Managing Smarter Moves Tuscaloosa Water and Sewer Department Towards Sustainable SSO Reduction Accomplishments

The City of Tuscaloosa Water and Sewer Department (TWSD) is similar to many small to midsize utilities that struggle annually as they assess the demand for capital needs compared to a stressed economy. TWSD has done well, however, since 2007 to present their need for adequate funding to address a growing community, aging infrastructure, and persistent steady number of annual sanitary sewer overflows (SSOs). The sewer department management staff knew that in order to address each of the above challenges that one of the initial activities that would be needed was to revisit how the department was organized, how staff was trained, and develop a plan on how data should be efficiently and effectively moved through the department to help managers make better work and investment related decisions. TWSD has demonstrated that management involvement can produce efficiencies that are measureable and show steady SSO reductions but that a continued vigilance of evaluation and accessing performance and making process improvements is required to sustain favorable SSO reduction trends. This paper presents the sequence of management actions, process changes, and enhancements that TWSD have implemented over the past several years that have had a direct and indirect affect and steady reduction trend on SSOs. The TWSD management decisions and process enhancements are presented so that other utilities may evaluate whether TWSD’s management decisions could also benefit their utility.