Metro Water Services Completes Critical Project Designed by GS&P
Gresham, Smith and Partners is pleased to announce the completion of upgrades to an essential portion of Nashville’s water distribution system. The long-awaited Cumberland City Low Transmission Water Main improvements project consists of more than 24,000 linear feet of 60- and 36-inch and 2,000 linear feet of 12-inch diameter ductile iron water main. This project not only creates redundancy to the area east of Stones River to increase resilience, but also renews a failure-prone section of the distribution system’s vital backbone.
Metro Water Services (MWS) provides water to over 200,000 customers in Davidson County, Tennessee, through two surface water treatment plants—K.R. Harrington (KRH WTP) and Omohundro (OMO WTP). Together, these treatment plants feed the entire distribution system. Prior to this project, treated water from KRH WTP was delivered via two large transmission mains, a single 36-inch diameter main and a circa 1970s pre-stressed concrete cylinder pipe susceptible to failure.
GS&P provided planning services, including a routing study, along with design, engineering, construction administration, surveying, traffic control, utility coordination and permitting services for this important project. The chosen route expedites the movement of water through the system for improved efficiency and enhanced water quality.
“Our No. 1 priority is providing our customers uninterrupted service and safe, great-tasting drinking water. We needed a solution to provide reliable water service to a part of town served by old transmission infrastructure, so we partnered with Gresham, Smith and Partners to design a new dual feed system,” said Jeff Duncan, P.E., construction manager, Metro Water Services. “This redundancy makes our system more resilient. Now, even if a pipe were to break or we had an issue in one section of the system, water will continue to flow and serve the community.”
“We understand the importance and complexity of these infrastructure improvements, not just as engineers but as residents of Davidson County,” commented Dale Mosley, senior vice president, Gresham, Smith and Partners. “This project presented significant challenges in relation to routing and construction. We met those challenges with creative solutions, and managed construction in a way that minimized service and traffic disruptions—even in highly trafficked areas. Working against an expedited delivery schedule, we were proud to complete the project in less than 24 months.”
In conjunction with MWS and Wilmot, Inc., GS&P also completed a “triple bottom line” analysis. The study explored the community impacts and quantified the social, environmental and economic benefits, uncovering the real savings yielded from the project design.
Post-construction, the redundancy accomplished by the project is estimated to avoid $5.5 million of additional expense and lost revenue in the communities east of the Stones River in the event of future water supply disruptions. During construction, approximately 106 jobs were supported, and an estimated $8.7 million in future construction costs were saved by upsizing a portion of the water main to a 60-inch pipe. It is projected that 1.4 years of additional congestion was avoided, $1.3 million in wasted time and fuel was averted, and $46 million of public health and other external environmental costs were avoided due to the expedited construction schedule.
GS&P’s Water + Environment team consists of experienced environmental engineers, designers, geologists, operations and regulatory specialists, and scientists providing a wide range of water, wastewater, stormwater, environmental management, compliance, and sustainability services. By staying abreast of the latest developments in technology, water quality, and regulatory legislation, the team integrates environmental services with other in-house capabilities to maximize project delivery, efficiency and cost-effectiveness.
