Water/Wastewater Brochure

Water & Wastewater Water and wastewater systems face evolving challenges. From growth and funding to operation and compliance, the right partner can help you navigate these challenges and optimize performance.

LaBella works alongside clients to address infrastructure needs from study through concept, implementation, and commissioning.

Our full-service capabilities support projects involving source development, pumping systems, storage and equalization, industrial pretreatment programs, conveyance, and treatment, reuse, and disposal.

Clients have secured hundreds of millions of dollars in grants and loan funding with LaBella’s support.

Experience coordinating with regulatory agencies and overseeing design and construction keeps projects of all sizes moving forward.

Whether for targeted improvements or major system upgrades, we help turn water and wastewater challenges into opportunities, supporting reliable, high-quality service.

Expertise in

Treatment plants

LaBella was the first company in North Carolina to apply membranes to the treatment of surface water (at a 27.3 MGD municipal drinking water treatment plant), reducing a city’s necessary expenditure by $100 million.

Innovating every day.

From planning innovative treatments that preserve clients’ resources to solving complex issues caused by contaminants like lead, copper, and PFAS, we aim for solutions that are innovative yet still practical to build, operate, and maintain.

Starting with the end in mind.

Successful treatment plants are safe, convenient, and cost-effective to maintain and meet user demands now and into the future.

legacy systems to implementing advanced and tertiary treatment technologies.

Today’s treatment plant projects increasingly require owners to address aging infrastructure while expanding capacity and improving treatment performance. For facilities that have served communities for decades, this often involves comprehensive modernization, from replacing or repurposing

Our teams work together seamlessly to develop holistic, practical, and effective solutions for your treatment plant needs.

Even when current limits are manageable, we design with future demand and regulations in mind.

Though we’re designing upgrades, we’re ultimately improving the entire treatment process—from headworks to solids dewatering and influent equalization to effluent disinfection.

Our approach to water and wastewater design is keeping your goal in focus: to deliver reliable service to water and sewer customers in an economically and environmentally sustainable manner.

To get there, we engage our full suite of services.

Bringing in-house technical expertise—including surveyors, engineers, environmental scientists, GIS technicians, architects, and resident project representatives—we investigate the problem, propose solutions, and guide the project through construction.

Our multidisciplinary team is well-versed in pitching these out-of-the-box solutions to uncertain stakeholders, such as regulators, and earning their support.

The importance of practicality.

Treatment design is grounded in science and advanced by innovation, but successful solutions also require practical application in order to deliver high-performing, economical facilities. Engagement with plant operators is a key part of the process, helping ensure systems are aligned with day-to-day operational needs. This focus supports long-term reliability while minimizing lifecycle operational costs.

Turning practicality into practice.

Our team studied performance issues related to sedimentation basins at a 24 MGD water treatment plant. Our practical analysis convinced skeptical regulators that previously installed ballasted flocculation negated the need for the basins themselves, resulting in a higherperforming yet simplified configuration.

Supporting your staff.

Because many water and wastewater pumping stations are not continuously staffed, supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) is critical.

The monitoring and control systems we design are based on decades of experience, including troubleshooting some of the most complex controls. We uphold a high design standard that yields robust and reliable SCADA installations.

To ensure an easy transition into full operations, we provide handson support during commissioning, observing equipment testing and startup as well as training owners and operators on their new equipment and control systems.

Pumping Stations Design features that benefit your facility and its neighbors.

Pumping stations have significant operation and maintenance requirements. For both water distribution and wastewater collection system pumping stations, we identify and incorporate design features that are right-sized for the facility and maximize operational efficiencies while minimizing maintenance requirements.

At large facilities, we often recommend technology that reduces energy consumption and long-term operation and maintenance costs.

In smaller facilities, a simple approach often provides the best long-term value with few points of failure.

We understand that pumping stations present unique challenges, particularly regarding odor and aesthetics. That’s why we place a strong emphasis on designing facilities that minimize community impacts.

Pumping station force mains, in particular, raise concerns about odor disrupting neighbors as well as corrosion increasing the risk of sewage spills.

We incorporate treatment methods that protect system performance while preserving the quality of life in the communities we serve.

Hydraulic surges resulting from pump starts and stops can also create substantial failure risks.

LaBella evaluated a 240 psi, 25 MGD raw water pump station in Central America, revealing substantially different results than the previously applied rule-of-thumb approach.

LaBella’s analysis enabled informed application of mitigative measures.

Water & Sewer Conveyance

Planning & support Services

Managing community impacts.

Supporting smooth operation.

Water and sewer line projects have a direct and visible impact on the community. Not only are most homes tied into a system, but the steps to complete a linear project also require substantial community involvement.

Driven by the goal of successful operations, we help ensure your infrastructure projects move smoothly from design to construction. We work with clients to define project parameters and, where appropriate, evaluate alternatives that may better support their ability to provide reliable water and wastewater service to customers.

Assessing environmental impacts, securing permits, and acquiring easements can be complex, making proactive public outreach and regulatory agency coordination essential.

Our team guides clients through every step, helping minimize disruption, streamline approvals, and keep projects moving forward.

We have prepared dozens of funding agency application documents, resulting in over $650 million in grant and low-interest loan funds for municipal clients in recent years.

Designing for longevity.

To streamline permitting, we maintain good working relationships with regulatory agencies.

Water and sewer lines are typically out of sight—until a failure occurs. We recognize the significant consequences our clients face in managing linear infrastructure, so we emphasize the importance of designing for longevity.

Our resident project representatives can provide part- or full-time on-site support, collaborating with contractors to resolve issues as they arise and help limit construction delays and budget impacts.

From details such as pipe material and air valve and outlet design to trenchless pipeline design, LaBella’s nonconventional and robust designs address the immediate and long-term project needs of varying complexities, including those of dense urban communities.

Your single source.

Modeling for reality.

Utilizing modern software, LaBella brings full water and sewer system modeling capabilities, having modeled entire municipal water and sewer systems. We identify pressure and supply issues, as well as potential water quality and surge concerns, ensuring models are grounded in reality.

As a full-service firm, we have the expertise to support any water and wastewater project. Our team of civil engineers, surveyors, geotechnical engineers, environmental scientists, GIS technicians, building engineers, architects, and resident project representatives collaborates to deliver integrated, well-coordinated solutions.

The result is a single, responsive source for services that meet every project need.

At LaBella Associates, our job is to create—structures, plans, ideas, results. As a nationally recognized Design Professional Corporation, that’s a given, right?

But here’s what really drives us: creating partnership between our team and our clients. So much so that we become one team, unified in the unrelenting pursuit of exceptional performance on each and every project. Reliability.

Accountability. Collaboration.

Respect. Not skills we went to school for, but innate in LaBella team members.

The pursuit of partnership is embedded in our culture—has been since our inception in 1978.

And it affects client outcomes in profound ways. It means we’re built to expertly execute projects from start to finish. That we have the talent and resources to take on any challenge. That projects are completed on time, on budget, and beyond expectations. And that we win awards—not just for our talent, but also for our ethics, employee culture, and growth.

Today, our wheelhouse is broad, with four key service offerings: Buildings, Energy, Infrastructure, and Environmental. Our reach is widespread with staff located throughout the country and Europe. We’re headquartered in Rochester, NY—but our impact is seen, felt, and experienced around the world.

Buildings

Infrastructure

Architecture

Transportation Engineering

Interior Design

Municipal Engineering

Mechanical, Electrical, & Plumbing Engineering

Construction Engineering

Structural Engineering Land Development & Landscape Architecture

Planning & Grant Writing Land Surveying

Hazardous Building Materials

Energy

Environmental

Electric & Gas Transmission & Distribution

Environmental Remediation & Compliance

Dams & Hydropower

Full-Service Solid Waste

Renewables

Air Permitting

Program Management

Environmental Contracting

Construction Management

Visit us at www.labellapc.com to get a glimpse of some of the things we’re working on right now.

But don’t let us do all the talking— tell us about your goals by calling (877) 626-6606.

(877) 626-6606 | www.labellapc.com