18 | ROCKY MOUNTAIN WATER JULY 2019
FEATURE
Board is familiar. This results in a CIP that informs financial
planning as opposed to being subjected to it.
Developing a CIP around the right problem statement
The WBWCD potable water system in Weber and Davis
Counties is supplied from the Weber River watershed
through three water treatment plants (WTPs) in the Wasatch
Front foothills. For several years, WBWCD assumed that
expanding existing WTP capacity would require cost
prohibitive improvements to the transmission system and
that the next supply capacity improvement would be a new
WTP supplying water from Willard Bay, called the Weber
West WTP (WW-WTP). In recent years, as demands began to
approach the need for additional supply capacity, WBWCD
decided to reframe the question around its planning efforts.
WBWCD commissioned a potable water transmission
planning effort with the objective of determining the most
cost-effective transmission improvements from all available
source expansions to provide the levels of service desired by
customers through 2060.
Framing the problem statement in this way opened the
process to other alternatives with the potential to achieve
WBWCD’s mission at a lower cost. Figure 4 shows the two
leading alternatives that came out of WBWCD’s approach
Figure 4. WBWCD Planning Problem Statement
to plan around the right problem statement. The planning
effort founded that increasing the existing WTPs capacities
would defer the need for the WW-WTP by 15 years. This
15-year deferral translated to an overall savings of $20
million dollars for WBWCD even after discounting for the
cost of transmission improvements that would be required to
convey additional capacity from the existing WTPs.
Leveraging comprehensive analyses
to facilitate adaptability
During the planning effort described above, WBWCD used a
comprehensive approach to develop projects that addressed
multiple objectives and documented those objectives in a
way that would allow them to adapt projects as opportunities
presented themselves. As listed in Phase 2 of Figure 2,
WBWCD evaluated their system for capacity, renewal, water
quality, operational optimization, and resiliency needs.
Figure 5 demonstrates the method used to document each
CIP project in a way that allows WBWCD to adapt to changes
in projections and opportunities. The estimated completion
year listed in the green box is accompanied by the trigger
used to determine that target, so that as projections change
the targeted completion years can be updated. The multiple
objectives of the project are clearly summarized in the text
so that WBWCD can act on opportunities that may arise to
achieve these objectives in a different way.
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