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Stormwater (SW) utilities face competition for limited funds, especially those communities faced with renewing aging sewer and water assets to address overflow problems and sewage basement backups. There continues to be the political stigma with raising SW rates to upgrade aging infrastructure to increase the level of SW service. Utilities are confronting the reality their underground storm sewer assets are deteriorating, and many have reached the end of their useful lives. Utility managers struggle to get their heads around how to efficiently and cost-effectively manage and renew their assets versus staff “fighting fires” from the next emergency collapse or flooding event. Utility managers are also typically facing combined sewer overflow (CSO), sanitary sewer overflow (SSO), municipal separate storm sewer system (MS4) regulatory compliance, and surface flooding costs. The audience will hear lessons learned from other utilities and learn how to develop and implement a straightforward stormwater asset management program and increase the level of service to their customers.

Pandemic-related population shifts in many parts of the U.S. have led some analysts to identify this trend as the “Great American Migration” of 2020. Whether fleeing a high cost of living, a volatile climate, or local lockdowns, Americans moved in droves from large urban centers to smaller cities and rural or suburban counties. The result is an increased need for local government and public works agencies to manage their transportation infrastructure for accelerated growth, even as public funding remains modest. This panel discussion provides insight into how the City of Frederick, Maryland, and Polk County, Florida, are successfully modernizing their transportation asset management strategies and practices to save money while delivering reliable, sustainable, and resilient roadways, bridges, and other assets for current and future populations.

New regulations require utilities to create and maintain service line inventories. Incomplete, inaccurate, and unreliable historical records make it challenging to use service line inventories to inform planning, support decisions, and communicate risk to the public. Best practices in statistics and data science can be used to develop more accurate inventories, create realistic budgets, inform capital planning, and manage lead service line (LSL) replacement programs. We partnered with the Association of State Drinking Water Administrators (ASDWA) to outline important considerations for state regulators and utility leadership when using statistical and predictive methods for LSL inventory and replacement. Water systems can use these principles to plan strategically, make data-driven decisions, set budgets and requests for funds, build capacity in some skill areas, communicate with the public and build trust, and, most importantly, continue to protect the health of all individuals in the system.