Proactive Planning to Identify Affordable Replacement Solutions

In early 2019, the City of Rolla faced a few infrastructure challenges including reducing inflow and infiltration, minimizing sanitary sewer overflows and eliminating bypasses at two of their three wastewater treatment facilities. Further, each of their three wastewater treatment plants will require upgrades over the next 20 years to replace aging components, allow future growth, address regulatory requirements and improve performance.

To proactively identify affordable solutions and implementation schedules that address these issues, the City asked us to use the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s integrated planning framework to create a wastewater and stormwater Integrated Management Plan. We applied a streamlined planning approach that resulted in a final IMP that included plans and recommendations for the City’s wastewater treatment, wastewater collection and stormwater management systems.

The IMP was approved by Missouri Department of Natural Resources in September 2019. In their approval, MDNR agreed to use the IMP when making future regulatory and permitting decisions. For their part, the City will pursue a 5-year action plan to implement the IMP actions and periodically update the plan as new information is available.