Laura Barraza, senior civil engineer of facilities planning for the fast-growing Eastern Municipal Water District in southern California, noted that the budget for her utility’s capital improvement plan has grown from approximately $100 million annually a decade ago to $200 million to $250 million per year due to supply chain issues and rising costs. As a result, its team has had to have some “hard discussions” analyzing each planned project and evaluating which could be cut back, postponed or even cut. “We go through [each project] in very fine detail,” she said.  

Ghina Yamout, senior technical specialist at CDM Smith, outlined a framework developed with firm subsidiary Trinnex that uses algorithms and various risk and cost-benefit analyses to help clients identify how to optimize dollars in their capital improvement plans.

Pooling Resources Shows Results

Communities with very small water providers can achieve economies-of-scale when they work together at a state or regional level, said Allegra da Silva, research and innovation division director at Brown and Caldwell. One company study released in 2024 evaluated challenges faced by small utilities with tiny budgets seeking to address the problem of “forever chemicals" known as PFAS, in biosolids. The study found that utilities that individually might not be able to install high-cost treatment systems for the contaminants or other waste streams could potentially work with other municipal systems to pool resources for a local or regional facility to be used by multiple entities. 

Lauren March, a chemical engineer at Arcadis, described the regional collaborations as a “hub-and-spoke" model for PFAS destruction. “Instead of moving a system around to various sites or buying a system outright, you would essentially ship your waste to a regional disposal facility that would have a destruction system already in place to manage that waste, similar to what is already being implemented for landfills and incinerators,” she said.

Da Silva added that private financing working in in tandem with public dollars could help necessary projects advance. This might require novel delivery methods and contractual arrangements, she said. One current study funded by the Water Research Foundation is evaluating how to address brine concentrate created through reverse osmosis membranes. “We may need to create new entities—either private or public—to manage those concentrate streams, because to do it at the facility level isn't cost effective [for some small utilities]," she said. 

Brown and Caldwell teams are working to identify legal and contractual methods to create different types of institutions or frameworks to allow new partnership and delivery methods. "I think that's going to be a growing theme in the next 10 to 15, years in our sector, as we face water shortages and climate change,” said Da Silva.

New association President Heather Collins, who oversees water treatment for Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, told ENR that one of her top priorities over the next year is reaching out to other market sectors to serve as an educational and technical resource, and potential partner or collaborator. “I’m focused on making sure we increase the opportunity for partnerships and collaborations … with other market sectors,” she said.

The need to consider resilience in project planning to avoid higher costs after flooding or other extreme events, rather than paying much more to rebuild after such an event, is key, Christina Armour, a senior community resilience planner at Tetra Tech, emphasized. Project planners should consider incorporating the Federal Flood Risk Management Standard, which is more rigorous than using base elevation standards, in projects being built in floodplain areas.  “I get it, it's hard to swallow the upfront cost. Sometimes it's hard to sell them on that concept, but at the same time, you have to look at the long-range resiliency and the sustainability," she said, adding that building a project to higher standards makes it more likely to be insured, and as a result, more “fundable.” 

Valdis Krumins, a senior environmental engineer at the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, saidit the agency has federal funding available in the form of grants for projects in small, rural communities, but some funds are not being fully used, including grants for emergency response projects that could potentially be used where FEMA funds are not available.

Is there a PFAS Silver Bullet?

Determining how to scale up effective technologies for PFAS destruction was a major focus at the conference. The number of firms and groups conducting pilot studies and research to identify different ways to manage treatment and destruction of PFAS chemicals, of which there are thousands, is dizzying. The chemicals, found in everything from firefighting foam to kitchenware, do not degrade in the natural environment and have been found to be harmful to human health. The carbon-fluorine bonds within the compounds are nearly impossible to break and can exist for decades. 

“We're making progress, and I think that there's a lot of really interesting research going on, but there is no solution right now for any destructive technology that I'm seeing that is able to really navigate [the] limitations,” said Robbie Venis, an AECOM process engineer.

But that challenge hasn't stopped numerous firms that are testing and evaluating different technologies to mitigate PFAS. 

Water technology provider Xylem works closely with both utilities and engineering firms on pilot efforts for different technologies, determining which would be most effective and cost-efficient for particular sites, said Geoff Pellechia, its PFAS program manager. “We’re seeing growing momentum around PFAS mitigation, including from engineering firms designing treatment systems for utilities," he noted. "By working together from the earliest planning phases to full-scale system integration, we ensure solutions are tailored, scalable and aligned with regulatory compliance and treatment goals.”