Guide for Municipal Wet Weather Strategies – The Planning Approach: Developing Values-Based Risks with Community and Stakeholders

Municipal wastewater agencies manage system assets that are valued at millions and billions of dollars and will need community support to fund investments to properly operate and maintain the system into perpetuity. Community input can improve the quality of decisions that affect the scope, cost, and character of the programs by defining what is important or is of value to the community and the associated risks to those values. This paper focuses on the first and second step of a six step process for developing value-based risks described in the Water Environment Federation's Guide for Municipal Wet Weather Strategies. The paper discusses how values and their associated risks can be identified and gain consensus among the stakeholders. The importance is discussed of subsequent performance objectives and performance measures that enable the utility to properly measure activity performance and make any management or process adjustments to achieve optimum risk reduction goals and achieve stated values and goals.