Speaking

The Village of St. Henry, Ohio, provides water and sanitary sewer service to its residents and businesses, including the Cooper Farms poultry processing facility, which is the largest employer within the Village. The Village’s potable water is supplied through a series of 10 groundwater wells and a water treatment plant with a capacity of approximately 1.4 million gallons per day (MGD). Wastewater is treated through a lagoon system and discharged to the headwaters of Coldwater Creek through an intermittent National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit that limits the timing and rate of permitted discharges based on the flow rate within Coldwater Creek at the permitted outfall location.

Cooper Farms accounts for nearly 70% of the Village’s water and wastewater demand and is proposing to increase operations over the next 15 years, requiring an additional 150,000 to 200,000 gallons per day (gpd). When consideration is given to the potential corresponding growth in residential and commercial development within the Village in this period, water and wastewater demands are anticipated to grow by approximately 250,000 gpd to 500,000 gpd. Given the limited groundwater capacity of the Village’s well field and the limited capacity of Coldwater Creek to accept any additional load under the Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL), it is unlikely that the Village can generate or accept these additional water/wastewater demands under the current utility system design.

Wastewater reuse evaluations utilized both St. Henry municipal wastewater and Cooper Farms industrial wastewater. Wastewater reuse has the potential to be a technically feasible and economically viable solution compared to the other alternatives for St. Henry. However, the current federal and state regulatory environment, as well as the public perception of wastewater reuse, presents significant barriers to wastewater reuse for both St. Henry and Cooper Farms. Other alternatives to supplement the water supply system and reallocate wastewater discharge were also evaluated for technical and economic feasibility in comparison to wastewater reuse. These included alternative water source(s) coupled with expansion of the water treatment facility. The wastewater discharge alternatives considered adding a secondary outfall location, implementing land application, utilizing groundwater injection and enhancing mechanical treatment.

This presentation will detail the evaluation of these alternatives conducted under funding provided by the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for the Village of St. Henry, discuss the technical, financial and regulatory barriers to each and outline the recommended short-term and long-term solutions to facilitate the projected Village growth. Additionally, this presentation will review this project as a case study to evaluate Ohio EPA’s progress towards building a framework for water reuse regulations in comparison to other states and federal agencies as well as the importance of outreach and education of water reuse in order to gain public acceptance.

The French Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant faced capacity and equipment obsolescence challenges with its tertiary filtration system. Originally equipped with six HydroClear sand filters and later supplemented by two additional rotary submerged disk filters, the system struggled with high backwash volumes, system reliability and O&M issues, and outdated controls. Burgess & Niple was commissioned to evaluate retrofit options for upgrading the filters, incorporating modern disk filter technologies, and optimizing the facility layout.

After thorough analysis, the project team recommended replacing the existing sand and submerged disk filters with new partially submerged disk filters, improving hydraulic flow capacity and renovating the filter building. The new design includes enhanced NPW, integration of filter controls with the existing plant SCADA system, chemical cleaning capabilities, structural upgrades to the filter building facility and easy access to operate and maintain the new disk filters.

This retrofit addressed operational inefficiencies, reduced maintenance costs and provided storage solutions within repurposed spaces. Attendees will learn how the project team balanced innovation and practicality, ensuring compliance and sustainability while leveraging existing infrastructure to minimize costs.

Trying to make decisions about water or wastewater assets without the appropriate data is challenging at best. However, relatively few water and wastewater utilities have a documented approach or policy for defining assets, what attribute data to collect for assets and how to organize assets in a hierarchy.

While it may seem like a daunting task, having that information is game-changing for organizing a preventative maintenance program, tracking failure history and planning for asset replacements. 3D modeling tools can change how you view and interact with this information when you can see an entire facility and all of its associated assets in one place.

Asset Management

The most fundamental tasks in managing infrastructure are to define what are and are not assets, develop an asset register, assign unique asset IDs to each asset and specify the attributes associated with each asset type for which data should be collected. Organizing a preventive maintenance program (e.g., inspections and condition assessments) and tracking failure history is more difficult without this data. Asset condition, criticality and asset risk data are also difficult to organize, access and analyze without a clean asset register. Without easy access to this data, determining appropriate decisions to maintain assets and when to replace them is more challenging than it needs to be.

However, as fundamental as these determinations are and as valuable as the benefits are, relatively few water and wastewater utilities have a documented approach or policy for defining assets, what attribute data is collected for assets and how to organize assets in a hierarchy. Many utilities have gone through several generations of asset lists and have assets that are not numbered appropriately, there are duplicate asset IDs, and in many cases, data is simply missing.

During the first part of this presentation, audience members will learn:

• How to develop an asset definition
• How to determine which attribute data to collect
• How to document each asset based on ISO standards
• Different asset naming conventions.

Interactive 3D Models

Once a utility has a record of its assets, what can be done with new 3D modeling tools is changing the landscape of how owners can view and interact with this data.

This presentation will be in the context of a chemical feed system digital twin created using Autodesk Revit and Tandem. Through a live demonstration of a 3D Revit model, audience members will see how the digital twin allows a municipality to utilize their asset management system by tagging assets with unique asset IDs and associated attributes. They will also see how it allows the user to see a 3D representation of their tagged asset within the treatment plant and have all its associated attributes in one place.

In 2020 and 2021, water utilities across the country were required to update their Risk and Resilience Assessments (RRAs) formerly known as Vulnerability Assessments, for the first time since 2004. No longer solely focused on physical terrorist threats envisioned in the post-9/11 era, these updated RRAs now encompass a wide range of challenges, including cyberattacks, natural hazards, major infrastructure failures and other malevolent acts. While the regulatory deadline for most water utilities is approaching in either 2025 or 2026 depending on the populations they serve, the City of Columbiana was forced to update both its RRA and Emergency Response Plan (ERP) in early 2024. 

This presentation will provide attendees with actionable insights into the RRA and ERP update process, illustrating how utilities can achieve compliance with federal AWIA and state contingency planning requirements. By following Columbiana’s example, utilities can enhance resilience against emerging threats and safeguard their operations for the future.