A Better Way To Manage Sewers

For many wastewater operators, things are getting harder, not easier. With diminishing budgets and aging sewer infrastructure across North America, municipalities’ options are limited. Excessive inflow and infiltration (I&I) can cause a collection system to exceed its capacity limits, leading to increased treatment costs and sanitary sewer overflows (SSOs) that release untreated effluent into the environment. And aggressive cleaning programs, while effective at clearing pipes of debris, result in some pipes getting over-cleaned. This wastes resources and leads to premature pipe degradation and, eventually, early pipe failure. Today’s teams have neither the time nor the money to do it all.

Envirosight’s latest infographic depicts key steps in digital workflows for wastewater inspection. Municipalities and contractors can use it to help identify weaknesses in their current flow and understand how digital solutions can increase efficiency across the board.

Digital workflows deliver many benefits to sewer inspection teams. Now, municipalities and contractors who are looking to streamline their workflows for peak efficiency can learn about the fundamentals in our new whitepaper, Digital Workflows for Wastewater Inspection and Maintenance.

Many wastewater pros focus exclusively on gathering inspection footage, but that task is only a small part of the wastewater assessment workflow. And throughout the inspection process, there are a lot of handoffs: from supervisors who are assigning work to inspection crews; from crews who take videos and record observations to the teams assessing and prioritizing future work; from contractors to municipalities when work is completed; and more. Not surprisingly, crews that can transfer inspection and rehab information smoothly tend to work more quickly and efficiently.

Every day, wastewater pros around the world leverage equipment and software to keep communities clean and healthy. Key to this task is collecting and analyzing data to plan maintenance, improve performance and achieve compliance. Video from crawlers and other visual assessment methods, in addition to laser profiling and sonar data, can provide a complete picture of underground infrastructure.

Compared to crawler-only inspection, the Phased Assessment Strategy for Sewers (PASS) approach reduces assessment costs by roughly 34% and boosts productivity about 17%. This free, printable infographic can be used to understand the value of the PASS workflow and communicate it to your team. 

Artificial intelligence is spreading across every area of our lives, from ride-sharing apps to spam filters to smart personal assistants. In the last few years, artificial intelligence (AI) has also seeped into the wastewater industry in the form of automated defect coding. AI promises major benefits over traditional operator inspection, mostly in the form of lower error rates and faster inspection times.

Many wastewater system managers focus on pipelines. But manholes can be an even greater source of problems, in some extreme cases contributing up to 90% of inflow and infiltration in a system. And as they’re easier to access, manholes are generally less expensive to fix. To repair them though, they must be inspected.

With the start of summer comes hurricane season, but natural disasters—from blizzards to earthquakes—can disrupt daily life year round. The impact of natural disasters can be far-reaching and disrupt utilities and city operations. Floods, whether caused by snowmelt, hurricane, downpour or infrastructure damage, can quickly overwhelm collection systems and damage electric pump services. And earthquakes can destroy underground infrastructure in mere minutes.

Exfiltration is the leakage of wastewater out of a sanitary sewer system through broken or damaged pipes and manholes. Wastewater that leaks out of defective pipe joints and cracks may contaminate ground and surface water and cause a host of other problems, including pipe structure failures due to erosion of soil support, and ground subsidence due to erosion of underground soil.