Reducing and Managing Wet-Weather Overflows in Puerto Rico – Planning for the Future Using Asset Management to Implement Trenchless Solutions

摘要

The Puerto Rico Aqueduct Sewer Authority (PRASA) owns and operates more than 97% of all public water and wastewater systems including several million feet of wastewater pipelines. As part of PRASA’s continuing program to improve and upgrade the system, a major initiative has been undertaken to use a number of trenchless technologies to assess and rehabilitate pipelines and manholes in order to effectively reduce and eliminate wetweather overflows and bypasses. In general, wet-weather overflows constitute a significant portion of problems typically encountered by most municipalities and wastewater agencies and utilities. For PRASA, the solutions to reduce or eliminate these overflows are complicated due to a number of complex issues. Because of these factors, PRASA has had to leverage innovative technologies to pin-point specific assets that represent the highest priority for renewal and rehabilitation. The backbone of this initiative is the development of a comprehensive risk-based asset management program that is used to identify and implement trenchless sewer system improvements in the Puerto Nuevo area. This area represents Puerto Rico’s largest and most densely populated service area. Included in the paper will be examples of trenchless alternatives to investigate, manage and improve hydraulic performance and overflow controls and how tools such as CMMS and GIS have been integrated with condition assessment and asset management to fix this aging infrastructure.