The Challenge of Providing Future Infrastructure in an Environment of Limited Resources, New Technologies, and Changing Social Paradigms Proceedings of a Colloquium, March 24, 1995 (1995) / Chapter Skim
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Horizontal Integration of Infrastructure Services: The New York City Experience
Horizontal Integration of Infrastructure Services: The New York City Experience
Pages 23-44
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From page 23... ...
~ have left outside two or three pieces of material that ~ will refer to during the course of this presentation that ~ thought might be helpful and be worm some of your review. In addressing He topic, "The Challenge of Providing Future Infrastructure in an Environment of Limited Resources, New Technologies, and Changing Social Paradigms," ~ am going to focus on limited resources and changes necessary to deal with those issues in the future.
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From page 24... ...
In addition, we have provided capped and subsidy rates for affordable housing, increased our construction budget by 50 percent to about $750 million, (this in a period of lower unit cost) and added over 500 people and to make a major dent in, although not completely eliminating, the department's backlog of preventive and deferred maintenance.
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From page 25... ...
~ want to suggest that what we call adaptive planning, or we sometimes call action research-and ~ will talk about this a little more later-is really a very critical step to take for the future. Another step ~ think is very important is to move from expertise and mandated criteria to goal~riven criteria; that is, to use an example that is very much debated today, tile increasing rigidity of environmental mandates.
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From page 26... ...
~ also believe that we need to move from open-ended processes, particularly open-ended regulatory and participatory processes where the default decision is no action, to closed-ended processes where we assume we are going to act, and therefore make the best kind of decision on available information. A very good example of this is the deadlock the country is facing in dealing with the issue of mini-estuaries and dredge material disposal.
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From page 27... ...
First, we as a culture have an enormous bias for capital versus labor solutions. However, many times in the DEP water utility experience, we found that spending money to add head count-that is why we added 500 people at a time when the city was downsizing very dramatically-saved us the necessity of doing major capital projects by changing our ability to maintain and operate the system.
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From page 28... ...
That is, time and again, we would have people with 20 years of engineering or scientific expertise, and they would have to put their expert judgment into predetermined responses-predetermined procurement responses, predetermined regulatory responses, predetermined financial responses. In moving to a more entrepreneurial form of setting infrastructure policy on an integrated basis, we also need to see the flip side, and it is not the way it sounds when first described.
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From page 29... ...
Debt service is already close to half of the entire revenue stream of the department; 60 percent of the remainder is nonpersonnel costs, and 20 percent of We budget is personnel service. The main reason that the water rates were escalating in the late 198Os and the early 199Os is the capital program, driven by environmental mandates and a political decision to avoid
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From page 30... ...
A last drop, in 1992, comes from, in effect, just pushing the management of the existing sewage treatment plants. That is, tightening up the management of the sewage system, putting in pretreatment programs throughout the city, tightening up the operations within the sewage plant system itself, doing some very minor, small scale technology stuff.
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From page 31... ...
It has dramatically lowered our water use and essentially eliminated the need for both new sewage treatment plant construction and going into the Hudson River on a day-to-day basis. So we were able to take billions upon billions of dollars out of the capital budget, both from He planning sides of it and the projected future operating expenses.
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From page 32... ...
We added to that plan a restoration of the entire undeveloped portion of both sides of the basin, a wetland restoration at the mouth of the basin, and the creation of a nonmotorized boating area, which does not exist elsewhere in New York City, in the mile above the marinas at the head of the basin. We put community facilities into the headworks for the CSO, and we had a restoration plan for Me businesses affected by the construction at the basin.
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From page 33... ...
I want to emphasize this, because having talked about the Jamaica Bay program that had so many soft elements, ~ want to say that here is a solution that rejected soft elements in favor of a pure technology solution because it was faster and more reliable.
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From page 34... ...
Instead of the regulatory attempts that have been made over the years to control wetlands, and have just produced bitter and useless controversy, we went in and our sewage engineers, that is our sewage planners, working with some environmentalists, redesigned all the stream corridors as essentially natural storm water drainage. We then used the saving from that program to buy all the stream corridors and we netted a savings of at least $50 million in terms of storm water construction.
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From page 35... ...
And knowing that they did not have the up-front funding, we further put in a $300 million toilet-rebate program, which is privatized, to allow them to essentially do this kind of investment. Tile City is now very comfortably looking forward to its water use going below 1,200 million gallons a day by the end of the decade, which is essentially Nirvana.
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From page 36... ...
That is, we have a piece of infrastructure that is sitting around, and we are operating at only 60 percent capacity; we have only 60 percent of our infrastructure. The biggest single piece of operating savings-} have talked about capital savings, but we did operating savings as well-came when our clean water bureau was able to push the rated capacity of our sludge dewatering units from 20 to 24 percent-which is our projection, our initial operating experienc-to 29 to 32 percent.
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From page 37... ...
The way the Jamaica Bay plan worked presentationally was, we were able to identify key concerns for constituencies one at a time, to make sure they were dealt with, so that when people saw what would have seemed to be a radical departure, they also saw the benefits. That is, they got it in a package.
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From page 38... ...
Let me close with a favorite story of mine about the old system. ~ went to a watershed planning conference once and ~ saw six of We most beautiful GIS presentations you would ever
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From page 39... ...
Now by raising the entire floor of the bay to a depth of IS feet, you essentially shallow He bay, lower the volume of water, so it has to move faster to get through. And therefore you essentially restore close to the historical tidal period, with all the benefits ~ described.
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From page 40... ...
What we did is we first created internally-having this information based on these ongoing relationships-a package we thought would, if not work, at least force a constructive debate. And then when that package was ready, rather than go through the developmental process, then we took it into the normal participatory processes we had with the community.
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From page 41... ...
But basically the nice thing about a public process, once people see it is real, is two or three people step forward and take some leadership. We did not talk here about the agricultural program we developed in the watershed, which is really a nifty model program that the farmers themselves run.
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From page 42... ...
What we are looking at is a system of rail freight export to descend, as we did for sludge export in the city, that would then provide the cash flow to justify reinvestment in rail freight infrastructure. So you solve both a rail problem and a waste problem.
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From page 43... ...
Appleton is currently evaluating "smart infrastructure" projects for RPA's Third Regional Plan. He was formerly Commissioner of the New York City Department of Environmental Protection where he reengineered the organization and finances and integrated its engineering and environmental programs as part of an overall strategic business plan.
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