Defining our Water Resources Utility: Stormwater Management & More

The City of Clive is rich in water resources. The geography of the watershed graces the city with miles of creekside bike paths and recreation. However, that same benefit of proximity, also creates a challenge for protecting property and assets during rain and high-water events. The challenge with this project was to create a framework and program to comprehensively address the needs of the traditional stormwater network while also addressing the surface water, creek condition, and various green stormwater controls throughout the City. The project included a modeling evaluation to prepare for extreme weather flooding events, examining staffing to address the full service needs for all stormwater drainage assets, fully developing an asset management inventory, creating a financial plan that adequately address the needs of the City utility, and creating communication tools to share this information with both the City's citizens but also with critical partners in the Walnut Creek Watershed and Des Moines River Basin. Financial responsibility is a cornerstone of the City's value system. The current stormwater utility has near zero debt service and a positively growing fund. City construction projects comply with uniform standards for stormwater management required of development projects. The City selected a new project evaluation methodology to continue to be forward thinking and financially sound. The comprehensive analysis will support decision making, equity in rate structure, and policy to support the shared benefits and burdens of the water resources assets. The Water Resources Master Plan took care to reflect the authentic vision of the City and its citizens. The approved vision includes statements regarding the City's relationship with the greater watershed, its approach to resiliency, the quality of life provided for its residents, and creating amenities where one can recreate safely. The vision statement laid the foundation for the evaluation criteria for all capital improvement projects. A defensible score to compare varied projects was necessary for the utility. The benefit score was then balanced with the financial obligations and needs of the utility. The financial evaluation tool created for this project allowed for multiple scenarios and approaches to be evaluated and compared quickly. Finally, the implementation plan including a tactical step-wise approach for how to implement sustainable change and a dashboard to track key performance indicators was developed to monitor and measure progress year to year. The presentation will highlight the challenges and provide others a guide to how we incorporated previous studies to break department silos and make final recommendations cohesive to the utility, adapted a public engagement plan to pivot from broad education and instead associate education with a direct action (impervious cover with rate changes, infiltration potential with incentive program, and green stormwater infrastructure controls with a targeted pilot plan), and finally how we designed our management tools to be adaptive. Over time, we should improve and consequently, our goals should change. Our targets will be adjusted. Our tools reflect reality and therefore are not static.