Palisades Has 3 1-Million Gallon Water Towers; After 15 Hours At 4X Demand, They Ran Dry

[Strelnikov_]

17. The Engineering profession needs get in front of what is coming

Over my career, I have seen too many times where ‘averages’ are used for design, with no allowance for risk.

Contracted to do a design, use the typical values. The ‘profession’ needs to adopt an approach to broach the subject of risk based designs to clients.

LA, with their hills, have the opportunity to build some serious elevated storage.

My rice bowl the last number of years has been riverine hydraulics. Procedures I have developed using NCHRP guidance indicates, for Iowa and adjacent, a 12% increase in rainfall resulting in a 25% increase in discharge resulting in a 2 to 3 x shift in probability (the historic 100 yr discharge will be more like the 25 yr discharge near the end of the century). This is for a ‘moderate’ carbon scenario which is too optimistic. I am presenting this as the minimum to be considered. Higher risk designs need to consider the higher carbon scenarios, which are grim from a precip standpoint (30%+ increase in precip).

Most designs being built today are obsolete out of the gate.