Targeting structural deficiencies to cost-effectively reduce SSOs

Sewer System Evaluation and Rehabilitation Implementation

Through the Clean Water 2020 Program, the City of Columbia, South Carolina embarked on a mission to upgrade and rehabilitate its sewer collection and wastewater treatment system. The Clean Water 2020 Program Management Team was established to lead the efforts, analyze the existing network, and improve the City’s wastewater collection and treatment system.

As part of this program, the City is performing a sewer system evaluation study (SSES) of a portion of their system to identify problems that may lead to sanitary sewer overflows (SSO). They retained our services to complete an SSES and pipeline rehabilitation design for the Smith Branch 02 area.

The project team completed CCTV, smoke testing, dye testing, and manhole inspections, as well as assembled the inspection data. Using InfoMaster asset management software, they consolidated the data to score and tabulate defects for 128,000 feet of sanitary sewer.

We followed up by developing a decision-support matrix to generate a recommended rehabilitation strategy for approximately 54,000 feet of sewer. Ultimately, the rehabilitation strategy saved the City money by targeting severe structural deficiencies to cost-effectively reduce SSOs.