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WaterOperator.org Blog

RCAP's A Drop of Knowledge: Recent Article Roundup #2

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A Drop of Knowledge is a monthly digital article from Rural Community Assistance Partnership (RCAP.) The articles focus on topics like wastewater, drinking water, policy, and infrastructure in rural America. It contains how-to’s, tips, and guidance from more than 300 technical assistance providers (TAPs) across the country. Some recent featured articles are linked below:

Looking for something else? Find more articles and subscribe to A Drop of Knowledge.

Asset Management for Water and Wastewater Utilities

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Asset management is the management of resources to allow water and wastewater systems to be sustainable and efficient, as well as be able to make business decisions that allow you to have the money to run and maintain your system at a desired level of service. Resources (assets) include infrastructure, personnel, equipment, knowledge, and money.

We have over 3,300 resources (and counting) on Asset Management in our Documents Database that provide valuable information on this topic. You can search for documents that explain how to maintain and manage the large, expensive components of your system, how to create an asset management plan, how to build an asset management team, and many other useful guides that will help you to deliver safe and clean water to utility customers. 

To access the wealth of Asset Management knowledge within our database just select "CATEGORY" in the dropdown then choose "Asset Management." Once you make that selection, a second dropdown will appear where you can choose "HOST," “TYPE,” or “STATE” to narrow the search even further. If you have a specific search term in mind, use the “Keyword Filter” search bar on the right side of the screen.

This is part of our A-Z for Operators series.

Asset Management Video Resources

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We have over 200 videos on Asset Management in our Documents Database that provide valuable information on how to maintain and manage the equipment, buildings, land, personnel, and any other large, expensive components that are needed to deliver safe and clean water to utility customers. 

Below, we have featured three informative videos/ webinars that can be found in our database. However, if you are interested in looking through videos and webinars on other topics just select "TYPE" in the dropdown then choose "Videos." Once you make that selection, a second dropdown will appear where you can choose "CATEGORY" then select whatever topic you are interested in seeing videos or webinars about (the example image above shows "Asset Management" selected.) The last step is to click the "Retrieve Documents" button to see your results.  

Asset Management Overview

This short video from the WSU Environmental Finance Center provides an overview of asset management components and how they can be applied to fit your utility's needs. 

Asset Management 101 – Finding Financial Assistance for Infrastructure Upgrades

This 1 hour 30 minute U.S. EPA webinar recording from the Technical Assistance Webinar Series: Improving CWA-NPDES Permit Compliance, provides a high-level orientation to the core concepts of asset management, how to prioritize system needs, how to secure funding, what resources are available for small communities, and who to go to for help.

The speakers discuss case studies and highlight tools that small communities will find helpful in preparing long term plans and successfully implementing them. 

Asset Management Plans and the Clean Water State Revolving Fund (CWSRF)

This webinar from U.S. EPA discusses the components of asset management plans, how State CWSRF programs are implementing them, and various incentives that borrowers receive for funding projects that include asset management plans. 

RCAP's A Drop of Knowledge: Recent Article Roundup #1

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A Drop of Knowledge is a monthly digital article from Rural Community Assistance Partnership (RCAP.) The articles focus on topics like wastewater, drinking water, policy, and infrastructure in rural America. It contains how-to’s, tips, and guidance from more than 300 technical assistance providers (TAPs) across the country. Some recent featured articles are linked below:

Looking for something else? Find more articles and subscribe to A Drop of Knowledge.

EPA Mandates Cybersecurity Reporting for the Water Sector

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Public water systems are increasingly at risk from cyberattacks that threaten public health. U.S. EPA has issued new guidance that states are required to evaluate and report on cybersecurity threats for systems that use industrial control systems or other operational technology.

“Cyberattacks against critical infrastructure facilities, including drinking water systems, are increasing, and public water systems are vulnerable," said EPA Assistant Administrator Radhika Fox. “Cyberattacks have the potential to contaminate drinking water.”

This expectation is outlined in a memo that interprets sanitary survey requirements, accompanied by a detailed guidance document aimed at state programs and technical assistance providers. It was released as part of the Biden administration's updated National Cybersecurity Strategy

U.S. EPA offers resources that can help water systems understand and address cyber vulnerabilities including this video on basic cybersecurity concepts that can be used by water systems as a part of an annual cybersecurity training program. Our database on WaterOperator.org also has resources on this topic, including this 56-page guide from WaterISAC on cybersecurity best practices to reduce exploitable weaknesses and attacks.

RCAP’s Free Monthly Articles for Water and Wastewater Operators

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A Drop of Knowledge is a monthly digital article from Rural Community Assistance Partnership (RCAP.) The articles focus on topics like infrastructure, capacity building, and economic development in rural America. It contains how-to’s, tips, and guidance from more than 300 technical assistance providers (TAPs) across the country. Some recent featured articles are linked below:

Looking for something else? Find more articles and subscribe to A Drop of Knowledge.
 

A Day in the Life of a Water Operator

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While the specific details of each day can differ, the general tasks remain largely the same for water and wastewater operators in the United States. Below is a list of videos showcasing the different daily experiences of water and wastewater operators across the country. 

Whether you share these on social media to help inform the public or use the examples to inspire your own video, telling the story of what you do every day can help inspire future generations of water industry professionals.

Featured Video: Infusing Innovation into the DNA of Our Culture

There are many factors that drive the current utility model for wastewater operations. With traditional values in play, we have reached difficult economic and operational challenges. In order to address these challenges, we must adapt a new mindset and new utility model to push affordability for water customers, better equipment management, and increased compliancy.

Adapting a more innovative approach and mindset:
Our current utility practices suggest that our societal and business values coincide with "extraction, use, and waste disposal". This creates a motivation that is, at bare minimum, driven by public engagement, capital investment, and operations & maintenance. As a result our current water resources are being utilized inefficiently and ultimately running low. We must instead adapt a Resource Recovery business model for a circular economy. Focus must be shifted from regulatory compliance, utility impact, and traditional utility models to pivot toward ecological uplift, collective impact, and a transformative entrepreneurial business model. This new business model should include focus on resource recovery and watershed health as well as pump, plant, and pipe health.

The start of a new, innovative, and effective approach might be slow but can grow exponentially. Water organizations must start with efficiency and work their way to optimization, which will lead into investments for bigger ideas and new intellectual property such as smart meters, efficient pumps, proper monitoring equipment, better facilities, and so forth. Collective cooperation and corresponding mindsets will keep the industry on the same track with the addition of new water personnel and management turnover.

In this week’s featured video by the Water Research Foundation, Diane Taniguchi-Dennis, Deputy General Manager at Clean Water Services, presents a case study for how her organization is improving utility functionality through a culture of innovation.

Managing Sanitary Sewer Overflows (SSOs)

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The U.S. EPA estimates that approximately 23,000 to 75,000 sanitary sewer overflows (SSOs) occur in the United States each year. An SSO is defined by the release of untreated sewage into the environment through an overflow, spill, basement backup, or unpermitted discharge before completed treatment at the sewage plant. These overflows can degrade water quality, cause property damage, and pose serious threats to public and environmental health due to the release of harmful pollutants, disease causing microorganisms, metals, and nutrients into the environment. 

Section 301 of the Clean Water Act prohibits the discharge of pollutants to any Water of the United States from a point source without a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit. To address compliance challenges associated with SSOs, the EPA recently completed a National Compliance Initiative that first began in 2000 to reduce the discharge of raw sewage in national water ways.

SSOs occur through debris or grease blockages, root intrusion, vandalism, inflow and infiltration, improper design, aging infrastructure, operational mistakes, and structural, mechanical, or electrical failures. Typically, the most frequent culprit takes the form of blockages. After an overflow, clean up and response is not only expensive, but traumatic for the impacted communities.

In Queens, NY a sewage backup on the Thanksgiving holiday weekend of 2019 flooded the basements of approximately 100 homeowners creating a putrid odor and exposing the community to harmful pathogens. Liability for residential damages and repairs to the pipe was projected to reach millions of dollars.  The culprit for the backup? While operators initially theorized a grease induced fatberg was to blame, investigation later revealed a collapsed sewer pipe instigated the SSO.

In New England and around the country, many communities maintain collection systems of 100 years old or more. Aging infrastructure exacerbates SSO prevention challenges. As years of wear on system equipment increases, the likelihood of mechanical or electrical failures as well as the opportunity for inflow and infiltration increases. Pipe deterioration due to natural freeze-thaw cycles, environmental conditions, water flow, and water chemistry can also increase the likelihood of structural failures. When this deterioration is not routinely inspected and maintained, resulting failures will only add further hydraulic stress to the system.

The frequency of SSOs can be reduced significantly through preventative maintenance and the implementation of an appropriate asset management program. To upgrade your preventative maintenance program, an article from the March 2017 Kansas Lifeline discusses the basics of lift station maintenance. The Georgia Association of Water Professionals provides a more comprehensive guide of collection system maintenance practices in its 2016 guide Wastewater Collection System Best Management Practices.

Developing an asset management program will allow systems to plan for the replacement or rehabilitation of aging pipes, pumps stations, valves, manholes, and collection system infrastructure. During program development systems can predict and plan for population changes, capacity objectives, equipment deterioration, and more. To encourage proper asset management of collection systems, the EPA developed the CMOM program. CMOM stands for Capacity, Management, Operations, and Maintenance.  The information-based management approach encourages dynamic collection system management through the prioritization of activities and investments. Utilities can access how well their current practices meet the CMOM framework using this Self Assessment Checklist and the EPA Evaluation Guide for CMOM at Sanitary Sewer Collection Systems. Follow up this evaluation by integrating CMOM best practices into a new or updated asset management program using this blog post.

Even with the implementation of these programs, systems should still prepare for the event of an unexpected overflow. As in Queens, NY, preventative maintenance and asset management did not stop the SSO on the Thanksgiving weekend. Systems must be prepared to respond swiftly with a Sanitary Sewer Overflow Response Plan. These emergency response plans will limit potential damages and reduce community distress. By combining preventative maintenance, asset management, and emergency response planning, systems can ensure that their community and its environment have the best protection from SSOs.

Challenges Developing an Asset Management Program

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Developing and maintaining an asset management program benefits the short and long-term operations of any utility. During operational, financial, and managerial decision making, choices can be backed by quantifiable data and knowledge gathered from asset inventories, condition assessments, and risk assessments. Furthermore, the maps, spreadsheets, and reports generated for asset management programs can improve communication between board members and utility staff. Asset management programs allow utilities to shift their operations to preventative maintenance and long-term planning.

The recommended methods to develop asset management programs are well documented, however implementation of such methods in the real world generates a slew of both predictable and unpredictable challenges. Fortunately for all communities, it is the responsibility and the nature of any utility to problem solve and overcome these challenges.

In October of 2017, the Michigan Water Environment Association (MWEA) and the Michigan Section American Water Works Association (MI-AWWA) hosted a roundtable seminar on asset management plan development. The results of this roundtable highlight how communities and their consultants developed their own plans in response to new regulatory requirements in Michigan. The Spring 2018 Edition of MWEA Matters summarizes the actual approaches undertaken by these facilities and how they overcame individual challenges in developing an asset management program. These approaches and challenges were divided into six categories:  inventory, condition assessment, risk, O&M/ capital planning, rate integration & level of service, and software.

Most challenges in asset inventories arose around the question of how and where to organize data so that information could be related to other data sources. Challenges in condition assessment were often rooted in cost limitations, evaluating underground infrastructure, and weighting the data available from equipment history, maintenance history, age, condition scores, visual inspections, engineering judgement, and operational institutional knowledge. During risk assessment difficulties emerge when estimating risk for uninspected equipment or considering system redundancies. The final challenge lies in determining how to make maintenance program and financial decisions by balancing institutional knowledge with system modeling.

Utilities can find expertise in avoiding or overcoming these common program develop challenges through the Rural Community Assistance Partnership (RCAP) or the National Rural Water Association (NRWA). We also recommend searching through our online resource library to find program develop manuals, spreadsheets, and tips to get started. For a general overview of the program development process, review the 13 Session Asset Management Training Slides by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.