THE CITY OF THOUSAND OAKS WASTEWATER SYSTEM MASTER PLAN: PREPARING FOR CMOM

The City of Thousand Oaks in Ventura County, California provides wastewater collection and treatment services to approximately 120,000 residents. In mid-2000, the City's Public Works Department began an update to its Wastewater System Master Plan. Although an updated capital improvement program was the main objective of the Master Plan, the City also wanted to assess its operation and maintenance (O&M) program in comparison to other agencies, and to identify possible areas for improvement. Anticipating the future Sanitary Sewer Overflow (SSO) Rule and the Capacity, Management, Operations, and Maintenance (CMOM) program requirements, the City decided to accomplish its O&M assessment goal by including in the Master Plan a task to perform a preliminary CMOM program assessment.Integrating the CMOM assessment into the Master Plan provided a convenient mechanism for the City to tap into the knowledge and expertise of the engineering consultants on board for the Master Plan, resulted in synergies between the two efforts, and facilitated immediate implementation of selected recommendations that came out of the preliminary CMOM assessment.Self-audit and performance benchmarking methods were found to be useful tools for conducting the CMOM program assessment. This paper describes these tools and how they were applied within the context of a Wastewater System Master Plan. The paper also presents examples of the findings and conclusions in the case of the City of Thousand Oaks.