Unique Approaches to Using Hydraulic Models to Assist System Capacity Management and Sewer Assessment and Rehabilitation for DeKalb County

This paper describes the use of hydraulic models to actively manage the complex challenges of operating the DeKalb County, Georgia, sewage collection system. DeKalb County faces increasing demands on sewer system capacity resulting from a fast-growing economy while at the same time meeting the requirements of a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Consent Decree (CD) that requires more than $326 million of upgrades to the County’s deteriorating sewage system. Hydraulic modeling solutions discussed in this paper include efficient development and use of both steady-state and fully dynamic models, and implementation of advanced technology for rainfall-derived infiltration and inflow (RDII) simulation.