Adaptive Planning - A Success Story from Coeur d'Alene, ID

摘要

Over a 15 year time frame the City of Coeur d'Alene worked incrementally towards compliance goals, which at the time were considered beyond the levels of technology. Early on the City approached this challenge through a combination of planning for the worst-case while educating regulators and stakeholders as well as conducting applied research to develop a more cost efficient compliance strategy. R&D was as much a means to an end and as it was a vehicle of engagement and a way to extend the compliance schedule through meaningful advances in effluent water quality. This strategy extended the compliance schedule and helped shape the final Spokane River dissolved oxygen total maximum daily load (TMDL) and reduced the compliance cost by approximately $30 million. Today the plant produces effluent quality well beyond that required for discharge to the Spokane River and the sewer rates are still only $35/household.