Who’ll Stop the Rain – A Utility’s Approach to Minimizing the Impacts of Rain on a System-wide and Proactive Basis

In 1970, Creedence Clearwater Revival recorded “Who’ll Stop the Rain”. The song breaks into three verses, with a historical, recent past, and present tense. It has been surmised that the song appears to allude to a sense that our problems have to be dealt with by those who wish to fix them. Similarly, the City of North Port became a City in 1959. Soon thereafter, General Development Utilities (GDU), a subsidiary of General Development Corporation (GDC) began construction of the utility system to provide service. In 1992, the City took over ownership and operation of a utility system that was nearly 35-years old.This paper examines how the City addressed a key issue with their wastewater system – leaky pipes resulting in the City’s water resource recovery facility (WRRF) treating infiltration and inflow (I/I) and its economic impact on other components of the City’s wastewater system (e.g., sewer system overflows, pumping costs, etc.).