Irrigation Leader April 2020

Volume 7 Issue 4

April 2020

Jim Duncan: How SRP’s Infrastructure Became a Public Relations Tool

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Jim Duncan: How SRP’s Infrastructure Became a Public Relations Tool

Contents April 2020 Volume 7, Issue 4

5 C anals and Beyond

By Kris Polly 6 How

SRP’s Infrastructure Became a Public Relations Tool 12 SRP’s

PrecedentSetting Watershed Management Initiative 16 W alking All 131 Miles of SRP’s Canal System

24 R evamping Garland’s Wastewater Treatment Plants for a Growing Area 28 U pper Trinity Regional Water District: New Technology for a Growing Region 34 T he Water Education Foundation: Helping Professionals and the Public Understand Western Water

20 I nvestigating Inland Indirect Potable Reuse for Norman, Oklahoma

Do you have a story idea for an upcoming issue? Contact our editor-in-chief, Kris Polly, at kris.polly@waterstrategies.com.

an American company established in 2009.

STAFF: Kris Polly, Editor-in-Chief Joshua Dill, Managing Editor Tyler Young, Writer Stephanie Biddle, Graphic Designer Eliza Moreno, Web Designer SUBMISSIONS: Municipal Water Leader welcomes manuscript, photography, and art submissions. However, the right to edit or deny publishing submissions is reserved. Submissions are returned only upon request. For more information, please contact our office at (202) 698-0690 or municipal.water.leader@waterstrategies.com.

ADVERTISING: Municipal Water Leader accepts one-quarter, half-page, and full-page ads. For more information on rates and placement, please contact Kris Polly at (703) 517-3962 or municipal.water.leader@waterstrategies.com.

CIRCULATION: Municipal Water Leader is distributed to irrigation district managers and boards of directors in the 17 western states, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation officials, members of Congress and committee staff, and advertising sponsors.

For address corrections or additions, please contact our managing editor, Joshua Dill, at joshua.dill@waterstrategies.com.

Copyright © 2019 Water Strategies LLC. Municipal Water Leader relies on the excellent contributions of a variety of natural resources professionals who provide content for the magazine. However, the views and opinions expressed by these contributors are solely those of the original contributor and do not necessarily represent or reflect the policies or positions of Municipal Water Leader magazine, its editors, or Water Strategies LLC. The acceptance and use of advertisements in Municipal Water Leader do not constitute a representation or warranty by Water Strategies LLC or Municipal Water Leader magazine regarding the products, services, claims, or companies advertised.

MunicipalWaterLeader.com MuniWaterLeader

COVER PHOTO:

Jim Duncan, Manager of Field Consulting Services, Salt River Project.

Photo courtesy of SRP.

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PHOTO COURTESY OF SRP.

Coming soon in Municipal Water Leader: May: Israel

Municipal Water Leader is published 10 times a year with combined issues for May/June and November/December by

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Canals and Beyond

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large water provider like Arizona’s Salt River Project (SRP) uses canals to get water from storage facilities to users. That seems simple enough, but it is only half the story. This month’s issue of Municipal Water Leader brings you the other half. In our cover interview with SRP Manager of Field Consulting Services Jim Duncan, we explore how SRP uses its canals for public art and events, recreation, and historical commemoration. Then, in an interview with SRP’s Elvy Barton and Bruce Hallin, we learn how the agency is cooperating with the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Reclamation to actively manage the forests in its watersheds to protect its water quality.

Finally, we speak with Lynn Allen and Stephanie Berry about how a group of SRP employees is walking all 131 miles of SRP’s main canals, learning more about their history and operations along the way. From the remote forests where SRP’s water begins to the exciting events along its canal banks, SRP’s story goes far beyond getting water from point A to point B. This month’s Municipal Water Leader also highlights a number of important water and wastewater projects.

Michael Watts, the water reuse practice leader for Garver, tells us about the $700,000 grant that Garver and the City of Norman, Oklahoma, received to study an inland indirect potable reuse water source. Malcolm Parker of the City of Garland, Texas, tells us about how the Rowland Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant was upgraded to expand its

By Kris Polly capacity and to reduce odors for the rapidly multiplying subdivisions north of Dallas. And Jody Zabolio of Texas’s Upper Trinity Regional Water District tells us about another recently expanded wastewater treatment plant that is using ballasted flocculation technology to treat water more quickly and efficiently.

Finally, we speak with Jennifer Bowles, the executive director of the Water Education Foundation, about her organization’s tours, conferences, and publications and the fairhandedness that makes the foundation the Switzerland of the California water world.

From the watershed to the customer, our nation’s municipal water agencies are improving their services, increasing efficiency, and stewarding the natural environment. Many are also realizing that their infrastructure—particularly outdoor conveyance structures— provides great opportunities for public engagement and recreation. I hope that this issue of Municipal Water Leader helps you imagine the possibilities that await your own agency or company. M Kris Polly is the editor-in-chief of Municipal Water Leader magazine and the president and CEO of Water Strategies LLC, a government relations firm he began in February 2009 for the purpose of representing and guiding water, power, and agricultural entities in their dealings with Congress, the Bureau of Reclamation, and other federal government agencies. He may be contacted at kris.polly@waterstrategies.com.

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How SRP’s Infrastructure Became a Public Relations Tool

These floating lumineoles, created by artist association Porté par le vent, were featured at Canal Convergence 2017.

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he Salt River Project (SRP) is a major utility that provides both electrical power and water to a combined count of a little over a million customers in the Phoenix, Arizona, region. SRP manages 131 miles of Bureau of Reclamation–owned major canals and more than 1,000 miles of laterals. This infrastructure—which traverses heavily populated urban areas—provides an unexpected resource for public relations. SRP has cooperated with the City of Phoenix, Scottsdale Public Art, and other partners to turn its infrastructure into a place for recreation, education, and historical commemoration. Its Arizona Falls hydropower station doubles as a historical interpretation site, and the quarter-mile Scottsdale Waterfront hosts a major yearly arts festival called Canal Convergence.

In this interview, Jim Duncan, SRP’s manager of field consulting services, speaks with Municipal Water Leader about the genesis of these projects and how they help SRP tell its story to the broader community.

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position.

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Municipal Water Leader: Would you give us an overall introduction to SRP’s canal system?

Jim Duncan: The canal system comprises 131 miles of major canal and another 1,100 miles of laterals, including open ditches and pipes. We have seven major canals, which vary in size and right of way. All of them are sizable and have bank widths up to 50 feet, easily supporting public recreation on the canal system. This canal system provides water to approximately a quarter of a million acres of property in the Phoenix metro area.

Municipal Water Leader: How old are those canals?

Jim Duncan: The oldest canal is the Tempe Canal, which was built in 1871. The canal system is owned by Reclamation and managed by SRP. Most of the canals were built over the same grade lines that had originally been dug by ancient indigenous populations. In the 1800s, when settlers begin coming into the Salt River Valley area, various enterprising settlers

PHOTO COURTESY OF SEAN DECKERT.

Jim Duncan: I’ve been at SRP since 1983, when I started in the economic development group. In 1989, I moved to the water side of SRP, where I started working with our operations, maintenance, and construction groups, which dealt specifically with our canals and water distribution system. I did that for 3–4 years and then moved into the water engineering group. My primary function there was to

be the interface between local municipalities and SRP as we explored the different ways the canal banks could be used for public recreation, or as we call it, canal multiple use. I was in that position until last year, when through a reorganization, we formed a group that handles canal multiple use as well as irrigation system inspections and right-of-way issues.

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An aerial view of Arizona Falls.

discovered those ancient canals and started redigging and enlarging them. In the early 1900s, landowners in this valley pledged their property as collateral to the federal government for the construction of the Roosevelt Dam, because the existing canal system lacked any storage structures and was dependent entirely upon natural flow, which wasn’t adequate to sustain the farming interest. The Reclamation Act and the construction of Roosevelt Dam created the reservoir system, which since that time has developed into multiple reservoirs.

Municipal Water Leader: Does SRP’s canal system play any role in flood control?

Jim Duncan: The SRP canal system is not a flood control system; it is a water delivery system. During heavy rain, some flood water does find its way into the canal system, mostly from localized street flow. We continue working hard with the cities to make sure that whatever flood water enters our system is taken back out into their storm systems.

PHOTO COURTESY OF SRP.

Municipal Water Leader: Would you tell us about the Arizona Falls facility?

Jim Duncan: Arizona Falls is a low-head hydroelectric generating station on the canal. It was the first hydroelectric station in the city of Phoenix. When the Arizona Canal was originally dug in the late 1800s, the builders encountered a

granite shelf that ran through the valley. At that point, they did not have blasting equipment, so they simply left a 20foot high waterfall in the canal system. By the turn of the century, it had been turned into a hydroelectric station within the city of Phoenix. Later, it became part of Reclamation’s canal system, and SRP took it over and operated it through the 1950s. At that point, it had reached the end of its useful life. The equipment was removed and the area was fenced off.

The waterfall was no longer visible; it had been encased in box culverts and old concrete structures. People didn’t know that it was there. It wasn’t until 2000 that SRP decided to reintroduce low-head hydro at that location and set about rebuilding a modern generating station.

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about the design and construction of that new hydro station.

Jim Duncan: SRP made the decision to reintroduce lowhead hydro at the same time that the City of Phoenix was exploring the option of celebrating certain locations along the canal system that had some historical or social significance. Arizona Falls was one of those. Across the street was the location of the old Ingleside Inn, which was socially significant in the early 20th century. People used to gather at the falls prior to the first hydro unit being built. The City of Phoenix wanted to celebrate that in some fashion, but it wasn’t quite sure how and had a limited budget.

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The featured art installation at Canal Convergence 2019 was a flame-spouting water serpent.

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with working infrastructure. It has become a favorite spot. SRP uses it routinely for tours, meetings, and media interviews. We host everything from grade school kids to professional groups there, using it as a venue for education.

Municipal Water Leader: Would you tell us about how it works as a public relations tool?

Jim Duncan: It’s extremely useful. It’s one of the more photographed SRP facilities. It is located right in a residential area. We can talk onsite about almost everything that SRP does. We can talk about canal operations, SRP’s renewable portfolio, and sustainable generation. In fact, in addition to being a hydropower station, there are solar panels on the roof. Considering its art elements, it is also a good place for discussions about how the canal brought life to the valley.

Municipal Water Leader: SRP also uses its canals for an event called Canal Convergence. Would you tell us about that?

Jim Duncan: Canal Convergence is an annual public art event orchestrated by Scottsdale Public Art. It occurs each November for 10 days. This past November, it attracted just shy of 300,000 people. A quarter-mile segment of the canal system in the downtown Scottsdale area is used to exhibit commissioned public art pieces from local, national, and

PHOTO COURTESY OF SCOTTSDALE PUBLIC ART.

At first, everybody thought that there would be a conflict between SRP’s desire to build infrastructure and the city’s desire to take an artistic approach to celebrating the location’s historic significance. But by joining forces, we were able to create a better project than either of us could have done on our own. Had SRP taken a purely technical approach, the hydro station would have been just as efficient as it is today, but it wouldn’t have been a place to go to celebrate history. The city, meanwhile, had limited funds, so it wouldn’t have been able to do very much. SRP’s engineers and the City of Phoenix, along with an artist and an architect, formed a team to design a site that could use working infrastructure as a venue for education and to celebrate the history of the city of Phoenix. Considering all the structural work SRP had to do, the incremental cost of doing a little bit extra to celebrate the history of the area was easily manageable. The city dedicated its funding to do the more artistic elements of the project. There was a lot of involvement from the neighborhood and the general public.

One of the site’s features is a checkerboard floor adjacent to the generating room, which is called the dance floor.

Research into old newspapers indicated that at one time, people had constructed an old wood dance floor on the bank of the canal. That was part of the social fabric of the area.

Today, Arizona Falls is not just operating infrastructure, and it’s not just a simple interpretive site. It has art integrated

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PHOTO COURTESY OF SRP.

Bikers enjoying multiuse paths along the Arizona Canal.

international artists. These artworks are designed specifically for installation in and around the canal, not just on its banks but also in the water.

What the event is today is impressive, but understanding how we got to this point is really part of the story. This area in Scottsdale uses the canal banks at a higher rate than most.

In fact, the City of Scottsdale spent a considerable amount of money to develop this area, which it calls the Scottsdale Waterfront. It is unlike any other quarter-mile segment of our canal system. In 2008, when all this development was occurring, SRP needed to perform routine canal maintenance, which required draining the canal. Although the city knew this work needed to be done, it was somewhat taken aback to learn that it was going to happen in January. That is when the demand for water is at its lowest, but it’s also the height of the tourist season. The city was concerned that draining the canal would detrimentally affect it. Much to the credit of Scottsdale Public Art, it stepped up and said that it actually thought this was an opportunity. SRP went out to do the work that we needed to do, and Scottsdale Public Art orchestrated a little bit of entertainment, including interpretive dancing and a strange mixture of art and infrastructure. SRP provided some educational material to help people understand what we do to maintain and operate the canal system. An event that had started to mitigate maintenance work caught on so quickly and aroused so much interest that it now has a budget of nearly a

million dollars and has gone from 2 to 10 days in length and from a few hundred participants to 300,000. It’s a wonderful opportunity for SRP to engage with the public on the banks of the canal. People come out to enjoy the entertainment and the artwork, but they are open to learning about where their water comes from and what it takes to manage the resource. That’s what SRP is interested in as a sponsor of this event.

Municipal Water Leader: Was it difficult to convince the SRP leadership to allow and sponsor an event like this?

Jim Duncan: It wasn’t easy. First of all, I should say that most of the budget that supports this event comes from the City of Scottsdale, Scottsdale Public Art, and private donations.

Although SRP supports the event both financially and with in-kind services, the majority of the funding comes from other sources. It’s important to understand that the utility industry is not much of a risk-taking industry. We like things that are tried and true. This was a huge departure for SRP. We had never allowed anyone to introduce something into the canal for an event. Although we laugh about it today, the first art that we allowed were large, simple styrofoam shapes, 10–12 feet in size, that looked like tools. They were all strung together, draped over a bridge, and laid in the bottom of the dry canal. When we refilled the canal, the shapes would float to the surface and then be removed. We MUNICIPALWATERLEADER.COM

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ADVERTISEMENT When we first held Canal Convergence in 2012, it drew about 6,000 people, with three or four artists. Today it has grown into a major tourist event for the city of Scottsdale that lasts for 10 days. This past November, almost 295,000 people came. Visitors have the opportunity to experience the canal in a beautifully transformed state; see public art; enjoy great music, great food, and great drinks; and learn about the water. They get to learn about sustainability, recycling, and the need to be aware of our carbon footprint. It’s become a great forum not only to enjoy public art, but also to hear more about what water means to us and the power of what SRP does to manage that water source.

We love partnering with SRP each year. At first, there was some nervousness about the event, but Jim Duncan was able to assure the SRP leadership that it would not cause any damage or interfere with SRP’s services. As a result of his incredible work over the years, we have amazing installations, including ones that shoot fire! It has been a tremendous collaboration for both of us and has allowed us to transform the space in so many wonderful ways.

— Kim Boganey, Public Art Director, Scottsdale Public Art

had to go through serious discussions at SRP, not just with our executive management but with our board of directors, to convince everybody that this was compatible with SRP’s charge of delivering water. We chuckle about that because in 2019, the featured art piece was a 200-foot-long, stainless steel water serpent that shot flames 30 feet into the air and used pyrotechnics. We’ve clearly crossed the threshold of understanding just how much can be done in the canal while still meeting our core responsibilities of delivering water.

Everything we allow the artists to do has been thoroughly vetted to make sure that it does not compromise water quality or safety. We’ve come a long way in a few years.

Jim Duncan: My advice is simply that the initial reaction is always going to be about liability, but that our experience has been that liability can be worked out through agreements, and that the payback is fantastic in terms of public relations and educational opportunities. When these things are first talked about, everybody immediately brings up the liability issue. That can always be worked out. It was worked out here.

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Municipal Water Leader: Are there any other ways in which SRP’s canals are used by the community?

Jim Duncan: SRP has exerted considerable effort working with municipalities to allow the canal banks to be used for nonmotorized recreation, including walking, jogging, and bicycling. Per federal regulation, the canal banks are open to the public for those activities. We take it a step further in working closely with the cities to allow them to design and build bike paths, public art, lighting, and landscaping. These improvements serve primarily to allow people to recreate and bicycle off the streets. The public art and interpretive elements built into these miles of multiuse paths also serve to educate people about where their water comes from.

Our 131 miles of major canal support over 85 miles of fully developed bike trails, all of which are compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act, and feature $12 million of commissioned public art. People use the canal banks to get from point A to point B, but they also provide a way for them to rediscover the connection to the canals that our agrarian predecessors understood perfectly. M Jim Duncan is the manager of field consulting services within Water Services at SRP. He can be contacted at Jim.duncan@srpnet.com.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF SCOTTSDALE PUBLIC ART AND SRP.

Municipal Water Leader: What advice would you have for another water provider that is thinking about using its infrastructure for a festival like this?

Scottsdale Public Art executed an agreement for each of these events indemnifying both Reclamation and SRP. It assumes the entire responsibility for the safety and compatibility of the artwork that it does. It takes little effort on SRP’s part to make sure that the artwork placed in the canal does not in any way compromise our ability to maintain and operate the canal. The benefits we derive from this 10-day festival are immense. It is a valuable educational event. Of the 300,000 people who come, thousands engage with our content experts. It is a fantastic opportunity to help people learn and appreciate the value of bringing water to the Phoenix area. Most people, even those who drive over the canals every day, don’t know what these canals are or where the water comes from. The other thing to mention is that, while SRP is the largest provider of water and power to the Phoenix metro region, most people only pay a power bill to SRP. We deliver raw water primarily to the cities in our service area, and those cities treat and deliver potable water and bill the customers. That means that many customers don’t realize that SRP plays a role in delivering water. They also don’t know about the efforts SRP takes to manage the watershed, to measure the snowpack, to take care of the forests, and to bring that water down through its rivers and reservoirs. The more their knowledge expands, the greater their appreciation is. That leads to better efforts at water conservation and an understanding of SRP’s roles.

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SRP’s Precedent-Setting Watershed Management Initiative

Arizona forest before and after thinning.

D

iverting, storing, and delivering water is the main trade of a major water supplier like the Salt River Project (SRP). But to successfully carry out that mission, it must pay attention to a much wider landscape than that encompassed by its infrastructure and service area. All water comes from somewhere, and that means that SRP has a direct interest in the tracts of forest and wilderness land, much of which is federally owned, that its water flows through on the way to its reservoirs. One challenge is forest management.

Without it, forests become unhealthy and overgrown and are susceptible to devastating wildfires that send ash and debris into SRP’s system.

In this interview, Elvy Barton, a senior water policy analyst at SRP, and Bruce Hallin, SRP’s director of water supply, tell Municipal Water Leader about SRP’s partnership with the U.S. Forest Service, the Bureau of Reclamation, and the State of Arizona and its Four Forest Restoration Initiative (4FRI).

Endangered Species Act. Last year, I came over to the water resources department, where I’ve been focusing on forest restoration issues and water supply policy.

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about your backgrounds and how you came to be in your current positions.

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about the watershed that provides water to SRP.

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Elvy Barton: There are three watersheds that flow into SRP’s seven reservoirs: the Salt River watershed, the Verde River watershed, and the East Clear Creek watershed. They encompass about 8.3 million acres of land in northern, central, and eastern Arizona. Four of our reservoirs are filled by the Salt River; two by the Verde River; and one is filled from the East Clear Creek Watershed, which then flows into the Verde River.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, SRP lobbied Congress to set aside the lands above our water service

PHOTOS COURTESY OF SRP.

Elvy Barton: My career started in the Arizona House of Representatives, were I was a senior policy analyst for 10 years, working on natural resources, water, and environmental policy issues for the Democratic caucus.

In 2015, I came over to SRP as a senior policy analyst for environmental issues and worked on a range of policies related to the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), and the

Bruce Hallin: I’ve been at SRP for close to 30 years.

I have a varied background in water supply planning, water resource management, water adjudication, water supply acquisition, business development, water resource development, and water strategy. Most recently, I have also been assisting in the area of forest restoration, forest health, and watershed health. In addition to that, I spent some time on the power side of the business doing power resource planning and corporate planning strategy development. I was also in charge of our land acquisitions group, so I did some real estate development on the power side of the business. Also, I do a lot of lobbying and legislative briefings. We also all work together on policy and policy development.

An unhealthy, overgrown forest with trees marked for removal.

territory in the Phoenix metropolitan area, mainly because our founders knew that those watersheds were important in providing a reliable, sustainable water supply to the valley. They succeeded in getting Presidents William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt to set aside the Tonto National Forest and the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest, primarily to protect those lands and the water supply they provide.

Municipal Water Leader: What are the overall concerns related to watershed health?

Elvy Barton: One of our major concerns is that our watershed is overstocked with trees and brush. On average, an acre of land in our national forest land has about 100 trees per acre, but in some areas there are thousands per acre. When the trees grow at that density, they compete

for resources and undergo more stresses, which makes them more susceptible to insects and disease and less tolerant to drought conditions. In addition, they provide so much fuel that wildfires can take hold and burn at high severity rates.

Over the past 2 decades, we have seen a huge increase in the number of wildfires and in their severity. We’ve had five mega fires—fires over 100,000 acres in size—in our watersheds in the last 2 decades, which is not normal for this environment.

These wildfires not only devastate our natural resources, they degrade our water quality: When precipitation occurs after those fires, a lot of ash and debris is washed into rivers and reservoirs. They also put a lot of sediment into the SRP reservoirs, which reduces our ability to store water, which is a huge concern considering that we’re in a desert environment where long-term storage and resiliency to drought is crucial.

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on forest restoration. 4FRI is the largest CFLRP project. It has been in place for about 10 years and has to be reauthorized every 10 years, a process it is going through right now.

A significant number of stakeholders participate in it, including SRP, environmental groups, industries, academic institutions like Northern Arizona University, and the National Forests.

Municipal Water Leader: Were SRP and the Forest Service already working together on watershed issues before 4FRI was established?

A healthy forest.

Bruce Hallin: The land in our watersheds is primarily owned by the federal government, whether it’s tribal land or national forest land. At this point, unfortunately, the practice of protecting the watershed has gone awry, and we’re actively pursuing partnerships with the Forest Service, the State of Arizona, and the Bureau of Reclamation to remedy that. SRP is a federal Reclamation project, so Reclamation is also interested in the health of the watershed. We have been working together to improve the health of those forests through major forest restoration initiatives.

Municipal Water Leader: What steps does SRP have to take when ash and debris end up in the water?

Bruce Hallin: SRP is a raw water provider. Historically, we primarily delivered water for agricultural purposes, but because of this area’s rapid urbanization, we now provide water to 10 municipal water treatment plants. Essentially, the poor-quality, ash- and debris-laden water that washes into our system following

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these fires is being treated by the cities. The cities have invested tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars to improve their ability to treat water that is heavily laden with organics, ash, metals, and other materials engendered by these catastrophic wildfires. We’ve even had situations in which the cities couldn’t even treat the water because it was so contaminated with ash. We ended up diverting the water away from our canal system and releasing it into a dry riverbed.

In those cases, the fires were actually downstream of our reservoirs, so the poor-quality runoff had a direct effect on the diversions that we were making out of the Salt River.

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about 4FRI. Elvy Barton: In 2009, Congress established the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program (CFLRP), which is a program under the Forest Service that focuses on landscape-scale restoration projects.

It pulls a bunch of stakeholders and interested parties together to work

Bruce Hallin: We were working together on partnership issues associated with a triparty agreement involving SRP, Reclamation, and the Forest Service regarding issues associated with the management of our reservoirs. In addition to that, SRP has power infrastructure that crisscrosses Forest Service land, primarily major transmission lines, so we’re working on access to that infrastructure to ensure that we can get in and manage it. On the water side of the business, a lot of our work with the Forest Service dealt with getting permits to install, monitor, and measure preset flow on river, precipitation, and snow gauges, which allowed us to monitor the watershed and understand hydrologic conditions in order to estimate flow in the river systems and into our reservoirs.

Early in our history, maybe up until the early 1980s, we were a little bit more actively involved in the overall management of those forests. However, since that time, up until the most recent 7–8 years, we weren’t actively working with the Forest Service on the health of the watershed and the forests. We began working together again because it became apparent, like Elvy mentioned, that we were in a crisis situation in which our forests had become unhealthy and extremely overgrown. That occurred because of a mix of fire suppression and a lack of industry. There was a lack of proactive management.

ADVERTISEMENT Now we’re trying to change that. The only way we’re going to get this fixed is to reestablish a forest products industry here in the state. We’re hoping that the CFLRP can be part of that solution, but the Forest Service and all involved have struggled with attracting wellcapitalized industry to thin the forest on a much larger scale. A lot of the forest is low-value material, which is part of the challenge. We’ve been working with the Forest Service to develop a request for proposals (RFP) for work on 605,000–818,000 acres across northern and central Arizona, which includes a good portion of our watershed. We hope to get one or more contractors to help remove this material and at the same time create some fairly high-paying jobs and develop more highly valued marketable timber products beyond the low-value biomass that makes up a large portion of these forests.

Municipal Water Leader: Is the long-term aim to develop a sustainable logging industry in the state?

Bruce Hallin: Very much so. A significant quantity of acreage has already been approved by NEPA, and the prescriptions themselves have been designed through NEPA. We support that, and we want to see logging follow all those prescriptions to a T, as outlined in the environmental impact statements (EIS). We don’t want clear cutting; we want to restore the forest to its more natural condition. There is significant support for the EIS, not only from SRP but from a majority of the nongovernmental organizations, academic institutions, and the communities that are affected by wildfire.

Municipal Water Leader: Before you get to the point at which you have a continuous, sustainable logging industry, are you going to have to have people come in and remove the biomass that might not even be marketable?

Bruce Hallin: That will be part of the business plan. The RFP includes requirements to remove biomass. We’re asking the industry to describe how best to remove the biomass and how to take some of the larger material and make higher-value products with it, whether that is dimensional lumber or oriented strand board. If it is not possible for them to make money on removing and processing the timber and biomass, we want to know how large that gap is. Then we can look at how to best fill that gap in cooperation with the Forest Service, the state forestry agency, and the federal government.

Municipal Water Leader: How long do you expect it to take before you reach that sustainable stage?

a year. We want to increase that to 50,000 acres per year, which would add up to a million over 20 years. However, you also need to go back and actively manage the land you have already thinned. The Forest Service has plans to increase the use of prescribed fire to thin the underbrush.

At a later date, we may still need industry to come back through and thin the material that regenerates.

Municipal Water Leader: How does this project compare to what other water suppliers have done in terms of watershed management?

Elvy Barton: The RFP is really a precedent-setting partnership. SRP not only worked with the Forest Service, but we also brought together Reclamation and the State of Arizona to do a 20-year stewardship contract, which was passed in Congress’s 2018 omnibus bill. This is the first 20-year stewardship contract that the Forest Service has ever done, and it is also the first time that the Forest Service has ever worked with partners in this capacity. We not only helped the Forest Service develop the RFP that it published in September, but we’re also going to help it evaluate the proposals that come in and then provide recommendations on who should get awards. We hope that it can serve as a model for other states on how to proceed with landscape-scale restoration.

SRP is taking some innovative and proactive steps to ensure a safe and secure watershed for our customers. In June 2019, SRP’s board and council approved a forest health goal—to my knowledge, we are the only utility with one—that aligns with the 4FRI project of helping thin 50,000 acres a year. SRP is taking a leadership role not only in the state, but also in the region, to demonstrate that there is an opportunity for public-private partnerships to pursue forest health goals and increase the pace and scale of forest restoration. M

Elvy Barton is a senior water policy analyst at SRP. She can be contacted at elvy.barton@srpnet.com.

Bruce Hallin is the director of water supply at SRP. For more information about SRP, visit srpnet.com.

Bruce Hallin: The objective is to mechanically thin a million acres over 20 years. Right now, we have a fairly low-capitalized industry that’s doing 12,000–14,000 acres MUNICIPALWATERLEADER.COM

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Walking All 131 Miles of SRP’s Canal System

The 131 Can Be Done team.

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he Salt River Project (SRP) has 131 miles of canals in the Phoenix, Arizona, area, 60 miles of which have public recreational paths alongside them. This year, a group of 23 SRP employees have committed to walk all 131 miles of the canal system, calling their project 131 Can Be Done. In addition to being a healthy challenge, 131 Can Be Done is helping office staff connect with field teams and learn more about how the SRP canal system works on a dayto-day basis.

In this interview, Lynn Allen, the manager of the SRP Water Contact Center, and Stephanie Berry, SRP’s manager of water scheduling and field customer service, tell Municipal Water Leader about their experiences walking SRP’s canals and how it has informed their work.

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about your backgrounds and how you came to be in your current positions.

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Stephanie Berry: I’ve been with SRP for just over 20 years. I started on the power side in the Residential Contact Center.

I have worked in a few other divisions, including outage management; M-Power operations, our prepaid electric department; and customer accounting. I moved to water scheduling and subdivision services last year.

Municipal Water Leader: What is the Water Contact Center?

Lynn Allen: It is a 24/7 customer contact center that provides the ultimate customer experience to our water customers. We handle calls from water stakeholders, the general public, and SRP personnel. We perform a variety of functions, including placing water orders, processing water payments, advising customers of their scheduled water delivery times, assisting with water issues, and scheduling customer education training meetings.

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about SRP’s canal system.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF SRP.

Lynn Allen: I’ve been with SRP for a little over 18 years. I started in the Residential Contact Center and then moved to a variety of different positions within SRP. I worked in community outreach, financial services, and information

technology and then moved back to customer service. Now I’m the manager of the Water Contact Center.

Stephanie Berry: SRP has been delivering water to the valley since 1903. Our system consists of dams, lakes, and rivers, which eventually deliver water into seven main canals totaling 131 miles in length. Most of us mentally relate irrigation to farms, and that is how it all started. However, as the valley has changed, so have irrigation needs. SRP delivers irrigation water to large commercial farms, small private farms, dairies, city lakes, parks and schools, golf courses, urban farm co-ops, and residential subdivisions.

Municipal Water Leader: Of those 131 miles, how much of the canals have trails alongside them?

Lynn Allen: 60 miles.

Municipal Water Leader: What are some of the main recreational activities that people do along the canals?

Stephanie Berry: A lot of walking, bike riding, and rollerskating. A lot of people use the canal path to commute to the nearby community colleges. The City of Scottsdale also uses the canal front for a festival called Canal Convergence that involves art, food, and vendors.

great experience to see the full end-to-end process, which is something that we don’t necessarily see from the office.

Municipal Water Leader: What have you learned about the history of the canal?

Stephanie Berry: We’ve walked a couple of sections in Mesa near Mesa Country Club that we learned were built by a farmer named Dr. Alexander Chandler, who founded the community of Chandler, Arizona, in 1912. You would never know that this stretch of the canal was built by a member of the community to bring water to his farm. The rest of the community benefited from it, and eventually, SRP took over the operation.

Municipal Water Leader: Are there any other interesting or unexpected things that you’ve come across in the course of the project?

Municipal Water Leader: What was the motivation for starting the 131 Can Be Done project?

Stephanie Berry: Lynn and I are fairly new to water services—I’ve been here about a year and Lynn is a couple of months in—and we recently went to a presentation at which an SRP employee talked about the 131 miles of canal in the SRP system. Lynn said, half-joking at first, that we should walk those 131 miles to learn more about the system and its history.

We could take along the people who have been working at SRP for 30–40 years and learn from them. I said, “Sure, let’s do it.”

Then the next thing you know, it became a reality.

Municipal Water Leader: How many people have taken part so far?

Lynn Allen: There are 23 people on the team. Three are from media relations; everybody else is from water services. We go out once a week as a team and walk 3 miles. Now that the weather is picking up and temperatures are increasing, we’re going to start biking the canals in the early mornings. Our goal is to bike 5–8 miles a week.

Municipal Water Leader: What have you learned along the way?

Lynn Allen: We’ve learned a lot along the way, thanks to our peer, Don Lane, who manages the water masters and zanjeros. Don and his department are part of our walking team, and they teach us about the seven different canals that SRP manages. The canals are all a little bit different.

Some connect to private systems, some to laterals. It’s been a

SRP employees take part in the 131 Can Be Done campaign.

Stephanie Berry: We saw an interesting contraption along one of the canals that looked like a chair on a lift that slides across the canal. It was used historically to measure the depth of the canal.

It has also been a learning experience. My team schedules the water based on customer need and decides when and where the zanjeros need to turn the gates on or off to ensure efficient and on-time deliveries. Besides that, we are field service liaisons, meaning we go out into the community and solve issues between neighbors and educate people about how the irrigation systems work. It has been helpful to be out there and actually see the zanjeros working hard to meet customer demands. Water masters will explain to us how hard it can be to get from one canal to the other canal if there’s construction or a marathon in the way. This information helps us explain to MUNICIPALWATERLEADER.COM

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A path along SRP’s Western Canal in the city of Tempe, Arizona.

customers why we can’t always be there the second they need us. We’ve learned more in the last couple of weeks of walking than we could have from a book.

Lynn Allen: It has also given us the opportunity to build relationships with the field crews and to learn what they go through every day.

Municipal Water Leader: Have you changed your operations at all in response to what you’ve learned?

Lynn Allen: Definitely. We haven’t changed any major processes, but it has helped us think of innovative ideas and customer-focused solutions. We’re taking into account what the zanjeros and water masters are doing each day to meet customer needs while providing a safe working environment for both our customers and employees. It’s definitely helped bring the different departments of SRP together, which is important for meeting the needs of our customers. By going on these weekly walks along the canal, we’re able to fill the gaps in our understanding of our business processes and customer expectations by seeing things in person that we previously only knew about on paper.

Lynn Allen: A little bit. A couple of SRP retirees have our map and schedule, and they’ve been walking or biking

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Lynn Allen (top) is the manager of the SRP Water Contact Center. She can be contacted at lynn.allen@srpnet.com.

Stephanie Berry (below) is the manager of water scheduling and subdivision services at SRP. She can be contacted at stephanie.berry@srpnet.com. For more information about SRP’s irrigation services, visit srpnet.com/menu/water/ irrigation.aspx.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF SRP.

Municipal Water Leader: Has this functioned as a community outreach tool as well?

the canals on their own time and reporting what they’ve completed. For now, this is an internal SRP education and exercise effort. If the community would like to join, they’re more than welcome to use our online canal maps to plan and track their routes and progress. Once we get through this first year, we hope to expand this into something bigger that would involve the community.

It’s great to stress to the community that the canal paths are available. It amazes me every time I’m out there to see how many people use the canal paths to walk their pets, exercise, or walk with their families and friends. It’s a great opportunity to learn about SRP’s canals and all the great features we have while exercising and enjoying the beautiful Arizona weather. M

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Investigating Inland Indirect Potable Reuse for Norman, Oklahoma

Lake Thunderbird

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he City of Norman, Oklahoma, and engineering firm Garver recently secured a $700,000 grant through the Bureau of Reclamation’s Title XVI Water Reclamation and Reuse Program for a pilot inland indirect potable reuse (IPR) program.

The pilot program aims to determine the viability of using reuse water to supply Lake Thunderbird, the primary source of drinking water for Norman, turning it into a drought-resistant source.

In this interview, Garver Water Reuse Practice Leader Michael Watts, who coauthored the successful grant application, explains the motivations and aims of the pilot project and discusses how municipalities can best make use of Title XVI. Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position.

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Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about Garver as a company.

Michael Watts: In fall 2019, Garver celebrated 100 years of consulting engineering. The company provides a diverse array of services, including design, engineering, planning, architectural services, and environmental services. We have

PHOTO COURTESY OF GARVER.

Michael Watts: I spent pretty much all of my twenties as a graduate researcher at a couple of universities studying water reuse technology, particularly ultraviolet disinfection and advanced oxidation processes that are used to polish water and remove microconstituents and contaminants of emerging concerns from reclaimed wastewater—things like pharmaceuticals, personal care products, flame

retardants, and other anthropogenic organic contaminants that we find trace residuals of in municipal discharges.

I spent about 10 years researching how to remove those constituents and create nearly pristine reclaimed water for potable applications. My first career stop was in higher education, teaching environmental engineering and leading an externally supported water research laboratory.

In 2013, I met folks at Garver and learned that they were developing a team of technologists to focus on water reuse projects in the western states, where the scarcity of freshwater resources is a driver for alternative water supply projects. I’ve been at Garver for almost 7 years now, and I very much enjoy overcoming the technical challenges of municipal water reclamation and reuse.

ADVERTISEMENT over 700 employees across 13 states and have grown into a nationally recognized design firm. We’re in the Engineering News-Record’s top 150, and over the last few years, our ranking has continued to rise. As a water services provider, 99 percent of our work is for municipal clients. We do work both inside the fence and outside the fence. We provide treatment works design for water, wastewater, and advanced water reuse; pipeline and pump station design; and design of storage facilities and conveyance structures for treated water.

Municipal Water Leader: What is the problem that the City of Norman, Oklahoma, is trying to solve with its pilot study at Lake Thunderbird?

Michael Watts: The project started about 8 years ago with the City of Norman. It initiated a water supply plan and began to take a proactive look at its long-term water supply, including the expected economic and population growth of the city. As your readers know, water drives economic growth in cities across the United States. If you don’t have access to ample water, it is difficult to attract industry and businesses and to make it economically feasible for folks to move their families to your community. For the City of Norman, the major obstacle to continuing its rapid expansion was water supply. The city determined that around 2024, it would be short of approximately 5 million gallons a day of freshwater. With this in mind, it needed to develop and expand its water reuse programs. The city currently has a partnership with the University of Oklahoma, which is based in Norman, to sell reuse effluent from its only water reclamation facility, the Norman Water Reclamation Facility. That project has been a success for many years now. However, the city realized that it needed to divert more of its potable supply off groundwater and surface water resources onto an expanded nonpotable reuse supply.

Looking further into the future, Norman identified that by about 2060, it would be short about 15 million gallons per day of available freshwater resources. The city developed a pretty aggressive phased expansion plan for a new potable reuse program. It didn’t really know what shape that would take, but it knew that more than likely it would be an application like an augmentation project, typically called an indirect potable reuse project, in which effluent is treated, purified, and discharged. In Norman’s case, it would be discharged in Lake Thunderbird and then pulled out using the city’s existing infrastructure and treated again by its water treatment plant—a blended environmental buffer approach to potable reuse. That was on the horizon as a possibility, but the State of Oklahoma did not yet have a codified permitting procedure for a project like that. In addition, the lake is a shared water resource. There are youth camps that use the lake every summer, and there are large fishing and bass tournaments

that are supported by the lake, so it has become an ecotourism destination in central Oklahoma.

Garver got involved in 2013, working for the Central Oklahoma Conservancy District, which was set up to manage the lake when Reclamation created it in the 1960s with a dam off the Little River in central Oklahoma. The conservancy district was looking at the long-term viability of the lake as a water supply, knowing that the City of Norman had a water supply gap and wanting to be a part of the solution.

The conservancy district itself is a board of representatives from each of the stakeholder organizations on the lake, all of them concerned and engaged citizens who volunteer their time to manage the lake and ensure that it provides for all the designated beneficial uses. When Garver got involved in 2013, the firm looked at the feasibility of augmentation projects on the lake, looking at effluent from different sources, including municipal reclaimed water. It became clear from study, evaluation, and design that an IPR project using Norman’s effluent would be of the most benefit for the long-term viability of the lake and the City of Norman’s long-term water supply goals. Several water quality models and conceptual designs have been completed over the years; simultaneously, the State of Oklahoma has codified rules on how to permit a water supply reservoir IPR-augmentation project. We are currently in step 2 of the process, which is developing a pilot program to demonstrate the quality of effluent to support an engineering report submission to the state.

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about the pilot study.

Michael Watts: It’s going to be partially funded by a grant from Reclamation under its Title XVI Water Reclamation and Reuse Program. We are in a design phase in which we’re going to put all the pieces together—all the treatment regimes from primary influent to the Northern Water Reclamation Facility to advanced purified effluent. It’s a pretty large project: It will involve over $2 million of construction and design over 2½ years. We will be looking at how we can convert influent to the plant into an effluent that will have long-term success as an augmentation water resource for Lake Thunderbird.

Municipal Water Leader: If you were to go ahead with the full-scale IPR project, what would it look like?

Michael Watts: That is still an open question, and it is one that we’re trying to answer with the pilot itself. We see several possibilities for effective, efficient, and safe IPR discharge into Lake Thunderbird, but we want to take our time to find the right answers and develop a data set that backs up a smart plan that can be expanded in the future. We want to start filling in the water supply gap that Norman will face by 2024, but with the much larger supply gap that is expected by 2060, we need an approach that is readily expandable and can be staged in multiple construction projects.

MUNICIPALWATERLEADER.COM

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Representatives from Garver joined officials from the City of Norman and others to announce the project on January 31, 2019, at the Norman Public Library.

Municipal Water Leader: What factors do you expect to play into the question of whether the IPR project is feasible for Norman?

Michael Watts: There will be questions from groups like our citizen advisory council and our technical advisory committee that will drive some of the technical testing and data collection for this project. In general, feasibility is going to come down to ensuring that the water we produce can support all the lake’s beneficial uses, from fishing to swimming, boating, and water supply.

Municipal Water Leader: Would you tell us about those citizen advisory committees and any other public relations work that Norman and Garver have undertaken?

Michael Watts: The citizen advisory committees are the backbone of our public engagement. The City of Norman has been pretty progressive in developing them. The city recognizes that there are multiple parties that are interested in the future of the lake, all of whom want to have a seat at the table and to have the opportunity to ask questions about how the plan works, what the city’s plans are, and how they will affect the lake’s future. The committees include representatives of the City of Midwest City, representatives of the City of Dell City, folks from the City of Norman, and folks who work around the lake every day. Their understanding of the system will have a huge influence on the ultimate acceptance of the project in the community. The initiative has been a success to date.

Municipal Water Leader: Was this project inspired by any other inland IPR projects?

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Municipal Water Leader: What went into writing a successful grant application for the Title XVI program?

Michael Watts: Lots of patience! If I were going to provide some advice for other cities and engineers looking to take advantage of the Title XVI program, I would urge them to start the conversation now with their local and regional representatives of Reclamation. In our case, the Oklahoma City office and the Austin, Texas, office were instrumental in guiding us toward the data that we needed to start collecting almost a year and a half before we applied. Reclamation, like any funding agency, wants to invest in projects that are viable for the long term, and it wants to see that a project helps fulfill the long-term goals of water supply for the region.

I would also encourage folks to talk to Reclamation about getting access to past successful applications. It was helpful for us to see what worked and what didn't. These grant applications can be 100 pages long, so there’s plenty of room to make mistakes. There are details that you want to include that help Reclamation assess the potential success of the project. Seeing how others have avoided making mistakes in their applications can be helpful. M Dr. Michael Watts is the water reuse practice leader at Garver. He can be contacted at (214) 451-2950 or mjwatts@garverusa.com.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF GARVER.

Michael Watts: We have learned quite a bit from other projects across the West that involved surface water augmentation with indirect water reuse, some successful and some not successful.

We’ve watched them closely, and that has informed how we’re

moving forward with this project. However, it’s also true that each state is looking at surface water augmentation with IPR through a different lens. In Oklahoma, regulators have taken an active interest in making sure that they come up with a program and a permitting process that helps their communities, cities, and water suppliers to develop a reliable water future with reservoir augmentation.

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Revamping Garland’s Wastewater Treatment Plants for a Growing Area

The Rowlett Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant's cake loading and dewatering facility.

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he City of Garland, Texas, provides wastewater services to over 320,000 customers in a large residential area north of Dallas. Like many wastewater service providers in the region, Garland is dealing with a rapid growth in population and urban density. The increased demand has required major renovations to its wastewater treatment plants, both to increase their capacity and to cut down on unpleasant odors from preventing development around the treatment plants.

In this interview, Malcolm Parker, the superintendent of Garland’s Rowlett Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant, speaks with Municipal Water Leader about the process of revamping the plant and how it led to a National Association of Clean Water Agencies (NACWA) award.

Malcolm Parker: I started with the City of Garland in wastewater treatment in July 1986. The City of Garland has two wastewater treatment plants, Rowlett Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant and Duck Creek Water Treatment Plant. I started at Duck Creek and worked there for 6 months as a

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Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about the City of Garland’s water and wastewater services.

Malcolm Parker: As I mentioned, we currently have two wastewater treatment plants, Rowlett Creek and Duck Creek. The Rowlett Creek plant’s design capacity is 24 million gallons a day (MGD), and Duck Creek is a 40 MGD plant. Between the two plants, we employ about 60 people. Our customer base is well over 320,000 people.

We serve the cities of Garland, Rowlett, Sachse, and portions of Dallas, Richardson, and Sunnyvale. That puts our service area at over 100 square miles.

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about the history of the Rowlett Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant.

Malcolm Parker: The Rowlett Creek plant was built in 1952. At that time, it was a trickling-filter activated-sludge plant. Over the past 70 years, it has undergone three major

PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE CITY OF GARLAND.

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position.

wastewater operator. Then I was transferred to the Rowlett Creek plant and have been here for going on 34 years.

ADVERTISEMENT expansions. In 1952, the plant was rated for 2 MGD. The first expansion took place in 1956, when the contact stabilization basin, which is an activated-sludge unit, was added. In 1983, a major expansion upgraded the plant to 16 MGD. Then into the early to mid-1990s, a third expansion upgraded the plant to 24 MGD. At that time, it was a trickling-filter activated-sludge plant with anaerobic digesters along with a belt filter press for processing the sludge. In 2015, we started a project to improve our handing of solids by converting the digesters to solids holding tanks and replacing the belt presses with centrifuges as well as adding odor control features to various parts of the plant.

Municipal Water Leader: What happens to the biosolids after they’re processed?

Malcolm Parker: The biosolids are landfilled. The Duck Creek plant is about 4 miles outside city limits, so we have a 13-mile pipeline from Duck Creek that pumps sludge to Rowlett Creek. The sludge for both plants is processed at Rowlett Creek plant. We use the Hinton Regional Landfill, which is owned by the City of Garland.

Municipal Water Leader: Would you tell us about the importance of the Rowlett Creek plant for the Trinity River?

Malcolm Parker: Houston, Dallas, and other surrounding cities draw their drinking water from the Trinity River. The Rowlett Creek and Duck Creek plants discharge into the Trinity River, replenishing the water source, so they play an important role.

We meet U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Texas Commission on Environmental Quality standards for that discharge water. Our permit requirements cover ammonia, biological oxygen demand, copper, fecal coliform, and total suspended solids, among other things. We don’t currently have phosphorus on our permit, but that is in the works.

The Rowlett Creek plant's sludge holding tanks and biotrickling filter tower with carbon scrubbers.

Municipal Water Leader: What were the issues that you were trying to solve with your most recent renovation to the Rowlett Creek plant?

Malcolm Parker: We had two main objectives. The first was to replace aging equipment. The anaerobic digesters, the belt filter presses, and the gravity belt thickeners, which thicken the secondary wasting sludge prior to digestion, were all well over 30 years old. Because the plant is located within the city limits, odor control was our second major concern.

Municipal Water Leader: Were those odor control concerns based on complaints from the public?

Malcolm Parker: Back in 1952, when this plant was built, it was outside of Garland’s city limits in the country. There were no houses or subdivisions around the plant. Recent growth means that we now have quite a few subdivisions surrounding the plant, so odor was becoming a major issue. We want to be good neighbors. We have received some odor complaints, and that’s what prompted us to address those issues.

Municipal Water Leader: How you go about reducing the odor from wastewater treatment?

Malcolm Parker: A wastewater treatment plant is going to smell, at least somewhat, but our goal is to reduce the odors, especially the more offensive ones. To do that, we enclosed our open-top wet wells, which contain raw sewage, and added odor scrubbers. We do that with biotrickling filter towers, which use a biological process in which microorganisms use the foul air, or hydrogen sulfide, as a food source. We also installed carbon scrubbers as a polisher or backup. Our belt filter presses were not enclosed and were the source of a lot of odors. We replaced those with centrifuges, which are enclosed units, so that we can trap the foul air and scrub it with

The Rowlett Creek plant's dewatering centrifuge room.

MUNICIPALWATERLEADER.COM

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ADVERTISEMENT the biotrickling filter towers. We converted our anaerobic digesters, which had a floating dome, to a sludge holding tank with a fixed cover. That traps gases as well, and again we scrub them with the biotrickling filter tower.

Municipal Water Leader: Would you tell us about the experience of the project?

Malcolm Parker: When we started the project, we wanted to do some experiments with the equipment and odor control. We were using anaerobic digesters; we decided to experiment with processing raw sludge. We started the experimental phase in 2013. We worked with three different consulting firms before we settled on the one we felt could best address our needs. The actual project started in October 2015 and took 3 years. There were a lot of meetings, hard work, and challenges along the way. During the project, our staff and our consultants were constantly looking for ways to improve the process. This is a project that we hope will last another 30 years. We were able to put together a good project that we’re satisfied with.

Municipal Water Leader: How did you go about funding this project?

Malcolm Parker: This was a capital improvement project with a budget of $24 million.

Municipal Water Leader: What results have you seen from the project?

Malcolm Parker: For one, we’ve cut down drastically on the odors coming from the plant. This past year, we have received only one or two odor complaints. The project has also helped us be more proficient in processing sludge. With our previous belt filter press, once it reached the end of its useful life, we were getting 18 percent solids from the sludge on a good day. Now we’re at 30–35 percent on our cake solids. That has helped us put more water back into the environment and transport less sludge to the landfill, which saves landfill space. Plus, we put together a process that helps our staff carry out their day-to-day assignments. Employee buy-in for this process has been positive.

Municipal Water Leader: How did you build that buy-in with your employees?

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Malcolm Parker: This particular award for our biosolids project recognized our commitment to helping and protecting the environment.

Municipal Water Leader: What advice would you have for other municipal utilities that are considering a similar major overhaul of a plant?

Malcolm Parker: Getting your employees to buy in to the project is a key factor. It is important to have a realistic view or vision of what you want to accomplish. It’s also important to choose the right consultant to help plan, design, and oversee the project. We have a knowledgeable staff, but you also need a knowledgeable consulting group. Its knowledge, experience, and ability go a long way in helping you have a successful project.

Municipal Water Leader: When you’re looking for a consultant who’s right for the project, what are some of the factors that you want to look out for?

Malcolm Parker: Knowledge, experience, and ability. Trust is an important factor as well. Do you have confidence in their ability to come in and do a good job? We interviewed at least three different consultants, and we spent quite a bit of time with them, getting their thoughts on what they saw and what they would recommend.

Municipal Water Leader: What is your vision for the future of Garland’s wastewater services?

Malcolm Parker: We’re always looking toward the future.

With the biosolids project, we weren’t just looking at the next 10 years or 20 years—we looked 30-plus years down the road. Hopefully, what we put together will still be in service then. Right now, we’re continuing to expand Rowlett Creek, but because we’re landlocked, we’re limited as to how much we can expand. Currently, we’re looking at expanding the Duck Creek plant, which has a lot more land space.

I recently returned from a trip to Mississippi, where they have some serious flooding. Here in Garland, we don’t have flooding as serious as that, but we do experience flooding events after 3–4 days of rain, when 5 or more inches of rain have fallen. With that in mind, we are also looking at how we can better control our influent flow. M Malcolm Parker is the superintendent of the City of Garland’s Rowlett Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant. For more about the City of Garland’s wastewater services, visit www.garlandwater.com/ 598/wastewater.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE CITY OF GARLAND.

Malcolm Parker: By taking in their input. They’re the ones operating the equipment. We had a number of conversations and meetings with our employees about their experiences.

What have they seen in the field that works? What doesn’t work? What improvements would they like to see? Because they had a voice in the process, they were able to take ownership and to buy into our project.

Municipal Water Leader: What do you think NACWA was recognizing when this project was awarded?

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Upper Trinity Regional Water District: New Technology for a Growing Region

The Riverbend Water Reclamation Plant.

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Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position.

Jody Zabolio: When I enrolled in college, I went into civil engineering. The first A I made in a civil engineering class was

28 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER

in a fluids class, so on that basis I decided that water resources was my forte. After graduation, I went on to graduate school and received a master’s degree in civil engineering with a specialization in water and wastewater. After that, I went to work for a consultant that designed water and wastewater treatment plants for municipalities and utility districts. In 1996, I took a job with the City of Fort Worth as the assistant program manager for its capital improvement program to upgrade the sanitary sewer system. The city was under an administrative order from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to eliminate sanitary sewer overflows. After a couple of years, the director of the department asked me if I would be interested in getting involved in wastewater treatment, specifically as a plant engineer at the wastewater plant. I said yes. A number of years later, Upper Trinity had the need for a similar position. I was already familiar with Upper Trinity because I had done some work for the district back when I was a consultant. I went to work for Upper Trinity as a process engineer. A few years later, the assistant director of operations

PHOTO COURTESY OF UPPER TRINITY REGIONAL WATER DISTRICT.

he Upper Trinity Regional Water District provides water and wastewater services to the rapidly growing region north of Dallas, Texas. This year, the National Association of Clean Water Agencies (NACWA) recognized Upper Trinity with a National Environmental Achievement Award for its Riverbend Water Reclamation Plant, which was recently expanded in order to keep up with development in the area. The plant now uses ballasted flocculation technology, allowing it to treat wastewater more quickly and in a smaller footprint.

In this interview, Upper Trinity Director of Operations and Water Resources Jody Zabolio speaks with Municipal Water Leader about the district’s experience in expanding the plant and choosing to implement ballasted flocculation.

ADVERTISEMENT retired, and I was promoted to the position; I’m currently the director of operations and water resources.

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about the Upper Trinity Regional Water District.

Jody Zabolio: Upper Trinity was created by the Texas legislature in 1989 as a wholesale provider of water and wastewater services to smaller communities north of Dallas, primarily in Denton County. Today, we serve about 25 communities, some with water services, some with wastewater services, and some with both. Around 300,000 people live in our service area. We have two water treatment plants, one in Lewisville, the Thomas Taylor Plant, which is rated to treat 70 million gallons per day (MGD); and one in Audrey, the Tom Harpool Plant, which is rated for 20 MGD. We have four water reclamation plants, the largest being the Lakeview Plant in Lake Dallas, which is currently permitted to treat 5½ MGD of wastewater. Our Peninsula Plant in Oak Point, rated at 0.94 MGD, is under design to be expanded to 2 MGD. Our Riverbend Plant was recently increased from 2 MGD to 4. We also have the Doe Branch Plant, which is currently under construction to take it from 2 MGD to 4.

Municipal Water Leader: What are some of the district’s top issues today?

Jody Zabolio: We’re in a high-growth area, so staging the expansion of our system and bringing on new facilities to keep up with that growth is a top issue. We’re also focused on securing an adequate future water supply to address the long-term growth in our service area. A key strategy is the creation of a water storage reservoir, a new lake in East Texas called Lake Ralph Hall. We just received our U.S. Army Corps of Engineers permit, which will allow us to begin construction later this year, and we expect it to be online around 2025.

Municipal Water Leader: Would you tell us about the challenges of being in an area with a quickly growing population?

Jody Zabolio: It’s challenging to try and stay ahead of the curve, because it usually takes 2 or 3 years to go from identifying new needs to actually providing the facilities to meet them. It requires a whole lot of looking into the future and communicating with our customers about the speed of development and construction. You need to make sure that you have a planning horizon long enough to allow you to start the project in time to meet their needs.

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about the Riverbend Water Reclamation Plant.

Jody Zabolio: Riverbend was originally a greenfield plant created to serve the communities that were being developed in the northern part of our system. It was constructed and brought online in 2004. The plant originally functioned as a sequencing batch reactor, which treats wastewater in batches rather than as a continuous flow. That process tends to work well for a community in the early stages of growth but becomes difficult to operate when the growth reaches a certain level. In 2016, we had enough growth to expand the plant, and we converted it from a sequencing batch reactor to a normal, industry-standard activated-sludge plant. As part of that project, we implemented ballasted flocculation technology in the plant.

Municipal Water Leader: How does that differ from the technology used by a conventional activated-sludge plant?

Jody Zabolio: In the conventional activated-sludge process for wastewater treatment, you cultivate bacteria that consume the waste in the water. When they’re consuming, the bacteria get fluffy and sticky and agglomerate together, which allows them to settle out and be separated from the treated water. However, that settling process is somewhat slow. If you add a ballast or weight that the bacteria can cling to, they settle more quickly. In this case, we selected magnetite, which is a readily available, fully inert form of iron ore with a high specific gravity. Magnetite is naturally occurring and is obtained through a mining process.

Because magnetite is iron, you can use a magnet to separate it out after the treatment process is done, recover over 90 percent of it, and put it back in the process. The ballasted flocculation process allows you to treat wastewater in a smaller footprint, because you don’t need as large a basin for the sludge to settle out in.

Municipal Water Leader: How much magnetite is used?

Jody Zabolio: The original amount of magnetite that was loaded into the 4 MGD Riverbend Plant was approximately 50,000 pounds, which actually turned out to be more than was necessary. We are currently feeding less than 100 pounds per day just to keep the equipment operational, allowing us to slowly reduce the amount of magnetite in the process.

Once the recommended equilibrium is reached, we expect to regularly feed around 200–300 pounds per day.

Municipal Water Leader: How widespread is ballasted sludge technology?

Jody Zabolio: It’s been around for some time, but is still fairly uncommon in the industry. There are a number of technologies that use different types of ballasts. This particular method, known as BioMag, was created in the engineering graduate program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. There are a few plants up in the MUNICIPALWATERLEADER.COM

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ADVERTISEMENT Boston area that use it, as do a handful of plants scattered through the rest of the United States. We took a trip up to the Boston area to visit some of the first plants that went online and were sufficiently satisfied with the viability of the process to attempt to get it permitted in the state of Texas. This is the first installation of its sort in Texas.

Municipal Water Leader: When did the first plants to use this technology come online?

Jody Zabolio: Ballasted flocculation has been around for over 20 years. However, the first BioMag installation was put in service in 2011.

Municipal Water Leader: What results have you seen from ballasted flocculation?

Jody Zabolio: The expansion facilities have been up and operational for 9 months now, and we’ve seen good results.

However, we haven’t had a whole lot of rain in that time frame. Ballasted flocculation comes in handy most when you get higher-than-normal flows resulting from an influx of storm water. We have yet to see how it stands up to that, but we’re confident that the ballasted flocculation process is sound and provides us with another tool to better serve our customers.

Municipal Water Leader: What in particular was NACWA recognizing with the award it recently gave you?

Jody Zabolio: First and foremost, if they’re looking to pursue ballasted flocculation, they need to check with regulators within the state and make sure they’re on board with the treatment process. Because a BioMag installation had never before been permitted in the state of Texas, we had to go through quite a bit of work in order to verify its effectiveness and justify its benefits. We had to perform a full-scale demonstration at one of our other plants to collect the data and get the information that the state needed to feel comfortable with the new process. If the process hasn’t already been permitted in their state, they should expect a bit of a longer planning horizon. We worked closely with the vendors and the design engineers and talked to the operators to discuss concerns and lessons learned and to make sure they were comfortable using the technology.

Ted Henefin, the chair of the NACWA Awards Committee; Jody Zabolio; Ben Hodges, Upper Trinity’s assistant director of operations; and John Sullivan, the president of NACWA, pose with Upper Trinity's award.

Municipal Water Leader: What is your vision for the future of the district?

Jody Zabolio: Our vision is to continue to serve our customers’ water and wastewater needs at an affordable rate and to keep up with growth by providing top-notch facilities in a timely fashion. M Jody Zabolio is the director of operations and water resources at the Upper Trinity Regional Water District in Lewisville, Texas. He can be reached at jzabolio@utrwd.com.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF UPPER TRINITY REGIONAL WATER DISTRICT.

Jody Zabolio: NACWA gave the National Environmental Achievement Award to Upper Trinity for operations and environmental performance. We focused on three aspects of our project in our submission for the award. One was to improve operations, converting our existing sequencing batch reactor to conventional activated sludge to better address the growing plant flows. We also doubled the existing capacity of the plant. By using ballasted flocculation, we were able to do that within our existing aeration basins, needing only to construct clarifiers to convert to conventional activated sludge. We also used an alternative delivery process called construction manager at risk, which brings the contractor on board as part of the design process to help with constructability and accelerate the schedule.

That allowed us to go from design to construction in a more seamless manner and in a shorter time frame.

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Municipal Water Leader: Do you have any advice for plants that might be considering implementing ballasted flocculation?

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The Water Education Foundation: Helping Professionals and the Public Understand Western Water

T

he Water Education Foundation has been educating water professionals and the general public in California and across the Colorado River basin for more than 40 years. Its tours, conferences, publications, and online resources make the complex world of western water more easily comprehensible while also highlighting the high stakes of the issues involved.

In this interview, Executive Director Jennifer Bowles tells Municipal Water Leader about the foundation’s history, its current activities, and its importance for the municipal water audience.

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position.

Jennifer Bowles: I was a journalist for much of my career, first at the Associated Press in Los Angeles and later at a newspaper in Southern California, where I spent a lot of time covering water issues. In addition, I had been a Scripps fellow at the University of Colorado, Boulder, for a year, studying water law and policy at the law school. When I was a newspaper reporter, I took a tour of the lower Colorado River with the Water Education Foundation, which is how I first became aware of the organization. The then executive director sent me one of the foundation’s California water maps after that tour, and I hung that map everywhere my desk was moved in the newsroom because of how much it helped me to understand water issues in California. It showed where the water came from and where it went—which is sometimes hundreds of miles away. The foundation strives to be extremely neutral and impartial in everything it does, including in writing its water news, so I think my journalism background and my writing and editing skills were an important factor in my being hired by the board 6 years ago.

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about the foundation and its history.

34 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER

The foundation brings tour attendees to visit Diamond Valley Lake, the reservoir built by Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.

for Water Education for Teachers. With that program, we began to organize workshops across the state to train educators on how to teach lessons on water in the classroom.

During the 1990s, we also started a 1-year leadership program for the various stakeholder groups known as Water Leaders; today, there are more than 400 graduates of that program. In 1997, we also started our Colorado River Project and began applying many of our programs in California to the Colorado River basin, which is a key water source for Southern California. We started programs, wrote news articles, and started planning a lower Colorado River tour. Most importantly, we began holding a high-level Colorado River Symposium every 2 years, which brought together people from all seven states that rely on the river,

PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE WATER EDUCATION FOUNDATION.

Jennifer Bowles: The foundation was founded in 1977, in the middle of a bad drought in California. At the beginning, it had a small staff—one person, for the most part—and worked primarily on its Western Water news magazine. But we eventually grew and began hosting conferences because it was clear to my predecessor that the various stakeholders needed a neutral place to discuss the often thorny issues associated with water. We also started running tours and creating those beautiful educational maps of California water regions. The 1990s were a key time for the foundation.

That’s when we became the California coordinator for a national program known as Project WET, which stands

Four members of the foundation’s Water Leaders program stand by Hoover Dam during the lower Colorado River tour.

ADVERTISEMENT Mexico, and tribal nations to discuss how to best manage the resources in this major western watershed.

Municipal Water Leader: How many staff does the foundation have today?

Jennifer Bowles: Today, the foundation has about 10 staff, most of them full time. We also work with a freelancer who puts together our water news aggregate, Aquafornia, every weekday. Most of our team has a background in either teaching or journalism.

Municipal Water Leader: How is the foundation funded?

Jennifer Bowles: We’re funded by donations from a wide variety of people and organizations, and we also apply for grants for specific projects. We also get some money from sales of our water maps, guides on water topics, and other educational materials.

Municipal Water Leader: Is the foundation active primarily in California and the seven Colorado River basin states?

Jennifer Bowles: That’s right. We have been based in Sacramento since we were founded in 1977, and we’re active across California and the Colorado River basin.

Municipal Water Leader: Who are your target audiences?

Jennifer Bowles: Our audience is anyone who wants to learn more about water. I like to describe the foundation as the Switzerland of the California water world—we’re pretty much the only neutral organization, and everyone is invited to our table. We offer a diversity of voices on water issues in whatever we do, whether it’s a tour, a conference, our news articles, or our leadership program. Our target audiences include farmers, environmentalists, urban dwellers, water rights lawyers, engineers who work on water projects, and the employees of state and federal agencies that are involved in water management across the West. Through our programming, we raise awareness of water issues but also seek to catalyze the critical conversations about water that are needed to manage the resource wisely.

Municipal Water Leader: What are your main programs?

Jennifer Bowles: Our main programs today are our tours, our online Western Water news, and our maps and printed guides on key water topics. We also run an annual water summit in Sacramento, Project WET workshops, our Colorado River Project, and our yearlong Water Leaders professional development program. Our priority over the last 2 years has been using social media to reach a wider and more diverse audience and putting more of our staffgenerated water news online. Our Western Water magazine

used to be a printed magazine, but a few years ago we took it online, which gives more people the ability to read about water issues as newsrooms continue to shrink. We have the necessary expertise to generate that news, and we want to share it with as many people as we can. Going forward, we want our website to be even more of an educational tool than it already is. We’d like to create more interactive online learning tools in addition to Aquapedia, which is an online water encyclopedia.

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about your tours.

Who goes on them and how do you choose the destination and the speakers?

Jennifer Bowles: We hold six to eight public tours a year.

Some are 2 days and some are 3 days. We do bus tours to our major regions every year. One of those annual tours is the BayDelta tour, which includes both the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta, which is the hub of California’s two major water projects, and San Francisco Bay. Tour participants actually go across the bay in a boat during that tour. We do another annual tour across central California’s San Joaquin Valley, south of Sacramento, and another tour north of Sacramento across the Sacramento Valley, which includes the big dams like Oroville and Shasta. We also tour the lower Colorado River every year.

That tour essentially starts at Hoover Dam and ends in the Coachella Valley in California, taking in the lower basin states of Nevada, Arizona, and California. In the last few years, we have done a headwaters tour to emphasize the importance of the upper watershed and the Sierras with respect to water statewide. That tour goes from Sacramento to Lake Tahoe and back. We also do tours every year based on important topics of the year, such as drought or groundwater. For instance, we did a San Diego tour when the big ocean desalination plant opened in Carlsbad a few years ago.

The tour participants encompass a wide array of people, including farmers, environmentalists, employees of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that work on water issues, water district employees and board members, lawyers, engineers, scientists, water managers, and employees of the California Department of Water Resources and the Bureau of Reclamation. Those agencies use our tours as a training ground for their newer staff.

We choose speakers for our tours based on the region and focus of the tour, but we always strive to include a diverse set of voices wherever we go.

Municipal Water Leader: Do you have a rough estimate of how many people participate in all your tours every year?

Jennifer Bowles: Probably around 350. The Bay-Delta tour alone has about 100 participants and requires two buses.

Municipal Water Leader: Who are the participants in your training programs?

MUNICIPALWATERLEADER.COM

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ADVERTISEMENT Jennifer Bowles: It’s the same wide array of folks who come to all our events—lawyers, engineers, scientists, people from NGOs, farmers, people who work at water districts or irrigation districts, and people from the state and federal agencies that manage water in the West. Like I said, we’re the Switzerland of the California water world—everybody comes to our events.

We take that reputation seriously and strive to remain neutral. I think that’s why people trust us as a resource.

Our Water Leaders program has more than 400 graduates. A strong theme of that program is learning other perspectives and getting out of your comfort zone. We match up everybody in that program up with a mentor, usually someone with a completely different background, to help them come to understand water from a different perspective. We have seen graduates of that program move into top leadership roles in the water world, which is really satisfying.

on their taps and use water without thinking about where it comes from. Our tours are important for city dwellers because they bring them to where their water comes from. Our maps are also good for city dwellers because they are a good visual to show them just how far their water travels to get to them.

Its origin can sometimes be hundreds of miles away from where it is used in Southern California.

Municipal Water Leader: Do you work directly with municipal water providers?

Jennifer Bowles: Many of them support our work and are or have been on our board of directors. For instance, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California and the Contra Costa Water District are represented on our board, as is the Association of California Water Agencies, which represents many of the municipal water districts and irrigation districts in California. Municipal water providers speak regularly at our events and our tours, and a lot of their key employees come to our events and tours as well.

Municipal Water Leader: What kinds of water conservation initiatives do you support for urban water users?

The foundation brings tour attendees to visit the Claude "Bud" Lewis Carlsbad Desalination Plant during a water tour of the San Diego region.

Municipal Water Leader: Who uses your books, maps, Aquapedia, and the other resources you create?

Municipal Water Leader: Which of your programs are most relevant to municipal water providers and users?

Jennifer Bowles: All our programs are relevant to city dwellers. I often think farmers have a better understanding of water than city dwellers do, because people in cities just turn

36 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER

Municipal Water Leader: What is your vision for the future of the foundation?

Jennifer Bowles: We want to put more of our materials online and create more interactive learning tools. We want to expand our programs even more across the Colorado River basin. We want to keep making a difference by bringing in diverse voices and helping people understand the water story so the differences can be resolved and the resource managed wisely. M Jennifer Bowles is the executive director of the Water Education Foundation. She can be contacted at jbowles@watereduation.org.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE WATER EDUCATION FOUNDATION.

Jennifer Bowles: Our Layperson’s Guide series—which includes books on groundwater, California water, and water rights—are used by universities, which we know because we suddenly get a lot of orders as the semesters start. We know that professors use them, which is part of the reason we keep them in a print version. I have had people tell me that when they first came to California after getting hired by a water engineering firm or law firm, they went through our whole collection of water guides. I’ve heard that story over and over again. Water issues in California are probably more complicated than in any other state, and our publications are a good resource for getting your arms around the issues.

Jennifer Bowles: One of the big things for city dwellers is understanding how much water their lawns take. Their lawns are the biggest water user there is, for the most part. I think people really started to understand that during the last drought.

In California, low-flow toilets and showers have been around for a while, but outdoor water use can account for as much as 50–80 percent of a home’s water use, depending whether they live along the coast or in the arid desert. Understanding the outdoor water use of a typical home is really important. We put some information about that on our website. We also write a lot in Western Water about ocean desalination, water recycling, and other ways in which people are conserving and reusing water as well as drought-proofing their cities.

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Upcoming Events April 2–3 Association of California Water Agencies, Water Policy Conference, Davis, CA April 6–9 CA/NV American Water Works Association Section, Spring Conference, Anaheim, CA April 7–9 Irrigation New Zealand, Water for Life Conference and Expo, Wigram, Christchurch, New Zealand April 20–22 National Water Resources Association, Federal Water Issues Conference, Washington, DC May 5–8 Association of California Water Agencies, Spring Conference & Exhibition, Monterey, CA May 15 Agribusiness & Water Council of Arizona, Annual Meeting, TBD May 28–29 National Ground Water Association, Workshop on Groundwater in the Northwest, Boise, ID June 8–9 Idaho Water Users Association, Water Law & Resources Issues Seminar, Sun Valley, ID June 9–10 WESTCAS, Annual Conference, San Diego, CA June 9–12 Groundwater Management Districts Association, Summer Conference, Colorado Springs, CO June 17–19 Texas Water Conservation Association, Mid-Year Conference, The Woodlands, TX July 7–9 North Dakota Water Resource Districts Association, Summer Meeting & North Dakota Water Education Foundation Executive Briefing, Grand Forks, ND July 15 North Dakota Rural Water Systems Association, Summer Leadership Retreat, Medora, ND July 23–24 Idaho Irrigation Equipment Show, Summer Meeting, New Meadows, ID

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