Juli Beth Hinds, AICPSenior Planner & Water Resources Project Manager

Tetra Tech, Inc. ♦ San Diego, CA

Fly Me to the Moon:A Framework for Facilities Planning

Today’s Theme: Houston, we’ve had a problem.

Who remembers what they had to build…out of what was on the ship?

http://movieclips.com/ukKJv-apollo-13-movie-square-peg-in-a-round-hole/0/65

…and that’s exactly where we are.

Square Pegs:

� Need to combine centralized with distributed wastewater management

� Impact of energy, carbon footprint

� Integration with stormwater management

� Less common engineering approaches & treatment methods

� Affordability

Round Holes:� State Revolving Fund, NEPA

procedures for wastewater facilities

� Department of Justice guidelines for consent decrees

� TMDLs

� Engineering business models & practices

� Environmental rules

� Cost & financing structures built around the above

Cincinnati/Waitsfield, we’ve had a problem

Cincinnati: Combined Sewer Overflow Consent Decree Green Infrastructure Option

Waitsfield: Failed bond vote for $12 million ($33,600/ERU) but chronic failing systems & no business flexibility or growth

Waitsfield’s Square Pegs/Round Holes:

� Want to do a program loaning funds to voluntary, landowner-initiated associations to create upgraded/advanced treatment cluster systems

� NEPA, Facilities Plan must have final cost numbers and a schedule…but we don’t even know which sites will be interested.

� State Facilities Engineering must check off boxes saying “Preliminary Engineering, Final Engineering”but the approach doesn’t fit.

� Must gain EPA concurrence that this is a valid use of public funds for private systems under the guidance…which the administrator doesn’t know well.

Cincinnati’s Square Pegs/Round Holes:

� Consent Decree: Must reduce combined sewer overflows by 1.6 billion gallons/year from Lick Run Watershed by 2018

� Default option: 30 foot, 1.2 mile underground storage tunnel; $244 million

● Satisfies Department of Justice, which wants the number of gallons removed

● Extremely disruptive during construction

● Tunnels have been found not to work as designed in other CSO settings (notably Chicago)

� Want to do a green infrastructure option, but it can’t be quantified in the same way

� Requires land and maintenance (uh oh)

Can we build a filter cartridge out of the available parts?

Lost in Space…

Taking on a challenge

“People came down to Clear Lake to interview me on "What are the people in Mission Control really like?" One of their questions was "Weren't there times when everybody, or at least a few people, just panicked?" My answer was "No, when bad things happened, we just calmly laid out all the options, and failure was not one of them. We never panicked, and we never gave up on finding a solution."

Quote from Jerry C. Bostick (above, 2nd from right)

Is failure one of the options? Waitsfield’s options as of today:

No Action Pursue Decentralized Program

Put “Big Pipe” up for vote

Town must begin paying $45,000 per year on 5/1/13 out of General Fund; equivalent to $0.015 on tax rate

Roll over loan, borrow additional to update facilities plan & NEPA, design pilot project

May defer loan payment

Town will forfeit $900k in obligated STAG grant funds

Develop association agreements for IDR and EPR systems

May fail

No expansion of restaurants possible in Irasville

Develop oversight structure, responsibility, administrative system & costs

Provides about 1/3 of “solution” needed

Town buildings subject to enforcement for failed systems

Defer portion of initial loan repayment

Voluntary vs. mandatory hook-ups issue not solved

Is failure one of the options? Cincinnati’s options

No Action Pursue Green Infrastructure Program

Big Pipe

City fined by EPA/DOJ

Must hire staff between MSD & City to coordinate action plan

Explain & plan for major business disruptions

2 billion gallons of combined sewer overflow annually

Coordination of land acquisitions among HUD NSP, Buildings, MSD

Ratepayer cost will increase to cover $244 million

Non-compliance with Consent Decree

Coordination of all brownfield investments

Future capital outlays to repair/manage tunnel

Increased communication, MSD may have to relinquish role as lead

Continued violations not unlikely

Coordination with City and ODOT to ensure roadway designs do not interfere with green infrastructure

Does not leverage HUD NSP, Buildings, other land acquisitions for economic development & beautification.

They had only what was on board…but that was enough.

“Using only the type of equipment and tools the crew had on board –including plastic Moon rock bags, cardboard, suit hoses, and duct tape —his team conceived a configuration that just might work.”

Moon Rock Bag Equivalents:

� Expanded zoning databases

� Youth conservation corps crews for maintenance

� Rhode Island’s loan program documents

� Schools as BMP sites and communication leads

� One department funds staff in another department

USING PARTS IN NEW COMBINATIONS:We even found new money!

Cincinnati:� HUD Neighborhood

Stabilization Program & brownfield remediation to acquire land & demolish structures for surface stormwater management

� Cincinnati Parks MOU: new source of revenue (!) for labor & youth training program by maintaining stormwater BMPs

Waitsfield: � New condominium

association documents piggy-backing on state permit tracks

� Creative use of private $ to match STAG fund and pay back SRF planning loan

� Using of the old sewer engineering facilities plan

● Pieces of the collection system

● Mapping

● Permit documentation

● Most of the environmental review

These parts aren’t suited to the challenge…but they will have to do.

“The biggest challenge was attaching the hose into a funnel-like device having a small round inlet hole for the suit hose and a much larger square outlet attached and surrounding the square filter. But the funnel would most likely leak. Added to that difficulty was the hose and plastic Moon bags tended to collapse restricting the air flow through the filter. “

The Do-It-Yourself Unit!

� “As Jim Lovell wrote in his book Lost Moon, ‘The contraption wasn’t very handsome, but it worked.’ And it saved Apollo 13.”

The Do-It-Yourself Unit, Waitsfield

No kidding: this is the outline of the new Facilities Plan as of Tuesday afternoon:

Pink: specific actions or responsibilities for developing & managing decentralized systems

Blue: New documents/agreements that must be developed

Green: content of documents

Boxes on white paper: Who is responsible for different (pink) actions?

The Do-It-Yourself Unit, Cincinnati: Organizing the actions of 1818 departments/ organizations around 5 core tasks

SOME THINGS THAT WILL HAPPEN

To the moon, Alice!

Everyone will think it’s nuts, but you either figure it out, or the astronauts die.

Media coverage will be…ya know.

Where they started wasn’t where they ended:

“’The concept seemed to evolve as all looked on,’Woodfill said.”

Transparency: instructions must be clear enough for others to implement remotely.

“The contraption that Smylie and his team came up with was checked out in the simulators, which worked, and then the team quickly radioed instructions to the crew, carefully leading them through about an hour’s worth of steps.”

THERE IS ALWAYS DUCT TAPE:

� “Then the thought came, ‘Use cardboard log book covers to support the plastic,” said Woodfill. “It worked! But more importantly, they had to figure out how the funnel could be fashioned to prevent leaking. Of course…the solution to every conceivable knotty problem has got to be duct tape! And so it was.”

Success! (Cigars optional)

Note: A date with Tom Hanks is NOT included with your hybrid wastewater facilities plan.