Laserfiche WebLink
Interconnections will be used to convey water from the existing sources and storage facilities in <br />developed communities to those communities that are growing and need more water supply. The <br />development of a detailed hydraulic model to plan strategically placed interconnections is <br />recommended as a next step. In general, the cost of interconnecting the communities is considered to <br />be at no additional cost to implement in the long run. All interconnections would be recommended in <br />locations where existing watermains would have been placed anyway. The sizes would be increased in <br />some cases but the benefits of interconnecting the systems would actually reduce other watermain <br />sizes within each of the growing communities. In most cases watermain was already planned to be <br />installed in the areas shown in Figure A6. However, some of the planned watermain would be installed <br />as new trunk main interconnecting the communities. <br />For areas where dead-end watermain exists, additional watermain is recommended to be installed to <br />loop the piping for improved circulation and water quality. A benefit of a joint utility is that dead end lines <br />could be more easily looped with pipes in neighboring communities rather than looped back to another <br />main in the same community. In some cases joining the pipes would be a few feet of additional <br />watermain as opposed to hundreds needed to loop back to another main within the same community. <br />A key factor in analyzing a joint utility will be planning the future watermains so that there is no net <br />increase in cost over the cities developing independently. If planned properly and early, there should be <br />opportunity to actually reduce costs over independent development. Cost reductions could be realized <br />through the elimination of dead end watermain by interconnections at city boundaries (rather than <br />looping watermain within each city), as well as eliminating the need to provide perimeter trunk main <br />(medium to large diameter watermain around the perimeter of a city) for each individual city. <br />Interconnections would eliminate the need for each community to carry large diameter trunks along <br />their municipal border parallel to similar large diameter main in the adjacent community. In other words, <br />perimeter trunk main could be provided for the joint utility as a whole, thus reducing redundancies <br />created by individual adjacent systems. <br />Joint Water Utility Feasibility Study 26 <br />