Saturday, June 14, 2014

Why Is Sediment Removal So Expensive?


The economic viability of expanding an existing reservoir versus building a new reservoir seems outrageously huge.  The information below is from the excellent California WaterBlog.  Storage should be a consideration when looking at the matrix of water resource management strategies.  I wonder if this is applicable to Texas and what construction, project delivery, technology, permitting, sediment reuse forces are on the horizon that might disruptive the economic gap?  You have a cost factor of between 8 and 10 that needs overcoming - which seems a huge challenge, but potentially a huge opportunity.

"Removing sediment from reservoirs is often suggested as a potentially better way to expand storage capacity than raising dam heights or building new reservoirs. This is a natural notion to explore given the cost and likely environmental impacts of traditional expansions.

For perspective, the construction cost of conventional reservoir expansion is about $1,700 to $2,700 an acre-foot (af) of storage capacity. For example:
The cost of expanding reservoir capacity by removing sediment seems likely to be $5 to $20 a cubic yard or $8,000 to $32,000/af (at 1,600 cubic yards/acre-ft)."

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.