Water, energy, and affordability: Key drivers in the financially sustainable management of urban water infrastructure

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The applicants propose to contribute to the knowledge-base require to implement a variety of legislation within the Province Ontario designed to safeguard municipal water supply. These include: the Safe Drinking Water Act 2002; Ontario Regulation 453/07 dictating financial self-sustainability; PSAB 3150 which requires reporting and depreciation of tangible capital assets; and, the Water Opportunities and Conservation Act 2010 which requires municipalities to develop an asset management plan, financial plan, water conservation plan, risk management plan, and performance indicators and targets to manage their water infrastructure. The proposed research will focus on developing three distinct levels of a water infrastructure asset management system. First, the current version of the applicants' strategic planning model will be enhanced to include the operation of water and wastewater treatment plants to the existing watermain and sanitary sewer networks in order to capture energy consumption and total system costs required to provide water and wastewater services to the residents of an urban center within a watershed, with an implicit understanding that water is conserved and finite in quantity. Second, a new tactical planning model will be developed that will enable the strategic model to enact decisions regarding capital and operational expenditures on the water infrastructure based on reliability and criticality metrics. Specifically, performance indicators for the water conveyance system might suggest that rehabilitation of existing deteriorated pipes may reliably extend their service life in non-critical areas of the network, relative to the increased expense of new construction. Third, an operational planning model will be developed as a continuation of the applicants' hydrologic model of the groundwater and surface water components of the Laurel Creek watershed. The operational model will involve inserting the watermain, sanitary, and storm sewer pipes within the hydrologic model and simulating their interaction with the water balance within the watershed. This model will be generalized and made adaptable to other localities.