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Operating CSO/SSO control facilities is a relatively young field. It wasn’t until the
1990’s that utilities and municipalities started designing and constructing these
control facilities in large numbers to address combined sewer and sanitary sewer overflows.
Many were demonstrative facilities designed to test and identify the treatment capability
of these facilities to meet Federal or State regulatory requirements. Now, owners, engineers
and operators of these facilities are generating operational data that provides guidance
into the best operations and maintenance practices for these facilities.
In an effort to compile and summarize guidance on the operation and maintenance of
these facilities, a research project was initiated to collect and analyze existing
facility operations and maintenance cost and staffing data. Jim Sherrill of Wade Trim
and Gary Fujita of the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD) are spearheading the
project being undertaken in conjunction with the Water Environment Federation (WEF)
Collection Systems Committee. The initial data collection was presented at a full
day workshop as part of a WEF Specialty Conference in Detroit, Michigan, on August 6, 2006.
Additional data supported a presentation in a half-day session at WEFTEC07 in San Diego,
California, on October 15, 2007, entitled, "Everything You Wanted To Know About Wet Weather
Facility O&M But No One Had The Answers Until Now". Six half-hour sessions were presented.
Wade Trim was part of four of these presentations. Other presenters included DWSD; Macomb
County Department of Public Works; Wayne County Department of Environment; Oakland County
Drain Commissioner; Brown & Caldwell; Hubbell, Roth & Clark; and Bergmann & Associates.
To continue to improve on O&M guidance, Jim and Gary are seeking additional data on actual
capital expenses, operations and maintenance budgets, and staffing information for wet
weather facilities. The goal is to develop a comprehensive wet weather facility O&M cost
and staffing database to provide a better understanding of actual staff and non-staff
resources to operate and maintain CSO/SSO facilities that can be used by owners, managers
and engineers as guidance to develop costs for their long term control programs and benchmark
their O&M costs against a national average.
Please contact Jim (jsherrill@wadetrim.com)
or Gary (fujita@dwsd.org) if you are interested
in contributing data to enhance the database.
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