Infrastructure Asset Management – Risk Factors in the EnviroMission and Central Arizona Project Agreement

EnviroMission Ltd., an Australian energy company, and its U.S. Subsidiary has signed a project development deal with the CAWCD (Central Arizona Water Conservation District) that allows it to develop a transmission project.

This could increase the reliability of the Central Arizona Project water transportation system and give EnviroMission with increased access to regional power markets in California and Arizona.

Arizona is in favor of this project due to the constant need for water to flow uphill from the Colorado River into central Arizona.

To do that, the reliability of the transmission system that delivers energy to the Central Arizona Project’s pumps needs to be improved – this is where EnviroMission steps in.

PR Newswire reports:

“The CAP aqueduct system was engineered to deliver an average of 1.5 million acre-feet of water per year to central and southern Arizona, including the Phoenix and Tucson metropolitan areas. CAP carries water from Lake Havasu near Parker to the southern boundary of the San Xavier Indian Reservation southwest of Tucson. The canal system stretches 336 miles across the state, lifts the water more than 2,900 vertical feet, and incorporates control structures and pumping plants to regulate the flow of water. The CAP system includes 14 pumping plants, one hydroelectric pump/generating plant at New Waddell Dam, 39 radial gate structures to control the flow of water, more than 50 turnouts used to deliver water to municipal water treatment plants and other customer distribution systems, and the Lake Pleasant storage reservoir. The CAP is the largest single user of power in the state of Arizona, requiring a total of 500 MWs at peak to deliver water via their system. Access to a reliable power supply is paramount to this mission.”

It’s always great to see cross-continental collaboration where there is so much benefit to both parties.

This also highlights an issue that can often be overlooked when considering the infrastructure asset management of a water or wastewater utility network – how dependent are you on other systems or networks being functional.

This can be analyzed in the risk management section of your asset management plan and allows you to look at natural disaster and other disruption scenarios – assess the probable impact on your network, and also assess how vulnerable you are to damage on other networks.

For example, this could include:

• Loss of electrical supply
• Loss of telecommunications
• Loss of access (road network damage)
• Loss of your network due to damage of another network – such as loss of a bridge that has your pipes crossing it, or a levy burst that causes scour damage to adjacent pipes

Network resilience analysis is an issue of on-going relevance to infrastructure asset management practitioners and should be incorporated into your practice where it’s appropriate.

PHOTO CREDIT: “New Wadell Dam” by A U.S. Bureau of Reclamation workers during their official duties – U.S. Bureau of Reclamation; source. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.