2017 Issue

35 Can We Afford It? A common question is heard by Franson Civil Engineers as they travel around the State of Utah to rural water and wastewater systems: “How can we afford to do that proj- ect?” Helper City was faced with just this dilemma, but found themselves instead answering a different question: “How can we afford not to do this project?” Eric Franson states, “As infrastructure ages within these small commu- nities, the operation and maintenance costs continually in- crease. At some point, it makes economic sense to assume some debt, replace the aging infrastructure, and as a result reduce the escalating operation and maintenance costs.” One of the main challenges of the project was obtaining the necessary funding. At the onset of the project, Helper City applied for and received $19.5 million from the Utah Community Impact Board (CIB). Of this funding, they received $12.5 million as a low-interest loan for the culinary and sewer replacement and $7 million of grant funds for the storm drain installation. Over the course of the multi-year construction, it was determined that additional funding would be necessary to complete the final phase of the project. Helper sought funding from not only CIB, but also the Utah Division of Drinking Water (DDW) and the Utah Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ). To complete Sewer Lateral Replacement the culinary system, DDW granted Helper $1.05 million and loaned $2.45 million. Helper received a loan for $2.314 million from DEQ for the sewer system. The remaining $3.15 million to complete the storm drain came as additional grant money from CIB. This results in a total of $17.3 million in low-interest loans and $11.2 million in grants. Historically, Main Street in Helper served as a state road and was therefore under the jurisdiction and maintenance of the Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT). In conjunction with this project, Helper City negotiated the transfer of responsibility for Main Street from UDOT due to the previous relocation of Highway 6. Helper City received $750,000 from UDOT for improvements and maintenance of the previous state road. Not a Road Project Helper City did not intend to complete a road project. However, once the first phase of the project was underway, it was evident that for several reasons the utility project would involve considerable rehabilitation of most of the streets throughout Helper City. The first issue was the width of the roads, or lack thereof. Many of the residential streets are less than 20 feet wide. Installing three separate utilities in three separate trenches was nearly impossible in such a narrow space without tearing up the entire road. According to State Code, the minimum horizontal distance between culinary and sewer pipes is 10 feet. Due to the narrow streets, DDW granted Helper an exception that al- lowed the minimum separation to be 5 feet. In some cases, even that was not sufficient and additional measures such as encasing the culinary pipe or capping the sewer pipe were used to protect water quality. The narrow width of the streets was compounded by the depth of the existing sewer. In several locations, the sewer was nearly 30 feet deep. In order to provide Sewer Bore under Railroad