Municipalities and utility agencies are increasingly looking for partnerships, collaborations and regionalization efforts to decrease costs, increase efficiencies and better utilize resources for their constituents and rate payers. Shared Service agreements can optimize the services and resources that cooperating agencies have in place. Intermunicipal Agreements can provide a legal, long-term framework for communities to better serve their customers and residents. Walden has led the effort to craft such agreements among dozens of governmental agencies and utility providers, saving millions of dollars in costs to tax payers and rate payers. Walden can help you get more out of less through creative partnering and effective agreements.
Walden is leading an effort by the Village and Town of New Paltz, NY to consolidate their utility services in many ways to reduce costs, increase services in many ways to reduce costs, increase service levels, and lower the utility bill for residents and customers of the Utilities. As part of this effort, Walden prepared a grant application to obtain funding that would allow the development of alternative solutions for a failing sewer plant– including the cooperative regionalization of a Town owned sewer utility with a nearby treatment provider. This would decommission the failing treatment works by consolidating flows to the nearby sewer plant. Nearby areas with failed or failing septic systems will also be identified for consideration of providing sanitary sewer service. read more
In a successful effort to leverage the asserts and resources of utility providers, Walden led the work to have a City enter into unique public-private partnerships (PPP) with an investor-owned utility. These unique private and municipal wastewater partnerships included more than $20M in infrastructure investments by both parties and several long-term operation agreements. Leveraging the performance of the PPP packages, the City is able to delay or eliminate previously planned LTCP construction projects while remaining in CSO regulatory compliance and growing as one of the most affordable places to live in the United States. read more
Walden was retained by BCS Management (BCS) to assist with the review and assessment of the water and wastewater facilities serving four regional districts and the community of Mount Etna located in Huntington County. The County Commissioners sought an assessment that could determine if regionalization and consolidating the facilities was a viable option. The review and assessment helped to identify and confirm the ability of each of the systems to grow and expand, consider cooperative consolidations or other efficiencies and service offerings. read more
The Allen County Regional Water and Sewer District (District) faced a more than 50% increase in operations and maintenance costs from the incumbent contracted provider. The nearby City of Fort Wayne, Indiana sought to review and analyze the District’s needs and the City’s capabilities for opportunities for the utility groups to work together. Walden led working committees from both agencies to identify and articulate services that could work together. This effort continued with the negotiation and implementation of a 10-year, $3M interlocal agreement that enables the City of Fort Wayne to assist and support the operations and management of the District and the District to provide certain specialized services to the City. read more