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Urban water services are building blocks for healthy cities, and they require complex and expensive infrastructure systems. Most of the infrastructure is out of sight and tends to be taken for granted, but an infrastructure financing crisis looms in the United States because the systems are aging and falling behind on maintenance. A road map for pu

Available as eBook only. Water plays a critical role in every aspect of civilization: agriculture, industry, economy, environment, recreation, transportation, culture, and health. While clean water and sanitary conditions remain an elusive luxury in many parts of the world, we, as Americans, take them for granted. Much of America's drinking water and wastewater infrastructure; however, is old and deteriorating. A crisis looms as our demands on these systems increase. The costs associated with renewal of these aging systems are staggering. There is a critical disconnect between the methodological remedies for infrastructure renewal problems and the current sequential or isolated manner of renewal analysis and execution. This points to the need for a holistic systems perspective to address the renewal problem. Therefore, new tools are needed to provide support for water infrastructure decisions. Such decisions are necessary to sustain economic growth, environmental quality, and improved societal benefits. Accurate prediction of wastewater pipe structural and functional deterioration plays an essential role in asset management and capital improvement planning. The key to implementing an asset management strategy is a comprehensive understanding of asset condition, performance, and risk profile. The primary objective of this research is therefore to develop protocols and methods for predicting the remaining economic life of wastewater pipes. This report presents a development of a robust performance index for wastewater pipes, including physical/structural, operational/functional, environmental and other parameters, for not only the pipe, but also the entire pipe system. An analysis of data from participating utilities was done to establish the statistical significant of each parameter. These parameters are grouped into pipe properties, internal environment and external environment. The proposed performance rating system evaluates each parameter and combines them mathematically through a weighted summation and a fuzzy inference system that reflects the importance of the various factors. The Performance Index comprises of structural and functional index, and each index evaluates pipes in scale from zero to five, in the pipe rating scale zero indicates the worst condition whereas five indicates the best condition.

The concept for the Water Environment of Cities arose from a workshop “Green 1 Cities, Blue Waters” workshop held in 2006. The workshop assembled experts from engineering, planning, economics, law, hydrology, aquatic ecology, geom- phology, and other disciplines to present research?ndings and identify key new ideas on the urban water environment. At a lunch discussion near the end of the workshop, several of us came to the recognition that despite having considerable expertise in a narrow discipline, none of us had a vision of the “urban water en- ronment” as a whole. We were, as in the parable, blind men at opposite ends of the elephant, knowinga great deal about the parts, but notunderstandingthe whole. We quickly recognized the need to develop a book that would integrate this knowledge to create this vision. The goal was to develop a book that could be used to teach a complete, multidisciplinary course, “The Urban Water Environment”, but could also be used as a supplemental text for courses on urban ecosystems, urban design, landscapearchitecture,water policy,waterqualitymanagement andwatershed m- agement. The book is also valuable as a reference source for water professionals stepping outside their arena of disciplinary expertise. The Water Environment of Cities is the?rst book to use a holistic, interdis- plinary approach to examine the urban water environment. We have attempted to portrayaholisticvisionbuiltaround theconcept of water as a coreelement ofcities. Water has multipleroles:municipalwatersupply,aquatichabitat,landscapeaesth- ics, and recreation. Increasingly, urban water is reused, serving multiple purposes.

According to a report released by the Water Infrastructure Network (WIN), over the next 20 years America's water and wastewater systems will have to invest an additional $20 billion a year to replace aging and failing infrastructure in order to comply with the national environmental and public health priorities in the Clean Water Act and Safe Drink

This Report presents information on the current state of knowledge of the origins, occurrence, nature and effects of sewer solids for use by engineers, scientists, administrators and water quality planners for the planning, design and operation of sewerage systems. The report addresses both sewer maintenance requirements and environmental protection issues. Increasing environmental standards, coupled with public expectations, have led to stringent water quality standards. In response to this, it has been necessary to develop new methodologies and computer based analytical techniques to model and understand the performance of all aspects of waste water systems. Fundamental to these techniques is the understanding of the way in which sewer solids contribute to the poor performance of wastewater systems and consequential environmental damage. The information presented in this Report about the origins, nature, movement, hydraulic and polluting effects of solids in sewers has enabled strategies and rules to be developed for the management of sewerage systems to minimise the deleterious effects of these solids and associated pollutants. Scientific & Technical Report No. 14

Low-cost sewerage provides practical solutions to the sanitation needs of low-income areas. As a result of the currently very rapid urban population growth, the demand for sewerage exceeds the resources of most high density urban areas in developing countries. Low-cost alternatives to conventional sewerage, such as settled sewerage and simplified sewerage, therefore need to be developed. This book is the result of contributions by both academics and practitioners who attended the International Conference on Low-cost Sewerage which was held at the University of Leeds, England, in July 1995. Low-cost sewerage technologies are described and their applications in both developed and developing countries are detailed.