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, has recently completed a dynamic, comprehensive wastewater system capital improvement plan to facilitate significant growth in Fort Worth’s service area and a projected doubling of population from 740,000 to 1.5 million people over the next twenty five years as shown in Figure 1. Fort Worth grew at a rate of approximately 3.5% annually from 2000 to 2010 which, according to Census records, places it in the top two fastest growing large cities in the nation. Developing a wastewater system capital improvement plan for a large city with this tremendous growth rate facilitates a number of challenges such as regional growth and adequate capacity in wastewater collection and treatment facilities, focusing on the maintenance and rehabilitation of existing infrastructure, improving system reliability, as well as, maintaining superior wholesale and retail customer service. This paper discusses some of the innovative tools used in the development of the wastewater system master plan faced with these challenges. These tools include the development of a strategic plan, utilization of GIS throughout the wastewater flow projections, modeling and rehabilitation assessment, development of a risk based asset management approach to score and prioritize needed capital improvements for critical facilities (Figure 2), extension of the wastewater collection system model through the major primary components of the treatment plant facilities for an integrated modeling evaluation, assessment and implementation of various new treatment strategies such as the development of new regional treatment facilities and peak flow storage to optimize treatment capacity, and a number of enhanced business processes to make the wastewater model sustainable to other data sources, such as GIS, CMMS and the condition database, as shown in Figure 3. Special focus was given to have a balanced integrated approach of providing long term capacity while also implementing a number of new programs to improve system operation and enhance wastewater system rehabilitation/replacement measures as shown in Figure 4.