Oral History Interview

Interviewee: David Marshall
Interviewer: Mark Olson
February 13, 2024

Mark O: Welcome back to Beneath the Surface, an oral history project of the Tarrant Regional Water District. This is our opportunity to spend time with some people who have spent much of their career life working at the water district. It’s also a chance for us to capture their insight on the projects they’ve worked on over the decades.

Hello. My name is Mark Olson, senior video producer here at TRWD. Today is Tuesday, February 13th. And today we’re in for a real treat. Our guest is David Marshall.

David worked at the water district for 35 years. He started his career here working on water quality out of the Eagle Mountain Lake Office for the Environmental Department. But he ended his career leading the Engineering Department and was a pivotal influence in some of the most consequential projects the district has been a part of the last three decades. He recently retired in November 2023.

So, it is a true pleasure to welcome David back to the office here in Fort Worth. Before we get started, I just want to say David is one of the coolest cucumbers among engineers that you’ll ever run across. DavidÖ

David M: Thank you.

Mark O: Welcome. Okay, so it hasn’t been too long since your retirement, but it has been a long time since you started working here. So, if you could do us a favor and take us back to what it was like when you started. Tell us about your early beginnings. Tell us also where you got your engineering degree and how you ended up working here at the water district.

David M: To start with, my first degree was actually from Penn State in forest science and natural sciences, and that’s really where I wanted to go. And I specialized in entomology at that time. So, I was working for the Northeast Forest Experiment Station out of Connecticut, and the government decided to shut down all their bug programs. So I was put out on the street, competing against PhDs.

So I decided to take some time off from reality. And I became a mechanic for several years and would work long enough until I had money saved that I could do a big backpack or mountain climb.

And so I did that. And then a friend of mine lived in Albuquerque. I moved to Albuquerque and, started going to school there part time. And I also got a job with the U.S. Geological Survey as a water quality technician there.

Mark O: Can you fill us in on the year?

David M: This was 1978. And so that kind of steered my career path into water quality, into water. So, I worked on a master’s degree there, as well as, working full time for the USGS. And it allowed me to really know the fundamentals of true streamflow because I ran three quarters of the gauging stations in New Mexico. And so I got to experience, you know, what collecting data was really like, the quality of the data. And then from the professional side, also how to use it, especially with my master’s degree working there. So University, New Mexico is where I got my first engineering degree.

Then we moved here. My wife had a job with the Texas Instruments. So, and at that time again, I was exploring, trying to find where to go. Also, I was enrolled at UT Arlington for my PhD program.

And so, I got a job with Plummer, Allen Plummer Associates, when he was very small. I was one of, like, six engineers on staff. And his office really grew pretty quickly. And we became clients of Tarrant Regional Water District. Or Tarrant Regional Water District was one of our clients. And that’s how I got to know the district. Because, I did a lot of mathematical simulation of water quality for the district. And met Jim Oliver. And Jim was the one that invited me to come over. And so I did.

When I got to the district here, I developed our sampling program and trained all the, the technicians how to really sample for good quality control work. And also set up stream models and lake models, for us to do simulation work to see where we really needed to put our money in water quality.

Mark O: So what time frame are we talking about here?

David M: This was 1988. (okay). And so I started in November of 88 and worked in water quality till the spring of 1990, when one of our major floods hit. And so they asked me to come down, to try to help work on the flood. And with that, really showed them how to use basic hydrology in a spreadsheet model to predict what the floods were like.

And at that time, for instance, like the Jacksboro gauge, there was only five gauges in the West Fork. Very sparse information, but the Jacksboro gauge always flooded. So, we had a person out there phoning in the staff gauge every couple hours so we could translate what the streamflow was to make predictions on lake levels.

And so after that flood was over, they decided to create an Engineering services department, and it was developed from a group called Technical Services, where Mike Meza was the person who ran that. And they really looked at operations. Did a pretty good job on monitoring power and staying within our tariffs. And so with that staff, they were… none of them were trained in engineering. But they had some really good on the job training experience. So I worked with them to further looking at how our operations really worked. And develop with them risk based operations, which is something they hadn’t done before, which allowed us to to look at the probability of events happening and to determine what the best path was. And given we could set a certain amount of risks where the operation, if it performed admirably 80% of the time. That’s what we went with. That 20%, again, we’d have to add more pumps or change our how we were operating. But so it was a real start of making a more sophisticated operations procedure.

Because before that, Freese Nichols had developed some basic memos on here’s what you do. And it was cookbooks. So they followed that. And if I got out of bounds in either direction, it was, there were problems.

Mark O: So this is with regards to bringing water supplies from our East Texas reservoirs into the Fort Worth area, into Tarrant County.

David M: Right. At that time, it was, the Cedar Creek pipeline was the only operational pipeline. Richland-Chambers was just trying to be started. And we only had Lake Arlington to fill. So it was a fairly basic system, and with a spreadsheet it worked pretty well.

And then with the Richland project, there was lots of issues. Because of that, I got to experience things that I had never really worked on too much. Pipeline issues, pump station issues, especially the pumps that the lake pumps had more miles going back and forth to California, and they had hours of operation on it.

And so working through all those issues on the Richland project to get it up and functional, provided me with tremendous background on learning what I had to do and working with vendors and a lot of engineers to help educate me. So, it was a good experience. One that was not in my bailiwick to start with, but I rapidly caught on and developed the skills necessary for that.

And also like the Richland spillway. Whenever the lake first filled the field pretty rapidly. We started to see some leaks inside the gallery. So again, red flags went off and we had to develop a big program on monitoring the movement of the spillway and working with Freese and Nichols on stability, as well as in bringing in other experts from the Corps of Engineers and private consultants to find the best path to make sure there wasn’t any kind of a potential for catastrophic issues with that.

And while that… I continued working with water quality. We set up a gauging network to improve our, looking at what was coming down in the rivers. And with a gauge network, we also used that for our flood control. So, we started to get a little more sophisticated in our flood control operations and went from those five gauges to probably 20 or 30 in a matter of five years. So that really helped us make our estimates of what lake levels would be for peaks and potential flooding much more sophisticated.

Mark O: So I have a question. So was all this incorporated into some sort of modeling? Is within a computer, right? (Right). So you’re just entering in this data and based on this model that you’ve been tweaking over the course of time, it’s kind of telling you what the inflows are so that you can anticipate how fast the lake’s going to go up? Or, how fast it’s going to rise?

David M: And our gate operation switch were critical because, again, with the flooding potential on all three reservoirs in the West Fork for houses, we wanted to make sure we minimized that damage. And it was always a balancing act. So the more information we had, the better it was.

Also, at that time, I got to work with Harold Johnson, who was head of operations in East Texas. And he was about to retire. Mike Meza was moving into his position. And so he helped me on construction projects, on repairs that needed to be done.

The Bridgeport discharge channel, was never a stable channel. So one of the first big projects we did was to put a plunge pool in there and then downstream, some check dams to control the erosion in the channel. And Harold ran that pretty well with a couple of folks from engineering. Dale White and Glen Sanderson overseeing the day to day operations there. And I did the design work. So that was some of my first real designs on, you know, big concrete structures.

Mark O: That’s pretty cool.

David M: It was it was real fun. It was a learning experience.

Mark O: What year are we looking at here?

David M: That was probably 1992. (Okay) . All that work. Wesley Cleveland had come on board in 1991 and his forte was construction and construction management. So again, we really started to improve the technical abilities of engineering services. And I was able to hire some engineers to help me. Usually they were EIT’s just out of school. But again, it provided for more robust staff to to really take on more technical issues. And I didn’t have to do it all.

And then along with what was going on, we started having pipeline issues, pipeline failures. And there was about one a month. And, so there was a great unknown. At that time there was no inspection program for the pipelines. And it was happening across the country.

So, I was able to to connect with, the PCCP users group, which was started in Colorado, from the Bureau of Reclamation. Because they, again, we’re always having the same issues. And so with that group, we were able to put our funds together to do some exploratory analysis of remediation and inspection techniques for large pipe.
Mark O: And so the pipeline that we’re talking about here is the Cedar Creek pipeline?

David M: Cedar Creek and Richland, both. (Okay). Richland the first five times we started the pump station up, we had leaks. And it was unusual that it was what was called thrust restraint where the pipe was flexing, twisting, and tearing the cylinder. Hadn’t been seen before.

And again working with Freese and Nichols, Lee Freese was an expert in pipelines. So, I worked with him quite a bit and actually then became part of the American Waterworks Association Pressure Pipe Committee to develop the standards for construction of the pipelines and how they were to be maintained.

And so with our problems, I finally got those into the specifications on thrust restraint. For instance, it took eight years of working with the committee. But again, they understood that what we saw was there was a potential for design problems in the soft soils we have here that wasn’t accounted for in the standards.

So again, it allowed me to have exposure with the nation’s best engineers, which helped the district tremendously. And also, during that time then, I developed the Technical Advisory Committee, which was the operators of the water plants for all our customers. And that became a monthly meeting. And then agin working with, in the flood control side of things, did the interagency coordination, which was the USGS, the Corps of Engineers, the weather Service, even BRA and Dallas joined in that group.

So, we coordinate our activities and again, direct what kind of research we needed to go; how we could improve our communications among the agencies during flood events. So a lot of it was just developing lines of communication beyond just the district, but into the greater water community, which really, really helped us a whole lot.

And we spent a lot of time working on inspection techniques; brought a lot of people in that had tried some new techniques. And again, Lee Freese knew that the electromagnetic inspections were just around the corner. So I got to meet with a professor from Queen’s University that was developing it with his grad student. Came down. Got a grant from the Water Research Foundation and built that technology a little bit better. So, they actually had some real promise. And that’s what we’ve used ever since – Is the the electromagnetic inspections of the pipelines to determine the number of broken wires.

And we got into the fundamental ground floor of it. So, we were used as a test case and really able to solve a lot of the anomalies that they were reading from the readings, by working with them, taking pipe out of the ground, and inspecting it.

And from that, we’re able to really have some confidence in finding damaged segments. And then replace them in an orderly fashion so that we weren’t having to replace entire miles of pipelines, but rather individual segments. And that work still continues on today.

Mark O: So it’s my understanding that with that program, there was a tremendous amount of financial savings that resulted in being able to target these individual pipe segments for repair versus what you’re talking about and just like replacing certain percentages along the way, right?

David M: Exactly. It was it was a huge savings. It cost us about 4% of total replacement cost for the entire program. And we did a root cause analysis to determine what the issues really were. And from that, we determined that we needed to cathodically protect the pipeline. We knew that some of those pipe segments would be damaged from cathodic protection, but they were a small number compared to the damage from corrosion. So, we instituted that. And again, that was another development in the standard for the American Waterworks that came into being from the work we did.

And so again, we hired engineers, corrosion engineers. At that time, there were very few that were willing to even touch prestressed concrete cylinder pipe because it had so many issues. But we developed a successful three-mile test program. Learned from that. And then expanded it to the whole system. And over the years our people put those cathodic protection anodes in the ground. Over a number, probably 6 or 7 years. And with that group, we were able to hire folks as labor force. And that labor force, they became full time district personnel, like Skinner, for instance. Jonathan Skinner is from that. Danny Hayes. They came on board as you know, green is gourds. But, learned and just, you know, and again, their skills were just exceptional.They, you know, they were able to able to go through the ranks just because they, they were such talented people. So that was a great experience to bring people on board. You know, test their mettle before we hired them as real folks.

Mark O: That is cool. That’s cool. Go ahead.

David M: I was going to say. And then with that, we started having, you know, much more in the way of capital improvements and construction projects. And the first one I worked on was with city of Fort Worth, actually, for the intake of Eagle Mountain. And I cut my teeth on that. Got to meet Ted Gay from Freese and Nichols, who… It’s an education in yourself when you meet Ted. But he, again, showed me the ropes. And from that we’re able to really grasp and go forward.

So, we started to develop our own standards and specifications in-house on everything that had gone wrong in the past to make sure we never repeated an incident again. And then Eddie Weaver, was in pipeline. And again, he was working on his industrial technology degree. A great resource starting from the welding shop. He knew the nuts and bolts coming up into the, to troubleshooting. He was phenomenal. So he became, in engineering, as well. And, you know, with his talent, we were able to really finesse our designs and construction.

And with Wesley on construction again, he knew what not to do. So we were able to, to really successfully, build some projects with minimal risk. And every time we learned from a project, we would incorporate that into the next project.

One of the biggest unknowns, like on the Eagle Mountain connection, was we did borings every thousand feet. And we missed a 400-foot pocket of quicksand, which ended up costing us about $1.1 million to lay that 400-feet of pipe.

And so whenever we did IPL (Integrated Pipeline), we went through and did a more sophisticated analysis using geophysics to look for anomalies. And again, just to reduce that risk. So, everything we did was, you know, based on improving reliability, reducing risk.And doing that in a cost effective manner.

Mark O: Okay, let’s back up for just a second. You mentioned the Eagle Mountain connection. I believe that was a 2006 to 2008 timeline project. Why did that, how did that one come about?

David M: That was, that one… actually, it was Lee Freese that came up with the idea that we should try to connect the West Fork to the pipeline system. And it didn’t produce any more water, but what it produced was a higher reliability. Because in the past, Fort Worth would have to shut down water production on the West Fork. Move it to the pipeline. So that meant it had to expand Rolling Hills for that one in ten-year event. So, they had a lot of capital improvements sitting idle nine out of ten years.

And with the Eagle Mountain connection, we were able to add Eagle Mountain to keep its level from dropping as dramatically. And they could continue running the Eagle Mountain Water Plant and the Holly Plant at full steam.

And so it was a $140 million project. Provided us no additional water, but just reliability. And again, the customers saw that the need for reliability. Because we had our water supply pretty well secured at that time for the growing population. But our reliability on, on the East Texas pipelines was… everything came out of East Texas. And by adding it to Eagle Mountain, it provided us that flexibility to allow us, to Fort Worth especially, during drought years to continue their operation. Not have to invest heavily in capital projects that would sit idle so much of the time. And so it went from a one in ten-year event to a one and 99-year event for the the West Fork being down. So, it really improved the situation there.

And that was also the first time we looked at using steel pipe, instead of pressure, concrete pressure pipe. And that was a learning experience for us. And we got to go to see some jobs that were in operation. Find out what contractors liked and didn’t like. What worked and what didn’t work. And so with that, the Eagle Mountain connection was built with steel pipe for the first time for us.

Mark O: So, what you’re saying is that that connection could have been built with concrete pipe, but (you were) based on your previous experience with concrete pipe, wanting to do something different that was more reliable, like you’re talking about?

David M: Well, actually, we still had concrete pipe in there that if you wanted, if the contractor wanted to bid it with concrete pipe, it was acceptable. We had improved the design standards stuff for concrete pipe that we assumed it was reliable. And it has proven since that time that the concrete pipe now is just as reliable as steel pipe, but that that stigma of these catastrophic failures had everyone frightened.

So, we let the market determine what was best. And the market showed that steel pipe was actually more economical for us. But again, we had to make sure that with steel pipe cathodic protection was on there from day one because rust never sleeps. So, we had to ensure that, you know, the pipe was protected, trying to get that 100-year life.

And again, learning as we went along. Because we found that the way we coated the joints where they were welded together, it was shrink sleeves, they recall where they were put on with heat. Sometimes they were done well, sometimes they were done poorly. So again, we had a dig up where we tested those to make sure that our inspection programs during construction were, were proper. And the contractor was following the proper procedures.

And again, with all the failures we had on the the Richland project, whenever it first came online, we upped our quality control work and all the components. You know, we now send people across the world to inspect products before they delivered here. And that was a result of the Richland project, where we had such failure so rapidly on so many pieces of equipment. So, our quality control and quality assurance programs now for capital purchases is, is really rigorous and making sure that our product is good every time.

And the same with we had inspectors at all the pipeline manufacturing plants. I can remember an Eagle Mountain connection Dean Kuhn rejected a piece of pipe. He called me and said, ‘I’m going to do it. I’m going to do it.’ I said, ‘Dean, you’re the person there. You’re, you know, you’re authorized to say this pipe is bad. And so really empowering Dean to say what was good and bad was… it was good to see that he was willing to take on that role and really be critical about what they did.

So with that quality control, we made sure that every stick of pipe met the standard we were after because, you know, a pipeline is as weak as its weakest link. So one bad segment could take the system down. And with that quality assurance that we had developed in our inspection programs, we were really confident we were put the best we could put in the ground.

Mark O: So we talked about the Eagle Mountain pipeline. There’s another pipeline project that we’ve been working on and actually still working on it, but have sections of it complete, that came about in what I find is kind of a serendipitous fashion. Can you talk about that a little bit?

David M: The integrated pipeline was an idea that, well, our first meeting with Dallas was in 1993. I met with Kevin McCarthy because they had the water in in Palestine and knew they had to get it here to to Fort Worth. So, it didn’t go very far those first few years. But we started both Dallas’ and TRWD’s demands were rapidly picking up. Our growth was phenomenal for both cities. And we saw the need that we had to have that kind of transmission capabilities pretty soon.

So, in the early 2000s, we began a little more earnest conversation on let’s look at a joint line. So we did a preliminary work looking at alternatives for pipelines and how they could benefit each, each of the agencies. And from that, about 2010 or 11, I believe, we started really working with CDM to look at a business case analysis. The business case showed that it would save us about half a billion dollars in capital costs if we both joined together on a large, large pipeline compared to what each of us needed. And that energy costs as well, because of such a large line, for most of the years, we’d be running far below capacity. So, our friction losses were much less, and our energy costs, again, would be, you know, in the hundreds of millions of dollars of savings over the life of the project.

And with that, we were able to, you know, get through the business case, develop a good relationship with Dallas, a fair contract and how we split up the costs for the pipeline, and for the maintenance and operations. So we started again looking on, what are the risks involved in that? And one of it is it’s 108-inch diameter pipe for most of the line, and that large diameter is not built very often. So, we did a two mile test section between Lake Arlington and the balancing reservoir. And it was called line J. And we had the four major pipeline construction people. Each had a half mile segment on there, so they could see if they could actually build a 108-inch diameter pipe successfully and economically. And by doing that, they were able to really reduce their, their risk dollars in the bids. So when the bids came in for the pipeline, it was far less than anticipated by the engineers we had working on the project.

So, there was true economical savings for us by doing that test section, working on all the bugs. So those people knew they could build that pipe successfully and what it cost them.

Since then has been just construction project after project. And we also shot for a 100 year life cycle on that pipe. So, we explored, for instance, like the coatings. Southern Nevada Water District, which supplies from Lake Mead to Las Vegas, had done a whole lot of work on coatings. We hired their coating engineers to further that work. And working with like Northwest Pipe and Hanson to find out really what the best way to coat that pipe would be with a polyurethane coating. It came up with the fact that it couldn’t sit out for more than six months, and we had additional thickness in that pipe just for that oxidation. And also it had to be a kind of a tan color because that repelled the sunrays rather than the typical blue we were using.
So again, we built from the pipeline community improvements in our design specifications. And spread that across any utility that wanted to use that work because it was really groundbreaking on making sure that that this coating lasted for the hundred year life we were after.

And again, it so much of this is taking it beyond just TRWD. Taking it to the wider water community to get everyone’s experiences in and also then to give back to the community what we learned. So, it was a really interesting project.

Mark O: Yeah. So, let’s jump back a little bit to get a little bit more perspective on this 100-year life for a project which I imagine is just, like, that’s not the usual life that most people are trying to bid on their projects. So, how did we get from going after low bid stuff to incorporating different aspects of projects into, or incorporating these aspects so that we could evaluate it, not just based on how much it’s going to cost, but based on the value that we’re going to get out of it over the life of the project.

David M: Well, yeah, whenever I first started here, it was low bid took the contract. And then we moved to look at a lifecycle analysis, what it would cost us versus how long the project would last. And that’s really what started for us to look at, not the lowest bid, but the best bid.

And for instance, on pumps, we actually had an efficiency rating that they had to meet. And if they met that rating and improved upon it, we would pay them more money. If they didn’t meet that, it would be a penalty to that contract. So, we had pump manufacturers really working with us on trying to to get the most efficient pump there was. So, their final payment was based on the factory test that they had for that pump.

And again, for the other parts, components of the system, you know, again, we looked at what the potential risks were. For instance, like the valves. A lot of times in the past, we always used butterfly valves. But we couldn’t run a pig through a butterfly valve. And with knowing that zebra mussels were going to contaminate our reservoirs, we had to have the option to be able to pig these big lines.

And Utah, some of the irrigation districts had again broken the ground on that. Able to pig some of these 88 inch diameter to 102 inch diameter lines. So, from their experiences, we came back and decided to put gate valves in, which were much more expensive. And no one had ever built a gate valve for 108-inch diameter line.

So, rather than just trying to upscale from a smaller design to a new design, they started over and worked through a finite element analysis, looking at the stresses and strains in those valves to ensure that it would work successfully. Because our experience had been whenever we had pumps we would buy, they would upscale from a smaller pump. And their performance was sometimes contrary to what you would believe. It didn’t work.

On the risk of the high capacity, they went through 30 sets of impellers, or 30 impellers for ten pumps to get it right. And again, it was Fairbanks Morris. They stood behind their product. But they had just done a basic let’s just scale the pump up and it should work as it did. We found out that really didn’t. It didn’t perform as anticipated.

And the same for the 108-inch diameter pipe. That again, in pipeline design, it was always based what’s called ring theory, which, you know, it’s like a Coke can. That, you know, Coke can’s full. It’s hard to dent. Well, it turns out that by the time you get 108-inch diameter, it’s more like a a liter bottle of plastic. You can put a dent in it with no problem. And you don’t want to have pipe dented. So again, we had to go through some design and it required a little bit thicker steel to understand how to do that properly. So again, it changed the way we did design. And we worked with UTA to for several years looking at, through finite element analysis, what were the risks of these large diameter pipes.

And some things we found, like a Y in the pipe, they built some that just failed right away. And through finite element analysis, we determined that the design standards at the time just really wasn’t effective on these large diameter pipes. They are just different animals. So, it took a lot of research, because you can’t just scale up in engineering and expect it to work properly. And we found that to be the case. And so we tried to really prevent that from happening on such a large project as IPL.

Mark O: Is there anything else that you can think of?

David M: Well, yes. One thing, again, looking at IPL that power failures were always a problem. And in the past, it would drain our tanks pretty quickly. Well, we developed much larger suction basins for these pump stations and a much larger, balancing reservoir for there. So we had, you know, a three day supply of water for Fort Worth should the system shut down. And again, it was able to, we’re able to ride through power outages or any kind of problems and not have an impact on our operation, wherein the other lines, Cedar in Richland, as soon as one shut down, the water plants could get a different blend of water. They’d have to scramble to treat it successfully. So, we learned that we wanted to have a much more robust system in operations.

So, the system was designed not only for best performance for 100 years, but also best operations, knowing that we’re going to see power failures in the future. And, that has proven to be really true. That we’ve had a number of power failures, but able to go through and keep the water plants to have a uniform blend of water, where they wouldn’t have problems treating it.

Mark O: So there were some other considerations that you guys took into, into play with the integrated pipeline in that (you could) we had a right of way for a third pipeline that could have come from both of those reservoirs, but we chose to do this in a different right of way.

David M: Again, that was based on risk analysis, especially for power failures. We wanted to make sure that this new pipeline was on a totally different power supply from the other two. So, in case there was a regional outage, we’d have a much higher opportunity to stay running. And so, yeah, we moved it south, and really it was the electrical grid that kind of showed us where we had to put it to get away from the substations that were powering the, the existing two lines.

And with that, we also planned in the future to have two more lines in the IPL right of way. And same coming from Palestine. That even though we don’t have the water from Palestine, if we ever get another water source to the east, we would have the right of way to put another line in to bring that water to Fort Worth. So, always looking down that 100 year horizon rather than short term.

Mark O: It’s my understanding also that you place this integrated pipeline in the first right of way. There’s, you know, with this pre stressed concrete pipe that we haven’t had the best of luck with over time, that could potentially impact delivery of water here to North Texas.

David M: Exactly. Because with the shared pump stations if one line goes down you have to shut the entire system down. So again, it provided for higher reliability, a much more robust system to move it. And it cost us more money to buy all that right of way. But, you know, it’s looking for, you know, the next 300 years, we have enough right of way to really build enough transmission capacity to, to supply Fort Worth for a very long time.

Mark O: That’s awesome. So, a lot of this stuff and we haven’t said this word yet up to this point. Said a lot about reliability. Resiliency. Sustainability. I know that that’s something that’s very important to you in that you, in the course of your career, kind of strived to move us in that direction.

David M: Yeah, I did. And that’s…it started, like it mentioned, we’ve gone to lifecycle cost for bidding. The next step we took was what’s called a triple bottom line, where we incorporated aspects of, you know, people, planet and cost into choosing what the best design would be and the best bid. And then we took that even further with IPL to look at really what a sustainable project would be. And we were working with the American Society of Civil Engineers. They had a pilot program trying to rate designs on sustainability. So, we got in in part of the beta testing with that group on that first three mile section of line J to test how their rating system worked. And, from that we started to develop a number of ideas. So once the full IPL was under design, we looked at a number of sustainability issues based on the ASCE performance guides on design. And that helped us look at, you know, instead of having to incorporate, for instance, backfill.

Most times we would have backfill coming from Bridgeport because it was good, crushed limestone. It wasn’t available in East Texas. We were able to find certain pockets of gravel within East Texas that we have it blended. But again, we allowed the contractor to have that flexibility to use local materials whenever possible.
And for instance, on Midlothian balancing reservoir in section 14. Midlothian balancing reservoir needed clay. Section 14 was in clay soil. The balancing reservoir was chiseled in rock. They could crush that rock, use it for backfill for the pipeline, and take that clay that was from the pipeline to build the reservoirs. Unfortunately, Theo was the contractor, and they didn’t quite have the concept down successfully to make it really productive for them, as far as it they handled the material too many times. And it wasn’t the best economics for them to build it.

But from a standpoint of sustainability, had they thought that through early on, it would have been a great savings. Because one day of construction on a the IPL usually had about 60 dump trucks, tractor trailers of backfill coming in. So again, tremendous amount of traffic, tremendous amount of dust, and a whole lot of material being moved. And the shorter you can move it, the less, you know, fuel required to move that material.

So, we looked at a lot of different ideas like that, and from that developed a long list of what we can incorporate into future projects. So that was kind of the start of sustainability. Then we tried to branch out, out a bit more into looking at the full enterprise of TRWD and sustainability. And that’s ongoing now. So we’ve just cut our teeth on it, but it’s a long way to go. But the people here have great ideas on how to make the district more sustainable. Because we are just an amazing power user. During one of the droughts 2005-2006, we used 1/1000 of all the power generated in Texas for our operation. So, when it comes to power hogs, we are the power hogs.

And we’ve also evaluated that across the country with the Water Research Foundation. They had a project looking at pumping power and what it took to bring water to individual houses. And we were on the high end of power requirements. So, the need for sustainability was there to really improve our performance as best we could.

And then from that, we also developed a much more in-depth analysis of how we can operate far more sophisticated, using a RiverWare model. And with that, we again looking at projections of climate. You know, the first five days you can get a pretty good, accurate idea what the weather is going to be. But when you’re looking at nine months away, it’s kind of hazy. And so we work with the folks from University of Colorado, as well as if a consulting firm, and able to, in the spring and fall, do a much better projection of what kind of rainfall we’re going to see based on what’s called correlation analysis, where it might be, an area of, you know, the tip of Greenland has certain climate today. How’s that going to reflect here? And we’re able to get about a 70% accurate rating. Accuracy on what our runoff’s are going to be into the reservoirs in the spring and fall, with that correlation analysis, looking at all the global data. So big data had really helped us. And that was just something fairly new that, you know, the weather data hadn’t been global like it has been in the last two decades.

Our sophistication on how we plan our operations now is fully risk based. The hedging of our bet on what the weather is going to be based on much more solid analysis of long-term climate, which is a tough nut to crack.
Mark O: Man, you guys thinking a whole, about a whole lot of stuff. That’s, that’s impressive.

David M: Well, and it all comes down to risk. For instance, we would use our maintenance records and go through what were our failures. And we work with CH2 two different times, over about an eight-year span between them, on trying to identify where we needed to improve our maintenance. What was most important? And it showed that the electrical components of switchgear were always our Achilles heel. And so again, we put a whole lot more energy and effort and resources into maintaining that switchgear so it wouldn’t fail like it had past.

And that advanced then into our asset management program, which built on that initial risk analysis, but also in much, much greater depth. Trying to look at every major component. What could fail in a pump station that would affect our operations? And some things you wouldn’t expect.

They were replacing just a fan in a bathroom, and it shorted out, and it triggered shutdown of the whole station. So again, we learned to look at on every time we had a failure. We did a root cause analysis and improved our operation design not to happen again. But with that, our, asset management program has really reflected that, you know, where we spend our money most importantly. You know, things you can buy a home Depot, run it till it fails and just go buy another one. But something that takes two years to replace, you want to make sure that you have enough analysis of how that equipment is – the condition of it to make sure it’s not going to ever fail and wait for two years (until) we have the next piece of equipment. You know, we either rebuild it or replace it before it fails. And that required a whole lot more analysis of our operation and procedures. But again, with SCADA, we’re able to get a whole lot more in-depth analysis of like the the temperatures of the windings of the pumps The vibration of the bearings and the motors to where we can really say, okay, this is going to start to track abnormally. So, we have to do something about it before it fails. Because anytime you have a failure, it cost so much more than it does to do a refurbishment.

And again, the asset management program started with the pipeline. It’s now progressing to all aspects of district operations and provided us with the highest reliability at the lowest cost. And that was a project that went on for years to really build it. But now it’s really up and functional. And as it continues to grow, we’re able to do it pretty much all in-house. Instead of having consultants come and help us develop the project. The idea was for them to show us, educate us on what to do so we could take over. And that’s what we’ve done.

Mark O: Wow. So, you’ve spent 35 years here at the water district. It’s an incredible amount of time. What kept you here for that long?

David M: Oh, so much of it was you never got bored here. There was always something to learn. Some problem to cure. And then also planning for that growth. That growth was just, it was just skyrocketing in the late ‘90s, early 2000’s. You know, thinking that we had have IPL built within 20 (years) by 2018 or 2019. But, luckily again on the same side, we were looking at our conservation program. 1988 was the first conservation thought, but again, it wasn’t well put out across all the customers. And the drought of 2005-06 alerted the customers that our demands can just skyrocket.

At that time everything was voluntary conservation measures. So, when we hit those target levels in 2006, it lasted for about three days and people turned their sprinklers back on. And again, the water plants were running at maximum capacity. We were running at maximum capacity. And just it was scary. You don’t want to have that.

But conservation then took off from there, and we’re able to see a dramatic reduction in per capita demands. And again, we were allowed to slow IPL down. So, you know, now it’s more like 2035 when we finish it. Just because our demands have slowed down, even though our growth is still phenomenal here. We’re some of the fastest growing urban areas in the country. But with that, you know, the wise use of water has been really – educated the consumers on what’s really proper use. And we do have some mandatory measures when it’s required.

But again, I think everyone’s thought process is that they now know that water doesn’t just fall from the sky. You have to, you know, there’s times when it doesn’t rain, you have to conserve. And so that again, that’s helped us really reduce our need for capital improvements. But, you know, our capital improvements program is one that, as we grow, it continues to get more and more sophisticated. But with us, conservation slowing those demands, it’s really helped us. So, our costs for bringing that water to Tarrant County are much more reasonable now than they would have been had we not had that kind of conservation program in place. And it continues to, you know, every year we see improvements. And the customers are all on board because, again, they see the strain on their systems during these droughts.

Mark O: Yeah. I think the annual water savings that we are achieving now versus pre-conservation program is, is like enough to serve a population the city of Arlington. (Yep.) For a year?

David M: It’s kind of like the West… yeah, we’ve conserved enough water it’s kind of like another West Fork. It’s phenomenal the volume we save.

Mark O: Right. So, it’s like building a reservoir without building a reservoir, which is… it’s a pretty cool thing to see. (Yeah.) Other than what we’ve talked about, is there anything else you want to add? Any messages to anybody that’s just starting out here at TRWD that is trying to find their bearings.

David M: Well, first, when you get here, know that it’s going to take you three years to know all there is to know about the district. That’s what I tell engineers. You know, the first year you’re just, you’re overwhelmed. It’s drinking from a firehose. So, you know, plan on the fact that we’re a large enough operation, sophisticated operation, that it takes a while to really understand what we do.
But, also the other thing is to be a lifelong learner. You know, technology does not sit still. And that especially, you know, from the IT side, we’re all seeing rapid changes. But beyond that it’s – with pumps, motors, drives all that – it’s you have to learn what the market’s doing. And try to see how we can bring ideas in from like the oil fields, for instance, into water to advance our sophistication enough, so again, we have higher reliability at the lowest cost possible.

So, learning is critical. You just, you know, don’t sit back on your laurels. You know, go to all the conferences. You know, work with a Water Research Foundation. You know, participate in studies. Because what you learn is so much more than what you put in. So, you know, never close the books. Keep, keep learning.

Mark O: Wow. All right. Any more words of wisdom?

David M: That’s about it.

Mark O: Well, David, I just want to say thank you very much for coming in on your, what, 78th day of retirement?

David M: 76th. Let’s not exaggerate.

Mark O: Okay. All right. I know from what I’ve seen, what I’ve observed over the course of my short career here at the water district, that your contributions to what we’ve done and where we’re headed are incredible. And I know that the things that you’ve done, and as you’ve mentioned through the course of this interview, have really impacted not just the things that we’re doing here at the water district, but have really pushed the curve in the water industry outside of the water district. And from what I hear, other organizations reach out and look to us to see how we did things or how we’re doing things. And you’re responsible for a lot of that. And that’s a pretty cool place to be.

David M: Well, it’s good to stay, you know, high up on that curve that you don’t want to get on the backside where you’re not keeping up with technology. And sometimes things work, sometimes they don’t. I mean it’s, you know, it’s always a risk. But if the benefit far outweighs the cost, you want to move that direction, even though you may be the second or third, you know, utility in the country doing that. For instance, like our VFD’s (variable frequency drives) at Waxahachie. They were used some in the power industry. The size of horsepower we were after there was… we didn’t have serial number one. It was more like serial number ten on our equipment. And it was a risk, but it paid off.

And again, the companies like Siemens, they stood behind their work. We worked through the bugs and from that to it just kept growing and growing. So now VFD’s are commonplace for these high horsepower pumps. But you have to be willing to to get on that edge sometimes to make it, you know, to improve our – what we’re doing.

Mark O: Well, it also speaks to the leadership here too, because they’re giving you…

David M: Oh, the board was, they always question me pretty well, but they allowed me to have that freedom to really, to go forth and conquer. And it was because of them and, you know, and Jim and Alan just saw that we were moving in a good direction. And overcoming the problems we had, you know, in a in a manner that was really, truly cost effective, like, like our pipeline program.

And we had people come in with some ideas, you know, we spent $50,000 on a test procedure and said, we’ll never use that. But we learned from that that we wouldn’t use that. We had to bring them in to test that.

And the board gave me that freedom to, you know, to spend more, because whenever we started the integrity program on the pipeline, it boosted our spending on a budget by a factor of ten. And that was kind of hard to swallow the first year. But, you know, we had to do it. Otherwise, the pipeline would have just deteriorated rapidly. We’d be replacing lines 30-years after they were put in the ground.

Mark O: Yeah. Not a good thing.

David M: No. So it’s… but it’s making sure you thought out the case beforehand. It had a high degree of probability of success because you don’t want to get out of the very cutting edge. The bleeding edge is not where you want to be. You want to be one step behind, but you want to have somebody else do it. And when they fail, learn from their mistakes and you do it right the second time.

And that’s the thing with the water community is, you know, sharing ideas and problems. That’s what helps all these public utilities really advance. Because I work with the Washington, DC, that group, Metropolitan Water District, California. San Diego County helped us tremendously in the first few years of pipe inspections because they had real problems before we did.

So, we went out there one winter and they were inspecting pipe. Walked through their pipes with them, you know, inspected with them. Learned the techniques and brought it back here. And then for like asset management, Portland. If you want to have an asset management program that’s just by far the best – they’ve gone a little extreme. I mean, to the point of, you know, they have… if their printers fail for cutting checks, they have a another place they can go print checks. I mean, that kind of sophistication is pretty unique.

But with Washington Suburban Sanitation District, you know, they had 1.6 million assets they had to maintain. So, we were able to build from there how we can develop this without just being overwhelmed. And it’s because of that sharing, you know. Find the best people, you learn from them and then you share what you learn as well to the rest of the community.

So, you just can’t be an isolated island. You have to be part of the water, the larger water community. And our staff today, I know Shelly’s on probably 2 or 3 of committees. And again, on the pressure, prestressed concrete pipe I think, James is on that now. So, we stay in touch with what’s happening in the large industry. And working with the Water Research Foundation, is, it’s just phenomenal from that. And that is in our culture now to to be part of that, looking at technology and improving where we go.

So, it’s all about the culture. What’s built here. And the direction people are taking it. You know, they’re doing far better than I did.

Mark O: Wow. Awesome, man. Thank you very much for for joining this second edition of Beneath The Surface. Hopefully we’re not on the bleeding edge here. So, I really appreciate coming in. Thanks.

David M: Okay.

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