Managing socio-economic construction impacts while under an EPA AdministrativeOrder

摘要

In compliance with the United States Environmental Protection Agency'srn(USEPA) Administrative Order (AO) the City of Austin recently completed Sewer SystemrnEvaluation Surveys (SSES) on 40% of the Utility's 2,656 miles of sanitary sewers. The SSESrnrecommendations included approximately 75 capital improvement projects (CIP). The AustinrnClean Water Program began evaluating and coordinating the construction sequencing withrnprojects from other City departments, Travis County, and Texas DOT. The results were evidentrnthat the City could be clogged with construction if the original AO basin deadlines were to bernmet. The AO established deadlines for improvements to eliminate Sanitary Sewer Overflowsrn(SSO) for each of the three basins in the Utility service area (Crosstown, complete by Septemberrn30, 2005; Onion Creek, complete by September 30, 2006; and Govalle, complete by Septemberrn30, 2007) along with a final deadline for achieving compliance of December 31, 2007. Given therntight AO schedules for each basin and the volume of CIP projects in each basin, the Utilityrnrealized the need to evaluate the CIP construction sequencing to minimize the social and costrnimpacts on the residents and businesses. The City proposed and successfully demonstrated to thernUSEPA an alternative schedule that met the AO final deadline and minimized overall socioeconomicrnimpacts to the ratepayers. This paper describes the impacts and the subsequent actionsrnpursued to minimize the socio-economic impacts and hopes to provide a lessons learnedrndiscussion with other Collection System managers.