FWEA Focus—Ronald R. Cavalieri

President, FWEA

In my last column it was noted that America’s water infrastructure is failing. The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) created an Infrastructure Report Card to assign grades for infrastructure in the United States based on condition, safety, capacity, and other factors. The most recent report card assigned drinking water and wastewater infrastructure a C- and D+, respectively.

Water infrastructure is fundamental to our nation’s economic health and competitiveness.

By keeping water infrastructure in a state of good repair, we strengthen our economy. Local, state, and federal action to increase investment in our water infrastructure today will lead to a resilient, efficient, and reliable water future and protect the public health of generations to come.

This leads me to the topic for this month’s column—resiliency.

According to Merriam-Webster, resiliency is defined as “an ability to recover from or adjust easily to adversity or change.” To be sustainable, utility infrastructure needs to be resilient to manage acute and chronic disruptions to service. Natural and anthropogenic challenges include floods, earthquakes, droughts, sea level rise, climate change, an increasing customer base, energy challenges, a changing workforce, aging infrastructure, and yes, even pandemics.

To some extent, the focus of resiliency has been on climate change, and especially the impacts from extreme storms. The summary table shows anticipated climate conditions, observed and projected trends, and potential relevance to utilities.

The Florida 2020 legislative session was significant in introducing legislation to increase the resilience of utility infrastructure. In a year when domestic wastewater collection and treatment were focal points for both Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Florida Legislature, Senate Bill 712 (Clean Waterways Act) was passed unanimously by the legislature.

The bill addresses water quality impacts across the stormwater, agricultural, and domestic wastewater sectors and includes a requirement for sanitary sewage facilities to implement asset management plans and electric power outage mitigation plans that will limit sanitary sewer overflows (SSO). The bill also directed the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) to consider the implementation of such plans to mitigate penalties that would otherwise apply due to SSO.

The FDEP has developed draft rules for implementation of SB 712 and plans to seek ratification of rules in the 2022 legislative session. The FWEA Utility Council has been actively engaged in working with FDEP to develop a rule that is effective in meeting the intended goals, provides flexibility to accommodate the differing circumstances of each utility and allow innovation, and is practical to implement and comply with. The council’s concerns on early drafts of the rule have been addressed. The FDEP is expected to publish the revised proposed rule within the next two months.

To a further extent, having resilient utility infrastructure is good management. While compliance with SB 712 will help utilities become more resilient, there is more that can be done. Major tenets of resilience are system reliability and sustainability. Creating a system, which eliminates single points of failure and incorporates reliable components that provide consistent performance over a range of operating conditions, is critical. Resilient utilities also provide robust, flexible design that can be adapted to emergencies. Using an integrated asset management approach helps to achieve these objectives.

Asset management and asset management condition assessment are important management strategies that utilities can use to make their systems more resilient. This is important as it permits a utility to shift from a reactive mode to a proactive approach in making decisions based on transparent understanding of cost of service, levels of service, and acceptable risk.

An asset management decision-making framework results in identifying a utility’s needs and the right solutions to address those needs. Asset management is about determining the mix of management investment in maintenance, operations, and capital that sustains organizational performance over a long-term horizon, while minimizing life cycle costs. It is also about building confidence in decision making by guiding investment in the right work, on the right projects, at the right time.

The benefit to a utility of using asset management in a decision-making framework as the basis for infrastructure improvements includes: S Increased confidence in identification of needs and recommended solutions. S Using a common asset management framework will allow a utility to compare and prioritize assets from different systems and classes (e.g., water versus wastewater). S The weakest links in the existing system and greatest risks will be identified using data and analytics that are based on a transparent asset management framework. S Maintenance will be optimized by understanding asset criticality to identify the right kind of maintenance practices and resource requirements. S