Questions about Pressurized Irrigation
Now I am fashionable. My street has a gravel stripe down the middle just like everybody else's.
With pressurized irrigation coming to my block, I have been fielding many questions from my neighbors.
Q. Would it really have been cost prohibitive to build a water treatment plant instead?
A. Yes. The treatment plant itself would have equalled the cost of the pressurized system. However, the delivery system (the underground pipes) was not sized to serve the City's growing population, and would still have needed an upgrade. So we could have built a treatment plant, but we'd still be digging up streets and installing new pipes. This would have doubled the price of the current project, which uses a new pressurized system to deliver untreated water.
Q. Why wasn't the delivery system originally sized for growth?
A. Originally, American Fork built itself a culinary system for indoor water use, but relied on irrigation ditches for outdoor needs. Over the course of the 20th century, families pulled away from their agricultural roots and developers built subdivisions without irrigation ditches. Over time, the majority of American Fork's households shifted to the use of culinary water via hose hook-ups for outdoor irrigation. But the culinary system was never designed for this, and never anticipated the day when it would need to support 7,000 suburban yards.
Q. Why not dig more ditches?
A. Engineers estimate that 30 percent of the water delivered in ditches is lost due to evaporation and seepage. The pressurized system of underground pipes makes more efficient use of a scarce resource.
Q. If American Fork continues to develop at the rates of the last two decades, how long will it take for the City to outgrow the new system?
A. One reason the present system is so costly is that the City sized it for growth. In hearing after hearing, the City's longest and most knowledgable water users begged us to create something bigger than a band-aid for the problem. We listened and directed engineers to propose a project that would last for fifty years. They accomplished this through two means: First, by designing a structural backbone that will support the City's needs to build-out. Second, by calculating the costs of depreciation and maintenance and incorporating these into the rate structure. If present and future City Councils will hold to the rate structure that was approved, they will accrue the necessary funds to upgrade the system when the time comes. Hopefully, American Fork will never again see a 2006, when the City was out of water and had no money to solve the problem.
Q. Does this mean that today's residents are subsidizing tomorrow's developers?
A. No. Fortunately, Utah law allows a City to oversize an amenity to accommodate future growth, then to be reimbursed by future developers through impact fees. This is called "equity buy-in." (We treated our parks the same way when we passed the parks bond, which will be retired through present and future impact fees.) So the present irrigation bonds are building an oversized backbone which future developers will buy into. At that time, developers will themselves bear the expense of extending the system from the backbone to their individual properties.
With pressurized irrigation coming to my block, I have been fielding many questions from my neighbors.
Q. Would it really have been cost prohibitive to build a water treatment plant instead?
A. Yes. The treatment plant itself would have equalled the cost of the pressurized system. However, the delivery system (the underground pipes) was not sized to serve the City's growing population, and would still have needed an upgrade. So we could have built a treatment plant, but we'd still be digging up streets and installing new pipes. This would have doubled the price of the current project, which uses a new pressurized system to deliver untreated water.
Q. Why wasn't the delivery system originally sized for growth?
A. Originally, American Fork built itself a culinary system for indoor water use, but relied on irrigation ditches for outdoor needs. Over the course of the 20th century, families pulled away from their agricultural roots and developers built subdivisions without irrigation ditches. Over time, the majority of American Fork's households shifted to the use of culinary water via hose hook-ups for outdoor irrigation. But the culinary system was never designed for this, and never anticipated the day when it would need to support 7,000 suburban yards.
Q. Why not dig more ditches?
A. Engineers estimate that 30 percent of the water delivered in ditches is lost due to evaporation and seepage. The pressurized system of underground pipes makes more efficient use of a scarce resource.
Q. If American Fork continues to develop at the rates of the last two decades, how long will it take for the City to outgrow the new system?
A. One reason the present system is so costly is that the City sized it for growth. In hearing after hearing, the City's longest and most knowledgable water users begged us to create something bigger than a band-aid for the problem. We listened and directed engineers to propose a project that would last for fifty years. They accomplished this through two means: First, by designing a structural backbone that will support the City's needs to build-out. Second, by calculating the costs of depreciation and maintenance and incorporating these into the rate structure. If present and future City Councils will hold to the rate structure that was approved, they will accrue the necessary funds to upgrade the system when the time comes. Hopefully, American Fork will never again see a 2006, when the City was out of water and had no money to solve the problem.
Q. Does this mean that today's residents are subsidizing tomorrow's developers?
A. No. Fortunately, Utah law allows a City to oversize an amenity to accommodate future growth, then to be reimbursed by future developers through impact fees. This is called "equity buy-in." (We treated our parks the same way when we passed the parks bond, which will be retired through present and future impact fees.) So the present irrigation bonds are building an oversized backbone which future developers will buy into. At that time, developers will themselves bear the expense of extending the system from the backbone to their individual properties.
posted by Heidi Rodeback at 10:58 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home