water - Public Works Group Blog

January 13, 2012January 13, 2012

Is the ASCE Infrastructure Report Card Really a Good Idea?

As a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), I regularly receive information and notices proclaiming their annual "grading" of our nation's infrastructure. There is even a website to promote this effort: http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/. My opinion on this might not be popular with my colleagues, but frankly I have never thought this report was valid or a good idea. Finally after reading a LinkedIn thread about how engineers get no respect and a related link criticizing the annual report card, I decided to share my thoughts, as an engineer, on this public relations effort.

First of all, imagine going to the Infrastructure Report Card website as an average citizen – not an engineer. On the site there is a listing of all the different categories of infrastructure we are responsible for designing, building, and maintaining such as water, wastewater, dams, bridges, roads, parks, etc. Not one of them has a grade above a C and the average is a D. Now imagine going to the medical association's website and seeing a listing of items for which they are responsible such as cancer, common cold, fractures, etc. and a related listing of grades. How would you feel about the medical profession if they gave themselves all C and D grades for those? Because on the face of it, that is how it looks to someone who is not involved in the industry – engineers are grading themselves for the work they do and the infrastructure for which they are responsible, and can't manage to get above a D average! Then we wonder why we get no respect!

Now, I realize those responsible for setting up this effort would respond by explaining that no, it's not a grade on our efforts, but a wake up call that government is not giving us enough funds to adequately build and maintain the infrastructure. Because that's what this is really all about, trying to convince legislators they need to funnel more money into infrastructure. But I don't think it's working, and it should be no surprise why not. If I was funding work by a group and the reports kept coming back every year that the work was underperforming, I would start asking some questions such as why is your work failing, what progress is being made with the funds, and what else can be done besides throwing more money at it?

As an engineer, I am well aware of the need for funding, but as one who has worked in a severely economically depressed city for many years, I also realize that part of my job as an engineer is to figure out how to get the most from the money we have and explain to the elected officials the trade-offs for the different funding levels. Because that is what engineers are supposed to do best – analyze a problem, figure out solutions, attach dollars to them, and let elected officials decide which level of service they want. Then we build the best system we can with the money we receive.

In the last city where I worked, I would have graded our infrastructure efforts as an A because by working together, we were often able to figure out ways to get things done at a very acceptable level with very few dollars. If you drive through that community today, just about every road is in great shape while the neighboring community, whose coffers were always filled with millions more tax dollars than ours, has a proliferation of crumbling roads. This shows that while money is an important component, a successful system also requires people in government working together and making the right choices for the public good with patience and understanding of the goals and the ability to implement creative solutions.

And my past employer is far from unique – the fact is that many cities have systems that are well managed and maintained. I can't imagine anyone traveling across the U.S. coming to any conclusion other than the infrastructure in our country is very good. The true measure of success is demonstrated by the fact that the majority of us make it to work each day without even thinking of the roads we drive on, the water we use to get ready for work, the wastewater system that disposes of all the water we use, the stormwater systems that prevent any rain from keeping us from traveling safely, etc. So the real question is, how are we really measuring this grade?

I get the impression ASCE determines this grade by assuming a life for our assets and assigning a replacement cost then comparing that to funding levels. And because these levels don't match the replacement costs, we must be failing. The flaw in this is that just because something like a water main is more than 50 years old does not mean it is at the verge of imminent failure. But according to ASCE, if politicians don't give us money to rip it out at year 51, that main drops to a D. I've worked in cities where mains were 120 years old and were still delivering water to homes and businesses with no breaks or signs of failure. That's not a D, and it is irresponsible as an engineer to lead people to believe that it should be replaced strictly based on its age. Yesterday an engineer with a national consulting firm told me that in their experience they've noticed the older a main gets, the less chance it actually has of failing. And based on my experience, I agree. We also heard from that engineer and another at a different national firm, that most water main failures are occuring in mains built in the first few years after World War II because there was a decrease in the quality of materials at that time. And I can't understand how anyone can assign a life to PVC water main pipe since we don't have enough experience with it yet to really know how long it will last. Based on all this, it appears age is definitely not the only factor in determining the need for replacement.

So while it is a good idea to have some report of the state of our infrastructure, let's not fabricate the data just to get more business for our profession. And let's not use a grading system that leads people to believe we are all failures at the job with which the public has entrusted us. Instead we should choose to use an accurate and reasonable method of identifying and assessing our assets and reporting the actual projected costs to keep up with the management and maintenance of our system. Because no engineer I know really believes the Infrastructure Report Card is an accurate reflection of our nation's public works systems, it's not achieving the purpose for which ASCE has developed it, and most of us are not too happy that an organization representing our profession is falsely leading people to believe we are failures at our jobs.

November 3, 2011

A Day in the Life of a Civil Engineer – Day 66

Day 66

Culvert Lining Project

It looks like our issue with the culvert lining project has been resolved. We gave the structural drawings from our consultant to the contractor. Theh contractor ended up getting a couple prices from other concrete contractors which were lower than the original subcontractor's price. So it looks like we will end up getting the work we needed done at the price that was bid. It rained today so the contractor did not work, but he should be back out tomorrow to form the head walls.

Road Project

We've started on the plans for next year's road project. Today, I worked on adding a few more roads, My supervisor had said we could try increasing the amount we normally spend since we are not keeping up with the failure rate. Of course, all this will be subject to the approval of the council. We are just going to suggest this amount. We did get a little extra in MFT funds this year so that amount could be applied to this project.

The PACE sidewalk project

Today I tried to get a copy of the bid tab for the PACE project I discussed yesterday. The person I emailed said I had to submit a FOIA request to get it and that I had to ask how to do this by emailing their law department. Well, we have been through the FOIA drill here, and from we've been told, someone can ask for something on a dirty napkin, and that is an acceptable request to which you must respond. We can no longer require anyone to go through a formal process to get something. So because I did not hear back from the law department, I tried emailing their FOIA officer directly. He read the email but did not respond, so I'll have to see if they end up sending it or not. We did ask a local contractor who bids that type of work if they put in a bid, and they had not even been aware the project was out to bid.

Water Main Project

I met with the property owner of one of the parcels where we are asking for an easement for our water main. They said we could go ahead and submit the documents for their signature. I also worked a little more on the modeling but realized I needed the pump curve for our high service pumps at the water plant. So I arranged to have them sent over.

Tomorrow I am scheduled to be out of the office so won't be writing "A Day in the Life.." post for Friday.

November 1, 2011

A Day in the Life of a Civil Engineer – Day 64

Day 64

Culvert Lining Project

Today was somewhat of a continuation of the issues that started yesterday with our culvert project. Tomorrow I am meeting with the contractor and giving him the detailed structural design that we received today from our consultant. The contractor will have to determine if the work shown was what he anticipated when he bid the job. If not, he will tell us how much more he would charge us. Then if this is the case, we will need to review the increased amount and decide if we think that is a correct value. If not, and if we cannot reach an agreement, we will have to remove the concrete work from the contract.

This is a good lesson in why it is so important to have a lot of detail in the plans. A misinterpretation of the plans by the contractor or a difference in interpretation from what was expected by the engineer can lead to problems like this during construction. It can also lead to higher bid prices if there had been some uncertaintly on the contractor's part about the work when he was determining his bid. It's frustrating for us because we are managing the construction, but had to rely on another engineer for the design and the plans. And I realize it's frustrating for the contractor. Now we have a real chance of having to delete the work from the contract because the plans/specs seemed to have caused a difference of opinion over what the work entailed, and we are not sure if we can come to some agreement on the cost.

Water modeling

I have been working on the design of a water main extension. Today I contacted one of the owners of a parcel over which we are asking for an easement. We arranged to meet later this week to look over the area. I also started working on running an analysis of the water system with this line in place so I can finish filling out the IEPA permit. Fortunately a model was built several years ago when the city built a new water treatment plant. And the consultant who built that shared the information with us. It was built with EPANET so I downloaded the program. In the past I've used a DOS -based program and WaterGems, but since the data is in the EPANET format, I will just try to figure that software.

Miscellaneous & NaNoWriMo

We also drove a few more roads to determine their condition. Then at the end of the day, I attended an APWA education committee meeting. Today was also the beginning of NaNoWriMo. It's not really an engineering event, but I've always enjoyed writing so have tried to participate most years. And it's a great incentive for working on writing skills. I encourage anyone interested in writing to check it out!

August 22, 2011

A Day in the Life of a Civil Engineer – Day 16

Day 16

Back to work after a weekend of working on a presentation I'm giving in September at the Illinois Association of Highway Engineers conference in Normal, Ill. I'm really looking forward to the event, and if anyone reading this is going make sure to say hi at the conference!

Development Meeting

So today was our Development Staff Meeting. As usual we meet every other Monday morning with other department staff to discuss developments and related issues going on in the city. Today we discussed a few developments that range from those with initial inquiries to others that are almost finishing construction. We also talked about a few potential amendments to zoning districts and sign ordinances.

School Zones

Because one of our interns is now gone, I worked a little bit with our remaining intern to finish up our study of school zones in our city. We discussed the work they had done. Then we drove through all the school zones so I could get a better idea of where exactly the signs are placed and so I could review their recommendations. Next I plan to meet with the police department to discuss the zones, and then we'll present our recommendations to the council for amending the current ordinance.

Water Main Revisions

We also had a question come up with one of our developments. They found during construction that their water service line, which is planned to be 6 inches in diameter, will not have enough cover once they finish grading for their parking lot. (Normally we like to have about 5 or 5.5 feet of cover at least to ensure water lines will not freeze in the winter – this depth changes depending on where you are in the US.) So the engineer for the owner called to see if they could change the design to try to lower the line. There was some back and forth discussion, but because it was not something easily resolved through email and phone calls, we decided to meet on site. I went along with the engineer who reviewed the plans who was handling approval of this change and with our water and sewer superintendent. After seeing it out in the field and meeting with their engineer and contractor, we all decided on a different solution. They will shut down the water main in the block where they are connecting and will remove the existing service valve, then immediately dive the pipe down to get their cover, and then move the valve further into the site. The photo on the left isn't of this site, but it does show what the new valve will probably look like.

Development Review

Throughout the day I reviewed a resubmittal of the plans for a proposed development. There were only a couple items left to be addressed, but I can't send off the comments until I get the water and sewer fees calculated. And we can't complete the calculation of the fee until they tell us the size of the meter. Hopefully we'll get that this week, and then I can send this off.

Where did our Files Go?!

We even had an incident today where somehow one of our folders accidently had gotten taken out of the top level directory of our server and put into another folder. So no one could find the information they needed that had been in there. Because we don't have administrator access to bring folders back up to the top level, I ended up contacting IT, and they moved it back for us. But I am hoping they can make it so it can't be moved in the future. It's a good lesson to be careful when you're in a shared directory so that you don't accidently move folders into other folders without realizing it.

August 6, 2011

Setting Sustainable Water Rates

Raising water or sewer rates is never a popular move, and in this economy many have tried to avoid it as if they are fleeing from a zombie apocalypse. But for many utilities expenditures are exceeding revenues, and there's sometimes little choice other than a rate increase. You can only cut so much from a budget before negatively impacting service levels and quality. But is this an unavoidable consequence of a bad economy? And can rates be set to sustain a utility even during times like these? Let's explore the history of rate structure, how it has impacted us today, and some solutions for going forward.

History of Water Rate Structures

In the U.S., there have been basically three types of structures or a mixture of two of the three:

Uniform rates
Increasing rates based on usage
Decreasing rates based on usage

Some utitlities also applied a fixed fee in addition to the rate, but often this was not a significant amount. Water systems also created categories of users sometimes applying different rates to different users. Of the three structures listed above, number three was usually the more popular. After all, water was everywhere! And this was particularly true for cities with a large manufacturing base dependent on water for their process. It was almost as if utilities were begging people to consume water.

Based on stories I've heard from the "old timers," back then the water fund was never out of money. And they could always depend on it to carry the other funds. So what happened?

Water Rates & Water Funds Today

Our country has over the last couple decades transformed their view of water as an unlimited supply. Yes, water never really goes away, but it can become increasingly contaminated or placed into a state that costs significantly more to collect and improve its quality. So our view of water has changed to that of a valuable resource and commodity. And to encourage customers to conserve water, many utilities have changed rates to increase as water usage increases. At the same time, water regulations have significantly increased and only show signs of becoming even more stringent. The net result of all this is people using less water (yay! our conservation methods worked) causing a decrease in revenue (boo! we didn't see that coming!?) and the cost to collect, treat, and deliver water has skyrocketed causing an increase in expenditures. Then on top of that we had the recession with people cutting back even more on water just to save money or leaving behind vacant homes that generate no revenue for utilities.

Of course as they say hindsight is better than foresight. But it's surprising to me how many want to cling to the old ways going forward. Even as revenue is dropping and funds are bleeding, they continue to propose the old water structure of a decreasing rate based on increased usage. And many times with no fixed rate or a very small rate attached. This is simply not sustainable.

Implementing Sustainable Solutions

So what does work? This post cannot begin to offer the right answer for every situation. A good water rate study needs to be customized for each utility. But in general, a good beginning is to look at costs. Fixed costs that are truly independent of water usage need to be separated from costs that fluctuate with water usage. For example, if your water utility has two trucks, it has two trucks. If you normally pump 2 MGD and you change to pumping 1 MGD, you don't get rid of one truck if you still need two for checking your fixed system. Variable costs will include such things as chemicals and electricity.

In addition to costs, you need to look at your users. If you have categories of users such as residential, commercial, and industrial, these need to be analyzed as a group breaking each into usage blocks that make sense. It's also important to get a handle on the amount of usage expected throughout the year, particularly if seasonal temperatures fluctuate.

As you develop a good idea of water consumption in your system, you can start to explore which rate structure works best for your community. The community's philosophy on water consumption must also be taken into account. For some, a single rate independent of usage might best address the philosophy and the usage patterns. Because of water conservation efforts, some communities might choose to assess higher rates for increased usage. I can't imagine too many sticking with the less cost for more usage because this becomes a type of subsidy if source and treatment costs are high enough.

For many, it makes sense to meet variable costs with these rates and then add on a fixed fee that will pay the fixed costs. Doing anything other than this requires the rate to cover some of the fixed costs and puts the risk back on the utility because now the utility is dependent on water usage to be high enough to bring in extra money for fixed costs. It's also common to address low income populations or customers with minimum usage by offering a flat rate for the lowest tier of usage.

Although all that might sound straight forward enough, the real challenge occurs near the end of the analysis when you figure out what you really should be charging. Few utilities could probably implement the structure they really need immediately. One piece of advice is to set a target structure and then create a transition plan to get there. And whether you need to transition or not, it's best to create a long term ordinance establishing regular rate increases every year or every other year. This spreads the transition over a long time period and it allows for regular increases but offers elected officials the opportunity to amend an increase for specific years if possible.

Below is a guidance document from the EPA that can be used to assist in conducting a water rate study. And you can also find some good resources through AWWA publications.

Guide Small Systems Final Rate Setting Guide

May 30, 2010June 30, 2010

Bryan’s Consumer Confidence Report on Stage at Gov 2.0 Expo

Each year, water utilities all over the U.S. have to prepare and distribute Consumer Confidence Reports (CCR) to their customers. Usually these documents are sent out as two or three page sheets of tiny text filled with standard, required language reporting on water sources and chemicals found in drinking water. My guess is most Americans receive these, glance at all that tiny text, then toss it into the garbage.

A few years ago, Jay Socol, public information officer for the city of Bryan, Texas, decided to break out of the standard practice of sending out a boring CCR and create something that rocked. The city started producing calendars showcasing workers in their water system. The mandated CCR language was included in those calendars, but now it looked awesome and definitely a lot more interesting.City of Bryan, Texas 2006 Consumer Confidence Report Calendar

These calendars were recently highlighted in Kathy Sierra's presentation at Gov 2.0 Expo as an example of how to create passion for something. If a city can transform a simple CCR into something that leaves a positive and lasting impression on someone, what else can government do to light the fire of passion in citizens?