The City of Sherman was experiencing incredible growth and was working to improve its aging infrastructure to support this influx properly. However, sanitary sewer odors in downtown Sherman presented an issue for the City, businesses and residents enjoying the downtown area. The City was founded in 1846, with some of the downtown wastewater infrastructure dating back nearly a century. B&N was tasked to help identify odor sources and any potential inflow/infiltration (I/I) sources for repair recommendations to the infrastructure.
B&N field crews tactfully navigated through the sewer system and adjacent offices, finding illicit sewer connections, locating grease build-up issues and identifying surcharged manholes that provided potential sources of gas problems. B&N field crews inspected 133 manholes, smoke tested 36,271 linear feet of sanitary sewer mains and provided recommendations for rehabilitation along with estimated repair costs. B&N also developed a targeted CCTV televising approach to inspect the most critical wastewater mains with identified defects.
For the identified I/I sources, the estimated impact on the system was tabulated and provided to the City. The impact list made the largest contributing I/I sources easy to prioritize for City staff and allowed for an efficient improvement of the downtown odor. In turn, this provided the Sherman community members a more enjoyable downtown experience.
Additional opportunities were also identified to accommodate the anticipated growth and B&N presented these findings to the City. These findings later became opportunities for the City and B&N to work together again to rehabilitate existing and design new infrastructure.