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System planning
Planning and building new wastewater infrastructure is extremely complex. It can easily take a decade or more to go from identifying a project need to cutting the ribbon on a newly completed facility.
King County is updating our wastewater plan to guide long-term investments and meet the challenges ahead. An updated plan will help us prepare our wastewater system to meet the growing needs of the future, including:
- Impacts from climate change
- Upgrades to aging infrastructure
- Evolving water quality requirements from federal and state regulators
- Increasing needs for wastewater services to support a growing population
We have decisions to make about our wastewater system that will cost billions of dollars in the future. Updating our wastewater plan is also an opportunity to make strategic investments in the communities we serve.
A vision for protecting water quality
To guide this work, we are developing a vision of where we want our regional wastewater system to be by the year 2100. This is an opportunity to envision what we want for our wastewater system for the next 75 years. We are engaging decision-makers, employees, community groups and other interested and affected parties to provide input on what they care about so that the vision broadly reflects our region’s values.
How does WTD comply with the Growth Management Act?
Under the state's Growth Management Act (Municipal Research and Services Center), local jurisdictions are required to plan essential public facilities such as wastewater treatment to meet their population growth needs. King County is in turn legally required to build wastewater treatment capacity for the jurisdictions and agencies it serves in the central Puget Sound region.
To ensure planning decisions reflect the interest of the regional ratepayers, who ultimately pay for these investments, King County carefully reviews local comprehensive plans and compares growth projections to census data and population forecasts prepared by the Puget Sound Regional Council. The county also looks at its own wastewater flow and monitoring data, and further truth-tests projections by running the data through sophisticated system models to determine where future system capacity might be needed. King County's modeling data has historically proved highly accurate and reliable.
System planning is an area in which King County and its sewer utility customers work together closely
The 34 local sewer agencies that pay King County for safe, environmentally responsible sewage treatment are represented by the Metropolitan Water Pollution Abatement Advisory Committee, or MWPAAC (pronounced "Mew-Pack").
MWPAAC members help ensure we're making cost-effective decisions based on legitimate, emerging needs by working with the county to develop criteria to prioritize and plan projects.
Once project needs are identified, the county develops plans that it shares with MWPAAC's engineering subcommittee and other stakeholders, which might include local elected officials and jurisdiction staff, business leaders, permitting agencies and community members.
The King County Council and County Executive review the comprehensive plans, and only after the council votes its approval do plans for new projects move forward.