17736_Authority_August

A CHIEVING S UCCESS THROUGH C OLLABORATION By Andrew Reilly, CEO, Wyoming Valley Sanitary Authority; Adrienne Vicari, P.E., Herbert, Rowland, & Grubic, Inc.; William Finnegan, Jr., Esq., Pugliese, Finnegan, Shaffer & FerenƟno LLC; Wyoming Valley Sanitary Authority Board of Directors You can’t blame someone who’s struggling for taking a helping hand. When someone’s under water, they can only think about ge ƫ ng air. They’re just trying to survive this moment, and they’ll take any help they can get. Municipali Ɵ es need help. Their infrastructure is old and failing. The cost to replace it is beyond their means, and federal funding is not keeping pace with the need. They can get help from a private investor-owned u Ɵ lity o ff ering the promise of a big payout, or they can get it from us. At WVSA, we want them to get it from us. We provide many services to our municipali Ɵ es to help them minimize their costs and operate their infrastructure more a ff ordably. This keeps costs reasonable and prevents the municipali Ɵ es from being in a vulnerable posi Ɵ on. It also builds trust. Our municipali Ɵ es know we are a partner they can count on. When a private investor comes calling, we can come to them with the hard truth about priva Ɵ za Ɵ on, and they’ll give us their ear because we’ve built that rela Ɵ onship. This is not a strategy we devised to fend o ff priva Ɵ za Ɵ on. This has been our philosophy for decades. The Wyoming Valley Sanitary Authority was formed as an agreement between 14 municipali Ɵ es to operate a wastewater treatment plant. Each municipality would maintain its own collec Ɵ on system, and the authority would provide treatment service. Over Ɵ me, our municipali Ɵ es’ needs have grown, and we have con Ɵ nually an Ɵ cipated those needs and responded with support. Building a unified system to strengthen our municipaliƟes against financial pressures It started with pump sta Ɵ ons approximately 25 years ago. Opera Ɵ ng and maintaining pump sta Ɵ ons was a significant expense for our municipali Ɵ es, so we o ff ered to take on this responsibility. Municipali Ɵ es were able to invest those cost savings in maintaining and replacing other infrastructure, rather than accumula Ɵ ng a future debt (and we were able to introduce cost e ffi ciencies by standardizing equipment and telemetry). A few years later, we heard from our member municipali Ɵ es that they were struggling to provide the manpower to clean and maintain their collec Ɵ on lines, so we hired a collec Ɵ on system crew to service the lines. (This helps us reduce infiltra Ɵ on and inflow costs.) Later, we started providing grants to municipali Ɵ es to reimburse a por Ɵ on of their sewer repair and replacement costs. We’ve been providing each of these services for approximately two decades or more, but almost 10 years ago a new threat emerged for our municipali Ɵ es: the rising cost of stormwater management. Like our sewer systems, stormwater systems are at or nearing the end of their life expectancy. At the same Ɵ me, regulators are increasing municipal obliga Ɵ ons to control runo ff and prevent pollu Ɵ on from stormwater in our watersheds. The 2018 MS4 permit required many municipali Ɵ es – including those we serve – to adopt a Pollu Ɵ on Reduc Ɵ on Plan and construct Best Management Prac Ɵ ces in order to produce measurable reduc Ɵ ons in sediment and nutrient pollu Ɵ on. These BMPs could costs tens of thousands of dollars. Municipali Ɵ es didn’t have money like that lying around.