Sustainability Begins at Home…

Don’t we know it! That’s why several years ago we planted a rain garden in our corporate office parking lot. These gardens not only help filter pollutants from stormwater, but also tie in with OHM’s goal of building sustainable communities.

But as any gardener will tell you, no good seed goes untended. By this fall, our rain garden was looking a little less garden, a little more rain forest. Fearing global climate change, OHM’s “Rain Garden Club” stepped in. After two evenings of clean up, about 20 bags and 20 bundles were loaded into trucks and delivered to the compost center in Livonia, Michigan – approximately 4,400 km north of the equator (give or take a few kilometers).

In the spring of 2012, the club will clean up the gardens from harsh winter weather and plant more native plants.  Each rain garden is approximately 2,500 square feet in size – so lots of plants are needed.  



John Hiltz and Vyto Kaunelis tame the OHM rain garden.

 





  

Managing Peak Water Usage, Part 3

Welcome to the third part (the thrilling conclusion!) of our series on managing peak water usage. In previous posts we discussed how cities Troy and Novi reduced their water peak water usage by 30% with peak shifting. (Peak water rates occur when a community’s water usage during an hour equals or exceeds its maximum daily use amount.)

Northville, Oak Park and Auburn Hills are cities that reduced their peak usage rates through system optimization, cutting their water rates by 30-40% in some areas.

Bedroom communities with high water rates under the new rate system turned to a third approach: storage increases.

After suburbs with a high number of irrigation sprinklers found morning peaking factors climbing over 3.0, they looked at adding storage to their system. Not only would constructing storage tanks reduce water rates so dramatically to produce a 3 to 10 year payback, the communities would also gain the benefit of more reliable pressure, increased system reliability and increase fire protection.

In Orion Township, adding storage meant that it could go from a peak hour customer to a maximum day customer, shaving 25% off its annual water rates. This made building a 2.5 million gallon elevated storage tank a no brainer – rate savings alone would pay for the tank in less than five years.

By letting its customers “choose their own rate plans”, wholesale supplier DWSD recouped its own costs from peak usage and the resulting rate increases drove community awareness of peak water usage. Using different approaches - peak shifting, system optimization and storage increases - communities changed behaviors and changed their system operations.

Managing Peak Water Usage, Part 2

In a previous post, we told you about three different approaches that municipalities used to successfully reduce water costs:

• peak shifting

• system optimization

• storage increases

We looked at how two communities – City of Troy and City of Novi – convinced citizens to conserve water, one using ordinances and the other education.

Now, let’s take a closer look at the second water management approach: system optimization.

A number of the southeastern communities experiencing large rate increases from their wholesale water supplier, Detroit Water & Sewerage Department (DWSD), already had storage facilities. The problem was that many of the communities’ operational systems had been designed in the 1970s, long before the housing boom of the 90s. Fortunately, engineering studies showed that minor operational changes or moderate capital improvements would reduce the peak flow from DWSD, reducing their water rates.

Controlling the Flow

The City of Northville, City of Oak Park and the City of Auburn Hills all reduced their water costs by making better use of their existing storage tanks. Adding remote monitoring systems, programmed to fill storage tanks during off peak hours, and to keep water pressures constant for users led to substantial savings.

The City of Northville saw a 43% decrease in water rates since installing a supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system and making use of a DWSD water meter signal to maintain a set flow rate.

In the City of Oak Park, engineers modified the existing telemetry system and added a flow meter at the pump station to fill the city’s storage tank during the night. These changes reduced peak water usage by 32%.

The City of Auburn Hills combined minor operational changes with an odd-even grass watering ordinance for industrial and commercial users to cut their peak flows in half: from 3,600 gpm to 1,800 gpm.

System optimization is a smart investment, no doubt…but what about communities that don’t have existing storage? Turns out, adding storage can be a project that pays for itself in savings. Read about it in part 3 of our series on Managing Peak Water Usage.

Managing Peak Water Usage, Part 1

In the heart of the Great Lakes Region, water is in plentiful supply. But that doesn’t mean that it’s cheap. Delivering water to businesses and homes is a costly endeavor. The dwindling number of residents in southeast Michigan, the Rust Belt’s hardest hit region, combined with recession’s economic hardship spurred many communities to find ways to reduce water usage.

In a paper they delivered at the American Water Works Association’s national conference, ACE11, in June 2011, OHMers Carrie Cox, PE, and Vyto Kaunelis, PE, share case studies of how several southeast Michigan communities successfully trimmed costs by managing their water usage.

They describe three different approaches used by municipalities:

• peak shifting

• system optimization

• storage increases

The Back Story

Much like other regional systems with ample water supply, the water system in metropolitan Detroit was designed based on historical high usage, with conservative safety factors. Modern conveniences like automatic irrigation systems have driven peak usage upward. Rather than continuously upgrade systems to meet a demand that might not hold, the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department, wholesale water service supplier to 86 metro Detroit communities, opted for a new approach. DWSD let its customers choose the level of service they wanted to pay for. Communities and water authorities could specify annual volumes, maximum day and peak hour rates in their service contracts.

With the desired level of service was established, the communities had to figure out how to keep water usage below the thresholds, or pay costly penalties in the form of peak usage rates. The City of Troy and the City of Novi both opted to use peak shifting to change their citizens’ water consumption habits.

Peak shifting, the process of moving existing loads to off-peak periods, is commonly practiced in other parts of the US, but less so in the water-rich Midwest. Escalating infrastructure costs, shrinking population and diminishing economic base are forces that made peak shifting a desirable practice here as well.

Peak Shifting Results

The City of Troy reduced its peak water usage by 30% in the three years since it implemented a mandatory grass water ordinance that required odd/even grass watering and prevented irrigation between the peak usage hours of 6am and 10am. Interestingly, the unpopularity of the ordinance drive wide and frequent news coverage, which led to increased public awareness of the new rules.

The City of Novi opted to pursue an aggressive public education plan, rather than an ordinance, sending flyers and information to all its water customers. Those with billing questions were also given information on the benefits of odd/even grass watering and very early morning sprinkler settings. Two years into the education campaign, peak hour factors were down by 28%.

Want more water management success stories? Stay tuned! In the next post, we’ll look at system optimization to manage water usage.

More that You Bargained For: How the “Simple Method” could be Overestimating Stormwater Pollution

In a guest editorial published in the May 2011 issue of Stormwater, the Journal for Surface Water Quality Professionals, OHM’s wizards of water, Scott Kaiser, GISP CFM, and Murat Ulasir, PhD PE, point out that a commonly used stormwater management planning model can overestimate pollutant loads by 20%. Kaiser and Ulasir share a formula refinement to more accurately determine pollutant quantities that they’ve dubbed “The Simple Method 2.0.”

The original Simple Method model was developed in 1987 as a way to estimate four regulated pollutants - total suspended solids (TSS), total phosphorous (TP), or total nitrogen (TN) – for land use and stormwater management scenarios in urban areas.

This method allows the user to input parameters such as pollutant load concentration, watershed area, and annual runoff to determine an annual load. The output typically yields pounds per year of pollutant loading into receiving streams or natural features.

So what’s wrong with being simple? It can be useful. The simple method provides a general planning estimate of likely storm pollutant export from areas at the scale of a development site, catchment or subwatershed. However, Kaiser and Ulasir caution that, because the simple method is widely discussed in water quality literature and used in public forums on water-quality projects, its potential for overestimating can cause problems. Those problems could take the form of disappointing results from post-BMP sampling and money wasted on overdesigned treatment structures.

Since Kaiser and Ulasir are the kind of guys who eat technical challenges for lunch (and then ask for seconds), they created a new model that removes the overestimation and refines the results. Their model replaces the annual runoff variable in the equation with what’s known as the “first flush” calculation. First flush describes the initial portion of the rain event that is considered to be the pollution-contributing portion of a storm (the early runoff that cleanses the landscape of pollutants.)

In Michigan, where OHM is headquartered, the first flush is measured at 0.5 inches, although that measurement may vary from region to region. The article describes the new Simple Method 2.0 equations, along with guidance on how to obtain accurate precipitation data from public sources, such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA.)

The results? In a southeast Michigan example using sampled precipitation data, the Total Suspended Solids (TSS) value was about 21% less than the amount using the original simple method.

For more information on the Simple Method 2.0, or to get help with your community’s stormwater management planning, contact Scott or Murat at 888-522-6711.

OHM’s Busy Bees Build "Community" in Hancock

Ever seen a barn raising? It's an amazing display of community. In a matter of days, men, women, and children construct massive structures by hand. And did you know that when bees build a hive, it takes an entire colony – including the Queen? It was this idea of “community” that inspired our northernmost office to join the city of Hancock, Finlandia University, and other volunteers to assemble a new playground on Hancock Beach. By 9 am Saturday, June 4th, sun-blocked and fully-visored volunteers were assembled with tools in hand. By 2:00 pm, four posts and a platform stood as the result of their efforts.

No, a playground (barn or hive) we did not make, but a community we were. Nearly 40 people turned out to help with this event, not including countless others who donated money and support through the Hancock Rotary. A fun time was had by all, and OHM still holds fast to the idea that by working together, there’s nothing we can’t accomplish for our communities and friends. And, as any DIYer will tell you, only the Amish and the bees can do anything in a weekend...

Stay tuned to hear more as we put the final pieces together on this project.

Update on Retroreflectivity

New Signage Rules Intended To Make Signs Easier To Read.

The San Francisco Examiner (10/25, Begin) reports, "In an effort to make street signs easier to read, the Federal Highway Administration is requiring communities to replace all street signs with ones using what is known as mixed-case lettering. Instead of 'LEAVENWORTH,' for example, signs will have to read 'Leavenworth.' The new rules also require all city signs to be changed to better reflect light by 2018." And "the changes have communities across the country grumbling." But "federal officials said that despite some misunderstandings in national media about the rule changes, many of the costs associated with new signs would be the same if they were replaced." FHWA spokeswoman Cathy St. Denis said, "Signs that are easier to read will help us make roads and the people who drive on them safer."

For more information on FHWA rule changes and how retroreflectivity impacts your community, contact stephen.dearing@ohn-advisors.com