Conventional water treatment facilities are the norm for producing potable water for
U.S. metropolitan areas. Rapidly-growing urban populations, competing demands for
water, imperfect water markets, and uncertainty of future water supplies contribute to
high interests in alternative sources of potable water for many U.S. municipalities. In
situations where multiple supply alternatives exist, properly analyzing which alternative
is the most-economically efficient over the course of its useful life requires a sound
economic and financial analysis of each alternative using consistent methodology. This
thesis discusses such methodology and provides an assessment of the life-cycle costs of
conventional water treatment using actual data from an operating surface-water
treatment facility located in McAllen, Texas: the McAllen Northwest facility. This
facility has a maximum-designed operating capacity of 8.25 million gallons per day
(mgd), but due to required shutdown time and other limitations, it is currently operating
at 78% of the designed capacity (6.44 mgd). The economic and financial life-cycle costs associated with constructing and operating
the McAllen Northwest facility are analyzed using a newly-developed Excel
2 spreadsheet model, CITY H O ECONOMICS . Although specific results are applicable
only to the McAllen Northwest facility, the baseline results of $771.67/acre-foot (acft)/
yr {$2.37/1,000 gallons/yr} for this analysis provide insight regarding the life-cycle
costs for conventional surface-water treatment.
The baseline results are deterministic (i.e., noninclusive of risk/uncertainty about datainput
values), but are expanded to include sensitivity analyses with respect to several
critical factors including the facility’s useful life, water rights costs, initial construction
costs, and annual operations and maintenance, chemical, and energy costs. For example,
alternative costs for water rights associated with sourcing water for conventional
treatment facilities are considered relative to the assumed baseline cost of $2,300/ac-ft,
with results ranging from a low of $653.34/ac-ft/yr (when water rights are $2,000/ac-ft)
to a high of $1,061.83/ac-ft/yr (when water rights are $2,600/ac-ft). Furthermore,
modifications to key data-input parameters and results are included for a more consistent
basis of comparison to enable comparisons across facilities and/or technologies. The
modified results, which are considered appropriate to compare to other similarly
calculated values, are $667.74/ac-ft/yr {2.05/1,000 gallons/yr}.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/ETD-TAMU-2628 |
| Date | 15 May 2009 |
| Creators | Rogers, Callie Sue |
| Contributors | Rister, M. Edward |
| Source Sets | Texas A and M University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Book, Thesis, Electronic Thesis, text |
| Format | electronic, application/pdf, born digital |
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