Garvey, Peter, Garvey

Garvey, Peter

Peter Garvey is a Vice President with Dewberry Engineers, where he has worked since 2006. A graduate of Trinity College Dublin and University of Virginia, he has over 30 years of experience in the clean water industry. Peter served as a WEF Delegate from 2020-2023 and recently began a 3-year term as WEF Delegate at Large. He is a member of NEWEA, VWEA and CWEA. He is a registered progferssional engineer in MA, NH, NY, CT NH.

Titles from this speaker

Description: Assessing the Vulnerability of a Wastewater Treatment Facility to Anticipated...

Assessing the Vulnerability of a Wastewater Treatment Facility to Anticipated Climate Change Impacts

Abstract

This presentation will describe the funding mechanism obtained for the assessment, the strategy employed for assessing the vulnerability of the WWTP and the recommended solutions from the assessment to increase the resilience of the facility. Wastewater treatment facilities are often sited in locations which give them high exposure to negative impacts of climate change. Understanding the potential impacts of that exposure to maintaining operations is a critical part of ensuring a reliable and dependable service to the public Located near the mouth of the Merrimack River, in northeast Massachusetts, the City of Newburyport's WWTP provides secondary treatment to domestic and commercial wastewater flow generated within the City and treats approximately 3.5 million gallons per day (MGD) of raw sewage.â€¯â€¯The WWTP also lies within the current FEMA annual flood plain, making it vulnerable to flooding from significant precipitation events and storm surge. Given the its location, the City had significant concerns about the WWTP's exposure to anticipated climate change and sea level rise impacts, and potential impacts on the operations of the facility. During a king tide in 2019, water had encroached onto the WWTP site and the City urgently proceeded with an assessment of the vulnerability to the WWTP in the short and long term. Funding Massachusetts office of Coastal Zone Management (CZM) oversees a program of Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness (MVP) Grants to support municipalities to build resilience to climate change. Dewberry worked closely with the City to prepare a grant application for the MVP program for an assessment of the WWTP climate change exposure. The City was fortunate to be awarded $160,000 in June 2019 for the effort.
Vulnerability Assessment Strategy The strategy employed will be detailed during the presentation in the following phases of the vulnerability assessment:
SITEâ€¯- A comprehensive program of data collection was undertaken to make sure that the available information necessary and useful to the assessment was gathered and presented in a beneficial manner. We created a GIS geodatabase of the site using this information which was used to track water intrusion. The database now allows the City to manage its assets for operations and maintenance.
RISK â€“ We developed a climate risk assessment comparison tool to measure the effects of stressors including sea level rise, coastal storm surge, increased precipitation, wind intensity and increased heat. Data sources used to inform this assessment also included Massachusetts Climate Change Municipal Vulnerability, FEMA, NOAA and NOAA Hurricane Center, and National Weather Services.
FACILITY â€“ Impact assessments were performed for critical componentsâ€¯such asâ€¯electrical power systems, headworks, influent wet well, influent pumps, clarifiers, aeration system, sludge pumping, disinfection system, effluent pumping, and structures. A loss of any of these systems would reduce or halt operations. This set of information allowed us to identify the intersection between the critical components of the WWTP and the anticipated impacts of climate change on the site. Assessment of this intersection allowed understanding of the key needs for protection and led to development of solutions to support protection.
Development of Recommended Solutions With a balanced focus on nature based and engineered solutions, a series of solutions were developed to provide the protection determined to be necessary for different climate change scenarios. These solutions included deployable barrier walls, green infrastructure, back check valves on drainage outfalls, submersible pumps and emergency effluent pumps; coastal Berm with recreation path, flood walls, stormwater pumping station on WWTP property, tide check valves on outfalls (sewer and storm). The proposed solutions were then presented to City leadership to support proposed investment for ensuring continuity of operations. This presentation is an excellent primer for those seeking to learn more about assessing climate change vulnerability risks, the types of solutions that can be applied to mitigate the risks, and a framework for selecting the most appropriate solutions. This approach can be applied to WWTPs and other critical infrastructure.

The WWTF of Newburyport, MA is adjacent to the Merrimack River and Newburyport harbor. As a result it is exposed to the potential risks of climate change and sea level rise. This paper details the journey we took with the City to identify and secure funding for a vulnerability assessment of the WWTF, the assessment of the vulnerabilities and the suite of potential solutions that were developed to protect the WWTF from these vulnerabilities.

SpeakerGarvey, Peter

Presentation time

09:00:00

09:15:00

Session time

08:30:00

10:00:00

TopicFundamental Level, Resilience, Disaster Planning and Recovery, Sustainability and Climate Change

Author(s)

Garvey, Peter

Author(s)Peter B. Garvey1; Patrick Ronan2

Author affiliation(s)Dewberry Engineers Inc., Boston, MA1; Dewberry Engineers Inc., New York City, NY2

SourceProceedings of the Water Environment Federation

Document typeConference Paper

PublisherWater Environment Federation

Print publication date Oct 2022

DOI10.2175/193864718825158512

Volume / Issue

Content sourceWEFTEC

Word count14

Description: Needle in a Haystack? Found it ! How to Locate Green Stormwater Infrastructure in...

Needle in a Haystack? Found it ! How to Locate Green Stormwater Infrastructure in Dense Urban Environments

Abstract

Mini Abstract Finding locations to implement green infrastructure in dense urban environments, to meet the many necessary and cumulative siting criteria is generally a headache, time-consuming and prone to errors. This presentation will describe our automated/innovative GIS based tool which identifies locations that meet all stated criteria for GIS implementation. As an added bonus, the tool also estimates the pollutant removal ability of selected GI locations. ABSTRACT Introduction — Green Stormwater Infrastructure (GSI) makes use of plants, soils, permeable materials, and other landscaping features to capture and filter stormwater and recharge groundwater. It brings community benefits that range from flood control, water quality improvements to a reduction in urban heat island effect. GSI differs from gray infrastructure in that it typically manages/treats stormwater where it falls — gray infrastructure typically conveys the stormwater to another location. Challenge - If your municipality is a dense urban environment, or has densely packed sectors, you know by now that identifying suitable locations for GSI installations is a major challenge. The distributed nature of GSI and the numerous constraints and conflicts in these environments make GSI siting and installation challenging, time consuming and prone to error. We present our innovative solution — a better way to identify GSI locations in your dense urban environment. Solution — Our team developed a tool (Using ArcGIS Model Builder and Python Scripting) to assist with determining the feasibility of installing GSI across the entire City of Somerville in Massachusetts — the most densely populated municipality in New England. Somerville has a population of approximately 80,000 people within its four square miles — that's about 20,000 people per square mile. This tool utilizes available GIS layers, topographic data, and satellite imagery data to identify potential GSI candidate areas on the public right-of-way (roadway, sidewalks, and other general areas such as parks) based on cumulative siting parameters that apply to each GSI solution. In the case of the City of Somerville, to be considered eligible for consideration of a GSI install, a location must meet all of thirteen separate criteria such as minimum clearance from existing utilities, buildings, crosswalks/driveways, trees and parking meters, appropriate ground surface slope, with appropriate soil types. Only when all of these criteria are met is a location considered eligible. Determining this intersection of criteria meeting is very time consuming in the traditional manner — (using multiple separate data sources with a trial-and-error approach — particularly in a dense urban environment - the 'Reactive Approach' [Figure 2].). A simplified 'Venn Diagram [Figure 1]' approach, using only 5 of the 13 criteria, will be presented to portray the challenges of finding eligible locations. Only the gray section at the center of the Venn Diagram represents areas meeting all 5 criteria. The innovative tool identifies locations within the City (or parts of the City) that meet all of the siting criteria ('Proactive Approach' - Figure 3 shows a section of the City with the tool applied. Only the areas shaded in green meet all of the 13 GSI criteria. — and are therefore eligible for GSI siting consideration.) In dense urban environments, these sites are often few and far between — essentially like looking for a 'needle in a haystack'. Use of the tool avoids the need for an iterative/inefficient 'manual/reactive' approach to identifying these locations. Boots-on-the-ground are still needed to make the 'final call' on appropriateness of each location identified by the tool — allowing Engineer and the City to focus efforts on application of engineering judgement and stakeholder concerns and not on the trial-and-error process for initial location clearance. This significantly reduced the amount of time and effort it would have taken to perform a preliminary/traditional GSI Siting analysis City-wide. This tool can be adapted and scaled for use with other municipalities and for other siting analyses (utility siting, environmental permitting, etc.) This presentation will compare the approach, process and benefits of the newly developed application/tool with traditionally-used approaches. Key Aspects: -An efficient and accurate preliminary GSI siting analysis -Simplified analysis, using existing data sets and reducing field work -Customizable for different GSI Siting criteria -Adaptable and scalable for other siting analyses types Participants in this presentation will develop an understanding of gray vs green infrastructure, the types of Green infrastructure appropriate for dense urban environments, the multiple criteria that must be met for a location to be considered eligible for GSI siting, the application of the siting tool, and potential enhancements to the tool as well as other potential uses for this type of innovative approach.

This paper was presented at the WEF Collection Systems and Stormwater Conference, April 9-12, 2024.

SpeakerGarvey, Peter

Presentation time

11:15:00

11:45:00

Session time

10:45:00

11:45:00

SessionGreen Infrastructure and Nature Based Solutions Part 1

Session number16

Session locationConnecticut Convention Center, Hartford, Connecticut

TopicAsset Management, GIS, Green Infrastructure, Natural Treatment Systems, Policy, Legal, Legislation, and Regulation, Research, Surface Water, Wastewater Management