Conference Agenda

The Klamath Falls South Suburban Sanitary District encompasses roughly 10 square miles and serves a population of approximately 25,000 people in Klamath Falls, Oregon. SSSD owns and maintains over 100 miles of sewer pipe and over 1000 manholes. Most of the sewer mains were installed in the 1960’s and 1970’s.

One of the key focus areas for SSSD is the management of Inflow and Infiltration (I&). Excessive I&I can overwhelm a collection system’s capacity creating overflows. Climate change indicates more severe weather in the future. These changing weather patterns and frequency of severe weather is more and more relevant to sewer operators. I&I increases wastewater treatment plant flows unnecessarily increasing treatment plant processing costs.

SSSD started monitoring in 2012 by installing four initial monitoring units for a cost of $50,000 but, when the need arose for expanding our efforts to more locations, they required a more flexible, easy-to-install and cost-effective solution.

To address I&I monitoring expansion plans, SSSD designed a smart sewer system with SmartCover technology.

By leveraging SmartCover patented design and deployment, SSSD has been able to both expand I&I monitoring and enhance the granularity and detail of information compiled. SmartCover flexibility has proven to improve existing I&I monitoring processes at a much lower cost than the alternatives. Deployment is turnkey because no confined entry is required, allowing a collection system to get up and running fast without a lot of wasted staff time or traffic management.

SmartCover customized the solution to aggregate flow information from multiple locations, thereby enabling more flexibility to analyze relationships between sites and to better understand the dynamics within sub-basins.

RESULTS

It is anticipated that ROI on the first round of SmartCover deployment will yield better information on I&I and provide a more refined capital improvement decision making process, while also controlling costs and enhancing usage of valuable staff and resources.

Virtual Speakers

Prolonged wet weather and extreme storms can overwhelm drainage systems, cause urban flooding, or potentially lead to uncontrolled discharges of contaminated waters. While we understand these as potential impacts, quantitative risk-based analyses can be challenging given the natural variability of rainfall and the uncertainty associated with changing climate conditions. As the City of Shoreline (Washington) plans for a resilient future, the Surface Water Utility has recently compiled and analyzed precipitation data to create a library of rainfall time series and design storm events for use in stormwater planning and design studies. These data include observed storm events, updated intensity-duration frequency curves, and synthetic design storms—based on both historical conditions and adjusted for future climate conditions. This presentation will not only describe the development of these data, but also discuss appropriate use, uncertainty ranges, and how results should be interpreted for stormwater management decisions.