Corralling Cowtown?: Comprehensive CIP Development for one of the Nation’s Fastest Growing Large Cities

摘要

The City of Fort Worth, faced with one of the fastest growth rates of all large cities in the nation,rnhas recently completed a dynamic, comprehensive wastewater system capital improvement planrnto facilitate significant growth in Fort Worth’s service area and a projected doubling ofrnpopulation from 740,000 to 1.5 million people over the next twenty five years as shown inrnFigure 1. Fort Worth grew at a rate of approximately 3.5% annually from 2000 to 2010 which,rnaccording to Census records, places it in the top two fastest growing large cities in the nation.rnDeveloping a wastewater system capital improvement plan for a large city with this tremendousrngrowth rate facilitates a number of challenges such as regional growth and adequate capacity inrnwastewater collection and treatment facilities, focusing on the maintenance and rehabilitation ofrnexisting infrastructure, improving system reliability, as well as, maintaining superior wholesalernand retail customer service.rnThis paper discusses some of the innovative tools used in the development of the wastewaterrnsystem master plan faced with these challenges. These tools include the development of arnstrategic plan, utilization of GIS throughout the wastewater flow projections, modeling andrnrehabilitation assessment, development of a risk based asset management approach to score andrnprioritize needed capital improvements for critical facilities (Figure 2), extension of thernwastewater collection system model through the major primary components of the treatmentrnplant facilities for an integrated modeling evaluation, assessment and implementation of variousrnnew treatment strategies such as the development of new regional treatment facilities and peakrnflow storage to optimize treatment capacity, and a number of enhanced business processes tornmake the wastewater model sustainable to other data sources, such as GIS, CMMS and therncondition database, as shown in Figure 3. Special focus was given to have a balancedrnintegrated approach of providing long term capacity while also implementing a number of newrnprograms to improve system operation and enhance wastewater systemrnrehabilitation/replacement measures as shown in Figure 4.