Taking the Labels Off - Collaborative Approach to Regional Project Planning Yields District-Wide Benefits

摘要

A regional wastewater planning effort recently completed in greater Denver, Colorado provides a model for collaborative wastewater management that is both cost-effective and forward-thinking. The result is an immediately-implementable plan for strategic infrastructure investments that will benefit 22 Member Municipalities (which includes the four individual utilities participating in the project), 26 Special Connectors and 12 Connectors to Connectors, for a total of 60 member agencies served by the Metro Wastewater Reclamation District, Denver's largest regional wastewater service provider. This project demonstrates the power of collaborative planning approaches between agencies, which can be extended to and adopted by other utilities across the nation by implementing regional planning that first "takes the labels off to identify the right solutions without regard to ownership of assets, then allocating costs based on asset ownership and institutional protocol.