2020 Eugene Wastewater Master Plan Chapter 1: Introduction and Summary 1 <br />Chapter 1: Introduction and Summary <br />MASTER PLAN PURPOSE <br />The Wastewater Master Plan (master plan) was initiated by the City Engineer to organize a wide variety <br />of information about the City of Eugene wastewater collection system and to update the 1992 Urban <br />Sanitary Sewer Master Plan (USSMP). The plan’s scope includes all public portions of the collection <br />system owned and maintained by the City of Eugene, including pump stations. It excludes facilities <br />owned by the Metropolitan Wastewater Management Commission as well as facilities on private <br />property. The planning period for this document is 20 years. The purpose of the master plan is to: <br />• Provide historical information about the development of the existing system. <br />• Identify general problems and rehabilitation needs of the existing system. <br />• Provide design criteria to be used for future system expansion. <br />• Identify future needs and estimated costs to extend major system improvements to unserved <br />areas within the urban growth boundary. <br />The master plan is intended to be useful to several groups: <br />• City staff, to ensure consistency in various wastewater-related analyses; <br />• Policy makers, to provide background and guidance in the consideration of wastewater-related <br />plans and policies; and <br />• Developers and other private interests, to aid them in their understanding of the various <br />requirements related to the expansion and preservation of Eugene’s wastewater system. <br />Through the efforts outlined in this master plan, the City will continue to build and maintain a <br />wastewater collection system that meets several key objectives: <br />• Protect the public health and our local water resources <br />• Meet the NPDES permit requirement by eliminating sanitary sewer overflows <br />• Build new improvements with an expected life of more than 100 years <br />• Size improvements to ensure upstream future developments have capacity <br />• Ensure improvements are water-tight and reduce infiltration and inflow <br />• Minimize risk and increase seismic resiliency <br />GENERAL <br />Carefully planned, well-engineered, regularly maintained wastewater collection and treatment systems <br />protect public health and support economic growth. For thousands of years, water has been the primary <br />vehicle for conducting away community wastes. The collection and disposal of sewage has evolved over <br />the past several centuries to include elaborate underground piped networks and complex treatment <br />facilities. The basic layout for a modern wastewater collection system includes small-diameter, shallow <br />pipes that connect homes and businesses to the public system. These lateral pipes connect to larger, <br />deeper pipes that typically run under roadways and ultimately discharge to a treatment plant. <br />As detailed in Chapter 3, wastewater system construction began in central Eugene between 1900 and <br />1910. The wastewater collection system expanded very slowly prior to 1945. The initial system was a <br />combined system that collected both stormwater and wastewater flows.