By John Raiford, PE, PhD

Taking a strategic approach to master planning is easier than you think

Aging infrastructure. Strapped budgets. Extreme weather events. These are just a few of the challenges faced by municipal water and wastewater system managers. The combination of observation-based decision-making and limited resources makes proactively addressing these challenges nearly impossible without a comprehensive framework to evaluate infrastructure, operations, and system performance. For many communities, a water and wastewater master plan is indispensable in supporting wise decisions about the future with limited resources.

Water and wastewater master planning has evolved considerably in recent years and stands today as an essential tool for managing a community’s most valuable resource — its water. The ability to provide potable water and collect and treat wastewater effectively plays a pivotal role in maintaining community stability while improving the quality of life for residents. A comprehensively developed master plan can be key to maximizing operational efficiency, remaining in compliance with ever-changing regulatory requirements, demonstrating to decision-makers where investments are required, and being prepared for future challenges.

The 2019 Water Infrastructure Improvement Act recognized the U.S. Environmental Protection Administration’s 2012 Integrated Municipal Stormwater and Wastewater Planning Approach Framework as a voluntary way for communities to comply with the 1972 Clean Water Act. As a result, some states have made master plans a regulatory requirement, while even more are using justifications spelled out in planning documents to make funding decisions and manage assets. The burden of these regulatory requirements is greatly outweighed by the benefits municipalities can realize by taking a more proactive approach to managing their systems.

Harnessing Data

While the master planning process can seem daunting for those at the starting line, a systemic approach to development of the plan has proven effective without compromising the utility’s day-today responsibilities. The process should begin by harnessing a utility’s most valuable resource — the knowledge and expertise of its people. Through a thorough understanding of operations, challenges, conditions, and goals, utilities can develop master plans that are unique to them and that can be implemented within their means.

Conceptually, a master plan allows municipal utility systems to shift from a reactive to a proactive approach to managing their operations. It is a strategic decision-making support tool that captures institutional knowledge, and supplements and enhances this institutional knowledge with methodical analysis of data from treatment facilities, linear assets, and administrative offices. Additionally, a master plan aggregates and connects data that traditionally have been siloed within different parts of the utility.

Advancements in technology have made it affordable to capture, store, and analyze incredible amounts of useful data, including

• customer information, including type — residential, commercial, or industrial — and use, along with their locations;
• operational information, such as water towers’ operating range, valve settings, float settings, and when pumps are turned on and off;
• system performance and condition, such as runtime, flow, level, and pressure information, and closed-circuit television data; and
• GIS and other mapping information, including asset size and location, which may overlap with other data categories such as condition information or age.

While at one time only larger municipalities or utilities had the resources to benefit from digital applications, today these solutions are available to nearly all communities, giving them the capacity to turn these categories of data into useful information about their water systems. The challenge quite often is not technology, but mindset. Project team stakeholders can demonstrate how the perceptions driven by anecdotal observation and disparate data are enhanced greatly by hard information that may contradict what was once commonly assumed.

A common example of how data can elevate efficiency is billing analysis. Assuming past performance as an indicator of future performance, linking water use to population growth makes it possible to generate meaningful projections of future demand. Most of the time, a residential use of 3.8 L (1 gal) consistently will have a 1.2 L (0.33 gal) of commercial usage associated with it. A master plan can highlight where investment in data collection is needed and how it can allow utilities to make decisions driven by data.