Where Vision Meets Dollars and Cents: Comprehensive Plan Impacts to a Sanitary Sewer System

Sanitary sewer system design and planning often utilizes land use density designations when evaluating the existing and future capacity requirements of an overall system. Because of this, when land use density designations are altered, this can have a dramatic effect on the capacity of the existing sanitary sewer system. In 2009, the City of College Station (City) adopted a new Comprehensive Plan that outlines future growth and redevelopment, and assigned new or different land use designations. Utilizing the new land use density designations defined in the 2009 Comprehensive Plan, the City's Utility Department initiated a project to evaluate how this change in the Comprehensive Plan affected their overall owned/operated sewer system and the department's previous understanding of the capital improvement program. The overall project approach, results, and impact to the City's capital program are reviewed.