Is The City Of Holland Mi Repairing Water Lines

Focus on the Future — James Van De Wege, water treatment found superintendent, left, and Dan Sorek, water/wastewater services superintendent.

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The City of The netherlands, Mich., hasn't had any water crises over the years, but that hasn't kept it from making important investments to improve its organization and baby-sit against disaster.

Holland is deep into a cooperative project connecting its water arrangement with that of a next-door customs as a way to cope with possible future emergencies. It has repair and replacement projects worth millions of dollars lined upward for the coming years.

A focus on reliability, aggressive maintenance, innovation and stiff employee relations all have contributed to the system'due south success, says Dan Sorek, superintendent of h2o/wastewater services for the Kingdom of the netherlands Board of Public Works.

"We have a long history of high quality and loftier standards," he says. "We have a very depression rate of unaccounted-for h2o loss — almost ii percent — and we want to go along information technology that style. We want to stay ahead of the curve. Nosotros want to exist proactive as opposed to reactive."

That's paid off, in rates competitive even with much newer systems, and besides in bragging rights. Before in 2022, the city'southward progressive approach helped information technology earn Water Utility of the Yr honors from the Michigan Rural H2o Association.

City-owned Utility

The Holland Lath of Public Works is a not-for-profit, city-owned utility chartered 130 years ago. In addition to water service, the utility besides provides sewer collection and treatment and electric power generation and distribution.

Located about thirty miles southwest of 1000 Rapids and just due east of the Lake Michigan shoreline along Lake Macatawa, Holland was founded only 10 years after Michigan was admitted to the union and is now a thriving city.

While the metropolis itself has a population of nigh 35,000, the BPW serves more than than l,000 water customers in the area, including the unabridged nearby urban center of Zeeland (pop. v,400), which buys The netherlands water wholesale, and portions of four surrounding townships. Under contracts with those communities, the townships install their own water distribution systems; Holland and so conducts routine maintenance and metering of the lines where it distributes h2o, Sorek explains.

The netherlands industries include furniture makers, food manufacturers and machine parts suppliers, amid them makers of advanced battery technologies to be used in electric and hybrid vehicles. "In that location's a lot of entrepreneurial spirit here," says Sorek. And all that industry adds to the demand for water.

Although the area relied mostly on groundwater until the early 1950s and and so composite that with Lake Michigan h2o into the 1970s, Sorek says, Holland has taken all of its water from the lake for more than 35 years.

Strong Tape

To engagement, the community has never seen its water supply threatened, Sorek says. A 2003 Source Water Assessment Report for the city by the U.Southward. Geological Survey noted that while area land utilise and potential contaminant sources in the region gave the city's source water "moderately loftier susceptibility" to problems, the Holland BPW h2o treatment plant has a tape of effective water treatment.

But Holland's leaders don't believe in resting on their honor. In 2010, the city adopted a Surface H2o Intake Protection Programme (SWIPP) — an acronym that Sorek and his colleagues pronounce "Swippee."

Communities can put together SWIPPs under a voluntary programme through the Michigan Section of Environmental Quality. A SWIPP must define the roles and duties of government units and water suppliers; delineate a source water protection area for the community's water supply source; identify potential contaminant sources in the protection area; outline educational, regulatory and other management approaches to protect the source water; create contingency plans for public h2o supply sources, including alternating sources of drinking h2o; ensure that new water sources will be sited and then as to minimize potential contagion; and encourage public participation in h2o protection efforts.

Holland's SWIPP fills 90 pages, not including references and appendices, and was the reason the community was recognized as H2o Utility of the Year by the Michigan RWA, which brash metropolis officials during the document's drafting. Amongst the culling h2o sources included in the SWIPP document is a plan to exchange water with the next city of Wyoming, Mich., a 70,000-population customs with a water organisation that serves more than 200,000 in its ain surrounding communities.

Interconnect Pipeline

To that stop, Holland and Wyoming are constructing a iv.5-mile, 30-inch interconnect pipeline linking the h2o systems of the two communities. The pipeline was approved for a depression-interest loan under the land's Drinking Water Revolving Funds program.

Frequently, the loan program favors communities where there's been an urgent water quality trouble. Applications for the loans are qualified under a point system that awards more points based on the severity and urgency of the proposed repairs.

Holland's tape of practiced performance meant that the community was actually at a disadvantage under that point system in seeking the revolving funds loan, Sorek says. Only the loan application got a large plenty boost to qualify because Holland had created its SWIPP, and considering of the total population served by the ii water systems — well over 250,000. The project is seen as probable to significantly heighten the reliability of both systems, Sorek says. "It also expands the water distribution system to an area that is non currently served by public h2o."

The netherlands and Wyoming already had smaller interconnects in place. They began exploring a much larger interconnect a decade agone to allow the two communities to be able to reliably turn to each other in an emergency, or fifty-fifty to assist foster a possible regional water system sometime in the future. Now it's nether construction and could practice just that, Sorek says.

Not only has the $vi million project qualified for the low-interest land loan, merely considering of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Deed, fifteen percent of the loan principal will be forgiven, cutting the cost to 85 cents on the dollar. "That helped the states out tremendously," Sorek says.

Replacement Plans

Repairing or replacing nearly fifteen miles of distribution lines over the next several years is too on the utility'due south agenda.

Mains will be targeted for work based on how severely they leak. Holland generally prefers polywrapped ductile iron for new pipes, although they sometimes use PVC pipage instead. In most instances, Sorek says, the metropolis has found that all-out replacement will be more than price-effective than alternatives such equally CIPP lining.

One reason may be that whenever possible, the city replaces or repairs its mains when streets are being repaired or replaced, which reduces repeated disruptions. "Nosotros want to brand sure that the customer is only affected one time," Sorek says. Sewer work is probable to be undertaken on those areas at the same time.

"Where the street is existence resurfaced or replaced, nosotros try to accept a holistic approach with the utilities underneath and supplant those equally necessary besides," he continues. "By partnering with the road agencies, it affords them and us the opportunity to save on restoration costs. Instead of the route bureau picking up the whole neb on the restoration, or the utility picking up the whole bill, the restoration cost can exist shared between the two agencies."

In 2010 alone, the city replaced eleven,785 feet of h2o mains, according to the Holland BPW annual written report.

Water treatment plant capital improvements are also on the horizon: replacing pumps, motors, chemical feed and storage equipment, an upgrade in computer control systems, a rebuild of filter piping structures, new valves, catamenia transmitters and catamenia measuring devices, and new electrical actuators are all function of those plans, says James Van De Wege, superintendent of the Holland water handling plant. The toll is to be spread over the decade and then as to avert a huge hit to budgets at any ane time.

Among the technological advances Holland hopes to take advantage of are new, higher-efficiency motors and improved chemicals that tin can reduce chemical costs and sludge production by as much every bit thirty per centum. New turbidity meters that don't crave frequent recalibration are also on the shopping list.

Innovation Meets Cooperation

Meanwhile, the SWIPP is about a lot more than but helping Holland score well enough to go a low-involvement building loan, Sorek and Van De Wege say. It's near much, much more.

"We're eager to come across the SWIPP get going a trivial bit more than, because information technology touches on educating the public, and it touches on partnering with other agencies that nosotros accept historically not partnered with," Sorek says.

The SWIPP, he continues, "is not a document that we produced but to go points to build a project. It is living and breathing, not but to be placed on the shelf. Information technology is to be looked at, revised and kept up to date; it wasn't but a checklist that we got done."

With Lake Michigan so close at hand, offering a major source of h2o for a variety of uses, it's like shooting fish in a barrel to become conceited, Sorek says. Holland officials baby-sit against that.

"We were one of the beginning utilities to put in infrastructure for a water re-use system in Michigan," he says. That project enabled the condom re-apply of water from the wastewater treatment plant, rather than simply returning information technology to the lake.

Such innovation is par for the course in The netherlands's water operations, along with potent labor-management relations with unionized employees and high-quality service.

"We take a very good working relationship with the employees," Sorek says. "We've been very careful in our pick. We have loftier standards. That permeates throughout both our direction team and our employees, and information technology shows upward in our customer service and in our product."