training exercise that happened during the during a very rainy day but they were very productive there was a great turnout of our certain members who worked on various programs such as smoke alarm installation and other community preparation activities to help make belmont a safer place so great work to all those volunteers were glad to hear it went so well anyone who's interested in becoming more involved in the search program should contact the months emergency management agency there is some contact information for them on the town's website belmont asham a dot gov team our community allies and we're going to provide the home owners personal safety features and some smoke detectors and carbon units and our hope is to try to reduce the as i mentioned at the start of our broadcast we do have a very special guest today this is mike bishop he is the he's the director of the belmont public works water division so mike thank you for coming out thanks again for having me my pleasure thank you for coming like i said i understand that the d p w water division recently got a great award and you want to tell us a little bit about that yes thank you bob this happens to be the second consecutive year that we've won this award the wood was given by the massachusetts department reporting whenever it comes just system management you know they also look at you know the different programs that we have you know as you know we've got a very aggressive capital a water main program program  s twenty first year it's pretty much the benchmark of surrounding communities you know we get total support from the from the residents in the you know the board of selectmen like to thank my staff for a job well done you know i can't do it alone we've got to very professional staff that maintains the water system maintains to make sure can say it's a very well deserved war and i mean i've seen your crews out nights weekends and frigid temperature and sweltering heat we work in all weather so you know it's twenty four seventh's so service never ends service never is a good and we're lucky to have you thank you i understand that we're also getting into a hydra flushing season yes and one of the other programs that they do look at is the is our hydra flushing program in it is coming up in may the tuesday after memorial day it's a three week program we flush all of our fire hydrants and that's three week program roughly eight hundred and forty hydrants flushed in we shot a little video clip this morning on  we do and the importance of how you're flushing in the house right now what they're doing is they're checking for any defects in the hydrant prior to them over an opening it we flush from the what they call the steam or they have a fire hydrant usually have three nozzles we flush from the main nozzle if we can really we open the hydrant very slowly so once the water is starting to flow we open it up to increase of the loss of the in the main which will create a scouring action in the system that removes any of the sediment that you see there in the system as the as the he flows water hill's increase the velocity you'll see a definite color change in the in the water the more you opens the hydrant right now we're checking for for flow and pressure gives an idea of what what our system pressures are and what our flow rates are it also gives us a an overall assessment of our system we want to make sure that we maintain you know adequate flow and pressure to our residence in make sure we have adequate flow and pressure in case of a fire event certainly you can see the change in the water yes color some that some areas of town will clear up much quicker than others some will have to let it run for you know several minutes some depending on the area town again being so aggressive with our capital water main program the water quality in the system is really improving quite a bit we still have some issues in some of the older parts of town that we still have the the older water main that we're looking at now to to replace so it's definitely improve the water quality you know used to get a lot of discoloration calls those a few and far between now because of all the work that we've done in the system that's great to hear and certainly this a war that you guys recently got is this one of the maintenance criteria that u s is one of the maintenance criteria they look at the look at our hydro flushing program look at across connection program they look at our capital work there's a there's a whole host of  programs that they look at to qualify for the for the award so certainly that's a great achievement so congratulations to you for taking a leadership role in that and like you said your staff is a huge part of it  huge part of it can't do it alone so how many folks work in the water division we have a total levon ok so keeping keeping the water running too it's a it's a big big chore but you know since we've become a public works we've got that labor pool that we can we can draw from if if if need be and you know it's worked out well in the past so and certainly you guys are doing a great job so congratulations on the award and hopefully we'll be back talking about our third time and i hope to hear sounds good thank you both thank you very much for joining us mike for belmont on thirty we had a great episode today we appreciate you joining us and taking the time to visit for those of you mothers out there may is the month of mother's day so we do just want to wish you a happy mother's day including my mom happy mother's day mom so to everybody out there thank you very much for taking the time to join us from beaumont and thirty we look forward to seeing you next month