SLVWD Infrastructure Basics

January 1, 2022

Mark Dolson

The great majority of SLVWD’s annual revenue goes to Staff salaries and benefits, but the District also has an enormous investment in the underlying infrastructure that is essential for delivering water to customers: pipelines, storage tanks, pumping stations, treatment plants, etc. SLVWD today has 190 miles of pipeline, 55 water storage tanks (with over 9 million gallons of capacity), 2 water treatment plants, 8 wells, and 7 stream diversions representing tens of millions of dollars in cumulative investment.

Unfortunately, for many years, the District failed to invest sufficiently in maintenance and timely replacement of this infrastructure, and the deferred costs have accumulated accordingly. The challenge of dealing with this was further compounded by the extensive damage associated with the CZU Fire in August 2020. Consequently, infrastructure development is now widely recognized as a top-priority concern for the District.

Infrastructure development projects are distinct from the ongoing operations challenges (such as quality assurance and potential service disruptions) that the District contends with on a daily basis. Infrastructure projects are comparatively expensive one-time undertakings frequently requiring the services of outside engineering firms and environmental review teams. Ultimately, however, all of this activity is planned and overseen by the District’s Engineering Team and by the Board’s Engineering and Environment Committee.

Typically, infrastructure development projects only attract attention from the broader SLV community when they are inconveniencing someone (e.g., because roads are being excavated to replace pipelines). However, SLVWD is ultimately a community resource, and decisions about how much to invest in infrastructure development, how to pay for this development, and how to balance concerns about infrastructure design and associated environmental impacts are ones that all SLV residents must shoulder responsibility for. It is therefore vitally important that our entire community has at least a basic understanding of the key financial and engineering challenges that lie ahead.