Municipal Water Utilities Research Articles

Risk-based approach to manage aging urban water main infrastructure

Research Article| November 17 2014 Risk-based approach to manage aging urban water main infrastructure Thewodros G. Mamo Thewodros G. Mamo 1Department of Civil and Urban Engineering, NYU Polytechnic School of Engineering, 6 Metro Tech Center, Brooklyn, NY 11201, USA E-mail: tmamo@nyu.edu Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Journal of Water Supply: Research and Technology-Aqua (2015) 64 (3): 260–269. https://doi.org/10.2166/aqua.2014.052 Article history Received: April 13 2014 Accepted: October 10 2014 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Cite Icon Cite Permissions Search Site Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentAll JournalsThis Journal Search Advanced Search Citation Thewodros G. Mamo; Risk-based approach to manage aging urban water main infrastructure. Journal of Water Supply: Research and Technology-Aqua 1 May 2015; 64 (3): 260–269. doi: https://doi.org/10.2166/aqua.2014.052 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex The growing number of challenges in how to manage aging infrastructures, while maintaining a suitable level of service, have become major problems for many municipal water utility companies. As a result, municipalities are increasingly considering the concept of risk assessment and prioritization as the first and an important step that has to be used towards effective asset-management practices. Most experts agree that the main effort has to focus on implementing risk-based asset-management practices meeting a degree of sustainability decision-making process. However, there are so many challenges to establish common practices and understand the ground for operational implementations of the concept of the risk. This paper aims to form a basic decision support model to address urgent needs of risk-based water main asset-management tools. Furthermore, efforts have been made to demonstrate how this model can be used to support decision-makers to reach sound decisions for prioritization of mitigation with more informed and sound collective judgments of peer experts. This includes addressing the existing or potential risks based on scenarios, likelihood, consequences of the outcomes, and results of the action. In conclusion, this model would benefit decision-makers in evaluating further different planning horizons and set priorities for replacement or rehabilitation maintenance programs. asset management, consequence, likelihood, risk-based analysis, risk rating, scenarios © IWA Publishing 2015 You do not currently have access to this content.

Twenty First Century Water Asset Accounting: Implications Report

Green infrastructure, the use of soil, vegetation, and other natural landscape features to manage and treat water, is increasing in popularity as an alternative to traditional grey infrastructure for water management. However, challenges arise to the widespread adoption of green infrastructure practices because of the difficulty in evaluating, accounting for, and valuing the benefits of such practices. Current accounting frameworks do not adequately account for the value of these assets, and the absence of appropriate accounting and evaluation tools may limit the ability of utilities to maintain or expand green approaches. This project developed two potential accounting frameworks to help water utilities assess and account for the ecosystem services provided by green infrastructure. The frameworks were pilot tested at three participating public wastewater and drinking water utilities over a period of five months to assess the benefits and feasibility of implementing national-scale accounting methods for green infrastructure. Several themes on green infrastructure accounting emerged from the pilot tests: the effects of regulatory vs. non-regulatory drivers, the importance of information flow both to the utilities from outside experts and within municipal government, and the need for standardized methods for assessing and accounting for the services provided by green infrastructure. Pilot test participants indicated that with further refinement of the accounting frameworks and the development of standardized guidance for valuing green infrastructure, national-scale implementation of these accounting frameworks is possible. This report discusses the implications of larger-scale adoption and future research needs to facilitate green infrastructure accounting practices. U.S. cities are facing many challenges including aging water infrastructure and the costs associated with upgrades, changing weather patterns, rising demand for clean water, and more stringent water treatment standards. These pressures and others are affecting how municipal water utilities expand, repair, and maintain the infrastructure that carries and cleans our water. Building more grey infrastructure is the traditional approach to addressing these problems. Some municipalities are, however, turning to green infrastructure3 as an option. These municipalities may be investing in green infrastructure directly for water utility management or indirectly by increasing their green space and greenways. No matter the original intent of the investment, green infrastructure may provide a cost-effective alternative that can help water utilities protect source water supplies, reduce stormwater runoff, and improve water quality. Current municipal accounting standards, however, do not adequately account for the benefits provided by green infrastructure. For example, the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB), which establishes standard accounting practices for state and local governments, requires public utilities to value land assets using the historical purchase price, rather than the current market value and productive capacity. While there are good reasons to value assets at historical cost (such as avoiding over-valuation), this approach may also under-reflect the true asset value of many green infrastructure assets. Furthermore, the lack of a formal approach for accounting for green infrastructure and its benefits may be a barrier to further utility investment in this area and may predispose utilities to favor more investment in grey infrastructure. The lack of comparable accounting methods may also limit utilities' ability to convey green infrastructure's true benefits to ratepayers, policy makers, and investors. This project developed new accounting frameworks to help public drinking water and wastewater utilities more accurately evaluate and catalogue their green infrastructure assets. We developed two model accounting frameworks that could be included in the unaudited supplementary disclosure of a utility's comprehensive annual financial report (CAFR). We pilot tested these two frameworks at three participating utilities: The City of Raleigh (NC) Public Utilities Department, The City of Asheville (NC) Water Resources Department, and Clean Water Services (OR). We conducted surveys and semi-structured interviews to understand the utilities' experiences with the accounting frameworks and how the frameworks could be improved. This report summarizes the implications of the pilot tests, including implications of more widespread adoption of the accounting frameworks, and contributes to the growing body of knowledge surrounding green infrastructure, by offering two approaches for accounting and evaluation that more accurately reflect the value that green infrastructure provides for water utilities. This report also outlines the limitations of these frameworks and suggests future research needs. This title belongs to WERF Research Report Series . ISBN: 9781780405131 (eBook)

Domestic water pricing in Greece: a spatial differentiation

This study investigates the differentiation of the water pricing policies applied by the Greek Municipal Water Utilities (GMWU) in several regions. GMWU are being characterized by individual management framework with a lack of a uniform pricing policy and a significant diversification of the payable amount by region. The export of comparative conclusions regarding the overall pricing policy in Greece, both at GMWU level (a sample of 84 GMWU) and at regional level, is the basic objective of this study. The comparison analysis was performed on a monthly consumption basis of 5–150 m3, for the year 2007, per water utility population served (five groups) and per administrative region (13 regions). The mean net consumption cost and the mean payable amount are calculated for a monthly consumption, because water utilities do not use the same billing period. Fee for construction and sewer user fees are excluded. Maintenance water meter cost and maintenance projects (fixed charges) charges are also partly included. The study revealed that there is a large spatial differentiation of water prices on regional level.

The dynamics of voluntary benchmarking in the water sector

This article investigates the dynamics of benchmarking in municipal water utilities. The authors explain how a voluntary project developed the characteristics of compulsory benchmarking. While the first adopters of benchmarking sought efficiency gains, later adoptions have mainly been driven by institutional pressures. This limits the potential of benchmarking for improving utility performance.

Just a passing fad?

Purpose – The study seeks to add to the understanding of the diffusion and decline of environmental reporting practices. Design/methodology/approach – Semi-structured interviews and municipal water utility publications are analysed to identify factors which have influenced the diffusion and subsequent decline of environmental reporting practices within the Finnish water sector. Findings – The findings suggest a dynamic view of the diffusion and decline of environmental reporting, showing that a variety of forces operated jointly over time. The initial swift diffusion may be mostly explained from the perspectives of fad and fashion, whereas the subsequent gradual decline of such reporting appears to have been driven mainly by internal organizational factors and a lack of outside pressure. Research limitations/implications – The paper relies on a qualitative dataset, implying that extensive care is needed when seeking to generalise or apply the findings to different contexts or organizational fields. Practical implications – The findings presented here should prove interesting for public sector managers, who are considering how, if at all, their organization should engage in social and environmental reporting. Originality/value – The paper provides new insights into public sector sustainability reporting and presents reasons for its decline. In addition, the analysis illustrates the applicability of Abrahamson's typology of innovation diffusion to the study of social and environmental reporting practices.

Financial and technical competence of municipal board members: Empirical evidence from the water sector

The purpose of this article is to investigate municipal board members’ financial and technical competence and analyse factors explaining the presence of such competence. Financial expertise estimates were constructed based on the board members’ education and professional experience, while financial literacy levels were estimated based on prior board experience and participation in additional training in accounting and finance. Board members’ technical competence was assessed in terms of their education. Quantitative data was derived from a survey administered to 354 municipal water utility board members in Finland. The response rate was 52%. The results of the study indicate, first of all, that municipal board members’ estimated financial competence levels are not high and that financial competence is associated with organizational form. Secondly, board members’ technical competence levels are also fairly low and technical competence is associated with political affiliation. Stewardship theory offers the most plausible explanation for the influence of organizational form on financial and technical competence, while the resource dependency view provides an explanation for the effect of political affiliation on technical competence.

Exploring the Textured Landscape of Water Insecurity and the Human Right to Water

he last decade has seen historic advances in the formal establishment of the human right to water and global agreements on development goals that target improved access to water and sanitation. How...

Exploring adaptation to climate change in the forests of central Nova Scotia, Canada

The threat of climate change is now recognized as an imminent issue at the forefront of the forest sector. Incorporating adaptation to climate change into forest management will be vital in the continual and sustainable provision of forest ecosystem services. The objective of this study is to investigate climate change adaptation in forest management using the landscape disturbance model LANDIS-II. The study area was comprised of 14,000 ha of forested watersheds in central Nova Scotia, Canada, managed by Halifax Water, the municipal water utility. Simulated climate change adaptation was directed towards three components of timber harvesting: the canopy-opening size of harvests, the age of harvested trees within a stand, and the species composition of harvested trees within a stand. These three adaptation treatments were simulated singly and in combination with each other in the modeling experiment. The timber supply was found to benefit from climate change in the absence of any adaptation treatment, though there was a loss of target tree species and old growth forest. In the age treatment, all trees in a harvested stand at or below the age of sexual maturity were exempt from harvesting. This was done to promote more-rapid succession to climax forest communities typical of the study area. It was the most effective in maintaining the timber supply, but least effective in promoting resistance to climate change at the prescribed harvest intensity. In the composition treatment, individual tree species were selected for harvest based on their response to climate change in previous research and on management values at Halifax Water to progressively facilitate forest transition under the altered climate. This proved the most effective treatment for maximizing forest age and old-growth area and for promoting stands composed of climatically suited target species. The size treatment was aimed towards building stand complexity and resilience to climate change, and was the most influential treatment on the response of timber supply, forest age, and forest composition to timber harvest when it was combined with other treatments. The combination of all three adaptation treatments yielded an adequate representation of target species and old forest without overly diminishing the timber supply, and was therefore the most effective in minimizing the trade-offs between management values and objectives. These findings support a diverse and multi-faceted approach to climate change adaptation.

Defining Public Asset Management for Municipal Water Utilities

This article describes public asset management as incorporating the management of all things that are of value to a jurisdiction, its mission and purpose, and citizen's expectations. With 85% of U.S. water utilities owned or controlled by governments and municipalities, asset management for utilities falls under the larger umbrella of public asset management. The article focuses on geographic information system‐ (GIS‐) centric public asset management, which has a foundation that standardizes data and allows interoperability, providing users with the capability of reusing, coordinating, and sharing information in an efficient and effective manner. The article demonstrates how a GIS platform combined with the overall public asset management umbrella of both hard (physical) assets and soft assets helps remove the traditional silos of structured municipal functions.

Optimize Sustainable, Reliable Water Supplies

The municipal water utility in Santa Fe, New Mexico, had to enforce substantial mandatory restrictions in 2002 to meet peak day water demands. The city developed a long‐range plan to provide a reliable, sustainable water supply for current and future customers. At a time when many other Southwest communities face increasing water needs, Santa Fe's long‐range planning method can serve as an integrated, community‐based planning model. Santa Fe's process sought to take advantage of both surface water supplies and groundwater sources and optimize resources, conservation programs, and infrastructure.

Supply Risk and the Bond Market

In his column, AWWA Executive Director David LaFrance discusses a report titled “The Ripple Effect: Water Risk in the Municipal Bond Market,” published by Ceres, an investor and environmentalist group. The report focuses on the relationship of water supply vulnerability and bond ratings and, among other things, is critical of bond rating agencies, saying they don't adequately evaluate water scarcity when assessing municipal water utilities. LaFrance argues that bond rating agencies don't evaluate supply risk in the same way as Ceres, and he discusses a host of other variables evaluated by bond rating agencies when they determine a utility's bond rating.

Measuring the Embodied Energy in Drinking Water Supply Systems: A Case Study in The Great Lakes Region

A sustainable supply of both energy and water is critical to long-term national security, effective climate policy, natural resource sustainability, and social wellbeing. These two critical resources are inextricably and reciprocally linked; the production of energy requires large volumes of water, while the treatment and distribution of water is also significantly dependent upon energy. In this paper, a hybrid analysis approach is proposed to estimate embodied energy and to perform a structural path analysis of drinking water supply systems. The applicability of this approach is then tested through a case study of a large municipal water utility (city of Kalamazoo) in the Great Lakes region to provide insights on the issues of water-energy pricing and carbon footprints. Kalamazoo drinking water requires approximately 9.2 MJ/m(3) of energy to produce, 30% of which is associated with indirect inputs such as system construction and treatment chemicals.

Cost analysis of urban water supply and waste water treatment processes to support decisions and policy making: application to a number of Swedish communities

An econometric model has been developed that represents the cost structure of water supply and waste water treatment in an urban area. This paper proposes a method to capture the financial characteristics of the underlying organisation and addresses the steps and the conceptualisation in order to create a cost structure for municipal water utilities. The estimation procedure is based on a multivariate regression approach and the cost structure is represented by a parametrical expression (cost function). This function has been used for the purpose of analysing the observed system in terms of efficiency, technology, capacity, financial state etc. In the mathematical formula the estimated parameters relate certain system input components to costs, which are important in order to understand the key drivers. An empirical analysis is undertaken for a number of utilities in Sweden.

Exposure on Tap: Drinking Water as an Overlooked Source of Lead

Providence, Rhode Island, and Portland, Oregon, are two cities that by all accounts have well-run water utilities and health departments. Both have also had recurring problems with lead in tap water, yet both—according to some critics—have downplayed the potential importance of lead in tap water as a route of exposure. The experiences of these cities and others across the United States illustrate the difficulty not only of determining the causes behind specific cases of lead poisoning but also of ensuring that lead sources are eliminated. Unlike most water contaminants, lead gets into water after it leaves a water treatment plant. Often this contamination is the result of water treatment changes meant to improve water quality that end up altering the water chemistry, destabilizing lead-bearing mineral scales that coat service lines and corroding lead solder, pipes, faucets, and fixtures. “Lead is a ‘close-to-home’ contaminant,” says Marc Edwards, an environmental engineer at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. “That makes it very difficult to regulate and monitor.” Under the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) 1991 Lead and Copper Rule (LCR), municipal water utilities must sample a small number of homes at high risk for elevated lead levels, such as those known to have lead plumbing components. The size of the water system determines how many samples must be collected in each sampling period (the maximum required is 100), and the sampling interval can vary from 6 months to 3 years, depending on past compliance. The law requires that samples be “first-flush” water that has stood in pipes for a minimum of 6 hours. This scenario represents high but routine exposures to lead in tap water, because the longer corrosive water sits in contact with lead parts, the more lead leaches out. In many households, this worst-case normal-use scenario happens twice daily Monday through Friday: in the morning when the residents awake, and in the afternoon when they return home from work and school. Under the LCR, utilities are required to notify customers and take remedial action if more than 10% of the households sampled have tap water with lead levels exceeding 15 ppb. Remedial action might include changing chemical treatment methods to make the water less corrosive or, if treatment fails, to replace lead pipes that lie beneath publicly owned spaces such as streets and sidewalks. These provisions would seem to suggest that if a water utility is in compliance with the rule, then none of the dwellings served by the utility need worry about their tap water being a significant source of lead. Yet LCR compliance is based upon the results of sampling only a tiny percentage of the homes served. So even when a utility is entirely within LCR compliance, some consumers may unknowingly receive and consume water that contains lead levels much higher than 15 ppb. New evidence linking low-level lead exposure with cognitive deficits and other data linking lead-contaminated water with increases in the prevalence of children having blood lead levels over 10 μg/dL suggest that testing water for lead contamination should be done routinely in older cities. —Bruce Lanphear, Simon Fraser University “EPA as the regulator of lead in tap water and CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] with its concern for preventing lead poisoning in children should be working together to get on top of this problem,” says Edwards. “But in my experience this is not occurring to the extent it should.”

The Contradictions in ‘Alternative’ Service Delivery: Governance, Business Models, and Sustainability in Municipal Water Supply

Restructuring municipal water supply using ‘alternative service delivery’ models is a growing trend. The author examines potential contradictions between ‘alternative service delivery’ business models, on the one hand, and goals of good governance and sustainability on the other. A case study of water conservation and efficiency programs implemented by municipal water utilities in Canada is used to show that specific alternative service delivery (ASD) models which seek greater distance between management and government can create incentives which deter utilities from pursuing important social and environmental goals. The neoliberal governance reform that commonly accompanies and encourages ASD tends to exacerbate its deficiencies vis-à-vis conservation in the water sector. Still, the prevalent government-led service delivery model can impose trade-offs of its own. Strategic (rather than ideological) improvements in governance can enable municipalities to reap the benefits of a variety of business models (including ASD) without compromising sustainability objectives.

Viability of Long-Term Concessions for Municipal Water and Wastewater Utilities

Viability of Long-Term Concessions for Municipal Water and Wastewater Utilities

Free-living amoebae, Legionella and Mycobacterium in tap water supplied by a municipal drinking water utility in the USA

Legionella and Mycobacterium can proliferate within free-living amoebae (FLA) where they are protected from disinfectants at concentrations that can kill bacteria but not protozoa. Despite effective treatment of drinking water, microbes can enter water utility distribution systems (DS) and hence the plumbing within building premises. Additionally, biofilm formation may account for the persistence of microbes in the DS. In the present study a domestic water tap in north-central United States (USA) was sampled in March and September 2007 and analysed for FLA, Legionella and Mycobacterium. Identification of organisms was determined by growth on specific culture media, light and electron microscopy, and amplification of DNA probes specific for each organism. In both the spring and fall samples, amoebae, Legionella and Mycobacterium were detected. However, Acanthamoeba was prominent in the spring sample whereas Vahlkampfia and Naegleria were the amoebae detected in the autumn. Bacterial proliferation in laboratory cultures was noticeably enhanced in the presence of amoebae and biofilms rapidly formed in mixed amoebae and bacteria cultures. It is hypothesized that temperature affected the dynamics of FLA species population structure within the DS and that pathogenic bacteria that proliferate within FLA, which are themselves opportunistic pathogens, pose dual public health risks.

POLITICALLY FEASIBLE, REVENUE SUFFICIENT, AND ECONOMICALLY EFFICIENT MUNICIPAL WATER RATES

Water rates are designed to meet multiple objectives, typically resulting in trade‐offs among the objectives of economic efficiency, revenue sufficiency, and related revenue stability. Standard theory of natural monopoly is extended here to explain why long‐run marginal cost (LMC) can be greater than both average cost and short‐run marginal cost (SMC) for municipal water utilities. The distinctions between “benign monopoly rates” and “marginal cost rate design” favor LMC over SMC as the basis for economically efficient rate design. Taking into account conservation investments by consumers, SMC rates are economically inefficient, except during temporary shortages. The City of Los Angeles adopted economically efficient, revenue sufficient, and revenue‐stable water rates at the end of a prolonged drought. After the drought ended, Los Angeles (LA) modified the rate design, making the design politically feasible during normal rainfall years. Unique features in the LA rate design determine the allocation of consumer surplus among ratepayers, making the rate design politically feasible by sharing efficiency gains among customer classes. Revenue sufficiency and stability features in the rate design minimize adverse job effects on water utility management, reducing the frequency of rate hearings with an increasing block design. (JEL L51, L95, Q25, Q51)

Bureaucratic Job Mobility and The Diffusion of Innovations

In studies of innovation, policy entrepreneurs recognize latent demand for new policies and then expend resources to promote them. But studies of policy entrepreneurs have generally focused on the demand for innovation, while neglecting the supply side of policy entrepreneurship. This article argues that bureaucratic labor markets affect the emergence of policy entrepreneurs, and so affect the diffusion of policy innovations across local governments in the United States. Analysis of a survey of municipal police chiefs and water utility managers relates governments' hiring and promotion policies to their adoption of professionally fashionable innovations. Agency heads who advanced to their current positions diagonally (arriving from another organization) are more likely to initiate these innovations than are agency heads who were promoted from within. Bureaucratic policy entrepreneurs emerge where government demand for innovation meets a supply of mobile administrators, who carry the priorities of their professions into the agencies that they serve.

Bare knuckle and better technics: trajectories of access to safe water in history and in the global south

AbstractThis paper draws lessons from the history of water provision in the industrialised world, and the failure of colonial municipal water utilities, to illuminate the social, political and financial challenges facing improved urban water supply in the global south. It distinguishes four trajectories for water and sanitation access with different records of success. The paper then suggests that engineers, and the communities, NGOs, development agencies and governments for whom they work, could work more effectively if they formulated their work to fit socially, financially and politically feasible trajectories. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.