Utilizing Water Modeling to Address Challenges in Rural Massachusetts 

Project Scope

For close to a decade, Haley Ward has been assisting a small rural town in central Massachusetts, addressing their poor water quality issues, including numerous bacteria hits, poor fireflow, and missing or unaccounted for water.  

For many years this town did not have an accurate picture of their water system. Between poor records and high staff turnover, there were many outstanding questions about the system’s configuration. To make matters worse, the system tested positive for coliform enough times to trigger multiple Level 2 Assessments in a span of three years. 

The team at Haley Ward stepped in to help get a better inventory of the components of their system and assess the water quality issues. Our role included/includes:

• Reviewing historical records
• Running flow/pressure field tests
• Built and continue to maintain hydraulic water model
• Developed capital improvement plan and updates as needed
• Design water improvements, provide contract administration, provide construction representation
• Review of proposed developments as needed

Water modeling allows municipalities to not only have a detailed and accurate inventory of their system, but provide insight on:

• Available fireflow
• Capacity including areas of low pressure or under/oversized pipes
• Tracing water quality including water age, water temperature, chlorine residuals, etc.
• Effects of leaks/breaks on the rest of the system
• Effects of proposed system improvements and capital improvement planning
• Can be used to develop unidirectional flushing (UDF) plans, which save time and money compared to traditional flushing programs

Like many rural towns, funding is hard to come by. But the team at Haley Ward made it easy by collaboratively working with the town for close to ten years, piecing together the model as funding became available, to meet their goals and objective while working with their budget constraints.  As a result, the Town knows exactly how their system works, how it will react, and the most cost-effective solutions to continue to grow and improve their system.

Market

• Land Development
• Municipal & County
• State & Federal Government

Services

Project Data