Municipal Water Leader September 2020

Volume 7 Issue 8

September 2020

Chance Lauderdale: How HDR Helps Its Clients Address Pharmaceutical Contamination

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Chance Lauderdale: How HDR Helps Its Clients Address Pharmaceutical Contamination

Contents

September 2020 Volume 7, Issue 8 5 E liminating Pharmaceutical Contamination

By Kris Polly

20 E astern Municipal Water District’s Sewer Smart Program

6 Chance

Lauderdale: How HDR Helps Its Clients Address Pharmaceutical Contamination

24 H ow Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, Is Revamping Its Wastewater Transport Infrastructure

12 How

Southern Nevada Water Authority Researches, Detects, and Removes Pharmaceutical Contamination 16 O range County Water District: Protecting Groundwater From Pharmaceutical Contamination

30 L arge-Diameter Pipe Projects in Hidalgo County, Texas 34 I nfrastructure Updates at the Lower Neches Valley Authority

Municipal Water Leader is published 10 times a year with combined issues for May/June and November/December by

an American company established in 2009.

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 SUBMISSIONS: Municipal Water Leader welcomes manuscript, photography, and art submissions. However, 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 irrigation district managers and boards of directors in the 17 western states, Bureau of Reclamation officials, 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

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 | September 2020

MuniWaterLeader

COVER PHOTO:

Chance Lauderdale, Drinking Water Market Sector Director, HDR. Photo courtesy of HDR.

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PHOTO COURTESY OF HDR.

Coming soon in Municipal Water Leader: October: Hayes, Kansas

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Eliminating Pharmaceutical Contamination

By Kris Polly

T

he ubiquity of pharmaceuticals poses the danger that, whether through improper disposal or through human waste, they will make their way into wastewater and then into the environment or recycled water supplies. Luckily, our scientists and water suppliers are well aware of this potential problem and are monitoring, testing, and treating their water supplies to eliminate pharmaceutical contamination.

In our cover story, Dr. Chance Lauderdale tells us about HDR’s research and work into water purity issues.

Dr. David Rexing gives us a glimpse into Southern Nevada Water Authority’s robust compliance and research laboratories.

Jason Dadakis of California’s Orange County Water District tells us about how his district ensures that its Groundwater Replenishment System prevents pharmaceuticals and other constituents from entering the groundwater it manages. And Alfred Javier and Roxanne Rountree tell us about Eastern Municipal Water District’s Sewer Smart Program, which helps prevent pharmaceutical contamination on the user end through public education.

We also feature three stories of pipeline construction.

Ethan Edwards and Timothy Robins of the City of Broken

Arrow, Oklahoma, bring us up to speed on a major sewer trunk line replacement. We also speak with Frank Ferris of the Texas consulting engineering firm Ferris, Flinn & Medina about the company’s work on water conservation projects, including the installation of a major pipeline.

Finally, we interview Ryan Ard of the Lower Neches Valley Authority about a logistically challenging infrastructure project at a location where a drainage ditch, a canal, and a private farm access road all converge at the same point.

As this issue demonstrates, municipal water and wastewater service providers are staying on the cutting edge—whether by updating their infrastructure or by remaining aware of the risks posed by pharmaceuticals and other constituents of emerging concern. 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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Chance Lauderdale: How HDR Helps Its Clients Address Pharmaceutical Contamination

C

hance Lauderdale, PhD, PE, is an expert in the field of water treatment specializing in biofiltration who today leads engineering firm HDR’s global drinking water program. Dr. Lauderdale’s reference publications and novel biofilter enhancement and monitoring strategies are used by utilities throughout the United States. In this interview, Dr. Lauderdale tells Municipal Water Leader about HDR’s global drinking water program—one of the largest in the world—and the services it provides to help its clients mitigate problems like pharmaceutical contamination in water reuse projects and successfully communicate their achievements to their customers.

6 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | September 2020

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PHOTO COURTESY OF HDR.

goal was to inform the potential development of a biology-based drinking water treatment approach. At the time, most water industry professionals considered biological treatment to be a wastewater-exclusive topic.

However, biological filtration, or biofiltration, had quietly emerged as a practice for many water utilities.

Biofiltration is an operational strategy in which a conventional drinking water filter is operated without a disinfectant residual, allowing the bacteria that naturally appear in the source water to grow on filter media and provide additional treatment. At the time, little was known about the bacterial communities present in drinking water biofilters or how they could be optimized.

My research sought to help open that black box and identify bacteria capable of degrading the problematic compounds produced by blue-green algae, or cyanobacteria.

Recently, we’ve seen news reports on how some cyanobacterial species can release toxins in our lakes and reservoirs. However, a much more common consequence of cyanobacteria bloom Chance Lauderdale inspects filters at the John F. Kubala Water Treatment Plant in Arlington, Texas. events is their effects on the aesthetics of our Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about your background. drinking water. These organisms can produce compounds, like 2‑methylisoborneol and geosmin, that can change the Chance Lauderdale: I’m originally from Florida. I grew up way our water smells and tastes. My research partnered wandering our (and our neighbors’) properties on daily outdoor me with a Florida drinking water utility seeking a costadventures, curious about the animals and environments I found. effective solution to manage this issue. In the end, we Like others in my generation, I was also influenced by Dr. Seuss’s identified a naturally occurring bacteria in its drinking The Lorax, so it seemed natural to be drawn to a related field water reservoir that could sustainably remove these taste when I enrolled at the University of Florida. I chose a major and odor compounds, with the ultimate aim of using these in environmental engineering, without really knowing what I findings to develop a long-term treatment strategy. wanted to specialize in. All uncertainties vanished during my first After the study was complete, part of me did want to course in water treatment. I knew I was home and that I needed continue with my PhD. However, I was ready for a new more. I took the opportunity to dual enroll in a master’s degree adventure and chose to accept an entry-level engineering program as I wrapped up my bachelor’s obligations. position with a firm in Orange County, California.

My master’s research project focused on the potential for biological remediation of select contaminants Municipal Water Leader: Are these taste and odor commonly found in surface water supplies. The ultimate compounds harmful to humans?

ADVERTISEMENT Chance Lauderdale: These compounds can impart a musty, earthy odor to our drinking water, making it unpalatable.

Aside from that, they are not directly regulated, nor do they present any known health risks. The biggest concern relates to potential negative effects on public perception and utility branding. We are extremely sensitive to these compounds and can smell and taste them at trace concentrations of around 10 parts per trillion (10 nanograms per liter). Conventional treatment is ineffective at removing these compounds to sufficiently low levels. For many years, the best available technology was activated carbon adsorption. Activated carbon, in either powdered or granular forms, is an effective yet expensive treatment process that in some applications generates large waste streams and greenhouse gas emissions.

The concept behind drinking water biological treatment is to leverage Mother Nature and the inherent efficiencies of our environmental systems. In many natural cycles, the byproducts of some organisms are consumed and degraded by others. Therefore, treatment technologies that foster the growth of microbial communities capable of degrading and removing contaminants are often more efficient and less expensive than traditional treatment technologies that require high energy and chemical inputs.

One of my first and most significant professional mentors, Jess Brown, had a similar passion for this topic.

Though we worked in different states, Jess graciously brought me into his projects and initiatives. This arrangement lasted just over a year before I moved to join him in Sarasota, Florida. This allowed us to expand our collaboration and, over the next 5 years, to develop a drinking water biological treatment practice. Meanwhile, I’d never lost the desire to pursue a doctorate, and eventually the right opportunity presented itself. In 2007, the City of Arlington, Texas, decided to optimize its biofiltration process to further reduce the trace levels of pharmaceuticals that had previously been identified in its source waters. I secured funding from the Water Research Foundation to lead an investigation that simultaneously met an important client need and established the research plan for my PhD at the University of Florida. I cannot overstate the positive effects that this project has had on my career and the gratitude I have for all those who helped me along the way.

Municipal Water Leader: How did you come to be in your current position at HDR? Chance Lauderdale: I relocated to Texas during the execution of the Water Research Foundation project and my PhD research. There, I was able to expand my previous firm’s biofiltration practice and develop an incredible network across the industry. Shortly before my 10th anniversary at the firm, a close friend reached out to me about a great opportunity to serve as HDR’s global water treatment business class director in Denver, Colorado. I took that leap in August 2013. My new role focused on managing the water treatment technical municipalwaterleader.com

service line and required me to provide expertise to strategic projects, evaluate technical growth opportunities, look at quality control markers, and support our technical brand through conferences and publications.

About a year in, as I was finding my feet, HDR presented me with the opportunity of a lifetime: to lead the company’s drinking water program as the drinking water market sector director. This position presented a shift from technical service delivery toward guiding the growth of our program as a whole. The market sector director and their team are charged with ensuring that HDR maintains the capabilities required to meet the needs of our drinking water utility clients. This includes growing the depth and diversity of our services, developing staff, promoting quality, and fostering innovation.

It’s important to underscore that while I work to support and champion these efforts, the success of the program is built on the close collaboration of hundreds of staff members.

Municipal Water Leader: Would you tell us about HDR’s global drinking water program and the activities and programs that fall under that umbrella?

Chance Lauderdale: It is one of the largest drinking water programs in the world and was ranked as one of the top 5 such programs in the last Engineering News Record compilation. HDR has operations or projects in every state in the United States, and we have approximately 225 offices worldwide. We are a full-service program that draws resources from across our company to provide the right expertise for our clients’ needs. While our company has divisions reflecting our core businesses, we work hard to prevent ourselves from operating in silos. Many of our water professionals regularly engage in work across industries, allowing them to provide support where they are needed most. Our work includes the planning, engineering, design, and construction management of pipelines, reservoirs, pump stations and treatment facilities.

However, we also provide program management, rate studies, condition assessments, asset management, strategic communications and public outreach support, operations, research and development, and many other services.

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about the subject of pharmaceutical contamination of water, the dangers or problems it poses, and its relevance to water reuse.

Chance Lauderdale: Pharmaceuticals in drinking water has been an issue as long as there have been faucets and people who have been prescribed medications, but awareness among water professionals and the public was greatly elevated after the 2008 publication of an Associated Press story that drew on the source water characterization work of major drinking water utilities across the United States.

The article stated that pharmaceuticals were present in water supplies just about everywhere, at least among the utilities whose studies they had reviewed. The secondary September 2020 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER

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ADVERTISEMENT point, which received less attention, was that while these compounds are present, their concentration levels were extremely low—in the parts-per-trillion or even parts-perquadrillion ranges. Nevertheless, that story left the public with lingering questions about something potentially harmful in their water supplies. The reality is that we know through practice that no major epidemiological consequence has been attached to these compounds at their commonly observed environmental concentrations.

A research group from Nevada led by Dr. Shane Snyder made significant contributions to the foundational work characterizing pharmaceuticals across the environment.

Dr. Snyder appeared before the U.S. Congress several times to discuss the prevalence of these compounds and the potential risks they pose to the public. A consistent message

information often rushed to release it to the public without providing any context, which often led to uninformed reactions. Today, utilities are more likely to engage in public campaigns that include educating customers on the issue, sharing information about the actions the utility has taken to ensure continued drinking water safety, and providing recommendations on what customers can do themselves to be good stewards of their watersheds, such as medication disposal protocols.

Municipal Water Leader: How is HDR approaching this issue?

8 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | September 2020

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PHOTOS COURTESY OF HDR.

Chance Lauderdale: Many industry associations have invested heavily over the past few decades in helping inform the industry about pharmaceutical contaminants and helping set reasonable targets for removing these compounds from drinking water sources. HDR and our staff have led or participated in many of these studies, collaborating with others across the industry.

In addition, we also partner with our individual clients to develop tailored strategies based on their system and customer needs. Much of our current work involves assessing what pharmaceuticals are present in a given water source and at what concentrations. The results of these assessments then inform subsequent mitigation actions if they are needed.

One important consideration RO treatment trains at the West Basin Municipal Water District’s Edward C. Little Water Reclamation Facility. for these survey studies relates to across his testimonies was that while technology has evolved the constraints on analysis. Pharmaceuticals are most often to detect things at ever-lower concentrations, just because measured directly; this may involve running analyses for we detect a contaminant doesn’t mean it’s harmful. hundreds of unique compounds. The cost is often prohibitive Based on this discussion, the U.S. Environmental for large sample sets, and the suite of tested contaminants is Protection Agency added a suite of these compounds to its never comprehensive, as thousands of unknown chemicals Contaminant Candidate List 3, which includes compounds may be present. Today, this challenge is best addressed not subject to regulation that are known to occur in public through the careful optimization of pharmaceutical water systems and that may require future regulation under monitoring plans. The key is to first understand what may be the Safe Drinking Water Act. A decade later, there is no present to inform the right sampling matrix. Then, we want active regulatory action being pursued on these compounds. to target samples at the right location and the right time to Nevertheless, utilities across the country are working to measure the presence and behavior of those pharmaceuticals minimize any potential risks associated with pharmaceuticals, in a watershed or sewer shed. because the issue does attract public attention.

Looking toward the future, the water industry has invested heavily to identify alternatives to the direct Municipal Water Leader: Is the public’s concern about this measurement of pharmaceuticals and other trace issue disproportionate to its importance? contaminants. The reliability with which bioassays and other surrogate testing methods can detect, characterize, Chance Lauderdale: Information is always valuable, but and assess the risk for these compounds is continuously I think we’ve learned about the importance of strategic improving. Widespread application is likely a few years out, communication with the public when it comes to issues like but those methods remain on the horizon and present a real this. In the past, a utility that became aware of this sort of opportunity to improve our overall analytical approach.

ADVERTISEMENT Municipal Water Leader: What technologies are most effective in detecting and mitigating pharmaceutical contamination?

Chance Lauderdale: The good news is that many available technologies can help manage drinking water pharmaceutical contamination. Treatment technologies that can mitigate pharmaceuticals as part of a water treatment process most often fall into one the following categories: membrane separation (e.g., nanofiltration, reverse osmosis), activated carbon adsorption, advanced oxidation (e.g., ozone, ultraviolet-peroxide), and biofiltration. Technology selection is often driven by treatment objectives, capital cost, operational cost, residuals management requirements, and available space.

Other strategies that can mitigate pharmaceutical occurrence in drinking water supplies include engineered natural systems, such as wetland mitigation or soil aquifer management. These systems can provide polishing treatment to wastewater effluent before it is blended with a freshwater supply. Hydraulic and water quality modelers are adept at characterizing the fate and transport of these compounds through the environment and can provide recommendations to improve natural remediation and removal.

filtration and advanced oxidation are just two of the multiple treatment technologies employed at this facility to remove pharmaceuticals and other potential contaminants.

We have a similar project in the eastern United States involving a utility trying to simultaneously manage groundwater resiliency and nutrient management from its wastewater treatment effluent. One alternative under consideration is the use of highly purified wastewater for managed aquifer recharge. There are many watersheds in the United States today in which nutrient criteria are set so low that by the time effective treatment is completed, you’ve got some pretty high-quality water. With some additional treatment, you can potentially make beneficial use of it, and in some cases even use it to augment existing drinking water supplies. Strategies like these can provide multiple benefits across our hydrologic cycle. As such, these programs are often referred to as employing a onewater approach. Utilities seeking these holistic solutions understand that increasing the connectivity between their water systems carries inherent real and perceived risks.

Managing trace organic compounds, like pharmaceuticals, will always be a priority, because it minimizes the unnecessary contamination of our water resources and helps maintain public safety and trust.

Municipal Water Leader: Would you tell us about some of your work with clients on this issue?

Municipal Water Leader: Would you tell us about HDR’s ongoing research on emerging technologies?

Chance Lauderdale: We’ve worked with utilities across the country to dig into the issue of pharmaceutical contamination. We’ve been a longtime partner of the LOTT Clean Water Alliance, a nonprofit wastewater management services corporation formed by Lacey, Olympia, Tumwater, and Thurston Counties in the state of Washington. We work with them to evaluate their reclaimed water system, which they use for irrigation and nondrinking water purposes. To help them understand the fate and transport of pharmaceuticals that may have originated in their wastewater supply, HDR helped them identify monitoring points across their groundwater system. It was a great project that demonstrated that their wastewater processing systems were doing an excellent job in eliminating many of these compounds, mostly through biological degradation.

Another example is the design and program management work HDR performed through multiple phases of the West Basin Municipal Water District’s Edward C. Little Water Reclamation Facility, which is located in Los Angeles County, California. This facility receives highly treated wastewater and further purifies it through one of its multiple treatment trains, which are tailored to meet customer-specific water quality objectives.

In addition, a portion of the finished water is injected into a groundwater aquifer to provide a seawater intrusion barrier and protect drinking water supplies. Membrane

Chance Lauderdale: HDR has a formalized applied research group called the One Water Institute (OWI).

OWI’s mission is to identify and validate holistic research solutions that maximize benefits across the water cycle.

Pervasive water contaminants, such as pharmaceutical compounds, which are commonly found in wastewater, storm water, or drinking water, align well with OWI’s objectives. Further, OWI not only participates in grantand client-funded research, it also sponsors a graduate scholarship within the American Water Works Association scholarship program each year.

One of our recent scholarship recipients that I’m really excited about is Haley White, who is a working toward her PhD at Georgia Tech. Haley’s innovative research looks at enhancing the material of reverse osmosis membranes so that they’re more selective for small, neutral molecules, like many pharmaceuticals. M

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Change Lauderdale is the drinking water market sector director for HDR. He can be contacted at chance.lauderdale@ hdrinc.com. For more about HDR’s water practice, visit hdrinc.com/water and follow it on social media at @HDRwater.

September 2020 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER

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How Southern Nevada Water Authority Researches, Detects, and Removes Pharmaceutical Contamination

The SNWA’s Compliance Laboratory conducts more than 300,000 analyses on water samples collected thought southern Nevada to ensure compliance with the SDWA.

David Rexing and SNWA’s postdoctoral researchers operate a highly specialized hybrid mass spectrometer used at the SNWA’s Water Quality Research and Development Laboratory.

T

he Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA), which provides wholesale water to more than 2 million people in southern Nevada, is highly proactive when it comes to water purity and safety. Beginning around 2000, it has done significant research into detecting and removing pharmaceutical contaminants and other contaminants of emerging concern from the water supplies it delivers. David Rexing, the SNWA’s water quality research and development manager, has worked for Las Vegas’s not-for-profit water agencies since 1975. In this interview, he tells Municipal Water Leader about the development of the agency’s compliance laboratory and its research activities today.

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

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David Rexing: When I started in 1975, the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) had just passed, and the SNWA had not yet been formed. At that time, I was employed by the LVVWD, which wanted to start a big compliance laboratory to take care of all the monitoring activities it required. I started from nothing and built a laboratory by myself. When the district and other local water and wastewater agencies formed the SNWA in 1991, the water quality compliance functions became part of the SNWA’s responsibilities. Today, approximately 40 individuals work in the SNWA lab, taking care of all the monitoring and analytical requirements of the SDWA. In 2000, the director of our plant decided that we needed to get a little more specialized in our research. I had always done some research in the compliance lab, but it took second place to compliance. I left the compliance group and started up yet another division, the Water Quality Research and Development Division, which today has about 25 individuals on staff. We solicit external funding and receive between half a million and a million dollars a year to do water quality research work. In addition to the work we do for external agencies who are trying to advance the field, we try to solve water quality problems within our own water treatment plant and distribution system. We are trying to optimize our internal process and stay ahead of the curve in terms of water quality. municipalwaterleader.com

PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE SNWA.

David Rexing: In my undergraduate studies, I majored in chemistry, but I was not sure what particular facet of chemistry I was interested in. Luckily, a professor came to me during my senior year and asked if I would like to do an internship at the local water treatment plant. He explained that a water treatment plant dealt with microbiology, hydraulics, and other scientific applications. I went to work at the local waterworks half time during my senior year, working 4 hours a day and taking classes 4 hours a day. I split the weekends with another intern. That was the springboard for me. I became so interested in the field that I pursued graduate studies in hydrology and water resources, and after graduating, I was hired into my current position.

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about your positions at the SNWA and the Las Vegas Valley Water District (LVVWD).

ADVERTISEMENT Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about the SNWA and its services.

David Rexing: The SNWA is a regional wholesale water provider that manages our community’s water resources on a regional basis. We are responsible for the management of southern Nevada’s water supply, the treatment and delivery of wholesale water, the coordination of conservation programs, and water quality compliance. The LVVWD serves as the managing agent for the SNWA. We remain committed to protecting water quality and expanding our knowledge and understanding of emerging water quality issues to remain ahead of the curve. From a water conservation standpoint, we have some of the most progressive and comprehensive programs in the nation. It’s these types of commitments that help us remain highly efficient and on the leading edge of the water industry.

Municipal Water Leader: When did the issue of pharmaceutical contamination in drinking water first come to the SNWA's attention?

David Rexing: Around 2000, environmental research in the field, particularly by a researcher named Shane Snyder, found that pharmaceuticals were affecting the life of fish in streams, particularly things like hormones from birth control pills.

We became interested in that, because even though we’re not in the ecological business, we treat our local wastewater to a tertiary level. That water flows by way of the Las Vegas Wash back into Lake Mead, which is the source of our drinking water supply. We became interested in whether those pharmaceuticals were affecting our drinking water supply.

We became involved in research, received funding from several different agencies, and developed in-house analytical protocols to analyze water for very low levels of those pharmaceuticals. We did some of the original research work that found ozone to be one of the most effective methods of removing these compounds from water. We currently use ozone in our two treatment plants. Since 2000, we have continued monitoring for a suite of pharmaceuticals in the Las Vegas Wash; Lake Mead; and, ultimately, in our finished drinking water product.

Municipal Water Leader: Are there any other treatments that your district uses to eliminate pharmaceutical contamination in addition to ozone?

David Rexing: No; that’s really the only technology we’re using.

Municipal Water Leader: Before you came to the conclusion that ozone was the most effective treatment, did you experiment with other treatments?

David Rexing: Yes; we tried half a dozen treatments. We looked at granular activated carbon; disinfectants like municipalwaterleader.com

chlorine dioxide, permanganate, and hydrogen peroxide; and membrane techniques. We did a research report evaluating and ranking 20 different technologies that could potentially be used to remove pharmaceutical compounds from water.

Ozone was one of the ones that did the best job.

Municipal Water Leader: Did you do that research in partnership with any other organizations or universities, or was it done mainly by your in-house staff?

David Rexing: It was a collaborative effort with half a dozen universities. All our research has always been collaborative.

The real key to strong research is to get a lot of partners involved, because no one partner has all the expertise.

You can do a lot more together than you can separately.

When we received the extra funding for research on pharmaceuticals, some of the money we received went out to subcontractors, such as universities and other laboratories, which carried out certain parts of the research.

An SNWA technician measuring water samples.

Municipal Water Leader: How does the district identify the suite of pharmaceuticals to test for?

David Rexing: You can’t analyze for thousands and thousands of different compounds, so we selected representative compounds from categories like hormones, pesticides, seizure medications, heart medications, and so forth. Then we researched which of these pharmaceuticals were being produced at the greatest poundage per year.

The greater the poundage, the higher the probability that the compounds were going to find their way into the environment. Based on this information, we identified a suite of 20–25 pharmaceuticals that we analyze for routinely.

Municipal Water Leader: What are some of the most common pharmaceuticals in drinking water today, and what dangers can they pose?

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ADVERTISEMENT David Rexing: Actually, there aren’t really many compounds in treated drinking water, although you can probably find these compounds in the raw water supply before it is treated.

Common pharmaceuticals that are found in raw and untreated water include things like birth control medications, hypertension medications, and heart medications.

Municipal Water Leader: In the drinking water that is delivered to customers’ houses, have those pharmaceutical compounds been eliminated or reduced to such a level that they don’t pose any danger?

David Rexing: Well, that certainly is true for our treatment facilities and water. I can’t speak for the entire country, because there aren’t any current regulations on this matter.

There is still a lot of ongoing research about the levels at which these pharmaceutical compounds would be dangerous; that’s still uncharted territory. That being the case, I think the responsible thing to do is just to reduce those compounds to concentrations below the detection level under all circumstances.

Municipal Water Leader: Is ozone treatment widespread among water districts in general?

David Rexing: No, it is not. Ozone is a powerful disinfectant and oxidizer that has been used in the pharmaceutical industry and other industries for a long time, but it’s not heavily used in the drinking water industry. Most water treatment plants in the United States use chlorine as their primary disinfectant. Generally, chlorine can be trucked in or can be generated on site through a much simpler process than can ozone. Ozone is more expensive and is generally harder to generate on site. Our experience, however, has been that ozone is not only a highly efficient disinfectant for things like cryptosporidium and giardia, it’s also good at removing things like pharmaceuticals and eliminating tastes, odors, and color from water. Considering all those capabilities, we believe that ozone is viable and cost effective despite the fact that it is more expensive than common disinfectants like chlorine.

Municipal Water Leader: How has the science of detection and treatment changed in recent decades?

Municipal Water Leader: What advice do you have for other water districts or water suppliers that do not have existing detection and treatment programs for pharmaceutical contamination?

14 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | September 2020

Municipal Water Leader: What else is the SNWA working on?

David Rexing: Over the last few years, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has gotten concerned about algal toxins—toxins that certain algae produce through their metabolic life processes. In fact, the EPA now has regulatory limits on a couple algal toxins.

We are doing some research on that group of compounds and are developing techniques to detect them in low concentrations and remove them from water. We are doing a lot of the same things today in the algal toxins area that we were doing in the pharmaceutical research area 20 years ago. Perfluorinated alkylated substances, known as PFAS, are also a big concern today. PFAS compounds, which are used to manufacture things like Teflon, are finding their way into water supplies, lakes, and rivers. They are inert and not easy to destroy, but we’re doing research into detecting and removing them.

Municipal Water Leader: What is your vision for the future of the SNWA’s water treatment and science programs?

David Rexing: The compliance laboratory now has about 40 individuals, and its research and development group has about 25 individuals. I see the groups continuing to do what they’re doing in a progressive and proactive way; continuing to solicit external funding; and maintaining the SNWA’s leadership role in the water, wastewater, and environmental fields. M

David Rexing is the water quality research and development manager at the Southern Nevada Water Authority.

He can be contacted at david.rexing@lvvwd.com.

municipalwaterleader.com

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE SNWA.

David Rexing: When I started working at a treatment facility in 1976, we were looking at constituents at the milligramsper-liter level. Now, when we’re testing for pharmaceuticals, we’re looking at nanograms-per-liter levels. Our technology and instrumentation have allowed a millionfold increase in our ability to detect these contaminants.

David Rexing: My advice to them is to have their water tested by a consulting laboratory or university. If you find high concentrations of these things, attempt to do something to remove them. Ozone is not the only method. As I mentioned earlier, granular activated carbon is another treatment method.

A lot of utilities used granular activated carbon for taste and odor control long before the issue of pharmaceutical contamination came to light, so a lot of treatment plants have those capabilities and could use them to remove pharmaceuticals. The other thing I would advise small utilities to do is to partner with an organization like the Water Research Foundation (WRF). The WRF collects membership dues from medium- to large-sized utilities and does research that can be valuable to all utilities. A small utility without funding can still take advantage of that research and implement the technologies that the WRF recommends.

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Orange County Water District: Protecting Groundwater From Pharmaceutical Contamination

Jason Dadakis in front of a reverse osmosis treatment train.

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Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about your background and current position.

Jason Dadakis: I’m a hydrogeologist by training, and I have worked for OCWD for about 16 years. My current title here at OCWD is executive director of water quality and technical resources. I work with our analytical laboratory, water quality monitoring programs, regulatory compliance, and research and development.

Municipal Water Leader: Would you give us an overview of OCWD?

Jason Dadakis: OCWD is what’s known in California as an independent special district. It was created by the

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PHOTO COURTESY OF OCWD.

range County Water District (OCWD) is the groundwater basin manager for north and central Orange County, California, providing 77 percent of the water supply for the 2.5 million residents of the area. OCWD is a world leader in water recycling, and its Groundwater Replenishment System (GWRS) is the largest advanced water purification system for potable reuse in the world. OCWD’s focus on water reuse means that it has developed sophisticated protocols for ensuring that the water it provides is clean, safe, and free of any harmful contamination, including contamination by pharmaceuticals and other constituents of emerging concern (CECs). In this interview, Jason Dadakis, OCWD’s executive director of water quality technical resources, tells Municipal Water Leader about how the district monitors and treats its water to mitigate pharmaceutical contamination.

ADVERTISEMENT state legislature in the 1930s and charged with the role of managing the local groundwater basin. We are the groundwater basin manager for north and central Orange County. There are 2.5 million people in our service area, and the groundwater basin currently provides 77 percent of the water supply. Our major stakeholders are the 19 retail water agencies that have wells that pump from the basin and serve water to residential and industrial customers.

Municipal Water District: Please tell us about the district’s testing for pharmaceuticals and other CECs. When did you start getting involved in this?

Jason Dadakis: The district’s testing for pharmaceuticals and other CECs began in the mid-2000s for a couple of reasons. One was that the necessary analytical technology became available for utilities like ours, which operates a fairly sophisticated water quality laboratory. We now had the resources and expertise to operate the analytical systems required for testing pharmaceuticals that can occur in water at parts-per-trillion-level concentrations.

In terms of the drivers, we were getting ready to bring our large potable reuse project, the GWRS, online in 2008. Our permit to operate that facility from the State of California required us to test for some classes of pharmaceuticals, personal care products, and similar CECs, as there was a desire to ensure that its advanced treatment processes were effectively removing those types of constituents.

treatment (SAT) process. Our monitoring is pretty good at documenting the removals that occur as environmental waters migrate along the path to becoming part of the drinking water supply in the groundwater basin.

We also do testing as part of our GWRS recycled water project, which is separate from the surface water I discussed just a moment ago. In conventionally treated secondary wastewater effluent, you will typically detect some residual pharmaceuticals, personal care products, and artificial sweeteners, but we have found that the engineered treatment processes that form part of the GWRS, including the reverse osmosis (RO) process and our UV advanced oxidation process (AOP), are effective in removing them. Even after that, we have the additional barrier of the SAT process that occurs when we introduce this purified water into the groundwater basin.

Municipal Water District: Do you test the water as soon as it arrives at your treatment plants, or after treatment?

Jason Dadakis: It’s a broad class of pharmaceuticals, personal care products, and industrial contaminants for which there are not currently enforceable drinking water standards or effluent limits.

Jason Dadakis: We do both. We test the conventionally treated wastewater that is the input to our advanced treatment facility, and we compare the results to the results of testing after each of our major advanced treatment processes. That allows us to track the removal of these compounds. The State of California has developed a list of CECs that it requires projects like GWRS to monitor in their influent and product waters. A limited number of these compounds are associated with potential health concerns. The majority of the listed CECs serve as indicators of treatment performance. Their specific structures and physical or chemical properties allow them to represent a whole class of compounds, so testing for them helps assess how effective the treatment is at removing a wider range of compounds. Testing both what’s coming in and what’s going out of our treatment facilities allows us to assess treatment performance.

Municipal Water District: At what points in your water system are you detecting these compounds in your water supplies?

Municipal Water District: Has the focus on pharmaceutical compounds in drinking water been driven by state regulators and legislators, by the industry, or both?

Jason Dadakis: These compounds are most commonly detected in certain environmental waters, such as surface water, particularly if they are influenced by the discharge of conventionally treated municipal wastewater, which can definitely be a source of these types of compounds. In some cases, these environmental waters ultimately become part of the source water for drinking water supplies. That said, we have found that there is some attenuation of these compounds in environmental waters from natural ultraviolet (UV) light and treatment wetlands. We’ve also found that when these surface waters are used to replenish a groundwater basin, a further attenuation and removal of these compounds occurs through the soil-aquifer

Jason Dadakis: I would say both. OCWD was interested in assessing CECs in advance of formal regulations.

It definitely has been a topic of interest for California regulators. The State of California’s formal requirements for the testing and treatment of pharmaceuticals and other compounds is largely focused on recycled water because of the known occurrence of CECs in conventionally treated wastewater. For certain types of potable reuse in the state, there is a requirement to use RO and AOP to help control the potential chemical risk associated with those compounds. The state is also evaluating similar monitoring requirements for environmental discharges of wastewater, but I don’t believe there are consistent formal effluent

Municipal Water District: What is included within the category of CECs?

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ADVERTISEMENT limitations as of yet. On the drinking water side, there are to my knowledge no formal testing requirements or regulatory thresholds for pharmaceuticals in drinking water in California.

Municipal Water District: What are the risks associated with the human consumption of these compounds?

Jason Dadakis: Pharmaceuticals and certain food additives have to go through a U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval process or another similar approval process, so we have pretty good information about the doses and concentrations that are required to have an effect on people. Based on that available information, it is possible to develop drinking water guidelines that correspond to those dosing thresholds.

Even in conventionally treated wastewater, the concentrations that are typically observed are orders of magnitude below the level that would elicit a response.

There isn’t thought to be much risk of consumption at those levels because they’re so far below medicinal doses.

The concentrations observed in drinking water supply source waters are even lower, for the reasons described previously. That’s likely why in California there are currently no drinking water limits in place for specific pharmaceuticals.

Municipal Water District: How do you select the particular compounds to test for?

Jason Dadakis: Typically, the targets that are used in the analytical methods are based on a variety of factors, including public interest, occurrence, and efficacy as a treatment indicator. Sometimes the community wants to know about the presence, absence, or level of a particular constituent. Another factor is a given constituent’s value as an indicator. Some constituents are widely used and are almost certain to be found in conventionally treated wastewater or other environmental discharges, so you may want to use them as treatment indicators. Perhaps a given constituent has a relevant structure that can cover a larger class of compounds. Indicator compounds ideally occur in the influent or source water at reasonably high and consistent concentrations so that their removal during treatment can be effectively quantified.

Municipal Water District: What treatment methods does OCWD employ?

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Municipal Water District: Were those treatment methods developed for this particular issue, or were they used previously for other contaminants?

Jason Dadakis: RO, AOP, and SAT are each part of the California regulations that govern our project. Control of organics, specifically constituents of emerging concern and pharmaceuticals, is a goal of that overall multibarrier process. That is why that treatment train is required for the type of work we’re doing in California.

Municipal Water District: What should OCWD’s customers know about pharmaceutical contamination in drinking water?

Jason Dadakis: It is really not an issue for us because of the treatment and monitoring processes we have in place. We’re able to reliably test for these contaminants and ensure that they’re being removed through both natural and engineered treatment. The combination of treatment and verification from monitoring means that pharmaceutical contamination is not a significant issue for our customers. M

Jason Dadakis is the executive director of water quality technical resources at the Orange County Water District. He can be contacted at jdadakis@ocwd.com.

municipalwaterleader.com

PHOTO COURTESY OF OCWD.

Jason Dadakis: In our potable reuse project, which purifies water to reintroduce into our groundwater basin, our core treatment process for chemical contaminants is RO. RO is a robust process across a wide range of contaminants, including both pathogens and chemicals.

It removes contaminants based on their molecular size and charge. Most pharmaceutical molecules are simply too big to get through the RO membrane, so when we test afterward, we rarely, if ever, have any detectable pharmaceutical traces.

After that, we have our UV AOP, which includes the addition of hydrogen peroxide, which is an oxidant. Any small, neutral molecule that was able to get through the RO process is either oxidized through the AOP or destroyed by the UV light. It is an effective supplemental barrier.

Finally, the water is introduced to the groundwater basin via injection wells or surface-spreading recharge ponds. The SAT process occurs as the water infiltrates or migrates into the ground and provides us another opportunity for removal through absorption, volatilization, and/or biodegradation.

That series of barriers constitutes a robust overall process for removing pharmaceuticals.

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Quality|Reliability|Service A STATE WATER CONTRACTOR IN PALM SPRINGS, CA

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Eastern Municipal Water District’s Sewer Smart Program

Test tubes at EMWD’s water quality lab.

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astern Municipal Water District (EMWD) is a leading provider of water, recycled water, and wastewater services over a 555‑square-mile area surrounding its headquarters in Perris, California. Roxanne Rountree, EMWD’s senior public affairs program manager, and Alfred Javier, its director of environmental and regulatory compliance, are on the front lines of the company’s efforts to prevent pharmaceuticals from entering their region’s water supply. In this interview, they tell Municipal Water Leader about EMWD's Sewer Smart Program, a comprehensive public information campaign that combines media outreach, classroom instruction, and the provision of alternative disposal methods for pharmaceuticals and other waste products.

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

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Municipal Water: Please tell us about EMWD and its services.

Roxanne Rountree: EMWD was incorporated in 1950 to provide water, wastewater, and recycled water services. Today, municipalwaterleader.com

PHOTOS COURTESY OF EMWD.

Roxanne Rountree: I am the senior public affairs program manager at EMWD and work in the district’s public and governmental affairs office. I began at EMWD in 2007 as a public affairs officer. I have spent almost 20 years in the communications field and am a veteran of the United States Navy.

Al Javier: I am EMWD’s director of environmental and regulatory compliance and have been engaged in this line of work with EMWD for 31 years. I started out working in the laboratory, focusing on water quality testing, and then moved over to a senior position on the environmental side, eventually becoming a manager and then director. I am also an associate faculty member at Mount San Jacinto College, where I teach water quality courses.

ADVERTISEMENT we serve almost 1 million people over a 555‑square-mile service area. This includes eight cities and several unincorporated areas.

We also provide sewer services for some cities to which we do not provide water service. We have 246,000 sewer service customers and 153,000 water customers.

The company is headquartered in Perris, California, which is midway between Los Angeles and Palm Springs, and its service area encompasses southwestern Riverside County. It reaches to Temecula in the south, Moreno Valley in the north, Mead Valley in the west, and San Jacinto in the east.

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about EMWD’s Sewer Smart Program.

Roxanne Rountree: The Sewer Smart Program was an initiative that we developed internally and launched in 2017 to educate our customers about what should and should not be flushed and poured down drains. We came up with taglines that we felt would catch the attention of consumers, which were “Don’t Be a Pain in the Drain” and “Don’t Rush to Flush.” Our objective was to improve the public’s awareness of what wastewater systems were designed for and how using them inappropriately can impede their functionality and negatively affect the water supply for everyone. It is important that our customers understand that any time a faucet, washing machine, dishwasher, garbage disposal, shower, or toilet is used, the resulting waste flows through the sewer system, arrives at one of our four wastewater reclamation plants, and is used again as recycled water. Educating customers on the materials that can appropriately be flushed or drained through these systems helps protect their own infrastructure as well as EMWD’s pipes, pumps, facilities, and personnel. When our customers are sewer smart, it reduces our maintenance and treatment costs and helps us preserve a sustainable water supply.

Al Javier: Another major part of our initiative is informing the public about how pharmaceuticals can end up in our water supply and how to properly dispose them to avoid this result.

Municipal Water Leader: If medications are flushed down the toilet or poured down the drain, how might they enter the water supply?

Al Javier: EMWD collects wastewater and treats it before it is released or reused. We have a water system that uses recycled water. That means that the water that is being released can eventually leach into the groundwater system. We also have seasonal discharges into the local Santa Ana River.

These sorts of water transfers can contain pharmaceuticals if the water has not been adequately treated.

Municipal Water Leader: When did EMWD become aware that this was an issue that required attention? municipalwaterleader.com

Al Javier: EMWD’s primary goal has always been protecting public health and safety while delivering water, wastewater, and recycled water services. In the not-toodistant past, wastewater systems were somewhat widely viewed by the public as a general trash disposal. However, federal and state policymakers, as well as the industry itself, have paid more and more attention to what is being put into our sewer systems and what is emerging from them. For example, in 2008, we worked with the Santa Ana Water Project Authority to form a task force to look at constituents of emerging concern (CECs) in the area’s sewer systems. The group included wastewater treatment dischargers as well as our regional board. The task force carried out several studies that focused on CECs, microconstituents, trace organics, and pharmaceuticals.

The overall effort included a public education forum called Your SoCal Tap Water, which is a blog that EMWD and other member agencies contribute to with the objective of further informing the public about how these chemicals enter the sewer system and eventually affect water resources.

Municipal Water Leader: Would you describe the alternative disposal methods that are encouraged through the Sewer Safe Program?

Roxanne Rountree: We’ve partnered with the National Prescription Drug Take Back Day program, which establishes designated collection stations and times for people to drop off hazardous or otherwise undesirable items such as unused pharmaceuticals. EMWD also provides disposal pouches that are designed to deactivate medications, whether in pill, patch, or liquid form, so that they can then be disposed of along with regular household waste. We also provide our customers with access to information from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and similar state regulatory entities.

Municipal Water Leader: Is there any danger that disposing of pharmaceuticals via pouches that eventually end up in garbage dumps could still lead to leaching into groundwater?

Al Javier: In California today, and I suspect throughout the nation as well, municipal landfill sites are lined with multilayer systems to prevent exactly that and also have multilayer monitoring to watch for leaching. In all likelihood, leaching will not be an issue in any properly maintained solid waste landfill.

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about the educational element of the Sewer Smart Program.

Roxanne Rountree: Most people turn on their water and flush their toilets without questioning where the water comes from or where it goes thereafter. Only a small September 2020 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER

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ADVERTISEMENT percentage of the public has a full appreciation of all that goes into ensuring the provision of safe drinking water and the disposal of wastewater. The solution to that is education, and that’s really what the Sewer Smart Program is all about. The program includes social media posts, videos, community presentations, and more. We also host educational tours at our San Jacinto Regional Water Reclamation Facility, where we also have a freestanding schoolhouse where classes can participate in hands-on educational activities.

Al Javier: EMWD has an excellent education program.

We have done a lot through local schools, teaching students about the water cycle. We have found that this is particularly effective at the grade school level, because it helps children develop lifelong sustainable habits.

Municipal Water Leader: Is there any sense in which conservation practices make it more difficult to manage and treat pharmaceuticals in wastewater?

Al Javier: Conservation does lead to some water quality issues. A higher flush or drain flow dilutes wastewater, which contributes to the natural aspects of the treatment process. Less flow means a more highly concentrated wastewater flow—the phenomenon is known as organic loading. More highly concentrated wastewater takes more effort to treat. We typically do not add water to dilute it, but but instead use slightly more chemicals and energy in the treatment process.

Municipal Water Leader: Which other entities are working on this problem?

Al Javier: This isn’t new for water agencies. There are many different entities looking at these sorts of issues, including the Association of California Water Agencies, which has helped greatly to distribute information about the issue.

regulators and the regulated community, and all are committed to it.

Municipal Water Leader: What are the primary steps consumers should take to improve water quality and sewer health?

Al Javier: The only things that should enter water and wastewater infrastructure are water, water-soluble human waste, and traditional toilet paper. Anything else is going to be harmful to the infrastructure and eventually also to the water supply. Consumers need to remember to properly dispose of pharmaceuticals and hazardous waste, such as pesticides, herbicides, petroleum products, and other poisons. There are collection programs for all these things, and it is incumbent on the public to responsibly use those programs rather than disposing these materials in the sewer system.

Municipal Water Leader: What should all EMWD customers know about pharmaceuticals and the water supply?

Roxanne Rountree: It’s important for customers to realize that while it may have been common or even encouraged in the past to dispose of medications and vitamins via the sewer system, today we better understand the direct correlation between wastewater and fresh water sources and the negative consequences of disposing of pharmaceuticals in this manner. They need to know about alternative disposal methods.

Al Javier: Proper pharmaceutical disposal needs to become common knowledge. Customers need to understand that whatever goes down the drain will eventually be in the environment. That’s why the water cycle educational initiatives are so important and effective. The concepts are fairly easy to understand, but we want to encourage people to take the time to actually think about them. M

Municipal Water Leader: Has it been state regulators or the industry that have led the response to this issue?

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Roxanne Rountree is EMWD’s senior public affairs program manager.

Alfred Javier is EMWD’s director of environmental and regulatory compliance.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF EMWD.

Al Javier: EMWD and many other agencies in the industry have played an active and responsible role, but the state probably played the leading role. One of the first things that usually occurs when an issue like this emerges is that the appropriate state regulatory body develops the scientific methods to test and measure the problem. This evaluation has been done and continues today, as we all study the effects. I want to underscore that EMWD and its counterparts throughout the state have been engaged on this issue and are committed to doing something about it to ensure the health and safety of our customers for years to come. It truly is a joint effort between the

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How Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, Is Revamping Its Wastewater Transport Infrastructure and because I was familiar with the city, I jumped at the opportunity. I was fortunate enough to be selected for the role. It’s been an easy transition for me because I already knew a lot of the staff here, and while I’m a civil engineer and am responsible for a wide range of topics, my expertise lies in the water and wastewater areas.

Timothy Robins: My background is also in civil engineering.

I got my bachelor’s at Missouri University of Science and Technology and recently obtained a master’s degree in engineering management from the University of Arkansas.

My career is primarily based around construction and field services. My university studies focused on structural engineering, so I was a structural engineer designer for a while. I transitioned into field services while working with a company based in Missouri, where I did material testing and construction oversight for several years. That job involved running a team that covered the states of Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas. About 5 years ago, I transitioned to Oklahoma and took the opportunity to serve as Broken Arrow’s construction manager, and I love it. Our division handles all public construction contracts and oversees and inspects all the privately funded public infrastructure that gets donated by subdivisions and business development sectors throughout the city.

Construction on Broken Arrow’s new sewer pipeline.

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he City of Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, is a suburb of Tulsa with a population of about 115,000. Ethan Edwards, PE, is the city’s director of engineering and construction, and Timothy Robins, PE, is its construction division manager.

The two civil engineers work together to carry out the city’s many capital and infrastructure projects. One major current project is the replacement of an aging and deteriorating sewer trunk line with large-diameter PVC pipe. In this interview, Mr. Edwards and Mr. Robins tell Municipal Water Leader about the challenges of installing a major new pipeline in challenging geological terrain.

Ethan Edwards: I’m a civil engineer by trade and have 20 years of experience in this field. I graduated from Oklahoma State University in 1999 and spent the bulk of my career in the consulting segment of the municipal water industry. The City of Broken Arrow was one of my clients, and I did a variety of projects for it over the course of about a dozen years. About a year ago, this position became open,

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Ethan Edwards: The City of Broken Arrow covers over 60 square miles and has a population approaching 115,000 residents, which equates to 35,000– 38,000 customers or taps. On the water side, the city is served by one advanced water treatment plant, the Verdigris River Water Treatment Plant, which uses membrane technology. Our raw water comes from the Verdigris River.

We have two wastewater treatment facilities. One, the Lynn Lane Wastewater Treatment Plant, is owned by the City of Broken Arrow. The other, the Haikey Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant, is operated by the Regional Metropolitan Utility Authority, which encompasses several cities in the Tulsa metropolitan area, including Broken Arrow. In fact, Broken Arrow and Tulsa are the primary contributors of flow to that second facility.

Timothy Robins: The Verdigris River Water Treatment Plant has the capacity to process around 27 million gallons of water per day (MGD), with a daily average of 14–16 MGD. That water is distributed through the city via an elevated storage tank distribution system. That’s how municipalwaterleader.com

PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE CITY OF BROKEN ARROW.

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

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about the City of Broken Arrow’s water, wastewater, and sewer services and infrastructure.

ADVERTISEMENT we get our pressure. We have high- and low-pressure water pipe, and we supplement our higher end with four booster pumps. Our water supply system has several connections with that of the City of Tulsa, which we can use to supplement our supply during high usage, usually during July, August, and September. One of the largest of these is the 61st and Olive Street connection, which feeds our lower-water-pressure points. Another at 51st and Aspen feeds into our higher-pressure Battle Creek tank.

Throughout town, we have 891 linear miles of water lines, ranging from 2 to 48 inches in diameter.

Regarding our wastewater system, as Ethan said, there are two main wastewater reclamation plants. The outflow of the Lynn Lane plant is 4–6 MGD. The main feeds that go to that plant come out of our Indian Springs lift station and from the county line trunk sewer, both of which collect influent from several other trunk lines. The Haikey Creek plant has a joint feed from Tulsa and Broken Arrow, with the latter accounting for as much as 60 percent of flow. That plant processes 10–14 MGD. Several lift stations feed into that system: one on the south side of Tulsa; another in the northwest; and, most importantly, the Haikey Creek lift station at 121st and Garnett Streets. That one has three large force mains, each of which is 30 inches in diameter.

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about your new pipeline project. What led to the need for a new sanitary sewer line, and how it was planned?

Timothy Robins: The project was launched to respond to the worsening deterioration of the existing pipeline system. It is a more-than-30‑year-old concrete line of variable diameter that averages around 27 inches. Several sections of the pipeline have deteriorated to the point at which the crown section of the pipe has almost completely disintegrated. This has led to the development of numerous sinkholes during high-flow periods: When the pipes run full, the remaining crown material and the soil above become saturated, ultimately leading the crown and the soil to collapse into the sewer line. While these issues have plagued the line for a good part of its history, their frequency has been increasing recently, leading us to recognize that a replacement was in the community’s best interest. In addition, a wastewater master plan completed for the City of Broken Arrow by HDR recommended several projects, not only from an operations and maintenance point of view, but also from a capacity point of view. Besides the concerns linked to deterioration, the replacement of this pipeline will add additional capacity in the basin.

The design engineers for the project were from a company called Professional Engineering Consultants, which was contracted by the Broken Arrow Municipal Authority, which all our city utilities fall under. In addition, the speed of the project and the nature of its design were in part determined by the Oklahoma Department of municipalwaterleader.com

Environmental Quality consent orders that had been issued in conjunction with the project. The result was the fast-tracking of an extremely large project. We were going to be upsizing from a pipe with a 27‑inch diameter to a variable line with a minimum diameter of 48 inches and a maximum of 60 inches. Within that, we also had to keep the flows running on the trunk line. Portions of this involved bypassing: We had to keep the flow going through a bypass line so that we could do in-line replacement of certain sections. In some of those cases, we were bypass pumping as much as 5 MGD to keep the flows operational. In other sections, we were able to design it so that flows could continue through the existing line until the replacement line was complete, at which point we diverted the flow into the new section and abandoned the old line. These examples demonstrate the importance of the design aspects of projects that involve challenging topography and geologic systems.

In this case, the line followed along the alignment of Aspen Creek and the easements of the prior sewer line, which presented the challenge of staying out of the creek itself and also led to subsequent dewatering and constructability issues. We also had to coordinate with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ applicable 404 permits in this area, which meant adjusting our construction season to account for certain species of bats and beetles in the area.

A manhole structure being constructed as part of the new sewer line.

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ADVERTISEMENT The pipeline will begin at the Lynn Lane Treatment Plant with a 60‑inch pipe that runs 5,300 linear feet north to 131st Street. From there, a 54‑inch pipe will run 9,400 linear feet all the way up to 121st Street. It will then jump through around 1,150 linear feet of an existing 42‑inch line, which involves a cast-in-place plastic in-line replacement. Then, another 4,100 linear feet of 48‑inch gravity sewer will run all the way to just north of Florence Street. The project alignment involves a total of roughly 19,950 linear feet, or 3.78 miles, of sewer improvements.

Municipal Water Leader: What role did soil and geological issues play in the design of the new line?

Ethan Edwards: The line runs close to an active creek, and the overall area has a fairly high water table. Those conditions, along with the corrosive soils that are present in the area, quickly ruled out certain materials, such as ductile iron pipe.

Ethan Edwards: The entire alignment will consist of PVC.

Timothy Robins: The proximity to the creek and high water table also required us to implement several dewatering plants during the installation of the pipeline. At its deepest point of alignment, the pipe was about 30 feet deep. Getting to that elevation near the creek and the river was difficult. In fact, the contractor’s trenching and excavation abilities were a significant factor in why it was awarded this contract.

Municipal Water Leader: What were the advantages of using PVC pipe?

Municipal Water Leader: How far along is the construction, and when is it expected to be complete?

Municipal Water Leader: What will the new pipeline be made of?

Timothy Robins: The project is currently roughly 60 percent complete. The 60‑inch segment is complete, and we’re halfway done with the 54‑inch portion. Meanwhile, around 90 percent of the 48‑inch element is complete. We should be tying in with the existing line here in the coming weeks.

The northern alignment should be completely done by September 1, and the pipe on the southern alignment should be all installed within the next 75 days. The clean-up is scheduled to conclude by December 1.

Municipal Water Leader: Where do you seek funding for your projects?

Lengths of PVC pipe manufactured by Diamond to be used in the new sewer pipeline.

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Ethan Edwards is the director of engineering and construction at the City of Broken Arrow. He can be reached at eedwards@brokenarrowok.gov. Timothy Robins is the construction division manager for the City of Broken Arrow.

He can be reached at trobins@brokenarrowok.gov. municipalwaterleader.com

PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE CITY OF BROKEN ARROW.

Timothy Robins: The plans were originally designed around fiberglass pipe. There were two manufacturers that were considered acceptable bidders, but in both cases the bids that came in cost more than the money the city had allocated for the project. At that point, we had to repackage the request for proposals. The major change we made was to designate that bid proposals had the option to use PVC pipe. This change ultimately led to significant cost reductions. There were other advantages, too, such as the ease of installation and inherent corrosion resistance that comes with using PVC. We compounded this by changing from coated-concrete manholes to fiberglass manholes provided by Containment Solutions Corporation. The overall contract was awarded to Arkansasbased Belk Construction. Its bid price was $16,048,115.86. The city council awarded the contract in June 2019 and issued a notice to proceed the following month. The expected substantial completion date is December 2020.

Ethan Edwards: The bulk of our water and sewer projects are funded through a loan program operated by the Oklahoma Water Resources Board. Also, the City of Broken Arrow has been quite progressive in passing general obligation bonds to help finance the costs of infrastructure projects, including those related to water, wastewater, drainage, transportation, and recreation. The most recent was a $210 million proposition in August 2018, which was the largest such obligation the city has ever passed. M

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Large-Diameter Pipe Projects in Hidalgo County, Texas because of the age of the infrastructure.

We have assisted our district clients in obtaining grants, such as the Bureau of Reclamation’s WaterSMART grants, and by providing our services in implementing the conservation projects. Most of my work is centered on those irrigation districts.

Municipal Water Leader: How do you help your clients obtain grants like those?

Three lengths of 60-inch-diameter Diamond PVC pipe used in the aerial crossing of a drainage ditch for United Irrigation District in Mission, Texas. The project was funded by the Bureau of Reclamation.

F

rank Ferris is the president of Ferris, Flinn & Medina, LLC, a consulting engineering firm based outside of Harlingen, Texas, in the lower Rio Grande Valley. The firm provides consulting engineering services for water utilities, irrigation districts, municipalities, developers, and navigation districts. Today, one of the firm’s major focuses is helping its clients conserve water by improving the efficiency of their systems, particularly by piping open ditches and upgrading existing pipelines. One large current project involves building a 6,000-foot-long, 48-inch-diameter PVC pipeline for Hidalgo County Water Improvement District No. 3. In this interview, Mr. Ferris tells Municipal Water Leader about his firm’s activities and current projects.

Frank Ferris: I graduated from Texas A&M University in 1985 with a bachelor of science in civil

30 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | September 2020

municipalwaterleader.com

PHOTO COURTESY OF FERRIS, FLINN & MEDINA, LLC.

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

engineering. I am from Harlingen, Texas, and after graduating I came back to Harlingen and began working with a consulting firm that specialized in water and wastewater. I was with that firm for about 13 years, and in that time I worked on projects for a lot of different municipalities, including Brownsville, Harlingen, and Laredo, specifically on the planning, design, and construction of water and wastewater distribution, collection, and treatment facilities.

In 1998, I went out on my own and continued water and wastewater consulting. Over the years, our firm has grown to about 20 people. I have three partners: two engineers and one surveyor. Our firm specializes in water. We began by doing a lot of development, and now we’re providing more water-related engineering services. Currently, I work as district engineer on a consulting basis for several irrigation districts in our area.

The irrigation districts are about 100 years old, and there are a lot of opportunities for water conservation

Frank Ferris: WaterSMART is a competitive grant program. It provides funding to cover up to 50 percent of the cost of water projects. This year, the program has increased the funding amounts for its water and energy efficiency grants to $500,000 for funding group I projects—those that can be completed in 2 years—and up to $2,000,000 for funding group II projects—those that can be completed in 3 years. With regard to its drought resiliency projects, the amount for funding group I is $500,000 and the amount for funding group II is $1,500,000. The program has changed a little bit over the years in terms of its grading criteria. The most important thing to consider when applying for a Reclamation grant is whether you have a good project that conserves a lot of water. The more water you conserve, the more likely you are to successfully obtain a grant. Reclamation publishes a number of goals in its funding opportunity announcements; those goals are used as grading criteria when it considers which projects to fund. The most important thing, again, is conservation. If you have a canal that seeps a lot of water, Reclamation wants you to document the reduction in seepage that would result from the implementation of the proposed project.

Recently, Reclamation has awarded a lot of points for the total volume

ADVERTISEMENT of conservation. We perform seepage studies on canals to document how much conservation our projects will achieve.

We often replace them with PVC pipe, and the losses from solid-wall PVC pipe are basically negligible, so you can conserve virtually all the water that would otherwise have been lost to seepage.

Municipal Water Leader: How far along are you in the construction process?

Municipal Water Leader: What other funding agencies do you work with?

Municipal Water Leader: Would you tell us about your work with Diamond Plastics?

Frank Ferris: The Texas Water Development Board (TWDB) also has an agricultural conservation grant program, which is intended for smaller projects. We’ve successfully acquired those grants for two of our projects. It’s probably a little more competitive, but it has been helpful. The TWDB has programs for essentially any water-related facility. Some of the programs are subsidized based on economic needs in the area, while others are subsidized based on program objectives. We assisted the United Irrigation District in acquiring an $8 million State Water Implementation Fund for Texas loan from the TWDB to fund the planning, design, land acquisition, and construction of a 670-acre-foot reservoir that allowed water conservation through better water management; it saves about 2,000 acre-feet a year.

Frank Ferris: Diamond Plastics makes large-diameter, solidwall PVC pipe, which is really good pipe. It has an expected life exceeding 50 years, which is usually our design horizon, and suffers negligible losses. As long as the pipe is constructed well with the proper bedding, there will not be any problems.

I use solid-wall PVC pipe quite often, and a lot of it is large diameter. Diamond Plastics is competitive in the large-diameter PVC market in our area, so we use a lot of its pipe. All my clients are public entities, so they have to bid any project above about $75,000. We end up bidding most of our projects, and Diamond Plastics is successful about 90 percent of the time.

Diamond Plastics also has a really good engineering continuing education program that it puts on every year.

Municipal Water Leader: Do most of your conservation projects involve piping previously open ditches?

Frank Ferris: Most of them do. Occasionally, our clients have some really old technology, like mortar-joint concrete pipe, that can be upgraded to PVC to save a substantial amount of water.

PHOTO COURTESY OF KATHERINE FERRIS, RANK & STYLE.

Municipal Water Leader: Would you tell us about your recent project with Hidalgo County Water Board No. 3?

Frank Ferris: That project is a 6,000-foot-long, 48-inchdiameter PVC pipeline. It is C900 pipe, mostly pressure class 100, but some class 165 also. District 3 basically wanted to diversify its customer base. It is a highly efficient district, operating at around 90–95 percent efficiency, which is a competitive advantage against other districts in the area that run at 75–80 percent efficiency.

If you have an end user with 10,000 acre-feet of water rights and its efficiency is increased from 80 percent to 95 percent, that would make 1,500 acre-feet of existing water rights available for beneficial use. Municipal water rights in our area have a capital value of about $3,000 per acre-foot, so that would represent about $4.5 million in capital savings.

Right now, District 3 is installing phase 1 of the line to diversify its customer base. The district is doing the project now so that it can install the pipeline while a new roadway is being constructed. Installing the line before the roadway is constructed saves quite a bit of money.

municipalwaterleader.com

Frank Ferris: The construction is about 50 percent complete.

The planning of this project took about 8 months. By the time it’s finished, it will have taken about a year and a half.

Municipal Water Leader: Would you tell us about any trends you see in the industry today?

Frank Ferris: In our area, there’s a lot of growth, and we have a finite water supply. Water conservation is key to stretching out that finite water supply, so conservation projects are more and more important. We tend to our clients’ needs by searching for funding where it’s available.

Municipal Water Leader: Do your firm’s clients tend to supply water more for municipal or agricultural purposes?

Frank Ferris: In the lower Rio Grande Valley, people began building these systems for irrigation purposes about 100 years ago. As our area urbanizes and the cities have grown, the irrigation districts have begun supplying raw water to the municipalities for treatment. Most of the public water systems in our area are supplied by irrigation districts, which deliver it to their water treatment plants. As the area is urbanized, irrigation districts’ water rights are typically converted to municipal rights and sold or contracted to the municipalities for their use. M Frank A. Ferris, PE, PSAP, is the president of Ferris, Flinn, & Medina, LLC. He can be contacted at f.ferris@ferrisandflinn.com or (956) 364-2236.

September 2020 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER

| 31

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Infrastructure Updates at the Lower Neches Valley Authority

The Jones Crossing site before the LNVA’s infrastructure replacement.

T

he Lower Neches Valley Authority (LNVA), one of Texas’s 23 river authorities, provides wholesale raw water to industrial, municipal, and agricultural customers in the southeastern corner of Texas. Maintaining a 600‑mile canal system requires the LNVA to periodically replace pipe flumes and culverts in both urban and rural settings. One recent project involved the replacement of a drainage culvert, a freshwater conveyance culvert, and a road that all overlapped in precisely the same spot. In this interview, LNVA Engineering Manager Ryan Ard tells Municipal Water Leader about the Jones Crossing project and the authority’s other current projects.

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

34 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | September 2020

working at Jones & Carter, Inc., a private consulting firm in The Woodlands, Texas, mainly handling work with water districts, small cities, and public utilities. In 2016, I had the opportunity to move back to the Beaumont area and work for the LNVA as its engineering manager. I made the move back in February 2016 and have been working with the LNVA now for 4½ years.

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about the LNVA’s history and services.

Ryan Ard: The LNVA is one of 23 river authorities in the state, having been authorized by the Texas Legislature in 1933 to develop and manage the waters of the state. The LNVA is the federal partner and local sponsor for the Sam Rayburn and B.A. Steinhagen Reservoirs in the Neches basin. The LNVA holds rights to the use of essentially the entire dependable freshwater yield of Sam Rayburn Reservoir, or approximately 820,000 acre-feet per year. Our jurisdiction includes Hardin, Jefferson, and Tyler Counties as well as portions of Chambers and Liberty Counties. We operate a 600‑mile canal system municipalwaterleader.com

PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE LNVA.

Ryan Ard: I grew up in Silsbee, Texas, just a few miles north of Beaumont, and attended Kelly High School in Beaumont.

I then went on to attend and graduate from Texas A&M in 2011 with a bachelor of science in civil engineering; I later received a master’s in civil engineering from Texas A&M with a focus in water resources. After college, I started

The newly replaced Jones Crossing structure.

ADVERTISEMENT with primary pumping facilities located on the Neches River and on Pine Island Bayou. Each of those systems operates independently and lifts water approximately 35 feet from the respective tributaries to the top of the hill in the north end of Beaumont. From that point, we convey water through the canal system by gravity, reaching as far south as Port Arthur and as far west as Nome and Winnie, serving our industrial, municipal, and agricultural customers along the way.

Separate from the Neches and Pine Island Bayou systems, the LNVA owns and operates the Devers Canal system, which was acquired in 2008. The Devers Canal system pumps water from the Trinity River, where the LNVA holds 30,000 acre-feet in water rights, and is strictly an agricultural system. It is interconnected with the LNVA system below Interstate 10.

Municipal Water Leader: Is the LNVA a retail or a wholesale provider?

Ryan Ard: We provide raw water wholesale to the municipalities, which then treat it for use as potable water. We also provide raw water to farmers, primarily rice farmers, as well as industrial users, including petrochemical plants and refineries.

Municipal Water Leader: How many customers do you have, and how many people benefit from the supplies that you provide?

Ryan Ard: The LNVA provides freshwater to 8 cities and water districts, approximately 25 industries, and over 100 irrigated farms over a service area of approximately 700 square miles, making water deliveries on a continuous 24‑hour-a-day, 7-day-a-week basis.

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about your Jones Crossing project. What was the situation as it existed before you did the project, and what was the problem you needed to solve?

Ryan Ard: Jones Crossing is a location on the east main of the Devers system where a drainage ditch, a canal, and a private farm-access road all converge at the same point, coming from various different angles. All three utilities are basically stacked on top of one another: The road goes over the freshwater canal culverts, which in turn go over the storm water conveyance culverts. The two sets of culverts are perpendicular to one another, and the access road crosses them at an approximately 45‑degree angle. Over the years, the concrete culverts that served to convey the drainage flow under the canal separated and allowed the freshwater canal to persistently leak water into the drainage ditch. To manage the project, we had to take that road out of service and work from the bottom up. We first rebuilt the storm culverts and then placed the canal culverts over them and rebuilt our canal levee system. Finally, we replaced the road surface on top of that. Everything was reconstructed in essentially its municipalwaterleader.com

original configuration, but with longer-lasting materials and improved slope protection.

Municipal Water Leader: Did the culverts need to be replaced because of age?

Ryan Ard: Both the drainage ditch and the canal culverts were made of concrete, and over time, concrete culverts can lose their effective seal. As the ground settles, moves, or erodes, the joints of the concrete pipe can separate and start to leak water, especially in a configuration where a charged canal sits on top of a typically empty drainage ditch crossing. In the case of Jones Crossing, the canal was always filled with 4–5 feet of water, so water was finding its way through the canal embankment and into separations in the drainage ditch pipe below. Although it was normally a small amount of water, that constant flow into the drainage ditch pipe was a nuisance.

In late 2015 and early 2016, we had a few heavy rains that caused serious erosion near the ends of the drainage crossing.

The drainage end treatments had originally been constructed with vertically driven timber headwalls, which had rotted and deteriorated over time. The heavy rains caused a lot of soil to wash out from around those headwalls, basically causing the slopes to fail and slough into the drainage ditch. I should add that the drainage ditch was not under our jurisdiction—it belonged to a rural drainage district. The situation got to the point of threatening the integrity of our canal system, so we had to step in and take care of the problem with the drainage ditch to protect our assets and the canal.

Municipal Water Leader: How old was the infrastructure that you were replacing?

Ryan Ard: I don’t know when it was constructed, but it was made of unreinforced concrete, which is evidence that it was an older installation. Reinforced concrete pipe is the standard today.

Municipal Water Leader: Was the timber construction also evidence of old age?

Ryan Ard: You’d be surprised. In some locations, the LNVA still uses timber to construct headwalls or retaining walls. It’s good for holding back small slopes. Timber isn’t necessarily a sign of old infrastructure; however, its condition in this particular location indicated that it was likely several decades old.

Municipal Water Leader: What was the timeline of the Jones Crossing project?

Ryan Ard: We started planning it in September or October 2016 and completed it in March 2017. The agricultural offseason runs from November to March, so we had a strict timeline. We started to get some of those heavy rains that exacerbated the problem at the end of 2016. Typically, we like to design those projects prior to the end of the ag season September 2020 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER

| 35

ADVERTISEMENT What we were left with was fiberglass pipe, which we have used at several other locations on our canal system, primarily for some large-scale crossings and largerdiameter pipe replacements. The benefits of fiberglass include that it comes in 20‑foot joints, it’s got a watertight seal, and it doesn’t suffer from corrosion. Structurally, it was rated to take the kind of load we were going to put on it. Also, rather than having to cut the piping in the field, we can factory-order fiberglass pipe cut precisely to our specifications. It has clean joints and also offers ultraviolet light (UV) protection. Their exterior of the pipe is UV rated, but the interior of the pipe is not. In the case of this drainage ditch, the ends of which will be potentially exposed to UV for an extended period of time, we opted to apply an optional UV coating as well.

Municipal Water Leader: What are the LNVA’s top issues today?

HOBAS Fiberglass pipe was selected for its watertight seal, corrosion resistance, and structural qualities.

so that construction can begin immediately after the season ends. The heavy rains caused severe erosion problems that needed immediate attention, so the project was planned and designed quickly. We have work crews that typically handle maintenance activities on the canal system, so we had some construction equipment and employees with the ability to do the type of work that was necessary to build this crossing.

Municipal Water Leader: How did you choose the pipe material to use in this project?

36 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | September 2020

Ryan Ard, PE, is the engineering manager of the Lower Neches Valley Authority. To contact Mr. Ard and to learn more about The LNVA, visit www.lnva.dst.tx.us.

municipalwaterleader.com

PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE LNVA.

Ryan Ard: We looked at reinforced concrete pipe, steel pipe, corrugated aluminum pipe, and fiberglass pipe. Reinforced concrete pipe comes in short joints and is generally heavy and not watertight. It works great for storm water, but when you have a canal that is charged 24/7, it has the potential for leakage and failure. We needed something more watertight. Steel pipe was another option, but its disadvantage is corrosion. You can coat steel pipe, but that generally means that you will need to engage in long-term maintenance to keep your coatings up to date. Since this is a drain ditch that conveys debris-filled water, we felt that the maintenance that would be required would be excessive.

Corrugated aluminum pipe is a light-duty pipe. We looked at it because the drain ditch is not technically under our jurisdiction and is in a rural area that does not necessarily have the funding to replace a culvert crossing like this. However, because the existing structure posed a risk to our canal system, we decided to replace it at our own cost, and we figured that if we were spending the money, we wanted something that would last longer. We see some soil conductivity interactions with corrugated aluminum pipe in this area, so it doesn’t tend to last long.

Ryan Ard: In the engineering department, our focus is on being able to provide the infrastructure that allows our operations division to convey the water that is needed throughout the system. In doing that, our primary focus is on the pumping facilities that push the water and the conveyance structures that carry that water throughout the system.

In terms of the pumping facilities, we recently completed two pump replacements and major improvements to the discharge piping systems on our Neches facilities. We are currently pursuing options to fortify our pumping plants against potential floods and to expand our engine fuel systems to provide better redundancy in case of emergencies.

With regard to conveyance structures, the LNVA recently finished a large initiative to replace many of the aging flume structures on both the LNVA and Devers Canal systems. In total, we have completed 10 flume replacement and/or improvement projects over the last 5 years. One of our current primary focuses is on enlarging crossings on the industrial leg of our canal system to better serve our industrial customers. We have a $7 million project underway that includes the replacement of nine street crossings, seven with bridge structures and two with traditional culverts. We are in the design stage of a similar project, estimated at around $6 million, that will replace another five street crossings with similar structures. In both of the culvert replacement projects, we will be looking at using fiberglass pipe for at least one of the crossings where bridges are not feasible. M

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Upcoming Events September 16 National Association of Clean Water Agencies, Wipe Out: How States and Municipalities are Flushing the Wipes Dilemma (virtual event) September 16 American Water Works Association, Smart Water 2020: Building a Resilient Water Future (virtual event) September 23–24 American Water Works Association, Education, Innovation, and Exchange (virtual summit) October 3–7 Water Environment Federation, WEFTEC 2020, New Orleans, LA October 13–14 Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies, Executive Management Conference (virtual event) October 20–22 The Water Council, Alliance for Water Stewardship Training (virtual event) October 21–23 Texas Water Conservation Association, Fall Conference, San Antonio, TX November 9–11 National Water Resources Association, 89th Annual Conference, Scottsdale, AZ December 1–4 Association of California Water Agencies, 2020 Fall Conference and Exhibition, Indian Wells, CA December 14–16 Colorado River Water Users Association, Annual Conference, Las Vegas, NV

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