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The Kachina Village Improvement District (KVID) in Flagstaff, Arizona was formed in 1965 to provide water and wastewater services for the residents of the local community. KVID is a division of the Coconino County Public Works Department and is committed to providing clean, safe drinking water and wastewater collection and treatment services to its residents. Kachina Village is an unincorporated community approximately 10 miles south of Flagstaff, west of I-17 and adjacent to the national forest. Encompassing approximately 700 acres, the community has a population of 2,662 (as of the 2010 Census). The community offers a full range of infrastructure including water, sewer and other utilities, public streets, full-service fire protection, community-oriented law enforcement, and park and open space amenities. As of December 2015, the community had 1,387 active utility service connections.
Water service is provided through a 17-mile network of underground pipelines served from three booster pump stations and four water storage reservoirs. The KVID water system consists of wells, distribution mains, pump stations, reservoirs and disinfection facilities. All water provided is groundwater pumped from the Coconino Regional Aquifer.
Wastewater is collected through a gravity wastewater disposal system for transport to the KVID wastewater treatment plant for further processing. Treated wastewater effluent is delivered to a series of evaporation ponds located at the northern edge of the community. These evaporation ponds also provide an ideal habitat for local and migrating wildlife. The KVID wastewater system consists of gravity mains, force mains, manholes, cleanouts, lift stations, a wastewater treatment plant and effluent evaporation ponds.
Civiltec is working with the Kachina Village Improvement District to prepare new Water and Wastewater Master Plans. The purpose of the Master Plans is to establish a realistic and affordable plan of operations for the next 20-year horizon as it relates to the community water and wastewater system. The results of the current facility condition assessments indicate an ongoing need to perform regularly scheduled maintenance and capital improvements to maintain the systems reliability and long-term value to the citizens. This maintenance and capital improvement program does incur cost, and these costs must be recovered by the utility through its rate structure in order to remain self-supporting.
KVID requires the construction and calibration of a new hydraulic model for the water and wastewater system and the study area is approximately 1.2 square miles. These models will be built based on as-built drawings and other field data collected (water valves, equipment information, sewer manholes, etc). Civiltec will map the GIS data and prepare water and wastewater system models using Bentley WaterGems and SewerGEMS software.
This Kachina Village Improvement District project update was adapted from a submission to the Arizona Chapter of the American Public Works Association (APWA) for their March 2016 newsletter.
