vw/ Water System Partnerships Workshop

Background

You are the operator of Pleasantville Department of Water Management. Your water system serves
30,000 people, runs at a demand of 4.3 million gallons per day, and is located in an east coast state. You
have two conventional water treatment facilities that were built in 1923 and 1979 and are equipped
with sedimentation basins. You draw water from two reservoirs, Peaceful Lake and Gentle Reservoir.

Ten years ago, your county experienced the worst drought on record. You have interconnections to
three neighboring water systems through which water can flow both ways, so you reached out to them
to see about purchasing some water to make it through the drought. Two of the neighboring water
systems were concerned about the replenishment of their own reservoirs and were unwilling to sell
their water. The third water system was willing to sell their water, but pumping all that water was
expensive, and it was a significant cost to your water system that summer.

Since then, your region has been experiencing more droughts every summer. Each water system has had
to purchase water from another at some point. In fact, it's become so frequent in the past couple of
years that you all have standing bi-weekly meetings during the summer to keep track of how everyone's
respective source water is doing. Luckily, you have never all experienced severe drought at the same
time and someone is always able to sell water to the other systems. You have really built trust over the
years as you all have had to rely on each other. Nonetheless, you and your neighboring water systems
have each taken a financial hit from having to pump so much purchased water through your
interconnections. On top of that, your town just built a new development with 300 new connections,
creating a significant increase in total customers and adding to your difficulty in meeting customer
demand.

Additional Information

Two of the smaller water systems' operators are planning to retire in the next four years, and
they are having a hard time finding qualified replacements to take over for them.

There is a 1.3-billion-gallon offline water storage reservoir nearby that is central to the four
water systems, but there is no intake built yet.

You have a new, eager town planner who loves regional planning. They are also motivated to
apply for grants, and in their short tenure, they have already secured a couple of community
development grants.

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