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Western Area Water Supply Project

WESTERN AREA WATER SUPPLY: SOLUTIONS FOR NORTH DAKOTA

Western Area Water Supply Projectter Supply Project

Western Area Water Supply Project

Western Area Water Supply: Solutions for North Dakota 2

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Written by: Sasha Orman Produced by: Tom Venturo >>>

Cory Chorne discusses efforts to provide clean highquality water to North Dakota’s booming population

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Western Area Water Supply Project

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s a multifaceted water delivery and collections solutions business, Advanced Engineering and Environmental Services, Inc. (AE2S) addresses the needs of multiple clients every day throughout northwest North Dakota.

But not too long ago, the company started to realize that many of its clients were coming to AE2S with very similar needs.

“We were working with a number of rural water systems in northwest North Dakota, and they were all dealing with one form of water supply issue or another, whether it was water quantity or water quality,” says Cory Chorne, Project Manager at AE2S. “As we were working through that with all our different clients, it became readily apparent to us that each one of these rural water systems was going to be spending large sums of money on capital improvements – we had a lot of them who were looking at building water treatment plants and water supply systems, either intake systems or drilling water wells. In our experience, those types of things not only require intense capital investments up front but every 25-30 years you’re going back in and reconditioning or replacing or 4

refurbishing equipment as it hits life expectancy.”

Any water supply issues were only exacerbated when the oil and gas industry boom hit North Dakota, causing the region’s population to balloon from 20,000 to nearly 60,000 in a matter of months and necessitating some clever out-of-the-box problem solving. What AE2S brought to the table next was the Western Area Water Supply Project, a collaborative undertaking unlike anything North Dakota has ever seen before.

A Regional Plan “What we approached a lot of these clients with was taking a look at a regional approach to a water supply solution,” says Chorne.

“Instead of building three or four water treatment plants at $1020 million apiece, why not build one big water plant and have that supply a majority of the water, then put rest of the money into a pipe – which will last a lot longer than water treatment plants and isn’t nearly as expensive to operate and maintain?”

With the mounting approval of its clients and counties within the region, AE2S got to work. “We put together this plan – a regional

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design concept on how it would all lay out and how it would work with cost estimates – and took all that information and presented it to policy makers within the state,” says Chorne. “We got our project on a list and eventually got it before the North Dakota legislature and were able to convince them this was something that needed to be done.”

Between the industry and the population boom, the choice was clear and the project was jumpstarted an initial $110 million investment grant by the state of North Dakota.

A Multi-Pronged Expansion The aspects of the Western Area Water Supply project are many, each addressing a different need of the northwest North Dakota region. Over the past two years, AE2S has completed $115 million in infrastructure, ranging from large diameter transmission mains to pump stations and reservoirs.

Largest of all is the expansion of the Williston water treatment plant from a 10 million gallon per day operation to 14 million gallons, with additional plans in place to reach 21 million per day by 2015. In addition to doubling the treatment plant’s capacity, work is also being done to improve the quality of the

plant’s output, a crucial step due to North Dakota’s reliance on the Missouri River.

“The nickname for the Missouri River is “The Big Muddy”, and we ran into a situation this Spring where we had sediment levels in that river that had never been seen before – with that, we were bringing so much sand and silt into the water treatment plant that it had overwhelmed the system’s design to handle that sand and silt that comes in with the water,” says Chorne. “We are adding an additional pretreatment process to handle that, and beefing up the 5

Since starting in March of 1995, PKG Contracting has provided creative, quality Water and Wastewater solutions for Municipalities, Rural and Regional Water Systems throughout the upper Midwest. Although our primary areas of work include North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota and Iowa, we have also completed projects as far away as Texas and Florida.

For over two decades our superintendents, craftsmen, and laborers have been dedicated to ensuring superior results for project owners.

We believe that a successful project outcome is the result of building and maintaining successful relationships with owners, engineers and subcontractors and have worked to build a reputation based upon our quality of work and expertise in this industry.

admin@pkg-inc.com I www.pkg-inc.com

systems already in place to give them a better opportunity to handle those events. So if it does that to us again, we’re in a better position to handle that. We may still have to reduce our production rate but hopefully not as drastically as we had to this past Spring.”

But the work is not over yet: the project is still in full swing, with $40 million in infrastructure work just starting and more still waiting to be bid out. “We’ve got a couple of pipeline projects that we’re working on, again a continuation of these bigger transmission mains,” says Chorne. “One is a loop around

Williston that will open up about six sections of land for development and will supply that area. That will also be our primary transmission main into the most northwest reaches of North Dakota, supplying communities that were getting some water supply using Williston’s distribution system – we’ll take it around the west side, and that will open up a large area of expansion for Williston. Then we’ve got another transmission line down in Mackenzie County to get some water into a rural area there and along with that a couple of pump stations, a reservoir, and

Western Area Water Supply Project

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Supplier Profile

PKG Contracting, Inc. Employees: 60 Established: 1995 Industry: Municipal-Industrial Services: Construction of Water and Wastewater Treatment Facilities Management: • Darin Pfingsten, President • Mike Sikorski, Project Manager/ Estimator • John Gisvold, Project Manager/ Estimator www.pkg-inc.com

there’s some additional money in that for additional water treatment plant work.”

A Unique Approach to Funding The oil and gas industry isn’t providing any upfront funding to the Western Area Water Supply Project – but its reliance on North Dakota’s water supply to operate is providing a unique way to help foot the bill.

“The state provides all the funding for the construction for the project to move forward – but what the oil industry is doing is

buying water from the project, and they pay a premium for that water,” Chorne explains. “This generates a rather significant revenue stream for the project, and that revenue is what’s largely being used to pay off the loans for this project.”

That revenue stream is extremely beneficial to the state and the project, allowing it not only self-sufficiency but the possibility of funding further related water solutions projects into the future.

“Hopefully what we can do is build this infrastructure out and, within fifteen to twenty years, have all the debt paid off and not cost the citizens of North Dakota a dime,” says Chorne. “If we can continue to supply industry as we are now and generate the revenue that we are, the system will be debt free and the state will get their money back that they invested into it.”

A Historic Project The Western Area Water Supply project is expected to slow down by 2015 as a majority of the large capacity transmission pipelines, reservoirs, pump stations, and water treatment plant expansion will be operational. By then, its effects on the region should be clear and a reflection of the hopes that AE2S has for the project – a way to both 7

Western Area Water Supply Project

improve the quality of life for North Dakota’s remote northern citizens and bring an increase in industry to the region.

“First and foremost, we hope and are pretty confident that it is going to provide a significant portion of the state a reliable highquality water supply for domestic, commercial, and industrial needs,” says Chorne. “That’s really what the mission of this project was first 8

set out to be: we saw this huge population expansion coming and knew they were going to need water and it was our goal to get them water they knew they could rely on. Along with that, the quality of water we are producing hopefully will not only be attractive to industrial customers we’re serving today, but also will be a potential economic development tool that this part of the state can

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STATISTICS

Industry: Civil and Environmental Engineering Consulting firm Founded: 1991 Headquarters: Grand Forks, N.D. Key People/Titles: Steve Burian, CEO & Charlie Vein, President Employees: 220 Website:

www.ae2s.com

use to attract businesses that are looking for a source of high-quality water. Whether it’s manufacturing or processing – whatever it might be, this area and the water supply it has is something that might be attractive to them.”

“It’s a very historic project,” he adds. “Not only for North Dakota but maybe for water projects across the country.”

Visit us online:

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Western Area Water Supply Project 4050 Garden View Drive Suite 200, Grand Forks, ND 58201 T: 701-746-8087 www.ae2s.com