Municipal Water Leader October 2020

Volume 7 Issue 9

October 2020

Toby Dougherty: Guaranteeing the Water Supply of Hays, Kansas, Through Conservation, Reuse, and New Supplies

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Toby Dougherty: Guaranteeing the Water Supply of Hays, Kansas, Through Conservation, Reuse, and New Supplies

Contents

October 2020 Volume 7, Issue 9 5 W ater Resources in Kansas

By Kris Polly 6 Toby

Dougherty: Guaranteeing the Water Supply of Hays, Kansas, Through Conservation, Reuse, and New Supplies 12 W ater Services in Kansas City, Kansas 18 W ater Utility Improvements in Lawrence, Kansas

24 H ow a Single-Coat Epoxy Coating Is Saving Charlotte Water Money in the Long Run

By Brian Brandstetter 28 T he Water Tower: A Water Innovation Center for the Southeastern United States 34 W astewater Testing as a COVID‑19 Early Warning System

Do you have a story idea for an upcoming issue? Contact our editor-in-chief, Kris Polly, at kris.polly@waterstrategies.com.

4 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | October 2020

SUBMISSIONS: Municipal Water Leader welcomes manuscript, photography, and art submissions; the right to edit or deny publishing submissions is reserved. Submissions are returned only upon request. For more information, please contact our office at (202) 698-0690 or municipal.water.leader@waterstrategies.com.

ADVERTISING: Municipal Water Leader accepts half-page and full-page ads. For more information on rates and placement, please contact Kris Polly at (703) 517-3962 or kris.polly@waterstrategies.com.

CIRCULATION: Municipal Water Leader is distributed to all drinking and wastewater entities with annual budgets or sales of $10 million per year or greater as well as to members of Congress and committee staff and advertising sponsors. For address corrections or additions, or if you would prefer to receive Municipal Water Leader in electronic form, please contact our managing editor, Joshua Dill, at joshua.dill@waterstrategies.com.

Copyright Š 2019 Water Strategies LLC. Municipal Water Leader relies on the excellent contributions of a variety of natural resources professionals who provide content for the magazine. However, the views and opinions expressed by these contributors are solely those of the original contributor and do not necessarily represent or reflect the policies or positions of Municipal Water Leader magazine, its editors, or Water Strategies LLC. The acceptance and use of advertisements in Municipal Water Leader do not constitute a representation or warranty by Water Strategies LLC or Municipal Water Leader magazine regarding the products, services, claims, or companies advertised.

MunicipalWaterLeader.com MuniWaterLeader

COVER PHOTO:

Toby Dougherty, Hays City Manager.

Photo courtesy of the City of Hays.

municipalwaterleader.com

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE CITY OF HAYS.

Coming soon in Municipal Water Leader: November/December: Dave Roberts of the Salt River Project

STAFF: Kris Polly, Editor-in-Chief Joshua Dill, Managing Editor Tyler Young, Writer Stephanie Biddle, Graphic Designer Eliza Moreno, Web Designer Milo Schmitt, Media Intern Caroline Polly, Production Assistant and Social Media Coordinator

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Water Resources in Kansas

W

hile the popular image of Kansas is that it is perfectly flat and mainly rural, the state is home to a number of vibrant cities and its climate and water resources vary significantly by region. In our cover story this month, we speak with Toby Dougherty, the city manager of Hays, Kansas. Hays is located in an arid zone of central Kansas that lacks significant surface water, precipitation, or groundwater. In response to this situation, the city has put significant effort into water conservation and reuse and is constructing a 70‑mile pipeline to bring it new water.

We also feature two other Kansas municipal utilities.

James Epp and Steve Green of Kansas City, Kansas, tell us about how the city’s Board of Public Utilities collects water from the aquifer under the Missouri River and delivers it to around 55,000 customers in the surrounding area. Mike Lawless of Lawrence, Kansas, tells us about the city’s water, wastewater, and storm water service upgrades, including the installation of advanced metering infrastructure, its inflow and infiltration reduction program, and its source water protection activities.

Next, we hear from Brian Brandstetter, the vice president of Warren Environmental, who tells us why Warren’s singlecoat epoxy coating was selected by Charlotte Water for its ongoing reliability and process improvements project and how it is saving the agency money in the long run.

By Kris Polly

We also speak with Kristan VandenHeuvel, the strategic director of research and engagement at the new Buford, Georgia, research center The Water Tower. The center aims to bring together research, innovation, community engagement, and workforce development on a campus where laboratories and classroom space are just a walk apart.

Finally, in an interview that will be of interest to all municipal wastewater utilities, we speak with Water Research Foundation (WRF) CEO Peter Grevatt about the current state of research on using wastewater testing as an early warning system for detecting COVID‑19 outbreaks.

Mr. Grevatt explains the basic science behind this testing method and updates us on the research and testing being carried out by WRF’s subscribers worldwide.

In the U.S. heartland and around the world, municipal water agencies are carrying on vital work every day. This issue of Municipal Water Leader will remind you why, in these difficult times, water agencies are rightly considered critical service providers. M Kris Polly is the editor-in-chief of Municipal Water Leader magazine and the president and CEO of Water Strategies LLC, a government relations firm he began in February 2009 for the purpose of representing and guiding water, power, and agricultural entities in their dealings with Congress, the Bureau of Reclamation, and other federal government agencies. He may be contacted at kris.polly@waterstrategies.com.

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Toby Dougherty: Guaranteeing the Water Supply of Hays, Kansas, Through Conservation, Reuse, and New Supplies

An aerial photo of Hays’s water reclamation and reuse facility.

H

ays, Kansas, is located in an arid zone of central Kansas that lacks significant groundwater resources. During the 1990s, it became apparent that its existing water resources were insufficient for its consumption. Its initial response was to implement ambitious conservation measures, which succeeded in reducing its water use by a third, and to build a water recycling plant. Today, it is developing a new water source: a pipeline that will supply the city with groundwater from a former ranch. In this interview, Hays City Manager Toby Dougherty tells Municipal Water Leader about the city’s efforts to guarantee a sustainable water supply for future generations.

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about your position at the City of Hays and your responsibilities.

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about your background.

Municipal Water Leader: What are the top water supply issues for Hays?

Toby Dougherty: I grew up in the little town of Lucas, Kansas, about an hour from Hays. I’ve been in Hays since 2005.

Toby Dougherty: As our city attorney likes to say, Hays is right in the middle of good water territory. If you go a hundred

Municipal Water Leader: What is the population of the city?

Toby Dougherty: The population today is about 21,000.

municipalwaterleader.com

PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE CITY OF HAYS.

6 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | October 2020

Toby Dougherty: The governing body of the city comprises five city commissioners. I am their one contract employee. I am tasked with running the city.

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The Fort Hays Municipal Golf Course and the Bickle-Schmidt Sports Complex in Hays are irrigated with effluent water. This pond at the golf course is a reservoir that stores effluent water.

miles in any direction, there is good water. If you go north, south, or west, you hit the Ogallala aquifer. If you go east, there is reliable surface water flow. The Kansas City area gets around 44 inches of rain a year. In Hays, we get about 22 inches of rain a year. That means that in Kansas City, farmers worry about getting their corn and soybeans in because it’s too wet, while in western Kansas, they struggle to grow dry-land crops on an annual basis. Hays is on the high plains, so it gets hot, it gets cold, there is a lot of wind, and it is dry. In an area like ours, with 22 inches of rain a year, the streams and even rivers have an intermittent flow. That is different even from the situation in an area like Salina, Kansas, 90 miles east of Hays. Salina gets about 30 inches of rain a year, which is typically enough to maintain perennial stream flow, even in small creeks. We are the only population center in Kansas that doesn’t have an adequate local supply of water. Of the 35 counties in Kansas that have a population of more than 15,000, 34 of them are either east of the line from Salina to Wichita, which is the break point of reliable surface water flow, or lie on top of a major aquifer.

In the 1950s, the City of Hays developed a well field about 12 miles south of town on the Smoky Hill River. Even then, the city government knew that it was a temporary solution. At that time, Hays had around 5,000 people. At that point, the city tried to put plans in the works for the next phase of outreach in order to obtain water. In 1991, the city ran out of water. The well field was not able to meet production, and the towers started going dry. This occurred municipalwaterleader.com

during a relatively dry summer, not a multiyear drought.

In retrospect, the main problem was that the city wasn’t maintaining the well field the way it was supposed to. The short-term reaction was to panic. Then the city got serious about finding additional water.

Municipal Water Leader: What has the city done to secure its water supply?

Toby Dougherty: Beginning in the early 1990s, Hays invested heavily in water conservation programs. We were the first wholesale adopter of water conservation practices in the state.

In the span of a few years, the city gave away over 20,000 lowflow showerheads and provided hundreds of thousands of dollars for low-flow toilet programs. At that time, the federal government had not mandated any liters- or gallons-per-flush standards. The city also heavily subsidized high-efficiency washing machines. It put ordinances in place that prohibited outdoor watering between 12:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. in June, July, August, and September and prohibited significant runoff of water from people’s property. That made people pay attention to their water usage.

Today, the City of Hays consumes about 2,000 acrefeet of water a year. Before the conservation practices were begun, our yearly use was closer to 3,000 acre-feet and once hit 3,600 acre-feet. The drop from 3,000 to 2,000 was accomplished simply through conservation.

When I came to Hays in 2005, the city was still riding October 2020 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER

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ADVERTISEMENT Toby Dougherty: In the first round of our program, we paid $1 per square foot up to 1,500 square feet. We just increased that to 3,000 square feet. We took the bare bones of that idea from Las Vegas.

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about your water recycling plant.

Toby Dougherty: We invested heavily in the 1990s in reuse water. Right now, we irrigate a golf course, our sports complex, and several baseball and soccer fields with recycled water. On an annual basis, we reuse about 30 percent of our produced effluent for irrigation.

Our water recycling plant processes about 2 million gallons a day (MGD) of water. We just rebuilt the plant last year at a size that takes into account our projections of future growth, so its full capacity is about 46 MGD.

Water conservation education in a local school.

Municipal Water Leader: What do you pay per square foot for removing lawns?

8 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | October 2020

Toby Dougherty: When the city had its water crisis in the 1990s, the obvious reaction was to go out and find more water. Unfortunately, we’re in an area where there is no water available. After a couple of years of looking, we realized that this was not going to be a quick fix. We were not just going to be able to build a pipeline, scale up our well field, or find a new source on tap. Kansas water law can be pretty contentious, and there are a lot of areas that are overappropriated, meaning that there are more rights than there is available water.

In 1995, the R9 Ranch, which is located in Edward County, about 70 miles from Hays, came up for sale.

The ranch was about 7,000 acres in size and came with approximately 8,000 acre-feet of water rights. At that point, it was the largest contiguous tract of water rights for sale in the state, so the city government bought it. The following year, the City of Russell, which is 20 miles east of Hays and has similar water issues, bought an 18 percent stake in the R9 to support its long-term water supply.

The governing body spent roughly 20 years continuing to consider every available option. In 2014, it finally came to the realization that there was no better option than the R9 Ranch, even though the regulatory process was going to be difficult and expensive. In 2014, I was given formal approval to begin the regulatory process developed by the R9, and in 2015, we filed the initial paperwork. We are still in the midst of the regulatory process and have a couple years left to go.

The project itself involves a roughly 70‑mile pipeline that would connect the 12 municipal wells at the R9 Ranch to our well field south of town at the Smoky Hill River. We’ll also build a short interconnect to Russell’s well field. The R9 Ranch had 44 irrigation pivots that have been removed from the ground; that area has been converted back to native grass. municipalwaterleader.com

PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE CITY OF HAYS.

the high of the successes of the 1990s. I became familiar with the system and just kept working within it. In 2011, I went to the second WaterSmart conference in Las Vegas, a conference hosted by the Southern Nevada Water Authority that brings together the key players in water conservation in the desert Southwest, the mountain West, and any other areas that are focused on conservation. At the conference, I realized that we were behind the curve. We were still focused on our past successes and were giving away 3.25-gallon-per-minute showerheads because that was the height of technology back in the 1990s, even though there are shower heads today that use less than a gallon per minute.

When I came back from that conference, we hired a water conservation specialist, just like communities in Arizona, California, and Nevada that were serious about their water conservation efforts did. Then we started seeking out best practices. We modeled our landscaping regulations on those of Salt Lake City and adopted various practices from communities in arid areas. We were the first city in Kansas to implement comprehensive landscape regulations related to water conservation and to implement the green plumbing code, which also supports conservation. We totally revamped our showerhead program, our washing machine rebate program, and our toilet program. We instituted the first cash-for-grass program north of Texas and east of Colorado. Through that program, we pay people to rip out irrigated turf and replace it with warm-season grass or xeriscaping. We kept investing heavily in our conservation programs, and as a result, we’ve continued to increase our population, but not at the expense of our usage.

Municipal Water Leader: In addition to conservation and water recycling, is the City of Hays developing new water sources?

ADVERTISEMENT Municipal Water Leader: What are the dimensions of the pipe?

Toby Dougherty: I believe the initial estimates envision 24‑inch pipes. We didn’t want to undersize it and be forced to add a second pipe during the full build-out, but we also didn’t want to oversize it. We’re looking at transporting 1,500–2,000 acre-feet of water from the ranch on an annual basis. Once we get to full scale, the pipe could push out 5,000 acre-feet a year if needed with no problem.

Municipal Water Leader: Would you tell us about the status of the project and the next steps you will take?

Toby Dougherty: Whenever more than 2,000 acre-feet of water is moved more than 35 miles, a series of statutes known as the Kansas Water Transfer Act kicks in. Any such transfer requires the approval of a three-person panel composed of the secretary of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, the head of the Kansas Water Office, and the chief engineer of the Kansas Division of Water Resources.

We are 5 years into this project, and we haven’t reached the regulatory halfway point yet. We’re still finishing the first leg of the regulatory process, which is changing the water rights from irrigation to municipal usage. That process culminates with a master order from the chief engineer of the Division of Water Resources, which governs the conditions of the conversion of irrigation rights to municipal rights. That order was issued over a year ago. We only have one opponent in this process. It’s a group of irrigators east and southeast of us called the Water Protection Association of Central Kansas, which believes that this is harming their members. They asked a judge to perform a judicial review on the master order. We are in the middle of that. COVID paused the in-person procedures, but we have hearing scheduled for October of this year. We hope to have confirmation from the judge shortly after that.

Municipal Water Leader: What is the predicted timetable for completion of the project?

Toby Dougherty: I would say, optimistically, 24–36 months.

We intend on moving pretty quickly. We hope to complete the transfer process within a couple of years. As we near completion, we will start the design.

Municipal Water Leader: What is your message to decisionmakers and to Congress about your project?

Toby Dougherty: The Cities of Hays and Russell are going above and beyond what’s required by law to be good stewards of the land and to do what’s right for future generations.

There’s no requirement in Kansas law for water use to be sustainable. Kansas water laws are based on the doctrine of prior appropriation—first in time, first in right. If a person applies for and perfects a water right in the state of Kansas, they can pump that water whether it’s sustainable or not. municipalwaterleader.com

Hays and Russell have agreed to reduce our available water rights in order to comply with the sustainable yield of the property. Hays and Russell are being held to a higher standard than most of the agricultural and industrial interests out there when it comes to water right conversions. Hays and Russell have no intention of using the ranch in an unsustainable manner. It wouldn’t be good for future generations, and it would make our $80 million investment a bad one. The R9 is extremely important for us as a water source. It is going to provide water for generations in the Hays and Russell area.

Rain barrels ready for distribution to Hays residents.

We also have 7,000 acres of the distinctive sand hill prairie environment at the ranch, and we are doing everything we can to convert it to a native sand hill prairie environment. We have a rangeland management specialist on staff whose sole responsibility is to advocate for the grass and the environment. We are working with the Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks, and Tourism to figure out how we can best use this property for the public good. The governing bodies of Hays and Russell want to make sure that this is not only a water source for us, but a unique benefit for the state of Kansas. M Toby Dougherty is the city manager of Hays, Kansas. He can be contacted at tdougherty@haysusa.com.

October 2020 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER

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Water Services in Kansas City, Kansas

An aerial view of the BPU’s Newman Water Treatment Plant.

12 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | October 2020

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about your backgrounds and how you came to be in your current positions.

James Epp: I am from Beatrice, Nebraska, and studied civil engineering at the University of Nebraska. Kansas City is a hub for engineering companies, so my best job opportunities were here. I moved here and accepted a job with an engineering consulting firm. I gained a background in water distribution improvements, hydraulic analysis, and things like that. I started at the BPU as a civil engineer, worked my municipalwaterleader.com

PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE KANSAS CITY BPU.

T

he Kansas City Board of Public Utilities (BPU) provides potable retail and wholesale water service to around 55,000 people in Kansas City, Kansas, and neighboring areas. It draws its water from horizontal collector wells in the aquifer below the Missouri River, treats it, and delivers it to customers via around 1,000 miles of water mains. In this interview, James Epp, the BPU’s executive director of water operations, and Steve Green, its director of water distribution, talk to Municipal Water Leader about operating in the age of COVID-19 and the utility’s plans for the future.

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A cross-section of the BPU’s horizontal collector wells.

way up to a director position, and then was appointed acting director of water distribution. After that, I was the full-time water distribution director.

In 2007, I was appointed executive director of water operations. The person who held my current position before me was Don Gray. He became the general manager of the company, so I got the position of executive director of water operations. I also have a master of business administration from the University of Missouri, which has helped me a lot in business and in my position as the chair of our pension fund.

Steve Green: I am from Kansas City, Kansas. I have a bachelor’s degree in business management. I’ve worked for the utility for 32 years. I started in the engineering department, working in mapping, and then quickly moved over to the distribution side. I worked in the field on a crew for about 12 years before taking a supervisory position. I held that position for a few years and then was promoted to superintendent. For the last 14 years, I have been the director of water distribution.

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about the BPU and its water services. municipalwaterleader.com

James Epp: We provide potable retail water to Kansas City, Kansas, and Edwardsville, Kansas, both of which are in Wyandotte County. We provide wholesale water to supplement the water supply of Bonner Springs, which is in Wyandotte County as well. We also provide wholesale potable water to portions of Leavenworth County and the cities of Baser, Tonganoxie, and Lansing, Kansas. Finally, we service small subdivisions in Johnson County, which is just south of us. Our average demand is about 30 million gallons per day (MGD). Our max days are about 45 MGD and our plant capacity is 72 MGD. We provide service to about 55,000 customers.

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about your water treatment and delivery infrastructure.

James Epp: We provide water from source to tap. The source of our water is the Missouri River. We have two horizontal collector wells that go about 100 feet down into a natural sand-and-gravel aquifer. By drawing water from the aquifer instead of directly from the river, we avoid having to treat muddy or high-turbidity water. We take advantage of the natural filtration performed by the sand-and-gravel aquifer.

The water coming into the plant is clear and consistent.

October 2020 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER

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ADVERTISEMENT do maintenance during a flood event as well. Also, if there is some sort of contamination or spill on the river, most of it stays on top and does not infiltrate the aquifer. All these factors mean that the horizontal collector wells are a precious resource for our community. They are two of the largest and most efficient in the whole country. Collector well number 1 was completed in 1998, and collector well number 2 was completed in 2004.

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about your treatment plant.

A BPU crew working alongside a backhoe.

We remove iron and manganese from it and perform the conventional treatment process. Then the water goes through a filtration process and a chlorination disinfection process.

We store the treated water in reservoirs at our water treatment plant and pump it out of those reservoirs to serve the entire service territory of our system. The transmission mains from the treatment plant range from 24 to 48 inches. We have three primary pump stations that serve our pressure zones, as well as three ground storage reservoirs and three elevated tanks. Our distribution system includes 12-, 8-, 6-, 4-, and 2-inch lines that bring water to our customers.

Steve Green: We have 1,000 miles of water main in our system.

Municipal Water Leader: What is the advantage of drawing water from an aquifer connected to the Missouri River rather than from the river itself?

14 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | October 2020

Municipal Water Leader: Kansas City, Kansas, directly adjoins Kansas City, Missouri, meaning that your service area abuts both municipal and state boundaries. Is your system at all interconnected with that of Kansas City, Missouri, and are any difficulties posed by your location on the border of multiple jurisdictions?

James Epp: We have interconnections with the system of Kansas City, Missouri, but they really don’t benefit our water system. They’re more for the benefit of Kansas City, Missouri.

They also provide a backup to the University of Kansas Hospital, which is located right on the state line. Our major interconnects are with WaterOne, the public water utility in Johnson County, just south of Wyandotte County. We have three interconnects with it. One is rated at about 6 MGD and the others are rated at about 25 MGD. Since our average day is 30 MGD, it’s more than sufficient. We tested the 6 MGD interconnection once, during the flood of 1993. WaterOne has used it two or three times in order to get water from us.

As for the situation with multiple jurisdictions, it doesn’t present any issues. The Kansas Department of Health and Environment knows that there are interconnects, and we notify it if we have to use them. We really only use our major interconnects within Kansas. To the best of my knowledge, during my career here, the interconnects between our system and that of Kansas City, Missouri, have never been used. municipalwaterleader.com

PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE KANSAS CITY BPU.

James Epp: In addition to filtering the water from the river and providing us with water of a consistent quality, it provides a more constant supply. Even if we are experiencing a drought, as long as there’s some water in the river, we’re still in business. The pumps for the collector wells are above the 500-year floodplain level, and there are dual feeds from the electric side of our utility to the station, so it can operate during a flood as well. We can operate it remotely even if we cannot get to the collector wells. We have boats lined up with the fire department so that we can get there and

James Epp: The treatment plant was put in service in spring 2000, so it’s 20 years old. It still looks brand new.

We participate in the Partnership for Safe Drinking Water, which is a voluntary program that aims to exceed U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations. It is sponsored by six agencies, the main one being the American Water Works Association. The main factor there is finished water turbidity, which is measured in nephelometric turbidity units (NTUs). The EPA standard is 0.3 NTUs, while the partnership standard is 0.1 NTUs. We are the only utility in the states of Kansas and Missouri that participates in this program. A year ago, we received the 10-year director award, which reflects well on our staff and our treatment plant. We’ve also won the gold and platinum awards from the Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies for utility excellence. Those are two things we take a lot of pride in.

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A BPU worker.

Municipal Water Leader: How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected your operations?

James Epp: It’s had an effect on revenue, because there was a period where we couldn’t shut people off. Disconnects are still being debated nationwide. When you can’t shut off people, revenues come in slower. We’ve had to make some adjustments to our capital budget and delay some projects.

As far as staffing, we’ve staggered the shifts of water distribution workers. We wear masks and practice social distancing. Our treatment plant operators are extremely important because they need a class 4 certification to operate the plant. We don’t have many employees with that credential, so we have to protect those operators.

We’ve adjusted the shifts so that there’s only one operator working per shift. That way, if one person gets infected with COVID-19, the other operators will not be exposed. So far, none of our operators has been infected.

In total, only two or three BPU staff members have tested positive for COVID-19. In most cases, they were infected off the job. We only had one case of an employee likely infecting another employee on the job. We’re doing a lot to protect our employees. We’re all still coming to work. Steve has separated his clerks into individual offices. We’re getting by on the operations side. When someone tests positive, you have to send anybody who has been in contact with them to get tested and possibly to quarantine. It’s had an effect, but it has not disrupted our 24/7 operations.

Steve Green: It helped that the management team moved pretty quickly to cut back on unnecessary expenses and to put some capital improvement projects on hold.

Municipal Water Leader: What are your other top issues? municipalwaterleader.com

James Epp: As far as future projects go, we want to maintain our main replacement program. We have a lot of old 2- and 4-inch mains, some galvanized and some cast iron. We also are utilizing new technology for leak detection. Going forward, we need to build a new 7-million-gallon ground reservoir to provide backup supply for the University of Kansas hospital and our industrial customers. We want to put in a new transmission main to provide backup to the western part of our service territory and our wholesale business.

We want to maintain our valve and hydrant inspection program; our service replacement program; and our meter replacement program, particularly for large meters. Small meters maintain their accuracy for several years, but large meters do not. Those meters are basically our cash register, so it’s important that we do that.

If you visited our Newman Water Treatment Plant, you would think it was brand new, but in fact it is 20 years old.

We need to step up our program for replacing parts at the plant, especially electrical components.

Another thing that is important is succession planning.

The current BPU employees all have many years of experience, but many of us are also approaching retirement.

I preach to my staff about the importance of preparing the people who are going to replace you. We don’t want to leave without people in place to continue providing safe, goodquality drinking water to our customers in the most efficient manner possible. That is our mission statement.

Steve Green: One of our biggest goals is to have a good succession plan for water operations and to train and educate our younger employees so that they are ready to take over operations and continue to deliver the high-quality water that the BPU provides to this community.

Municipal Water Leader: What is your vision for the future?

James Epp: We want to continue to uphold our mission statement, to meet and exceed all state and federal water quality standards, and to provide the best service we can.

M

James Epp is the executive director of water operations at the Kansas City Board of Public Utilities. He can be contacted at jepp@bpu.com or (913) 573‑9830.

Steve Green is the director of water distribution at the Kansas City Board of Public Utilities. He can be contacted at sgreen@bpu.com or (913) 573‑9630. For more information about the BPU, visit www.bpu.com.

October 2020 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER

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Water Utility Improvements in Lawrence, Kansas

An aerial view of the Wakarusa Wastewater Treatment Plant.

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Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position.

Mike Lawless: In 1992, I started my first municipal job as an assistant city engineer in Raymore, Missouri; worked my

18 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | October 2020

way up to city engineer; and moved to Liberty, Missouri, as city engineer. My family then moved to Texas, where I was the city engineer for the City of Hurst. My wife had an opportunity to go to school at the University of Kansas in 2007, so I applied for a job building a wastewater treatment plant in Lawrence as a representative for the city. Not long after I was hired, the project was paused because of the downturn in the economy. Next thing I knew, I was hired as the assistant director for the utilities department. My duties included budget, rates, capital improvement plan development, and field operations. A couple of years ago, the City of Lawrence merged its utilities and public works departments into the MSO. After that merger, my new position was deputy director of the MSO. Municipal Water Leader: Would you give us an overview of the City of Lawrence’s water, wastewater and storm water services? municipalwaterleader.com

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE CITY OF LAWRENCE.

awrence is a city of around 102,000 people in the northeastern corner of Kansas and is the home of the University of Kansas. The city’s water, wastewater, and storm water utilities serve the city and several outlying regions.

Like many municipalities, Lawrence is working to install smart, automated meters. It is also working to reduce unwanted infiltration and inflows into older clay sewer pipes and addressing debris and nutrients in the source water for its reservoirs. In this interview, Mike Lawless, the deputy director of the City of Lawrence’s Municipal Services and Operations Department (MSO), gives Municipal Water Leader a comprehensive look at the department’s top issues and current work.

ADVERTISEMENT Mike Lawless: We have two water treatment plants and two different sources of water. One plant, the Kaw Water Treatment Plant, has the Kansas River, also known as the Kaw River, as its water source. The other plant is the Clinton Water Treatment Plant. Its source is the Clinton Reservoir, which is a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers reservoir. We’re fortunate to have two different plants, either of which can supply the average daily flow to our customers. However, both plants are needed for peak summer demand.

We also have two wastewater treatment plants. One discharges to the Kansas River and the other discharges to the Wakarusa River. The Wakarusa plant is our newest plant—it has been in operation since 2018. It’s a 2.5-million-gallon-per-day (MGD) biological nutrient removal plant. We’re pleased with the excellent results we’re getting from that facility.

The city operates an Army Corps levee that protects North Lawrence—the section of Lawrence that lies north of the Kansas River—from flooding. The levee runs for 19.6 miles along the Kansas River and Mud Creek and has 27 gate structures. There are four storm water pump stations on the land side of the levee to pump storm water out of North Lawrence and over the levee. Anytime there are flooding events on the Kansas River, we operate and monitor all the gatewell structures on the levee and document water levels and levee conditions.

The rest of the city has gravity sewers that drain to various creeks and channels that in turn drain to the Kansas or Wakarusa Rivers. We are in the process of collecting asset location and condition information on the storm water system that will be used in basin models for the storm water system.

Municipal Water Leader: How many customers do you serve, and across how large a service area?

Mike Lawless: We have roughly 34,400 customer accounts.

We are currently undertaking an advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) project, so I have a pretty good count for the project. The population within our city limits is just over 102,000, and we have six wholesale customers that together add another 15,000 people. The service area within our city limits is about 35 square miles.

Municipal Water Leader: Would you tell us more about that AMI project?

Mike Lawless: Right now, most of our water meters are read by our seven meter readers, who read about 33,000 meters on walking routes each month; the rest are connected to an automated meter reading system. We have driver routes that use a laptop to read the meters remotely via radio. Generally, these meters are in vaults or indoor businesses. Through our AMI project, which will cost around $10 million, we are installing the Sensus FlexNet communication system. We municipalwaterleader.com

will replace all our 5/8-inch and 1-inch meters and some of the large meters and will add radios to all the meters. The project will allow us to transmit hourly data to our meter data management system. We’ll be able to pull hourly or daily readings or billing readings from that system. The fact that we will no longer need to walk all our routes will help us to be more efficient.

We started planning the AMI project in late 2015. Our business case analysis suggested that we would recoup our expenses after a 12‑ to 13‑year payback period. As we began to assemble funding, we discovered that our billing system lacked the capabilities we needed for a new water rate structure and the AMI project. We paused the AMI project for a couple of years to focus on a new billing system, which ultimately went online in December 2019. By the time we finish the AMI project in 2022, we’ll have an integrated system for meter reading and billing. It will also provide a mountain of data that we hope to be able to use in the technical and operational sides of the utility.

Municipal Water Leader: Who manufactures the meters that you are installing?

Mike Lawless: We went through a request for proposal process and selected the Sensus FlexNet system and meters for the AMI project and Harris SmartWorks Compass software for the meter data management system.

Municipal Water Leader: Would you tell us about some of the water conservation activities that you have undertaken over the last few years?

Mike Lawless: One of the strategic goals of the city commission is conservation and efficiency. We’re getting ready to implement an individual inclining-block water rate for our residential customers, which, along with the AMI project, will help to promote operational efficiency and conservation. AMI provides customers the ability to monitor their own water use throughout the month via a customer portal.

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about your Ecoflow inflow and infiltration reduction program. Why did you decide to pursue that project, and what does it entail?

Mike Lawless: We had been lining our older clay pipes for a number of years and had completed a fair amount, but we were still seeing pretty high peak flows at the wastewater plant—our peak flows were about eight times higher than our average daily flows. In 2012, through the master planning process, we set a goal to reduce the peak flow of the Kansas River Wastewater Treatment Plant by 35 percent. This would help us eliminate the need for capacity expansion at that facility, in the collection system interceptor sewers, and at our pump stations.

We realized that we needed to consider removing inflow October 2020 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER

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ADVERTISEMENT and infiltration from both the private and public sewer systems if we were going to achieve the 35 percent goal.

The Ecoflow program was the private-side program that was created to pursue that aim.

The master plan focused on the area around the university, which has the oldest clay sewer lines. We wanted to inspect each private structure in that area and see if it contributed significant inflow or infiltration to those pipes.

We didn’t want it to just be a study—we wanted to quickly find the problems, fix them, and move on. That’s how we came up with the Ecoflow program. We would divide the area into phases and address them one by one. We would do an evaluation, figure out what we need to do, and then contract out the work, all within about 60 days.

Municipal Water Leader: How old are those clay pipes?

Mike Lawless: In this area, quite a few are from the 1920s and 1930s. We’ve had to replace parts as recently as the last couple of years. The majority of the sewer system is probably from the 1950s or earlier.

Municipal Water Leader: Would you tell us about what the City of Lawrence has done to address and remedy flooding problems?

Mike Lawless: We have a pretty good handle on our water and sewer infrastructure assets. We know what assets we have and where they are, and we have a pretty good idea of their condition. That’s not necessarily the case on the storm water side. We know where some of the system is, but in some parts of town, we don’t have a good sense of the extent of our assets.

The capital improvement plan we recently proposed involves a 3‑year project to identify our storm water assets and verify or determine their locations and conditions. That will go a long way toward resolving some of the localized flooding issues that we have. Some of our neighborhoods are over 100 years old; they’re on the hill around the University of Kansas campus, and in some spots, we might not have storm sewer infrastructure for multiple blocks. Capturing water that’s running off a pretty steep hill is difficult without proper infrastructure. As we identify the extent of our system in each of the storm water drainage basins, we can start to model what we need to do to remedy localized flooding issues. The city’s last master plan was drawn up in 1995 or 1996, so we’re looking to update that information and get a better handle on what we have in each of the basins.

Mike Lawless: We started a source water protection program a couple years ago. The flooding that we had last year slowed the program’s progress, and now COVID-19 has slowed it down even more. We’re looking at ways to reduce the amount of sedimentation and nutrients coming

20 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | October 2020

Municipal Water Leader: How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected your operations?

Mike Lawless: Everybody who can work from home has been working from home since mid-March. Some people, such as treatment operators and some engineering and administrative staff, have to be on site. To separate and isolate the various operations groups, we have had most of the engineering staff who worked at the plants now work from home; the treatment and plant maintenance operators are the main people working in the plants. We separated the distribution and collection crews as well. If one crew typically does in-house water main rehabilitation, then that group stays together. We don’t mix the service-line crews with the meter readers, for example. We try to keep crews separate so that we can minimize the number of people who may have to quarantine if someone tests positive.

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about your vision for the future of Lawrence’s utilities.

Mike Lawless: We’re trying to become more efficient with the dollars that we get. Our city manager, Craig Owens, likes to talk about achieving the lowest cost of ownership for the city. We focus our efforts on that goal. To do that, asset management and life-cycle costing are key—figuring out what we have, what condition it is in, what we are going to do to it, and when we need to do it. In the future, I see us using SCADA integration with asset management. I’d really like to get to the point at which information from SCADA automatically triggers preventative maintenance activities in the work-order asset-management system. That will help us do a better job managing the assets. As we finish implementing the Ecoflow program in the initial area and see the results, I expect us to expand it to other sewer sheds in the city. M

Mike Lawless is the deputy director of the Municipal Services and Operations Department for the City of Lawrence, Kansas. He can be contacted at mlawless@lawrenceks.org.

municipalwaterleader.com

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE CITY OF LAWRENCE.

Municipal Water Leader: What are your other top issues today?

into the Clinton Reservoir from the watersheds above it.

We’re partnering with the Kansas Alliance for Wetlands and Streams (KAWS) to construct projects to address sedimentation and nutrient removal with constructed wetlands upstream of the reservoir. We help KAWS to leverage the funding it gets from the State of Kansas; the Natural Resources Conservation Service; and other partners, such as Ducks Unlimited.

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Deep Tunnel Force Main Replaces Aging Infrastructure

Pipe installation seen from above.

PHOTO COURTESY OF HOBAS.

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project undertaken by the Middlesex County Utilities Authority (MCUA), the Edison force mains/Edison Pump Station upgrade aimed to provide a redundant means for sewage conveyance from MCUA’s 85‑million-gallon-per-day (MGD) Edison Pump Station to its 400 MGD Central Wastewater Treatment Plant. The project consisted of two parallel 3,940‑footlong pipelines constructed in a tunnel 70–90 feet beneath the 3,000‑foot-wide Raritan River and some shorter connections constructed in open-trench excavations on the pump-station and treatment-plant grounds.

The 15-foot primary tunnel contains two parallel 60‑inch-diameter force mains. The lines will replace MCUA’s existing 60‑inch diameter Arsenal force main, which was installed in 1969. The existing line made of prestressed concrete cylinder pipe, is supported on piles, and is located several feet below the riverbed. It accepts continuous flow of wastewater from the northern part of the county and serves over 200,000 people. Since the pipeline has been in continuous service for 40 years, making it impossible to inspect it internally or externally, there was

concern that the prestressing wire could fail, causing a catastrophic pipe failure and the uncontrolled discharge of raw sewage into the river.

Hatch Mott MacDonald of Freehold, New Jersey, was hired to design the new system. Angelo Bufaino, PE, a senior project engineer at the firm, explained that its concerns included both installation and longterm performance criteria. “MCUA wanted a pipe that was corrosion resistant, both inside and out. Since the line was carrying raw sewage, the authority wanted a pipeline that would be resistant to sulfuric acid, a byproduct of hydrogen sulfide gas. Additionally, the pipe was to be installed within a damp tunnel and partially encased in concrete, and there would be no means to perform external repairs if external corrosion occurred. Fiberglass pipe was the only material specified for the force main.”

Kenny Construction Company, headquartered in Northbrook, Illinois, was awarded the tunnel portion of the project and purchased the 7,785 linear feet of 60‑inch, 100‑pounds-per-square-inch pressure class, 46‑stiffness pipe from Hobas Pipe USA.

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How a Single-Coat Epoxy Coating Is Saving Charlotte Water Money in the Long Run

By Brian Brandstetter

The clarifier troughs are cleaned in preparation for lining.

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24 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | October 2020

move forward with a pilot study with four different epoxy manufacturers. Three of the four manufacturers applied a test patch of their epoxy within the clarifier launder troughs, and a third-party testing firm performed adhesion tests. All three met the minimum adhesion requirements.

In addition to performing adhesion tests, CLTWater and its design-build team analyzed each manufacturer’s coating system along a variety of variables, including cost, schedule, performance, quality, service life, and safety.

The analysis provided them the information necessary to make a value-based selection. Warren Environmental’s 301 epoxy system was determined to provide the best value for the project.

Warren Environmental’s epoxy was not the cheapest of the four options, but because it does not require a mortar underlayment and is applied in only a single coat, it stood to save CLTWater 7 months of time, and thus saved the most money overall. If CLTWater had decided to use a different product, the minimum cure time required by the product’s municipalwaterleader.com

PHOTOS COURTESY OF WARREN ENVIRONMENTAL.

ith a rated treatment capacity of 64 million gallons a day (MGD), the McAlpine Creek Wastewater Management Facility is the largest wastewater treatment facility operated by Charlotte Water (CLTWater). In 2018, CLTWater began a reliability and process improvements project that is being implemented via the progressive design-build project delivery method and involves the rehabilitation of 28 aeration basins and 16 secondary clarifiers and the replacement of the plant’s three blower buildings. The secondary clarifiers range from 95 to 150 feet in diameter, with the oldest clarifiers being nearly 60 years old.

For the rehabilitation, CLTWater considered using an epoxy coating system to not only protect the assets but to extend the clarifier’s service life. CLTWater had experience with epoxy coatings and understood the importance of protecting its investment. However, it had historically run into issues with failures and delamination throughout its collection system. Due to this, CLTWater opted to

A test patch of Warren Environmental’s epoxy in the trough.

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Warren Environmental’s epoxy being applied.

mortar underlayment might have delayed the project as a whole and resulted in additional overhead costs.

Of the systems included in the pilot, Warren Environmental’s 100 percent solids epoxy system was the only one capable of being easily sprayed in a single coat up to 500 mils (½ inch) thick. That coat fully covered the concrete aggregate and protected the asset. It was also able to provide for a return to service within 4–6 hours. The fact that Warren’s product only required a single coat assured CLTWater that quality across all 16 clarifiers would remain consistent and that the product would not lead to failures or the delamination it has experienced in the past.

Another key benefit of the Warren epoxy coating was its safety. All its epoxies are free of volatile organic compounds, solvents, styrene, and isocyanates, making the product safe for applicators, workers, and the surrounding work site.

This provided tremendous benefit to CLTWater in terms of craft resource allocation. Warren Environmental’s master applicator, A&W Maintenance, recently completed the first phase of the project and discussed the benefits of this attribute. “One of the benefits clients are drawn to Warren for is safety. We worked alongside other technicians who were building rake arms as we sprayed our epoxy, and it was a seamless transition of work. They didn’t need to worry about us, and we didn’t have to worry about them.

That speaks to the safety of the Warren product. There are not many coatings out there that allow you to work side by side with another contractor and achieve your goals,” said Max Silva, the project manager for A&W Maintenance. Originally, CLTWater’s project schedule provided for the reallocation of workers to another area during epoxy spraying to avoid any potential hazards, but because of Warren’s safety attributes, it was able to be done concurrently with the rest of the project. municipalwaterleader.com

The first phase of the project, which consisted of coating clarifier launder troughs #11 and #13, was completed at the end of November 2019. This required the rehabilitation of 60‑year old concrete. The rehabilitation involved prepping the substrate’s surface and cleaning it of all debris. The surface showed depths of up to ½ inch of exposed aggregate.

Applicators then sprayed a single coat of approximately 125 mils of Warren’s 301‑14 epoxy at a rate of five shifts per clarifier. Upon completion, the quality of work was inspected. The applicators performed holiday tests with a high-voltage spark tester to identify any pinhole defects requiring repair. Then, applicators conducted an adhesion pull test to verify the thickness of the coating. Each clarifier underwent five different pull tests. The average results for clarifier #11 was 1,014 pounds per square inch and the average result for clarifier #13 was 1,089 psi.

The effectiveness of Warren’s product and the quality installation by A&W Maintenance earned the two companies significant additional work. Warren’s epoxy products and A&W Maintenance’s application services were selected for work on 11 additional effluent troughs, the aluminum support columns at all 28 aeration basin mixer walkways, the pedestal coating at the gravity thickener, and crack injection and crack and construction joint sealing on an as-needed basis for all structures. The work is expected to be finished by the end of 2022. M Brian Brandstetter is the vice president of Warren Environmental. For more about Warren Environmental, visit warrenenviro.com.

October 2020 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER

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The Water Tower: A Water Innovation Center for the Southeastern United States

A digital rendering of The Water Tower headquarters building, designed by Gresham Smith and being constructed by Reeves Young.

T

he Water Tower is a new water innovation center headquartered in Buford, Georgia. Its campus, expected to be completed in 2022, will include laboratories, a field training center, and access to real effluent and reuse water for research purposes. However, The Water Tower is already moving forward with programming in four key areas: applied research, technology innovation, community engagement, and workforce development. In this interview, Kristan VandenHeuvel, The Water Tower’s strategic director of research and engagement, tells Municipal Water Leader about the center’s vision of being a water hub for the entire Southeast and how it is already making that a reality.

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position.

28 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | October 2020

Municipal Water Leader: Would you give us an overview of the Gwinnett County Department of Water Resources, its current services, and how the idea of The Water Tower evolved?

Kristan VandenHeuvel: Gwinnett County and its Department of Water Resources have always had the reputation of being progressive and forward thinking. The water department’s F. Wayne Hill Water Resources Center is a world-renowned wastewater treatment and resource recovery facility. People from all over the world come to visit and learn about its innovative approaches. There are also four other plants that are devoted to a mixture of water and wastewater treatment and that incorporate thousands of miles of pipe and numerous pump stations. municipalwaterleader.com

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE WATER TOWER.

Kristan VandenHeuvel: I am fairly new to the Buford, Georgia, area. My career brought me here in September 2019, when I accepted the position of strategic director of research and engagement for The Water Tower. Prior to that, I had been working at the Water Research Foundation (WRF) in Alexandria, Virginia, where I focused on water reuse and water resource management. The work was heavily oriented to agricultural water use, and I also participated in outreach and engagement for the water industry. Through

that, I was able to develop my skills in research planning and project management.

Interestingly, The Water Tower’s current CEO, Melissa Meeker, was CEO of WRF at the time I was working there. Melissa was recruited by the Gwinnett County Department of Water Resources with the goal of developing the new Water Tower innovation center in Buford. She invited me to come on board to manage the research and community engagement programs.

ADVERTISEMENT The previous director of the department came up with the vision of The Water Tower as an innovation space.

The idea was that the Gwinnett County system would be involved in the creation of The Water Tower, but that The Water Tower would operate as a separate nonprofit that could apply for grants and provide training and resources for the immediate area surrounding Gwinnett and the southeastern United States more broadly. It is still a work in progress. For example, the staff of The Water Tower are still employees of the Gwinnett County Department of Water Resources. However, once established, The Water Tower will be a separate entity with its own employees.

Municipal Water Leader: What sort of entity is The Water Tower right now?

Kristan VandenHeuvel: There are two nonprofits, a 501(c)(3) and a 501(c)(4), that are collectively known as The Water Tower. The 501(c)(3) is focused on programming in four key areas: applied research, technology innovation, community engagement, and workforce development. The 501(c)(4) is focused on the real estate development of The Water Tower’s campus. The Water Tower is not just one structure; it is an entire campus. Part of our sustainable funding plan is to develop the area surrounding our main building. As we lease it out to water-related businesses, the revenue will be used as a sustainable funding source for the 501(c)(3).

Municipal Water Leader: How many employees does The Water Tower have at the moment?

Kristan VandenHeuvel: Currently, we have a staff of four and two interns. We are small but mighty!

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about the four focus areas you mentioned above.

Kristan VandenHeuvel: The Water Tower’s campus will offer world-class facilities and access to fully functioning real-world test conditions for researchers. We’re piping in primary effluent, secondary effluent, and reuse water to our demonstration area so that researchers can use those real flows for their experiments and then run their tests in the lab we’ll have in our headquarters.

We are crafting our research programming through the development of the Lake Lanier 5-Year Research Plan.

Our goal is to develop a suite of projects to be carried out over 5 years with the objective of benefiting the Lake Lanier watershed. The watershed and the lake itself are extremely important to our region, as the lake serves as a water source as well as a discharge point for treated effluent.

The transformation of wastewater into reusable water is becoming more and more important in regions throughout our country and the world, and doing it here will require thoughtful planning and the monitoring of the watershed municipalwaterleader.com

and lake. Various water research projects and planning efforts have been carried out in the Lake Lanier watershed in the past, but we have found that there is no centralized, coordinated plan that brings all the stakeholders together.

The Lake Lanier 5-Year Research Plan involves a threestep process. First, we gathered input from stakeholders from throughout the watershed, including utilities, water organizations, associations, and other folks who have a vested interest in the lake about the challenges they are facing. Then we took those challenges to our technical advisory committee, which is a group made up of researchers with backgrounds in fields like ecology, limnology, and water resources management and other people who have worked on projects in the watershed in the past. Now, we’re translating the stakeholder needs we identified into concrete projects. The 5-year plan will be funded through crowdsourcing and grants. Researchers outside The Water Tower staff will conduct the applied research.

Municipal Water Leader: You also referred to your plans to do workforce development. Does that refer to training people for careers in water resources?

Kristan VandenHeuvel: Yes. Especially in light of the current coronavirus situation, one thing we constantly highlight is that water and wastewater operators and workers are part of the essential workforce. It’s really important, especially considering the number of people in the industry who are nearing the point of qualifying for retirement, that we bring in young folks, get them excited about the industry through internships and apprenticeships, and eventually get them established as licensed operators.

We have a blended learning model that combines three different types of learning. The first is in-field training. We are building a field training center on The Water Tower campus where trainees can go and move dirt with heavy equipment, take apart a pump and put it back together, and see how things work through hands-on experience. The second type of learning is standard lecture-style classroom training. The third type is online courses. We’re working with a local association called the Georgia Association of Water Professionals (GAWP) to help young people access state-approved operator certification courses so that they can get certified, start working, and advance their careers.

Municipal Water Leader: Would you tell us about some of the community engagement activities you have planned?

Kristan VandenHeuvel: Our outreach involves fun, waterrelated engagement opportunities that encourage people to start talking and learning about water. Currently, we have a quarterly Women, Water, and Wine networking event that brings women in the water industry together to expand their networks and to talk about professional development and how to advance their careers. We have also launched October 2020 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER

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ADVERTISEMENT a virtual water-related book club that meets online every other month. Beyond just reading books as a group, we have invited the authors to join us for conversation and questions, which has been quite interesting.

We’re also developing a traveling water bar—essentially a repurposed food truck—that will be taken to local festivals and events. The truck will provide drinking water and serve as a handwashing station. As people come to wash their hands or get a drink of water, they will also get a quick bit of education from the volunteers operating the truck.

Another thing we are working on is a youth environmental summit for high-school-age students, which will be held on the campus once we can gather again in person. This initiative will allow students to talk about the value of water; participate in activities and challenges; and hear from engineers, operators, and others in the water field.

In addition, we’ve developed a suite of educational videos for public schools in Gwinnett County. We provided them online during the initial coronavirus school break in March–April 2020 while students were all at home.

Our videos featured conversations of around 8 minutes with water professionals from across the country in which they discussed how they had become involved in the water industry and shared their advice for students. The underlying focus, of course, was on trying to get students excited about careers in water.

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about your technology innovation pillar.

Kristan VandenHeuvel: As a part of our technology innovation pillar, we offer water technology companies workspace, mentors, a network they can bounce ideas off, and employment opportunities for those technologies. For example, a vendor can approach us with a particular technology, expressing the desire to demonstrate it to the industry and to gain recognition for it. The technology can be hooked up to our real flow system in order to be analyzed by panel experts to confirm that it matches the expectations hypothesized by the manufacturer. Thereafter, it may receive a certification from The Water Tower. The beauty of this approach is that manufacturers can get real-time feedback as well as instant exposure for their technologies. They can also connect with the researchers on the campus and the utility staff who are taking part in the workforce development program.

Municipal Water Leader: Are you planning to set up partnerships with municipalities, universities, and other entities?

30 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | October 2020

Municipal Water Leader: How will The Water Tower benefit the area economically?

Kristan VandenHeuvel: While the construction of the campus is really in its beginning phases, much of the operational programming is already well underway. Once the physical campus is completed in early 2022, our headquarters building and the different businesses on the campus will provide employment opportunities. We’ll work with utilities in the area to place employees in our workforce development program. The specific number is hard to nail down at this point, but we’ll have a staff on the campus guiding people through internships and apprenticeships with the water-related businesses we’ll have on campus to advance their careers.

Municipal Water Leader: Were you inspired by any other existing water resources hubs in the United States?

Kristan VandenHeuvel: There are some awesome examples of innovation centers and water clusters in the United States and around the world. We have been speaking with them and coordinating with some of them. Our goal has been to learn from and build off those interactions, but we always planned to approach the concept a little differently. Most other innovation centers are focused solely on economic development, but we wanted to come at the topic holistically.

Municipal Water Leader: What is your vision for the future of The Water Tower?

Kristan VandenHeuvel: We started locally, but we’re already expanding beyond the borders of the county and the state into the Southeast as a whole. Our vision is to continue to expand so that we can provide the benefits of our campus to researchers and utilities nationwide and eventually even internationally.

Our mission is to help small- and medium-size utilities become more progressive, and we want to reach as many people and organizations as we can. We’re hoping to be a one-stop shop for all things related to innovation, workforce development, applied research, community engagement, and technology. I think we are off to a great start. M

Kristan VandenHeuvel is the strategic director of research and engagement at The Water Tower. She can be contacted at kristan@theh2otower.org.

municipalwaterleader.com

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE WATER TOWER.

Kristan VandenHeuvel: Yes. Our founding partners are Gresham Smith; the Gwinnett County Department of Water Resources; Siemens; Mueller; and JEA, a utility company in Jacksonville, Florida. Having JEA as a partner already brings us beyond Georgia into the broader Southeast. We have innovation partners as well, such as

Georgia State University, Tetra Tech, and GAWP. As we establish new partnerships, we are expanding our reach beyond Gwinnett County. Our campus itself is located between I-985 and I-85, which makes it easy to visit.

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Wastewater Testing as a COVID‑19 Early Warning System Municipal Water Leader about how this method of testing works and its advantages.

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be at your current position at WRF. Peter Grevatt: Prior to joining WRF as CEO, I had a 30‑year career with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). I served in a variety of roles at the EPA, and during my last 6 years there, I was the director of the National Drinking Water Program. In that position, I had a lot of experience working with municipal water leaders of all types as a regulator.

In terms of my academic background, I have a doctorate in environmental health from the basic medical sciences program at New York University Medical Center. That gives me a grounding in the public-health aspects of the services that the water sector provides. Protecting public health and the environment is fundamentally what water utilities are there to do.

Municipal Water Leader: Would you introduce WRF?

Trussell Technologies staff conducting wastewater sampling as part of a WRF research project.

can provide an invaluable early warning of an outbreak to public health officials.

One institution that is helping to advance research into this method of detection is The Water Research Foundation (WRF). In addition to funding research itself, it has helped to facilitate information interchange among the many global utilities and research groups that are implementing and improving this method of testing. In this interview, WRF CEO Peter Grevatt tells

34 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | October 2020

municipalwaterleader.com

PHOTO COURTESY OF TRUSSELL TECHNOLOGIES, INC.

T

oday, everyone knows that individuals can be tested for current COVID‑19 infections or for the presence of antibodies that suggest a past infection. What fewer people may realize is that wastewater can be tested for residual genetic material that signals that SARSCoV-2, commonly known as the coronavirus that causes COVID‑19, is present within a community. This broad snapshot of coronavirus presence within a community

Peter Grevatt: WRF is the world’s leading research collaborative supporting the water sector. We do research on a broad range of topics, focused on helping the water sector to do its work to protect public health and the environment most efficiently and effectively.

Most of our research is funded by our subscribers. We work with our subscribers to identify their most important research priorities, oversee the carrying out of that research, and provide the results back to our subscribers. We have over 1,200 subscribers across six continents, more than 1,000 of which are water utilities, some of them public and

ADVERTISEMENT municipal, others private and investor owned. We also have subscribers that work in environmental consulting and manufacturing.

We also receive some support from state governments, the federal government, and private grant-making foundations. For example, we have received two grants from the State of California to support its work on direct potable reuse as well as grants from the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the EPA. We have also received grants from private foundations, such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Municipal Water Leader: WRF has recently supported research into testing wastewater for traces of the coronavirus that causes COVID‑19. Would you describe this method of detection and when it was discovered that it might be appropriate for the coronavirus?

Peter Grevatt: Wastewater can tell an important story about the health of a community. To start at the beginning, every living organism has a blueprint—a set of instructions that dictate how the various proteins and other compounds that make it up are to be constructed. In humans, that is DNA. For the coronavirus, that genetic material is RNA. The genetic material is present in every individual virus, and it often remains long after the virus is no longer capable of infecting a host and causing disease. That means that even noninfectious viral particles—dead viruses, so to speak— may still contain this RNA genetic blueprint. There are highly sensitive techniques that can detect small amounts of this RNA even in a complex matrix like wastewater, which contains many different compounds. These techniques can establish that the coronavirus was present in the community from which the wastewater has been collected. That’s the basic idea of environmental surveillance: Looking not for live virus, but for the genetic material that proves that the virus was present in a community.

This has all been unfolding at an incredibly rapid pace. None of us even knew about COVID‑19 until the beginning of this year, but we already have some sensitive methods to detect the presence of the coronavirus by doing wastewater surveillance. Because there’s a long history of using these sorts of tools to detect other pathogenic organisms—poliovirus is one of the best examples—a number of research groups across the globe quickly decided to try to tailor these tools to detect SARS‑CoV‑2 as well.

Municipal Water Leader: The genetic material you’re talking about no longer poses a health threat or health risk, correct?

Peter Grevatt: That’s right. Only a live virus can infect a host and cause disease. However, even after the viral particles break apart, at which point the viruses are no longer viable, the genetic material can remain present in wastewater. While the genetic material has been identified municipalwaterleader.com

in wastewater in many different communities, I’m not currently aware of any community where live virus has been identified in wastewater. That is an important distinction.

We’re not talking about a material that presents a health risk; we’re just talking about material that can serve as a signal of the presence of COVID‑19 in a community.

Municipal Water Leader: What are some of the different testing methods that are used to detect the presence of that material?

Peter Grevatt: Most of them use an analytical technique called polymerase chain reaction, which can identify small amounts of genetic material in the wastewater. It’s almost like a microscopic photocopying machine: There may be only a small number of copies of the genetic material from the coronavirus present in the wastewater, but the polymerase chain reaction replicates them again and again until you can begin to detect them. It amplifies the signal and allows you to see it. That’s the core technique that’s being used, and there are a variety of approaches to applying it. One of the important research projects that WRF currently has underway is comparing those various methods to determine which are most reproducible and provide the most reliable results.

Municipal Water Leader: What are some of the advantages of testing wastewater for the presence of the coronavirus, as opposed to other testing methods, like testing individual people?

Peter Grevatt: One of the biggest advantages of testing wastewater is that it’s cost effective. That is because it is so sensitive. A number of research groups have demonstrated that this tool can detect the presence of as few as 1–3 cases in a population of 100,000. If you are working with a community that has either not yet had a high level of cases or has overcome its first wave, this tool can serve as an early warning system. A number of groups have found that they were able to see a change in the trend line of COVID‑19 cases through wastewater surveillance nearly a week before clinical cases were identified in the community.

This has been demonstrated both in Europe and in the United States and both in large cities and small towns. It is both an efficient and an effective tool and supplements the other tools that are available for tracking COVID‑19 trends.

Wastewater surveillance is certainly not a substitute for clinical testing, which remains tremendously important in terms of addressing COVID‑19, but it is a great way to supplement the information provided by clinical testing.

Because wastewater surveillance looks for the presence of COVID‑19 across the entire community that is served by a wastewater treatment plant, it is not biased in terms of the demographic background of the individuals being tested— race, economic background, employment status, national background, etc. It captures information from everyone.

That broad snapshot is tremendously valuable.

October 2020 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER

| 35

ADVERTISEMENT Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about WRF’s recent symposium, the International Water Research Summit on Environmental Surveillance of COVID-19 Indicators in Sewersheds.

Peter Grevatt: WRF is a global organization that operates on six continents, and in early spring of this year, we saw that many different research groups and utilities across the globe were simultaneously embarking on projects to see if they could use the environmental surveillance of wastewater as a way to track trends of COVID‑19 in communities.

We thought we could surely accelerate progress if we brought all these groups together to share information about the approaches they were using, and that it would also help identify areas where there were significant gaps in understanding that could be filled through near-term research. That’s exactly what we did. We brought together groups from over 10 countries. We found that the research groups and utility participants were incredibly generous in their willingness to share their information openly. We asked them to identify what they currently understood as the best practices for environmental surveillance for COVID‑19 in wastewater. We also asked them to identify near-term research priorities. We took that information and published a summary of recommended best practices and the near-term research priorities that we have used to guide our own efforts to accelerate the progress of this work. It was tremendously successful, in large part because we had the right people there and because people are so generous in sharing their information.

Municipal Water Leader: Would you tell us about the findings of the research and the new avenues for research that you’ve identified?

36 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | October 2020

Peter Grevatt is the CEO of the Water Research Foundation. He can be contacted at pgrevatt@waterrf.org.

PHOTO COURTESY OF WRF.

Peter Grevatt: First, we heard that several groups have now demonstrated the viability of these tools for detecting SARS‑CoV‑2. That was important. Secondly, our participants talked about what they referred to as potential use cases for this information. For example, one use case is to use the information to track trends of COVID‑19 infections in the community. Another potential use case would be using this information to estimate the number of cases in the community. There are other potential use cases, like using this information to better understand the genetic variants of the virus present in individual communities. Some people have been working to understand whether the virus in Europe is different from the virus in Asia or the United States, and if so, how it affects the infectivity of the virus or the health outcomes of people who become infected.

The participants agreed that the most immediately relevant use case is the tracking of trends. As I mentioned, wastewater monitoring has been able to successfully detect the arrival of SARS‑CoV‑2 in communities nearly a week before the first

clinical cases were identified. For example, Erica Gaddis, who is on the advisory committee for one of our research projects, has been overseeing an effort in Utah to track the presence of the coronavirus in a number of different communities in the state. In Cache County, she was able to see the signal appear almost a week before the first cases were found. Ultimately, two meatpacking facilities in Cache County experienced outbreaks, with hundreds of cases. It’s a powerful tool because it alerts public health officials that something is going on in a community and allows them to focus on it. It may help them target the application of clinical testing.

As for near-term research priorities, our participants said that we’ve got to get our arms around the variety of methods being used and make sure we understand which ones are most replicable and reliable in terms of the results they generate. They also said it was important for us to get a better understanding of how the genetic signal changes over time as it passes through the wastewater collection and treatment system. One potential application of this work is to begin testing specific areas of the community rather than just collecting wastewater samples at a central treatment plant.

For example, you might want to understand the contribution of cases from a hospital, university, prison, or meatpacking facility to the overall signal detected at the wastewater treatment plant. You can target those areas for the collection of samples. However, in order to take that kind of approach, you really need to understand how the genetic material changes as it travels through the system—how much of it is breaking down or being bound up with other materials as it travels through the sewer system. We have another research project focused on that question, which is looking at how to develop appropriate sampling plans.

A third area of research that our participants identified relates to the preservation of the samples that are collected.

Many communities are now collecting and archiving samples, recognizing that they may want to go back and analyze those samples in the future. With that in mind, we would like to know more about the effects on the genetic signal of freezing and thawing a sample. How long can a sample be preserved in a refrigerator or a freezer without a significant change in the signal strength?

We’re currently pursuing research in all three of those areas that were identified during the summit. Not only has WRF been interested in this, but the NSF and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation are partnering in our efforts as well. M

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