Municipal Water Leader January 2021

Volume 8 Issue 1

January 2021

Pat Mulroy: Secrets to Success on the Colorado River

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8

Pat Mulroy: Secrets to Success on the Colorado River

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

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 Caroline Polly, Production Assistant and Social Media Coordinator SUBMISSIONS: Municipal Water Leader welcomes manuscript, photography, and art submissions; 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.

Contents

January 2021 Volume 8, Issue 1 5 T urning Vision Into Action

By Kris Polly

18 SePRO’s

Work in the Municipal Water Sector

8 Pat Mulroy: Secrets to Success on the Colorado River

22 S outh Platte Renew’s Gas Recovery and Pipeline Injection Project

14 H ow NuSTREEM’s Small Hydro Units Can Save Municipal Water Agencies Money

28 F EMA’s National Dam Safety Program 34 H ow Auckland’s Safeswim Program Keeps Beachgoers Safe

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

4 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | January 2021

CIRCULATION: Municipal Water Leader is distributed to all drinking and wastewater entities with annual budgets or sales of $10 million per year or greater as well as to members of Congress and committee staff and advertising sponsors.

For address corrections or additions, or if you would prefer to receive Municipal Water Leader in electronic form, please contact us at admin@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.

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COVER PHOTO:

Pat Mulroy, former General Manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority.

Photo courtesy of Pat Mulroy.

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PHOTO COURTESY OF PAT MULROY.

Coming soon in Municipal Water Leader: February: Wastewater Planning March: New Construction

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

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Turning Vision Into Action

T

he cover interview in this month’s issue of Municipal Water Leader features a truly inspiring water professional: Pat Mulroy, the former general manager of the Las Vegas Valley Water District and of the Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA). Ms. Mulroy played a key role in the formation of the SNWA and in major negotiations between the Colorado basin states and between the United States and Mexico. I know you will find our wide-ranging interview as interesting as I did.

Also in this issue, Kathy Bielert, the technical sales manager for small-hydro-unit manufacturer NuSTREEM, tells Municipal Water Leader about the company’s low-head NuTURBINE, which can be inserted into existing municipal water systems to harvest the energy latent in the water flowing through a facility and convert it into electricity.

Next, Sam Barrick of SePRO tells us about the company’s work in the municipal sector and the products and services it provides.

South Platte Renew (SPR), a Colorado regional wastewater facility, recently installed a gas recovery facility that allows it to capture the methane that is created as part of the wastewater treatment process, purify it, and sell it to Xcel Energy, earning significant credit from federal and state renewable fuel standard programs. SPR Director Pieter Van Ry tells Municipal Water Leader about the program.

James Demby, the senior technical and policy adviser

By Kris Polly

on dam safety issues and program manager for the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s National Dam Safety Program, tells us about that program and how it provides funds to rehabilitate small, nonfederally regulated dams via pass-through grants to U.S. states.

Finally, we speak with Nick Vigar, the manager of Auckland, New Zealand’s Safeswim program. Safeswim uses regular testing, real-time data on the performance of wastewater and storm water infrastructure, and data modeling to generate recommendations on the cleanliness and safety of Auckland-area beaches.

The challenges that water professionals in this country face are considerable, ranging from climatic conditions to energy costs and seeking funding for rehabilitations. The best way to address these challenges is to gather information, think big, and develop the necessary relationships to deliver win-win solutions for everyone. Pat Mulroy is a great example of someone who has done just that. 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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Pat Mulroy: Secrets to Success on the Colorado River

The water intakes in Lake Mead behind Hoover Dam.

P

at Mulroy is a legendary figure on the Colorado River. The former general manager of the Las Vegas Valley Water District (LVVWD) and of the Southern Nevada Water Agency (SNWA), she also served as the lead negotiator for the State of Nevada on the Colorado River. Today, she runs her own consulting firm and is a senior fellow at the law school of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. In this interview, Ms. Mulroy tells Municipal Water Leader about her decades of experience and accomplishments and discusses the challenges that remain to be solved in the Colorado basin.

Municipal Water Leader: Tell us about your background and your experience in Nevada water.

8 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | January 2021

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about your experience addressing drought on the Colorado River.

Pat Mulroy: During those years, water became my passion. I became even more active in the field as the reality of climate change began to settle in in southern Nevada and around the West, and an already dry area became even drier. It forced us to make some significant changes, mostly in adjusting our customers’ attitudes about how much water they needed and could use. In southern Nevada, as is the case in virtually every western state, most water is used outside for landscaping, parks, and golf courses.

The drought set in in 2000. It then took a deep dive in 2002, when there was only 25 percent of the normal runoff in the upper basin. The four upper basin states are the municipalwaterleader.com

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE BUREAU OF RECLAMATION.

Pat Mulroy: I was born in Frankfurt in what was then known as West Germany. My father was a civilian in the U.S. Air Force. In 1974, I went to Las Vegas, where I completed my bachelor’s degree at the University of Las Vegas and got my master’s degree. I then went to Stanford University to pursue doctoral studies. After that, I came back to Las Vegas and started working for Clark County. I worked in the manager’s office and with the board and got heavily involved in the legislature, doing intergovernmental work for the county.

After that, I went over to the Justice Court, where I created the first Justice Court administrator position. A few years later, in 1985, I was offered and accepted the job of deputy general manager of the LVVWD. When my boss, the general manager, left in 1989, the board made me the first female general manager of the district. I held that position until 2014.

In 1991, The LVVWD and the other jurisdictions in Southern Nevada created a regional organization called the SNWA, which is similar to the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWDSC). The board of the SNWA asked me if I would head the authority as well, so I held that position and reported to the SNWA board from 1992 to 2014. During that period, I ended up becoming the lead negotiator for the State of Nevada on the Colorado River. I was a participant and active negotiator in some of the most historic agreements that had happened on the river since the signing of the Colorado River Compact in 1922, and I also worked on several minutes to the Mexican treaty.

ADVERTISEMENT predominant areas from which the water in the Colorado comes. Through various tributaries, it ends up in Lake Powell. Lake Powell has a regimented release to Lake Mead; the area in between is the Grand Canyon. Lake Mead then services the three lower basin states and the country of Mexico. With only 25 percent of the normal runoff in 2002, Lake Powell was crashing catastrophically, and we could see that all the benefits that we had negotiated for Nevada in the mid- to late 1990s were evaporating before our eyes.

In response, we in southern Nevada embarked on one of the most aggressive conservation programs the country had ever seen. We began to pay our customers to take their grass out.

Since then, southern Nevada has removed enough grass to form a roll of sod that could reach all the way around the planet.

We cut our water use by almost 40 percent. We supplemented the grass buyback program with restrictions on grass in new construction. We established seasonal water schedules and enforced them. We warned our users about breaking the new rules, but if they did, we just put the extra cost on their water bill. If they didn’t pay, we shut off their water. It was really effective—more effective than trying to pursue a pathway through the courts, where judges were anxious to placate their constituents and eager to rescind those penalties.

Simultaneously, we had to begin negotiating with our neighboring states and Mexico again so that we could come up with a regional shortage plan, one that would work for the upper basin in terms of how Lakes Powell and Mead were managed conjunctively and that would establish the elevations in Lake Mead at which the lower basin states would start voluntarily stepping back our use. That took until 2007.

At the same time, we negotiated a minute with Mexico.

We did something unheard of: We allowed the country of Mexico to use storage capacity in our reservoirs as buffer against drought. Specifically, in years when it was able to take its full allocation but chose not to, Mexico could store agricultural water in Lake Mead and then call on a certain amount of it during an emergency. With that in place, Mexico agreed that it would accept shortages at exactly the same elevations and at exactly the same times as the lower basin states. By the end of 2012, we had created a true megaregional water plan that spanned seven states and two countries.

Municipal Water Leader: Which of those accomplishments are you most proud of?

Pat Mulroy: The creation of the SNWA, because it was so important and so difficult. There’s nothing more difficult than getting elected officials to cede power to someone else. The benefit was that I ran the LVVWD, which was the 800‑pound gorilla. When the elected officials saw that the LVVWD was willing to cede power—something about which I had some interesting debates, as you can imagine, with some members of my board—they were willing to cede power, too. If the SNWA hadn’t been created, there never would have been a conservation plan and Nevada could not municipalwaterleader.com

have negotiated the agreements on the Colorado River that have become essential to the area’s survival.

When we created the SNWA, we did something unheard of in the West: We threw out our priority water rights and said that nobody had a priority over anybody else. When you think about it, priorities like that between cities are insane. I can run water down the streets of Las Vegas, while the City of Henderson gets no water? That’s stupid. We threw out our priority water rights and decided to enter into a shared shortage agreement, which was essentially a regional conservation plan. The SNWA developed the blueprint regarding what conservation measures had to be taken. Those required every entity to rewrite its regulations, ordinances, and water rate structures and to implement and enforce the same measures across the board. That saved southern Nevada. Southern Nevada would not be what it is today had the SNWA not been formed and had we not set aside decades of war between the various jurisdictions.

Municipal Water Leader: What lessons do you think the creation of the SNWA has for other river systems that are facing tremendous challenges, such as the Rio Grande?

Pat Mulroy: To be frank, I think the only way a lot of these regions are going to be able to survive what climate change is going to dish out to them is by starting to think less parochially and more regionally and to start thinking about institutions like a water authority. An institution like that allows members to maintain their self-governance and doesn’t disturb the relationship between elected officials and their constituents but allows you to manage necessary items in tandem with your neighbors.

First of all, I don’t think that people in this country can afford the enormous bill that’s headed their way. We talk about increasing the costs of energy to mitigate the effects of climate change, but when you look at the costs that are going to be associated with retooling many of our water systems, especially in an environment in which you have decaying urban systems, the costs become enormous. In many instances, you can achieve greater cost efficiencies if the facilities benefit various areas, all of whom share in the cost; you spread the costs over a larger constituency. In southern Nevada, we built $5 billion of water infrastructure without a single dime of federal money, but we were only able to do it all ourselves because we spread the cost out. Larger, regional thinking also makes all the communities in the area more resilient and opens up opportunities that can avoid expensive solutions. Look at the banking arrangements in the lower basin, such as the Arizona Groundwater Bank and the virtual bank between the SNWA and the MWDSC. They represent creative exchanges that require little expensive infrastructure, if any.

Municipal Water Leader: Since you mentioned energy, what are your thoughts on the reduced energy production on the Colorado?

January 2021 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER

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ADVERTISEMENT Pat Mulroy: I think the day of reckoning is going to come.

We are going to see energy production virtually disappear on large swaths of the river, especially in the lower basin. There are communities in Nevada that are 100 percent powered

by Hoover Dam—it’s their only energy source. Boulder City receives the bulk of its power from Hoover Dam, and all of Lincoln and White Pine Counties are served by Glen Canyon Dam. When you start looking at the cumulative effect, the picture becomes pretty ugly.

Municipal Water Leader: What are the necessary next steps for Colorado River management?

Pat Mulroy: We’re still in the midst of a multidecadal drought. This is not a drought event, this is a true shift in hydrology. The 2007 agreement expires in 2026, and I can’t think of an agreement that’s more essential to the Colorado basin states than the renewal and enhancement of those 2007 guidelines. The states are examining what worked well and what didn’t and where improvements can be made. It will hopefully result in another longer-term agreement. In general, you never want to make agreements in perpetuity in a world of climate change. You may have to make course corrections along the way. I’ve become a big believer in short-term, sequential agreements that build on one another.

But if the 2007 guidelines are not reupped, it will pose an existential threat to the Colorado River basin. It’s going to take a great deal of diplomacy. These are difficult politics.

In order to get to 2026, states may have to make earlier and deeper cuts in water use.

An additional factor is that a lot of experienced hands are retiring. That gives me pause, because much of the river community’s ability to reach these important agreements has been predicated on relationships and on people’s abilities to understand their neighbors at an intricate level. You need to know where the other states’ vulnerabilities lie and what they won’t be able to deliver on for political or practical reasons. Trust and collaboration are essential. I’m hoping that some of the older hands remain on the job long enough to help the next generation of negotiators gain the same level of understanding and the same collaborative spirit.

Pat Mulroy: In southern Nevada, John Entsminger, the current general manager of the SNWA. I have not had the opportunity to make a judgment call regarding folks in Colorado. Colorado has always been a strong leader in the upper basin because it has the largest share of the upper basin’s water supply, it contains the headwaters for most of the Colorado River’s flow, and it has a strong culture of water politics and water laws. In the lower basin, with Jeff Kightlinger leaving the MWDSC, it is going to be hugely important that the agency finds a

10 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | January 2021

Municipal Water Leader: Tell us about the projects you are working on now.

Pat Mulroy: I’m still working with the MWDSC on some Colorado River issues, but I’ve also started a consulting firm.

I really enjoyed a project I worked on in northern Nevada for Switch, which is a data center company. There is a big industrial park called the Truckee River Industrial Complex right outside Reno in Storey County. We were able to successfully persuade the local entities in the Reno-Sparks area to allow 4,000 acre-feet of the effluent from their wastewater treatment plant to be delivered to this industrial complex to use as cooling water.

An aerial view of Hoover Dam and Lake Mead.

I’m a big believer in reuse, but I believe in using it strategically. I worry that if reuse water goes straight to a home, something’s going to break down somewhere and someone’s going to get sick. If that happens, the whole reuse effort will be set back decades. Having industrial users or outside applications that are sophisticated enough and have deep enough pockets to hire experienced private-sector water companies to build and run the required treatment facilities for them will make an enormous difference.

We talk a lot about the amount of water that agriculture uses, but we haven’t begun to talk about how much water the industrial sector and data centers use. Producing one cell phone battery requires 1,400 gallons of water. Multiply that by the number of cell phones we use. Plants that produce larger lithium batteries can use as much water as whole communities.

municipalwaterleader.com

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE NATURAL RESOURCES CONSERVATION SERVICE.

Municipal Water Leader: Are there any new folks that you see as rising stars?

strong leader who is able to bring Jeff ’s level of leadership and understanding to the table.

ADVERTISEMENT Municipal Water Leader: How important do you think the annual Colorado River Water Users Association meeting has been to the success of Colorado?

Pat Mulroy: I think it has been very important. Everybody attends it, so it is a great venue to structure other meetings around. It’s also great for forging relationships. It was started nonthreateningly as a coming together of the actual users.

It has created a forum that has been incredibly helpful in creating the necessary cooperation between various states.

The other thing we’ve been successful at is keeping partisan politics out of this discussion. When you think about it, the states along the Colorado River are either very Republican or very Democratic. Few are in the middle ground. However, when it comes to the subject of water, partisan politics leave the room. If the representatives of the seven states go to their senators and ask them to send a letter to Interior, it is not hard to get all 14 senators to sign on. And when 14 senators from both Democratic and Republican states sign the same letter on the same topic, the administration reacts quickly. The Drought Contingency Plan is a recent example of that.

Municipal Water Leader: You’ve developed a tremendous reputation as a decisive, tough, and successful leader. How would you characterize your success?

Pat Mulroy: I would characterize it as the success of the agencies I have been involved with, and that success is the result of the cumulative effort of a lot of talented people.

If I personally am being held up as successful, I would say that my greatest success is to have brought together a strong team that was able to do extraordinary work under difficult circumstances. We often make the mistake of thinking that success is something achieved by one person. It’s always a larger group. What makes a difference for any leader is the ability to surround themselves with people who will push back; who aren’t yes men; and who have the courage, conviction, and talent to work their way through difficult situations.

Municipal Water Leader: In addition to surrounding themselves with good people, what qualities should a leader have to be successful?

Pat Mulroy: The ability to listen is paramount. It is one thing to be able to accurately recite your organization’s position on any given subject. It’s another to shut up and listen to what your counterparts are saying and to learn where their needs and vulnerabilities lie. A true solution has to be a solution for everybody. There can be no winners and losers. If one loses, everybody loses.

Municipal Water Leader: Do you have any additional advice for water managers?

municipalwaterleader.com

Pat Mulroy: The challenge that water managers are facing is that a change is occurring. Although some new facilities are going to be critical, we won’t be able to just build our way out of the problem. Those days are over. It is going to take a lot of diplomatic and people skills, which can be learned and developed. The leader of a water organization should make sure they have people skills, or they will not be able to succeed, whether with their workforce or their neighbors.

Times are changing rapidly and challenges are becoming increasingly complex. Things you never had to worry about before now are everyday, in-your-face challenges.

Municipal Water Leader: Who is your favorite Bureau of Reclamation commissioner, and why?

Pat Mulroy: I’ll start by saying that my favorite secretary of the interior was Bruce Babbitt. Without him, the original interim surplus agreement never would have come together.

He was the decisive figure in changing the culture. He had been the governor of a lower basin state, Arizona, and was also a water lawyer, and to understand the politics and the law around water as well as he did was critical. I butted heads with him for almost the entire 8 years of his term, but nobody after him was able to accomplish what he did.

Every secretary organizes the U.S. Department of the Interior differently. Sometimes, Interior’s lead representative is the assistant secretary for water and science and sometimes it is the commissioner of Reclamation. In deciding who was most influential you have to look at individuals in both of these positions. First and foremost, I would point to Mike Connor. He did a fabulous job shepherding everyone through the 2012 Mexican treaty minute. Given all the challenges Brenda Burman had in the Trump administration, she did a great job. They come from different parties, they come from different political starting places, but they’ve both done great work.

Bob Johnson will always be one of the commissioners I admire most. He had so much experience, and he had the perfect temperament. You couldn’t rattle Bob if you tried. He maintained an even keel no matter how turbulent the waters became.

The one quality all these individuals shared was that they understood the relationship between the federal government and the states on the river. They could prod and push the states to an agreement, but they could not unilaterally decide the course of the river. It is one area where there truly is a structure of shared power. M Pat Mulroy is the former general manager of the Las Vegas Valley Water District and of the Southern Nevada Water Authority.

She can be contacted on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/patricia-mulroy-a4b17617a/.

January 2021 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER

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How NuSTREEM’s Small Hydro Units Can Save Municipal Water Agencies Money

NuSTREEM's NuTURBINE is designed to harvest energy from water being piped from one location to another.

N

uSTREEM is an innovative small-hydropowerunit manufacturer based in Connecticut. Its lowhead NuTURBINE can be inserted into existing municipal water systems to harvest the energy latent in the water flowing through a facility and convert it into electricity.

In this interview, Kathy Bielert, NuSTREEM’s technical sales manager, tells Municipal Water Leader about the idea behind the company’s technology and why it should be of interest to all municipal water managers.

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell our readers about NuSTREEM, its history, and its turbine products.

14 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | January 2021

municipalwaterleader.com

PHOTOS COURTESY OF NUSTREEM.

Kathy Bielert: NuSTREEM is an innovative manufacturer of small hydroturbine equipment. We started designing a modular and intelligent hydroturbine over a decade ago. In 2014, NuSTREEM completed two projects: one 500‑kilowatt (kW) installation in Connecticut consisting of five 100 kW units and a 100 kW installation in Massachusetts. Both sites have been successfully running ever since.

Our equipment is designed to rapidly build a hydropower site that is economically feasible based on average energy prices. Our NuTURBINE is a low-head Kaplan turbine that operates with 8–40 feet of head. It is made in America and is loaded with proven, modern features to automate operation.

This is a contemporary dual-regulated Kaplan design with electronically controlled, motor-drive-actuated wicket gates and runner blades. Although the NuTURBINE is based on the tried-and-true Kaplan-style turbine, NuSTREEM has a patented design variant that can take full advantage of current electronics technology and intelligent control capabilities. Our patented NuTECH controller ensures optimal hydropower system output by maximizing efficiency, regardless of the hydraulic or machine conditions. Last but not least, our NuCONTAINER uses an industry-standard shipping container modified to house a NuTURBINE and controls.

The turbines arrive on site inside their permanent housing, ready for installation. The NuCONTAINER allows users to bypass many of the costly and time-consuming geotechnical and civil efforts that traditional hydropower sites require.

ADVERTISEMENT NuSTREEM’s products are based on technological evolutions that significantly improve the performance of a long-accepted hydropower turbine paradigm. Those changes eliminate the need for a dam, offer a decentralized generation capability and the ability to harvest energy from existing hydropower intensive systems, and reduce environmental effects, all with a low setup and procurement cost. The hydropower community has recognized that the future of hydropower lies with modular, intelligent small hydropower equipment that protects and even improves our environment.

NuSTREEM saw this need coming over a decade ago. Today, we can quickly deliver modular, intelligent equipment that has been proving its reliability for over 6 years.

Another part of NuSTREEM’s strategy to become experts in the hydro industry is to take advantage of membership opportunities with different organizations and groups. We’ve been part of the National Hydropower Association for 3 years and have received invaluable help and connections through its programs.

Municipal Water Leader: What was the inspiration behind your in-pipe turbine design?

Kathy Bielert: Harvesting energy from water that is being piped to another location is a sustainable, green energy source that helps reduce a user’s carbon footprint. With the right conditions, our standard NuTURBINE can be used to produce energy from this underused source, helping to offset the costs of a plant.

Municipal Water Leader: What diameter of pipe is your turbine designed for?

Kathy Bielert: NuSTREEM’s standard NuTURBINE inlet is 48 inches. Pipes over 24 inches in diameter that can be increased or reduced to 48 inches can also be used.

Municipal Water Leader: What are the flow range requirements for your turbine design, and what is its likely energy output?

Kathy Bielert: The optimal flow range of the NuTURBINE is 40–100 cubic feet per second. Our turbines’ generators range from 75 to 250 kW in capacity. These turbines work with an available head of 8–40 feet.

Municipal Water Leader: How easy is maintenance on your turbines? Can they be accessed, worked on, and removed easily?

Kathy Bielert: With proper valving, the turbine can easily be removed for maintenance. The turbine is small enough to put on a truck. The NuTURBINE is standardized, so common parts are available. If the flow cannot be interrupted, a bypass loop can be added to allow the water to flow while the turbine is being serviced. municipalwaterleader.com

A NuTURBINE being transported.

Municipal Water Leader: What is your message to municipal water managers about your turbine design’s ability to help them recapture expenses?

Kathy Bielert: NuSTREEM’s NuTURBINE can be added to an existing system to harvest the energy that is currently lost when water flows through your facility, recapturing the energy as electricity and using it to run your plant.

Municipal Water Leader: How do you deal with risk in municipality capital equipment asset management?

Kathy Bielert: NuSTREEM offers products with proven, reliable technology. As experts in the small hydro industry, our team has spent lots of time developing, testing, and manufacturing these machines. NuSTREEM’s products were conceived and originally designed by an extraordinarily successful team of machine designers from the aerospace industry. With a background in designing machines that must work without fail and with super-high efficiency, they brought the ultramodern technology of the aerospace world to hydro equipment design. The NuTURBINE has been designed with an increased focus on longevity and ease of maintenance.

The ongoing maintenance costs are minimal, while the access and ease of operation provide an unusually easy-to-manage usage life. Our equipment is modular and exceptional in its ability to integrate into your hydro site system with ease.

Municipal Water Leader: If our readers have more questions, how should they contact you?

Kathy Bielert: They should e-mail me directly at kathy.bielert@nustreem.com or call me at (860) 324‑8262.

M

Kathy Bielert is the technical sales manager at NuSTREEM. For more information about NuSTREEM, visit nustreem.com.

January 2021 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER

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SePRO’s Work in the Municipal Water Sector

S

ePRO has been in the aquatic chemicals business for nearly three decades. During that time, it has expanded from its original focus on canals and irrigation infrastructure to encompass municipal reservoirs and water supplies as well. In this interview, Sam Barrick, SePRO’s vice president of marketing, tells Municipal Water Leader about the company’s work in the municipal sector and the products and services it provides.

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

Sam Barrick: I am the vice president of marketing of SePRO and have been working here for 18 years. I grew up on a small farm in Muscatine, Iowa. We grew mostly corn and soybeans and raised some livestock. I went to school at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa, with a focus on agricultural business. I graduated in 1984 and went into the chemical industry, working primarily with corn and soybeans and later moving into the specialty markets for fruits, nuts, vegetables, and specialty crops. A variety of different roles and responsibilities ultimately led me to SePRO, where I now focus on managing all aspects of water quality, invasive weed management, algae, and harmful algal blooms.

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell our readers about the history of SePRO. Sam Barrick: SePRO was started roughly 27 years ago when our founder was presented an opportunity to acquire a few specialty products that were considered niche chemistries by the large manufacturers. He saw that managing and protecting water was always going to be important, given its role in food production in the West. He started the company to meet the need for products to manage harmful algal blooms in water reservoirs and invasive aquatic weeds that grow in lakes, rivers, and irrigation canals. It started from that and has grown into a world-class organization.

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell our readers about SePRO’s history with municipal water supply.

Municipal Water Leader: What are some of the SePRO products that municipal water managers would be most familiar with?

18 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | January 2021

Municipal Water Leader: What should every municipal water manager know about working with SePRO? Sam Barrick: They should know that we are passionate problem solvers who are inspired to help our customers in this space, regardless of the size of their organization. We have experts at our research campus, in our labs, and around the United States ready to assist with any water quality situation. Our expertise is in solving taste and odor problems and in removing toxins from water at its natural source before it goes into municipal supplies. SePRO recently launched a new division within our organization called EutroPHIX. This team of experts will be focused on helping water resource and municipal managers detoxify their water from harmful algal blooms, phosphorus pollution, taste and odor issues, and dangerous toxins so that they can provide clean and safe water to the public.

Municipal Water Leader: Does SePRO provide any kind of training for municipal water workers?

Sam Barrick: All our technical specialists can provide continuing-education-unit training based on the needs of an organization, whether those needs relate to safety, technology, or chemistry. We can do that through virtual meetings, although we prefer face-to-face meetings. M

Sam Barrick is SePRO’s vice president of marketing. He can be contacted at samb@sepro.com or (317) 216‑8073.

To learn more about EutroPHIX, visit eutrophix.com.

municipalwaterleader.com

PHOTO COURTESY OF SEPRO.

Sam Barrick: When SePRO started, we were initially focused on managing water reservoirs, lakes, and ponds.

Over time, as new technologies became available, we shifted our focus to help manage many municipal water reservoir areas. We have added people, technologies, and expertise.

That has made us confident that we can help people bring better water into the plant so they can deliver better water out of the plant.

Sam Barrick: Municipal water managers are likely familiar with PAK 27 or Phycomycin. These products are peroxidebased chemistries that quickly eliminate cyanobacteria from water. Both are NSF-registered and Organic Materials Review Institute–listed products. We also have another NSF-approved product called SeClear, which is an algaecide and water quality enhancer. It is the only product in the industry that controls algae and sequesters phosphorus at the same time. It has been used in several municipal water scenarios to improve the quality of influent water.

We also have several chelated copper algaecides, including CaptainXTR and Cutrine, which are generally not used in municipal water areas but are great for using in the reservoir before the water comes into the plant. In addition to our comprehensive algaecide portfolio, we have two phosphorusmitigation technologies that effectively manage excess phosphorus in water resources, Phoslock and EutroSORB.

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Reliability and Growth in Sioux Falls Infrastructure and Population Grow Side by Side in Sioux Falls

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ioux Falls is the largest city in South Dakota, and it is growing larger each day. A growing community thrives when its infrastructure grows as well. Since the city’s first sewer was installed in the early 1890s, the Sioux Falls Water Reclamation Division has kept up investment in its infrastructure by • reconstructing the main sanitary sewer system; • replacing the outfall trunk sewer, which carries wastewater to the main pump station, and • adding the main pump station parallel force main, which then pumps the wastewater to the city’s water reclamation facility.

The existing outfall trunk sewer, built in the late 1970s, consisted of 2 miles of 66 inch reinforced concrete pipe (RCP) with an asphalt/bituminous liner for corrosion protection. This sewer line, which conveys over 90 percent of the city’s wastewater, had been structurally weakened by sewer gases. Hydrogen sulfide (H2S) gas typically is formed in wastewater collection systems that are conducive to creating septic conditions. The deterioration of the liner had resulted in significant corrosion of the concrete pipe.

Restoring Structural Integrity HOBAS supplied 8,500 feet of 72 inch centrifugally cast, fiberglass-reinforced polymer mortar (CCFRPM) pipe for the outfall trunk sewer replacement project, which was the last phase of a major replacement of the city’s main trunk sewer. Also included in the major replacement were four separate segments of the central main and three separate segments of the Sioux River south interceptor sewers along the Big Sioux River, varying from 36 to 60 inch pipes.

The construction took approximately 16 months from start to completion for this mostly open-cut installation. The contractor, H&W Contracting, LLC, of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, has successfully completed numerous water main, sanitary sewer, and storm sewer projects for the City of Sioux Falls and surrounding municipalities in the four-state area.

This new 72 inch outfall trunk sewer allows for continued population growth and increases the overall capacity of the city’s sewer system by approximately 21 million gallons per day, reducing the risk of backups and sewer overflows. The City of Sioux Falls was confident in its choice of HOBAS pipe after comparing life-cycle costs, corrosion resistance, constructability, operation and maintenance, compatibility with third-party products, and longevity.

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South Platte Renew’s Gas Recovery and Pipeline Injection Project

SPR's biogas conditioning system is housed in the white structure to the left.

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outh Platte Renew (SPR) is a regional wastewater facility serving approximately 300,000 people in and around the cities of Littleton and Englewood, Colorado.

As part of its energy optimization activities, it recently installed a gas recovery facility that allows it to capture the methane that is created as part of the wastewater treatment process, purify it, and sell it to Xcel Energy. In addition to the money it gets from Xcel, this earns SPR significant credit from federal and state renewable fuel standard programs. In this interview, SPR Director Pieter Van Ry tells Municipal Water Leader about the genesis of the program and his advice for other utilities that are interested in a similar initiative.

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

Pieter Van Ry: I’ve spent 25 years in the water, wastewater, and storm water field. I have an undergraduate degree in engineering from the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse and an executive MBA from the University of Denver’s Daniels College of Business. I began my career in engineering consulting, and after about 10 years, I made the transition to the public sector as the engineering manager of a water utility. I progressed from engineering manager to engineering director, and a little over 2 years ago, I became the director of SPR. In March 2020, I also became the director of the City of Englewood’s utilities. SPR and the utilities department are two distinct and separate organizations that are housed under the city umbrella.

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about SPR.

22 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | January 2021

Municipal Water Leader: What sort of infrastructure do you manage?

Pieter Van Ry: We are a wastewater treatment facility only.

Our property is about 53 acres in size, and everything inside the fence belongs to SPR. We don’t have large interceptors or anything like that. The site has about 25 buildings and approximately 50 process tanks. Our current rated capacity is 50 million gallons per day. We’re an advanced tertiary wastewater treatment facility with a liquid stream, a solid stream, and a gas stream. Our main wastewater treatment processes include primary clarification, trickling filter treatment, secondary clarification, tertiary nitrifying trickling filter treatment, denitrification filter treatment, solids handling, and disinfection.

Municipal Water Leader: What was the motivation behind the creation of your gas recovery facility and pipeline injection project?

Pieter Van Ry: Several decades ago, SPR developed an interest in trying to recover the methane gas stream that is created as part of the wastewater treatment process. In the 1990s, we installed two 1‑megawatt engine generators to offset electricity use and used the gas to power those generators. However, the gas was so dirty that it was not a reliable fuel source and fouled the engines. Ultimately, that project was abandoned after a significant investment.

In 2012, an internal workgroup focused on energy sought to identify ways to improve energy optimization at the facility. municipalwaterleader.com

PHOTOS COURTESY OF SPR.

Pieter Van Ry: SPR is a regional wastewater facility that is a 50/50 joint venture between the Cities of Englewood and Littleton. In the late 1970s, each city had its own separate wastewater treatment plant, each of which required a significant number of upgrades. The U.S. Environmental

Protection Agency worked with the two cities to combine those plants into a regional facility. The regional facility serves those two cities, which have a combined population of about 80,000, as well as a number of connector sewer districts, or communities outside the two cities, bringing the total population we serve to about 300,000 people. Our service area is about 108 square miles in size.

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The proximilty of Xcel Energy’s pipeline to SPR’s facilities made this gas recovery project an attractive initiative.

The first project the team came up with was the biogas recovery project. In 2016, we hired an outside consultant to perform a biogas feasibility study. The consultant considered a number of potential uses for biogas and ultimately landed on direct pipeline injection. We’re fortunate because a main Xcel

Energy transmission line runs along the northern boundary of our property, meaning that very little pipeline infrastructure was needed to connect to the main transmission line. That made it an attractive project for us.

The Renewable Fuel Standard program was also a significant driver for this project alternative. That federal program assigns renewable identification numbers (RINs), which provide credit for gas that offsets the use of transportation fuels. Whenever we can inject our renewable natural gas into the pipeline and offset the use of fossil fuels, we gain a revenue credit.

Based on those factors, the team decided that the pipeline injection project was the best project for us to move forward with. Once that determination was made, we held several meetings with our two city councils to get their support for and approval of the project and then moved forward with design and construction. The facility finally came online on October 31, 2019.

Municipal Water Leader: How much methane gas is created by the treatment process, and what happened to it before the building of this facility?

The skid housing SPR’s biogas conditioning system is lowered into place.

municipalwaterleader.com

January 2021 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER

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ADVERTISEMENT be even lower, although we don’t have enough information yet to make a firm determination.

Municipal Water Leader: Is SPR paid by Xcel Energy for the gas it provides?

The mayors of Littleton and Englewood, Colorado, at the ribbon cutting for the biogas conditioning system in October 2019.

Pieter Van Ry: We generate approximately 470,000 cubic feet of digester gas per day, which is equivalent to about 2,060 gallons of gasoline. We report that equivalency because of our involvement in the transportation fuels program. That is the amount of gasoline that our project offsets every day. Prior to the project, 40 percent of that digester gas was used to fire our boilers to help with the digestion process. The other 60 percent was flared off into the atmosphere. We now recover almost all of that gas, clean it, and inject it directly into the Xcel natural gas pipeline.

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about the recovery and cleaning process.

24 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | January 2021

Municipal Water Leader: Do you have any advice for other wastewater service providers that might be considering a similar project?

Pieter Van Ry: First, get your data and facts together to develop a sound rationale for the project. Once you have that documented, get your city council or board and the members of your community who support the project involved. In our case, a citizen group called Citizens Alliance for a Sustainable Englewood was interested in this project because of its renewable nature and its focus on sustainability.

It showed its support for the project publicly and advocated for the council to move it forward. Our councils also showed ongoing support for the project as it developed. Backing from the councils and the community in the early stages of the project is extremely helpful as you progress through the more technical challenges that lie ahead.

Getting a broker on board is important. We’re a wastewater treatment facility, so oil and gas are not our areas of expertise.

We hired a broker to assist us with our project development and to guide us through the appropriate regulatory processes.

It is also a critical support for us as we market and sell the gas, ensuring that we’re optimizing the timing of when we sell into the system to maximize our revenues.

I also recommend establishing a strong, early connection with the gas utility that will be receiving the gas. Gas utilities have stringent standards for their pipelines that do not typically account for the type of renewable natural gas that is produced by wastewater treatment plants. Many of the existing testing procedures used by the gas company made it difficult to actually sell our renewable gas into the pipeline. We worked with the utility over the course of a year to negotiate requirements for our gas that allowed us to inject while also ensuring that its systems were protected. municipalwaterleader.com

PHOTOS COURTESY OF SPR.

Pieter Van Ry: The majority of the process occurs in a system housed in a unit about the size of a shipping container that is positioned on a skid. In it are a number of cleaning mechanisms that remove impurities from the gas.

The system includes a hydrogen sulfide scrubber, a moisture removal process, heat exchangers that chill the gas, a compressor that compresses the gas, and an oil separator that removes oil from the gas. Throughout the cleaning process, the temperature is adjusted several times to optimize the removal of the contaminants. We then remove siloxanes, volatile organic compounds, and carbon dioxide. The clean gas goes through a gas meter and is injected directly into the Xcel pipeline. A small amount of tail gas, which contains the remaining concentrated contaminants, is directed to a device called a thermal oxidizer, where it is eliminated.

The cleaning and recovery process is not terribly energy intensive. We conservatively estimated that the annual operating cost of the system would be about $550,000. After a year of operation, data suggest that the actual cost might

Pieter Van Ry: Yes, we are paid by Xcel for the gas we inject, but that’s not how we generate the majority of our revenue. We actually access three revenue streams for the renewable natural gas we produce at our facility. The selling of the brown gas to Xcel accounts for about 5 percent of the revenue that we generate from the gas. The remaining revenue streams come from federal and state programs that help offset fossil fuel usage and greenhouse gas emissions.

The renewable fuel standard program accounts for around 60 percent of the total revenue. During our first year of operation, we also successfully applied for the California lowcarbon fuel standard program, which allows us to sell our gas for additional credit. This additional program revenue will account for about 35 percent of our 2020 biogas revenues.

ADVERTISEMENT Another recommendation is always to get your operations staff involved in the project early. In our industry, we’re really good at handling water treatment and solids, but gas is a whole new arena. Getting the operators involved in the gas recovery operation early and especially during system startup and commissioning helps you achieve success faster.

Finally, I would say to be patient and to remember that it’s a long-term investment. It takes time for staff to develop an understanding of this process, and it takes time to recoup your costs. The original cost of this project was about $7.8 million. Based on our revenue projections, we anticipate making that money back in 4–7 years. Actually, based on the current RIN pricing, we’re estimating about a 5½-year break-even point for the system. You can make the economics of this type of project work out fairly well in your favor if you’re able to keep the costs down and as long as the renewable fuels programs stays in place. Either way, the project is still a significant benefit to our community because the gas is no longer just flared into the atmosphere.

Municipal Water Leader: What are the other top issues that SPR is working on today?

Pieter Van Ry: Nutrient standards are something that we’re always planning for. Some significant nutrient standards are currently affecting us and will continue to affect our facility over the next 15–20 years. We’re planning for those future standards right now, because they will not just require a couple million dollars of investment, they’ll require hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of upgrades. We are planning now so that by the time we need to pull the trigger on those projects, we will have the funding in place and know the technical approach we are going to take to meet the challenge.

PFAS contaminants are a huge issue that continue to gain regulatory focus nationally and could affect wastewater treatment. These contaminants, sometimes called forever chemicals, are contained in firefighting foam, nonstick coatings, clothing, and many other everyday materials.

They’re hard to remove from wastewater, and we don’t know what that’s going to mean for our future treatment process requirements.

Like a lot of utilities across the country, we’re also continually trying to balance funding the replacement of aging infrastructure with maintaining rate stability. One of our biggest challenges is to plan for the unknowns of future regulations and how they will affect our treatment processes. When we focus on solving this problem strategically, we are able to minimize the potential for significant rate increase shock to our customers. This is something that we emphasize when developing our longterm financial plans.

The final issue is staffing. We seek to recruit the best and most highly qualified talent for our organization. The workforce is changing, and we are rapidly losing our most experienced workers to retirement. Utilities across the nation municipalwaterleader.com

SPR's wastewater facilities seen in the morning light.

are finding that that a significant amount of institutional knowledge is walking out the door, leaving our new people to figure things out without a lot of guidance. We focus a lot of our time and energy on this transition.

Municipal Water Leader: What is your vision for the future of SPR? Pieter Van Ry: For me, there are two aspects to this question.

I want our organization to be an active leader in innovation in the wastewater industry. I see that occurring through partnerships with colleges and universities as well as with manufacturers, technology providers, and engineering design firms. I want us to be a strong partner in developing new technologies to help solve the problems that are 10, 15, or 20 years down the road. If we take an active role in helping advance innovation in our industry, we will ultimately save our customers money in the long run.

The other focus for me is on the organizational or people side of our business. At our organization, we’re focused on developing a culture of excellence. I believe that that ultimately comes down to having people enjoy where they work. I want people to love to come to work. If they love what they do, they’ll work harder and be more engaged and dedicated to this organization. All the technical challenges will be addressed one way or another. It’s the environment and the culture that we create that will separate us as an organization and make us successful. M Pieter Van Ry is the director of South Platte Renew and of the City of Englewood’s utilities. He can be contacted at pvanry@englewoodco.gov.

January 2021 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER

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FEMA’s National Dam Safety Program

Construction on the Big Tujunga Dam, as seen from above the dam.

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any of the nation’s large, federally owned hydropower dams are aging and in need of repairs, which are often funded by agencies like the Bureau of Reclamation. However, such funding streams are often not open to smaller, state-regulated private and municipal dams.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is helping address this gap through its National Dam Safety Program (NDSP), which provides pass-through grants to states, which in turn award the money to subrecipients who sponsor rehabilitation projects. In this interview, James Demby, the senior technical and policy adviser on dam safety issues and program manager for the NDSP, tells Municipal Water Leader about the projects that the program funds and how states can best apply for grant funding.

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

28 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | January 2021

James Demby: The NDSP is a public-private partnership whose purpose is to reduce risk and reduce dam failure in the United States. The establishment and maintenance of an effective dam safety program brings together the expertise of federal and nonfederal resources and subject-matter experts.

The goal is to achieve national dam safety hazard reduction.

The program had its genesis in the 1970s, when a series of dam failures occurred under the Carter administration.

An ad hoc group was created to look at concerns about dams and to establish federal dam safety guidelines. That group’s guidelines were established in 1979 and provided the framework for federal dam safety programs. In 1996, the NDSP was codified in statute.

The NDSP provides financial assistance in the form of grants to states that have legislated dam safety programs. It also provides training for state dam safety professionals and other dam safety professionals. We also have a research program that develops tools to support state and federal agencies in their dam safety activities. We promote public outreach activities. It’s a modest program, but it benefits the profession.

There are two advisory committees under the NDSP. One is the Interagency Committee on Dam Safety, which brings together the federal agencies that have some role or municipalwaterleader.com

PHOTO COURTESY OF ADAM DUBROWA AND FEMA.

James Demby: I have more than 30 years of experience in the area of dam safety. I started working on civil works projects and military construction projects for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, where I spent about 14 years. I then went to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Forest Service, where I was the dam safety program manager. I was there for about 4 years. In 2007, I came to FEMA in the same position I now hold.

Municipal Water Leader: Would you give us a quick introduction to the NDSP?

ADVERTISEMENT responsibility related to dam design, building, regulation, or operations and maintenance. There’s also the National Dam Safety Review Board, which is made up of federal and state members and private-sector representatives. Both of those committees are chaired by FEMA. Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about the Rehabilitation of High Hazard Potential Dams (HHPD) grant program and the sorts of projects it typically funds.

James Demby: Congress authorized the HHPD grant program under FEMA to fund the technical planning, design, and construction of eligible high-hazard-potential dams. This program was authorized in December 2016 under the Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation Act. In fiscal year 2019, Congress appropriated $10 million for rehabilitation. The grant program provides those funds to states based on a formula that factors in the number of states that submit applications and the number of eligible high-hazard-potential dams. That formula produces a wide range of possible outcomes, but the amount of money any one state can receive is capped at 12.5 percent of the total funds available. With $10 million available, that’s $1.25 million. The minimum depends on how the formula works out. In 2020, the smallest amount was $170,000.

A range of dam rehabilitation activities can receive funds, including site investigations, geotechnical investigations, risk assessments, and design and construction activities.

Municipal Water Leader: Are the grantees always the states themselves?

James Demby: The HHPD grants are set up as passthrough grants, so the states are the recipients. There is a two-phase application process. The states submit grant applications that include basic information about their eligible dams. Based on those applications and the formula I discussed above, a determination is made regarding how much money each state receives. Then the states need to submit a revised work plan that reflects the actual funding they are receiving, detailing what they plan on doing with the grant funds and which subrecipients and projects the funds will be given to. Each subrecipient has to be eligible, the dam that is going to be worked on has to be eligible, and the activities that it wants to fund have to be eligible.

PHOTO COURTESY OF JAMES DEMBY.

Municipal Water Leader: Who generally owns the highhazard-potential dams in question? Are they owned by the states, by municipalities, or by private entities?

James Demby: There is a range. However, according to the statute, the subrecipient of a high-hazard-potential dam grant must be a nonfederal sponsor, such as a nonfederal government organization or a nonprofit organization. That entity will sponsor the rehabilitation of a dam. For example, municipalwaterleader.com

if a privately owned high-hazard-potential dam threatens a municipality, the municipality can be a subrecipient of a grant and then sponsor the rehabilitation of that project, but the private dam owner cannot be a recipient.

The dam in question also has to be eligible. For a dam to be eligible, it must be a high-hazard-potential dam, it must be regulated by a state, it must have an state-approved emergency action plan in place, and it must fail to meet the minimum state dam safety criteria and pose an unacceptable risk to the public.

Some projects will not be eligible for HHPD grants.

Those include federal projects, projects that have a hydropower license through the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and projects that were built under the authority of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Municipal Water Leader: What are the typical sorts of projects that HHPD grants support?

James Demby: It really depends. In the first year of the grants and in fiscal year 2019, we did not allow actual construction projects. A lot of the states didn’t have projects ready. A lot of states put the grants toward risk assessments.

Some states funded design and certification work. Risk assessments and site investigations seemed to be the prevailing types of projects for fiscal year 2019.

Municipal Water Leader: How can a state apply successfully for an HHPD grant, and how can another entity, such as a municipality, successfully promote its project to a state?

James Demby: One of the requirements for a state is to have an administrative plan or grant management plan that explains how it is going to implement the pass-through grants. The state needs to have a process in place through which subrecipients can apply for rehabilitation grants and the state can make subawards to those projects.

Municipal Water Leader: What is your vision for the future of the program, and where do you see it going in future years?

James Demby: There is a need across the country for the rehabilitation of high-hazard-potential dams. As long as this program receives congressional appropriations, FEMA will continue to move forward with the HHPD grant program.

We will improve our outreach and provide more training and materials to get the states better positioned to take advantage of this opportunity. M James Demby is the senior technical and policy adviser on dam safety issues at the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the program manager for the National Dam Safety Program.

January 2021 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER

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How Auckland’s Safeswim Program Keeps Beachgoers Safe Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position.

Nick Vigar: I have a background in both biological and physical sciences. I’ve worked in the field of storm water quality and quantity management for the last 15 years.

Municipal Water Leader: For U.S. readers who may only know Auckland as a name on a map, would you give some information about the size of the city and its geographical setting?

Nick Vigar: Auckland is in the upper North Island of New Zealand. It is the country’s largest city and is constantly growing. With the city situated between three large harbors, Waitematā, Manukau, and Kaipara, Aucklanders have a large number of beaches to enjoy during the summer.

Municipal Water Leader: When was the Auckland Safeswim program founded and why? What is the basic purpose of the program?

Nick Vigar: The revised Safeswim program was created in 2017 and launched in November 2018. The purpose of Safeswim is to provide advice on beach conditions and potential hazards to help Aucklanders make informed decisions about when and where to swim. The website provides real-time data on the performance of the wastewater and storm water networks; forecasts of water quality; and up-to-the-minute advice on tides, weather, wind, and temperatures at over 100 sites in the Auckland region.

Municipal Water Leader: Why were people getting sick from swimming at beaches near Auckland? What were the major drivers of unsafe or dirty conditions?

One of the digital signs located at 11 of the main Auckland-area beaches, displaying information on water quality and beach conditions and hazards.

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34 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | January 2021

municipalwaterleader.com

PHOTO COURTESY OF SAFESWIM.

he municipal government of the city of Auckland, New Zealand, has created a program to easily present up-todate information on water quality and hazards at local beaches to the public. The Safeswim program uses regular testing, real-time data on the performance of wastewater and storm water infrastructure, and data modeling to generate its recommendations.

Meanwhile, Auckland Council and its water utility are 3 years into a 10‑year infrastructure program to reduce the occurrence of wastewater overflows. In this interview, Safeswim Program Manager Nick Vigar tells Municipal Water Leader about how the program functions and the benefits it brings Aucklanders.

Nick Vigar: There is little direct evidence of illness associated with swimming around Auckland. The illnesses that you are most likely to catch from fecal contamination include gastrointestinal and respiratory illnesses, which may occur days or weeks after exposure. However, epidemiological studies do enable us to approximately establish the public health risk associated with particular bacterial indicators. We follow New Zealand government guidance in this regard.

There is a higher risk of poor water quality at our beaches after rain, especially in areas served by aging network infrastructure in the city center and aging onsite septic systems on properties at the edge of the city or in rural areas.

Rainfall after long spells of dry weather can carry a first flush of dirty water to our beaches—including water contaminated

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A panorama of Auckland, New Zealand.

PHOTO COURTESY OF SIDS1.

with animal feces and litter. Water quality at Auckland beaches is generally good and is getting better as Auckland Council and Watercare (New Zealand’s largest water supplier and wastewater treatment service) continue to invest in improving the region’s water management networks. But our beaches do suffer from poor water quality from time to time.

Municipal Water Leader: How are the data for the Safeswim program collected?

Nick Vigar: Safeswim combines real-time data on the performance of the wastewater and storm water networks with predictive models that forecast water quality to a high degree of accuracy. These models are underpinned by a regionwide program of sampling. The sampling program comprises routine sampling at each site in the program (excluding those subject to long-term warnings, which are managed under a different system), high-frequency sampling at targeted locations during specific climactic conditions, and community-led sampling to help speed up model development. On average, most beaches are tested every 2 weeks, although data collection may be more frequent when we’re trying to build a predictive model for a location quickly.

Safeswim’s water quality predictions consider rain intensity, duration, and location as well as tides, wind speed and direction, and sunlight. In addition, data from rain radar and rain gauges around the region are fed into the system to ensure that current water quality predictions reflect actual and observed rainfall rather than relying entirely on weather forecasts. municipalwaterleader.com

Municipal Water Leader: Does the Safeswim program use only water quality data it collects itself, or does it use information collected by other entities?

Nick Vigar: We only use data we capture ourselves.

Municipal Water Leader: What is the water tested for?

Nick Vigar: Aside from running predictive models based on New Zealand microbiological water quality guidelines, in freshwater we test for E. coli as our indicator of contamination, and in salt water we test for Enterococci.

Municipal Water Leader: How does Safeswim use predictive modeling to provide recommendations on beach conditions?

Nick Vigar: There was clear evidence that relying on the results of weekly monitoring was not an effective method to manage the public health risk from recreating in contaminated water in Auckland. Agencies responsible for managing recreational health and water quality in Australia, Hong Kong, Scotland, and the United States had begun to use water quality modeling to identify and communicate public health risk. Auckland chose to join that movement and bring its program up to speed with international best practices.

Model accuracy is established in two phases: calibration during model development and validation during model operation. Validation results are used to train models and January 2021 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER

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People visit Auckland’s Herne Bay Beach.

Nick Vigar: Safeswim has significantly raised public awareness of the potential public health risk associated with swimming and has raised the profile of storm water quality as an issue within the region.

36 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | January 2021

Nick Vigar: Auckland Council and its water utility are 3 years into a 10‑year program of building NZ$1.8 billion (US$1.27 billion) worth of infrastructure to significantly reduce the occurrence of wastewater overflows. Investigative programs now also exist to investigate and trace the causes of storm water and wastewater cross-contamination.

Municipal Water Leader: What advice do you have for other cities that are considering establishing a similar program?

Nick Vigar: Spend a couple of years collecting high-quality rainfall and water quality data in order to build models you can be confident in. Consider integrating complementary hazards and physical safety attributes into the system.

Expect the system to generate a significant increase in public awareness of water quality issues in your region. M Nick Vigar is the manager of the Auckland Council’s Safeswim program. For more about Safeswim, visit safeswim.org.nz.

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PHOTOS COURTESY OF RADISHSLICE AND SAFESWIM.

drive continual improvements in performance. All the models in the Safeswim program meet these requirements and are continually being refined to improve their predictive accuracy.

By continuing sampling and model development and validation throughout the year, the Safeswim team has been able to develop accurate models for several beaches in Auckland that had previously been subject to long-term warnings advising people against swimming at any time.

The Safeswim models can accurately identify times when water quality is likely to be poor at these beaches and when it is likely to meet guidelines for recreational use.

This innovation effectively enables Aucklanders to make decisions about when to swim in areas where the water had for some time been regarded as too dirty for recreational use.

Since models can only forecast predictable changes in water quality, such as environmental changes related to factors like rain, wind, and tide, additional methods are required to capture unpredictable contaminant events, such as accidental spillages or dry-weather overflows caused by human error or infrastructure issues.

Municipal Water Leader: What have the effects of the Safeswim program been?

During the 2019–2020 summer swim season, Auckland’s beaches were swimmable (according to national guidelines for recreational water quality) an average of 89.2 percent of the time, compared with 83.7 percent in 2018–2019. The increase is largely due to lower rainfall during the 2019– 2020 summer.

The benefits of enabling community participation in water quality sampling are being realized. Community-led sampling at Laingholm helped the Safeswim team build an accurate water quality model and remove a long-term noswim warning from the beach.

The Safeswim website continues to attract large numbers of visitors. From November 1, 2019, to April 30, 2020, the site had 130,000 users and a total of 231,600 sessions.

Visitors stayed on the site for an average of 52 seconds and used the site generally as intended. Generally, users were navigating between beaches, using the map-based interface, and relying on the easy-to-interpret imagery for information on beach status.

User testing and behavioral observation conducted in the leadup to the 2019–2020 summer led to several changes to the site to make the user interface easier to use and understand. The changes involved ensuring that water quality status was not obscured when safety alerts were issued at a beach and making it more obvious when a beach was being patrolled by surf lifesavers.

Municipal Water Leader: What are Auckland Council and other municipal authorities doing to address combined sewer overflows and other causes of unsafe beach conditions?

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