Utility Planning

Utility Planning can be as simple as evaluating treatment plant capacity or be complex enough to include planned replacement programs for existing infrastructure.  In every case, a utility plan is designed to look forward and find creative, cost-effective solutions before infrastructure fails or additional capacity is exceeded.

Indigo Water Group staff played a major role in developing Utility Plans for the City of Northglenn, City of Thornton, City of Brush, the Town of Carbondale, Fairways Metropolitan District, and others.  Northglenn’s Utility Plan focused on replacing a lagoon wastewater treatment facility with a mechanical treatment plant.  For both Northglenn and Thornton, our staff created complex collection system models.  Carbondale’s Utility Plan examined the potential for relocating an aging wastewater treatment plant to free up valuable riverfront real estate.

All of our previous Utility Planning work has included detailed alternatives analyses.  For treatment plant upgrades and expansions, we always evaluate at least three different alternatives based on performance, technical feasibility, cost, and staff preferences.  Alternatives evaluations for collection and distribution systems focus on land use analyses, evaluation of existing infrastructure for capacity, and preliminary layout of future lines.

We develop population, flow, and load or demand projections as the first step towards determining adequacy of existing infrastructure and what will be required to meet future needs.

No matter what your planning needs, Indigo Water Group has the experience.

PROJECT HIGHLIGHT

We recently completed a Utility Plan for the Meeker Sanitation District.  The Utility Plan will help the District plan for the impacts of growth due to the oil and gas boom.  As a first step, we conducted a CPE of the treatment plant.  The District is implementing many of our recommendations including new headworks equipment, replacement of obsolete meters, and operational changes.