McKim & Creed completed a hydraulic modeling evaluation of the City of DeLand’s water system. The objective of this project was to construct a water system model for ongoing internal planning, analyses and operational applications. This project involved construction of a water model of the city’s existing potable water system for all known distribution piping and includes water demand allocations, steady state pressure verification and evaluation of the existing and future (2030) systems. A technical memorandum was completed summarizing the findings.
The water system for the City of DeLand includes 11 water plants, distributed wells and seven storage tanks. Interviews with staff and graphical extraction of SCADA data provided an understanding of the daily and seasonal operation which includes multiple steps of storage and re-pumping. Development of new water sources in recent years have returned disappointing results because of difficulty in transferring water across needed distances. Updated GIS data was not available, so the model was constructed from old maps and mark-ups by operator’s memories.
The hydraulic model was developed to provide tools used to tackle water supply and distribution needs and to address the pros and cons of pumping and storage systems and various operational strategies. Model animations provided an understanding of the relative merits of proposed elevated storage, booster pumping, distribution improvements and alternate water supplies from adjacent communities so that improvements could be prioritized.