City of Fort Bragg | Section E | Scope of Work
E Scope of Work
Understanding/Approach
The City of Fort Bragg (City), located on California’s
Mendocino Coast in Mendocino County, owns and
operates a water distribution system that provides
potable water service to approximately 7,000
residents through roughly 3,000 service connections
(2,700 residential and 300 commercial/industrial).
The City receives water from three main sources:
Newman Gulch, Waterfall Gulch, and the Noyo
River. But tidal influence in the late summer causes
the level of salination in the Noyo river to rise. The
City has a small desalination plant that has been
operational since 2021 to treat the brackish water
before discharging it to raw water ponds where it
is then sent to the City’s water treatment plant for
finished water treatment. A rough water system
schematic is shown on Figure E-1.
The City’s water distribution system contains four
water tanks, three located at the water treatment
plant that primarily gravity supply. The East Fort
Bragg Pressure Zone (EFBPZ) contains elevations
that are too high to be served via the gravity system
and is served by a pump station located on Willow
Street.
The City’s last water master plan was finalized in
April 1986, approximately 36 years ago, and was
based on 1980 General Plan data that projected
development through the year 2000. Many of the
recommendations from the 1986 plan have been
implemented.
It is important to note that the City is located in an
area of potential seismic activity and if the Pudding
Creek or Noyo River Bridges are damaged and
become unusable, evacuation routes would be
cut off and there is a high probability that water
infrastructure near these bridges could fail. For this
reason, addressing water system risk and resiliency
will be a key component of the water system master
plan.
We understand that city would like to investigate
other issues which include:
1. Identifying distribution system dead-ends so that
they may be looped back into the system.
2. Locating shallow pipes which may be prone to
damage from surface activity.
3. Investigating climate change implications for low
lying areas in the harbor area.
4. Identifying water mains which cross private
properties, creating difficulties in accessing them.
Relocation shall be prioritized for pipes combined
with shallow coverage.
5. Approximately 1/3 of the city’s service area
is industrial area, which may be re-zoned for
development. The city would like to plan for
expansion in these areas.
Recognizing the need to update the water master
plan based on community changes, economic
transition, resiliency, and new technology related to
water system planning, the City is seeking to retain
Figure E-1. City of Fort Bragg Water System
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E-02
the services of an Engineering Consultant to develop
a comprehensive water system master plan that
provides a roadmap for the City to address existing
and future system needs necessary to provide
adequate water service to its customers well into the
future.
Our project approach relies heavily upon leveraging
our project team’s significant experience on similar
water planning projects combined with your team’s
institutional knowledge and understanding of
your systems needs and overall challenges. In our
experience, successful projects rely on a partnership
between Consultant and Client, leveraging your local
experience with our national experience. Project
status meetings combined with meetings following
key task deliverables will allow the project team to
meet the City’s expectations for depth and breadth of
the analysis as well as stay informed throughout the
planning process and be involved in key decisions so
there are no “surprises” when the report is delivered.
Our approach also relies heavily on “actionable
results.” Too often, master plans are delivered in a
“static” format and tend to “sit on the shelf” with
little or no implementation. Our implementationfocused approach, described in detail in the following sections, will provide the City with actionable
improvements that can be implemented based
upon a design “trigger.” We also use Power BI
dashboards and rely heavily on GIS integration to
confirm our plans can be updated efficiently to react
with changing external factors. Our detailed project
information sheets and 30% design approach will
provide adequate detail to allow key recommended
projects to seamlessly transition from planning to
design.
Details of our understanding and approach,
organized by the tasks outlined in the City’s RFP, are
provided below.
We understand the City has specific goals desired
for the outcomes of this project, as reflected in the
overall RFP. Our experience with projects in this
nature suggest that tasks tend to shift as well as
goals over the duration of the project. The strength
of our team is the ability to react and adjust to deliver a plan that meets your goals and objectives within
the desired budget.
Figure E-2. An example multi-step framework can improve overall master planning efficiency for the City.
City of Fort Bragg | Section E | Scope of Work
Approach and Work Plan
We have detailed our approach and scope
of work in the following sections. We have
organized the scope based on the four major
tasks identified in the City’s RFP and in Figure
E-2 on page E-02.
We assume that if selected, there would be
an opportunity to refine and adjust the scope,
schedule, and budget prior to award of contract
services.
Task 1 – Master Plan
At the start of the project, it is crucial to get
organized and gather the necessary data to get
our team up-to-speed and quickly moving ahead
in coordination with yours. With the numerous
individuals involved in this process, we need to
ensure that we streamline our efforts to reduce the
impact on your team. Prior to our kickoff meeting, we
will utilize an interactive tracking tool to assemble
a list of data needs that can be used to track our
requests. Of course, we will establish and coordinate
a protocol that is workable for transfers of files, both large and small, that is convenient and secure.
Once our team has reviewed and analyzed your data,
we will be ready to conduct a virtual or in-person
meeting (as appropriate) to kick off the project.
The objectives of this meeting are to establish the
technical and management teams for the project,
introduce the teams and stakeholders to the project
and how it will be executed, discuss expectations
and critical success factors, and review the schedule
and next steps. Because you will have received our
data requests prior to this meeting, we will also be
able to use this meeting to go over our data requests
while we have our technical specialists available and
ready to engage directly with your team. This effort
will utilize our time effectively and allow us to verify our understanding and information, while giving
each of our teams the opportunity to ask follow-up
questions, provide crucial understanding and details
to fill potential data gaps, and determine direction to fill needed information quickly and efficiently.
The overall goal of Task 1 is to review existing data
to gain a clear understanding of the system and then
develop a draft and final master plan report, based
on the results and findings of Tasks 2 through 4.
Key sub-tasks for Task 1 include:
1.a. Project Management/Meetings
vi. Kickoff Meeting (1)
vii.Project Meetings (12)
viii. City Council Meetings (3)
1.b. Data Collection and Review
1.c. Master Plan Report
Task 1 Deliverables:
• Meeting agendas/meeting minutes for Kick Off
Meeting and Project Meetings
• Draft Master Plan Report
• Presentation for up to three (3) City Council
Meetings
• Final Master Plan Report in both digital and hard
copy (3 bound) format
Task 2 – Mapping and Modeling
The mapping and modeling task includes evaluating
the City’s existing mapping resources, recommending
an appropriate software system for hydraulic
modeling, and performing field work, as necessary to
support an accurate water system GIS database.
The mapping and modeling task will be a critical
component to the success of the water master plan
project. The development of accurate and reliable
water system data that will feed into a water system
hydraulic model to support the capacity analysis, risk
analysis, and subsequent capital project planning is a
Advantages & Potential Analyses That Come With
a Comprehensive and Accurate Water Distribution
System GIS
• Prioritized maintenance and CIP planning
• Risk scoring (consequence & likelihood of failure)
• Strategic system renewal and deterioration
forecasting
• Easier coordination with other utilities
• Establish level of service goals and track system
performance
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key component. The City currently has water system
information housed in three unique sources
that are currently not integrated:
• The WaterCAD (now called WaterGEMS)
water model, updated in 2019, was
originally developed based on the City’s
AutoCAD maps, supplemented with field
survey data.
• The AutoCAD maps contain the current
up-to-date and accurate information
pertaining to the water distribution system.
• The City has a water system GIS, but it
is not heavily used and was based on the
AutoCAD maps described above.
This task presents an opportunity for the City
to develop a central data repository for their
water system data that will support the update/
and development of a water system hydraulic
model.
Figure E-4. Traditional approaches use the hydraulic
modeling environment for data manipulation, which can create disconnects between the model database and the GIS database.
HDR’s approach uses the GIS environment for model input data creation and update to avoid conflicts between the GIS data and the hydraulic model.
GIS has become an important component to utility
system planning in recent years. Our approach to
utility planning is to leverage GIS data so that it can be used for your business needs beyond the limits
of the specific project we are working on. This
project presents a great opportunity for the City to
start developing a GIS system not only for use on
this project, but for other uses beyond the scope
of this project. Our approach utilizes the open
architecture format of GIS to support a number of
future business needs for the City.
Our approach to development of GIS data relies
heavily on the fact that our clients have limited
resources and budgets. Therefore, our solutions
are highly “scalable” and not all data has to be
developed at once or developed with perfect
precision. We design our databases so that a
level of accuracy/confidence is established. For
example, a level 1 may include data based upon a
set of assumptions, whereas a level 4 is data that
has been field verified and surveyed to sub inch
accuracy. This allows the City to start with a base
GIS framework that can be continuously improved
as new data is acquired and added.
We will focus our GIS data development efforts on
the data required to support this master plan but in
such a manner that the accuracy can be improved
over time and future areas can easily be added.
Figure E-3. Focusing our efforts on GIS data development gives the City a tool to not only support this project, but also a number of future business needs.
City of Fort Bragg | Section E | Scope of Work
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Considerations for LoF Considerations for CoF
Installation Date Size of Pipe
Age and Material Pressure
Shallow Pipes Land Use
Seismic Proximity to Critical
Infrastructure and Critical
Customers Out of Service
Break History Near Water Bodies
Soil Type Potential Environmental Impact
Table E-1. Consequences of Failure and Likelihood of
Failure
Once the GIS database has been developed, we will
use that data to develop a water system hydraulic
model. Our experience with hydraulic modeling is
that when a model hasn’t been updated recently
(in this case since 2019) and a new accurate GIS
database is available, it is more efficient to create
a new model linked to the updated GIS database.
We are recommending that we create a new
model for the City in either WaterGEMS (the latest
version of WaterCAD), which is a Bentley product,
or InfoWater, which is an Innovyze product. Both
software solutions use the EPANet hydraulic engine,
so results will be similar and preference comes down
to City preference, cost, and available features.
We will prepare a software selection technical
memorandum as part of this task. After the GIS
data is developed for the water system, we will use
that data to form the basis of our hydraulic model.
Traditional approaches use the hydraulic modeling
environment for data manipulation, which can create
disconnects between the model database and GIS
database. HDR has developed a proven project
approach to GIS integration, shown in Figure E-3
above, that uses the GIS environment for model input
data creation to accomplish a number of objectives:
• We can avoid conflicts between the GIS data and
the hydraulic model.
• We can use the hydraulic model to QA/QC
the GIS data resulting in a more accurate GIS
database.
• It becomes easier to update the model in the
future as data is added to or changed within the
GIS database.
Task 2 also includes fieldwork including surveying,
geotechnical evaluations, and potholing required to
support the water system mapping. At the master
planning stage, we typically let the preliminary
results of the water system modeling, and risk
analysis drive the need to perform fieldwork. That
way we can focus our efforts on high risk assets
and areas that do not make sense from a modeling
and calibration standpoint. Our approach to data
accuracy will clearly document the confidence level
in each facility and we can recommend a plan for
collecting data for this master plan effort as well as
prioritizing future data collection. We have added a
contingency for field survey and potholing.
A final component to Task 2 will be the
establishment of Risk IDs for water main facilities
and risk criteria for use in the risk analysis which
will be performed in Task 4. Assigning Risk IDs
allow us to group facilities based on individual
construction project characteristics (e.g., year
of installation, material, leak history). The
development of consequence of failure as shown
in Table E-1 (CoF) and likelihood of failure (LoF)
evaluation criteria will allow us to perform a risk
analysis that evaluates how likely a facility is to fail and if it does fail, what is the overall consequence
of not being able to use the failed asset.
Key sub-tasks for Task 2 include:
2.a. GIS Database Development
2.b. GIS Mapping
2.c. Software Selection
2.d. Hydraulic Model Development
2.e Field Condition Assessment
2.f. Field Survey
2.g. Risk Model – Risk Analysis to be
performed in Task 4
i. Establish Risk IDs
ii. Establish Risk Criteria (Consequence of
Failure/Likelihood of Failure)
Task 2 Deliverables:
• Hydraulic Model Software selection technical
memorandum
• GIS database development and system
mapping to include:
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° Mains
° Valves
° Hydrants
° Meter laterals
° Pumps
° Appurtenances
° Pressure Zone Boundaries
° Field Condition Assessment Data
• Field data collection plan for master plan and
for future data collection. We have assumed
$150,000 of field collection services to support
Task 2.
• Risk model development technical memorandum
(definition of criteria). Note the Risk Analysis is
completed in Task 4.
Task 3 – Analyzing Environmental
Variables
Water Demand Projections
The focus of this task is the development of long
range water demand projections and water efficiency
strategies and the assessment and impact of
applicable climate change related conditions.
Water use trends have been decreasing over the
last several years. Determining how much of this
decrease will be permanent is a challenging exercise
in risk assessment. Accurately projecting future
demands from your historical trends, including
new development, and modeling them correctly, is
essential to right sizing your system and optimizing
when and where to spend your capital funds. The
transformation in demands has altered traditional
master plan thinking throughout the state, with a
focus shifting away from system capacity expansion
towards system reliability and asset management
planning. Our experience tells us that your water
system is in a similar situation.
We will use historic billing data to analyze past usage patterns and to establish an appropriate baseline for
your existing system demand scenarios. However,
the baseline developed may not reflect the current
or previous year, based on events (e.g., drought,
demand conservation, or unprecedented economic
event) that impacted the baseline or the current or
previous year. We will also analyze the City’s billing
data to develop minimum, average, and maximum
day demand peaking factors for use in updating the
model.
We will look at land uses within the City’s service
area and sort by service pressure zone, looking at
both existing and planned land use designations
within the approved General Plan. The growth data,
together with data from your billing system sorted by
pressure zone, will be utilized to analyze and project
demands and peaking factors at the Pressure Zone
level, providing greater accuracy for the forecast and
better demand data for use in the hydraulic model.
In particular, we will look at the following potential
growth sites:
• The Georgia Pacific (GP) Mill site
• North Fort Bragg industrial water line extension
from Pudding Creek to the edge of the City
Limits (Note: this project is planned for
2022/2023)
• Future development/annexation within the
Harbor areas
• One additional future annexation area, as
defined in the current LAFCO Municipal
Services Review (most likely the Fort Bragg
area)
Resiliency Planning Elements
Cities, agencies, communities, businesses, and
individuals are facing new and intensifying challenges
from extreme weather events, increasing air
temperatures, and increased precipitation variability
as a result of climate change. The City of Fort Bragg
has chosen to be proactive in response to these
changes as part of their strategic planning. This
step-by-step analysis utilizes historic climate trends
to set the baseline for understanding projected future
climate trends in air temperatures and precipitation
so that the City’s risk/vulnerabilities related to
water demand can be correlated to those that are
anticipated to change at future time scales due to
climate change.
HDR’s team of three atmospheric scientists have
over 65+ years of combined experience in climate
and weather hazard analysis for water management.
The following approach is designed to provide the
City of Fort Bragg | Section E | Scope of Work
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necessary decision support that will aid in prioritizing resilient actions to the environmental threats posed
by the varying climate
Communities that develop strategic plans for
climate resilience will not only reduce service
failures, improve financial efficiencies, and reduce
liability, they will make their cities and towns more
economically attractive to investment through their
resiliency efforts. The cost of not taking action to
mitigate climate hazards goes well beyond just those
associated with the hazards themselves. In previous
HDR studies, we have been able to conclusively
prove that the benefit-to-cost ratio of resilient actions is a ratio of 6-to-1 for every dollar spent.
HDR has performed climate change risk and
vulnerability assessments across a variety of
infrastructure types and scale, including community,
system, and site-level. We will use the climate
investigations developed for the City in Task 3b as a
starting place for a system-based climate resilience
investigation as part of this project.
Through these analyses, HDR proposes to utilize
the product of threat likelihood (probability) and
the consequences of failure to produce a high level
understanding of system risk to climate threats now
and into the future (i.e. 2035, 2050, 2070, 2100).
Considerations will be made for infrastructure
criticality and community socio-economic goals. A
prioritization schema will be developed to provide
decision support for resilient actions.
For the geotechnical desktop assessment, HDR will
review publicly available information on historic
seismic data, review published flood maps, and
records of historical pipe repairs. The desktop
assessment will help identify areas of concern related
to geotechnically sensitive areas and environmental
factors. Additional testing may be performed for
quantitative analysis of soils. Soils testing is not
included in HDR’s scope.
Environmental Sciences
HDR will review the options to prepare Programmatic
California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA)
document(s) for the City’s utility master plans and
CIP Program. CEQA allows for the preparation of
programmatic Environmental Impact Reports (EIR)
when a project includes a series of related actions
that can be characterized as one large project and
should be looked at as a whole. The benefits of such
documents are that they allow a examination of a
project and promote “tiering” when later activities
within the program are undertaken.
The use of tiering can expedite environmental
review by eliminating repetitive analysis of issues
and potential impacts adequately addressed in the
program EIR. Tiering allows for the preparation of
focused subsequent environmental documents
once the appropriate level of project information
and design is available. Typically these benefits
are realized through time and money savings.
Furthermore, preparing a comprehensive
programmatic EIR for such plans often reduces risks
to jurisdictions regarding timing project by project
environmental reviews. By establishing overarching
strategies and mitigation options for similar project
types, the CEQA compliance process can be
streamlined. HDR will prepare a memo that identifies
the benefits of preparing Programmatic EIR(s) for the
City utility master plans and CIP Program. The memo
will also outline the risks associated with preparation of project by project documents vs preparation of
a Programmatic EIR. Estimated costs associated
with preparation of individual CEQA documents,
including the array of different document types
(e.g., exemptions, initial studies, mitigated negative
declarations, EIRs), compared to the preparation of
a programmatic EIR and tiered, focused subsequent
documents will also be provided in the memo. HDR
will prepare a Draft Memo for the City’s review. Upon
receipt of the City’s comments, HDR will incorporate
the City’s comments and will prepare and submit a
Final Memo.
Key sub-tasks for Task 3 include:
3.a. Water Demand Projections
i. GP Mill Site
ii. North Fort Bragg Industrial Water Line
iii. Harbor Areas
iv. One additional future annexation area
3.b. Water Resiliency Planning – Review General
Plan (inland and coastal) Element 7
i. Climate Change: Impacts and Projections
ii. Climate Change: Risk and Vulnerability
Assessments
ii. Geotechnical Desktop Assessment
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1. Seismic
2. Landslides
3. Slope instability
4. Tsunami
5. Flood
6. Fire
iii. Environmental Factors
7. Soil Corrosiveness
8. PH
9. Ground Water
iv. Environmental Practices
10.Water Efficiency
11. Conservation
12.Working with local watershed groups
to capitalize on the protection of
sensitive fish and other members of the
native river community
3.c. Technical Report Preparation
3.d. Cost/Benefits of Preparing a Programmatic EIR
Memo
Task 3 – Deliverables
• Technical Report including analysis of future
water demand, resiliency planning, and
consideration of environmental factors. The
report should recommend strategies for Climate
Change and other disaster preparedness, address
water efficiency and conservation in keeping with
environmental constructs and ethical practices,
discuss new, innovative, or emerging pipe/water
system technologies.
• Prepare a memo analyzing the cost/benefits
of preparing a Programmatic EIR for City utility
master plans and proposed Capital Improvement
Projects (CIP) and risks of the timing of the
environmental review on a project-by-project
basis without a comprehensive environmental
document.
Task 4 – Capital Project Planning
Task 4 includes the bulk of the analysis work related
to the water system master plan and we will use the
model and findings from previous tasks to identify
water system improvements necessary to provide
adequate levels of service for both existing and future needs. Recommended system improvements will be
prioritized based on a Risk Analysis and associated
risk model that assigned a Business Risk Exposure
(BRE) score to each asset to confirm that resources
are spent wisely on high risk assets. Recognizing
that not all assets are created equal, we use a risk
based approach to prioritizing assets for repair,
rehabilitation, and replacement. High Lof/high CoF
assets rise to the top of the list, while low LoF/Low
CoF are at the bottom of the list. See figure below.
One of the primary strategies needed to successfully
develop a comprehensive CIP that the City can
confidently rely on year after year is to be able to
provide the right balance that considers replacing
aging infrastructure as well as meeting growth
and redevelopment, capacity, and reliability
needs. Developing a repeatable process that can
be updated internally by staff enables the City to
efficiently respond to and adapt the CIP whenever
capital planning needs change, without having
to rely on outside resources. This approach can
leverage the City’s Asset Management Program
recommendations, developed as part of this task, to
align the CIP with the recommended performance
metrics and service levels.
Through this project work, the City will be able to
develop a repeatable, data-driven asset management
project to support maintenance decisions and capital
planning. The foundation of this will be development
of a complete and reliable asset registry, an
understanding of the overall condition of the
infrastructure, and an assessment of capacity issues
and reliability risks from the hydraulic modeling.
These data sets can be leveraged to make defendable
Figure E-5. Consequences of Failure and Likelihood of Failure City of Fort Bragg | Section E | Scope of Work
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capital decisions and focus maintenance activities to
enhance the City’s efforts and capital dollars.
This can be achieved through alignment of
these analyses with the City’s priorities and key
performance metrics. HDR will work with the
City to develop or enhance level of service metrics
and establish a process that the City can follow
to align risk modeling, condition assessments and
modeling results with key levels of service in order
drive priorities. This will result in a repeatable and
defensible process that can easily be explained and
justified to stakeholders and decision makers.
HDR will conduct workshops to work with the City
to define level of service goals and key performance
metrics. These will be factored into the risk
assessment and capital planning effort for
prioritization and scheduling of capital projects.
HDR will document this process so that they City
can continue to update their capital improvement
program as new data is obtained and as needs
change over time.
We have found that a distinct advantage of an
Asset Management Program for our clients is the
shift from “reactive” or unplanned to “proactive”
or planned maintenance activities results in a
significant cost savings.
Reactive Vs. Proactive
Our team is committed to providing the City
actionable improvements. Too often projects are
identified that cannot actually be implemented. This
disconnect is commonly the result of lack of detail
on the triggers and drivers for identified projects, a
disconnect with available funding, or an inability to
finish projects due to emergency repairs of aging
assets. Figure E-6 provides an illustration of this
problem.
We have had a high level of success with detailed
information sheets to provide adequate detail for
recommended projects. While it is necessary to
forecast timing for projects to assist with financial
planning, assumptions related to population and
demand growth that may trigger these improvements
inevitably change over time, especially for long-range
improvements. Therefore, it is important to not only
forecast timing of a recommended improvement, but
also to identify the demand condition that triggers
the improvement. These project information sheets
contain necessary detail to support environmental
review and permitting process and support obtaining
project funding from various State and Federal
sources.
This leads to another key component of Task 4, the
identification of project funding opportunities and
funding streams Our funding strategy roadmap will
identify ideas to make the most of available funding
while lessening federal compliance requirements.
This will help reduce overall project costs and
administrative requirements. We have successfully
helped obtain SRF funding for clients across the
country, including the City of Santa Cruz and
Sacramento Regional County Sanitation District.
Beyond the SRF process, our team has expertise in
each of the required environmental considerations,
working relationships with applicable resource
agencies, and the resources to execute the required
environmental analysis and documentation. Our
approach will provide the City with a transparent
process and efficient execution of compliance
actions. Potential funding sources that will be
explored include:
• State Revolving Fund (SRF)
• Water Infrastructure and Finance Innovation Act
(WIFIA)
Our recent experience with WIFIA has led to
$3.3 billion in financing to support $6.8 billion of
infrastructure investment for our Clients (see Figure
E-7 on page E-11).
Figure E-6. Illustration of the impact of unplanned or reactive maintenance activities.
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Key sub-tasks for Task 4 include:
4.a. Existing Capacity Analysis
4.b. Future Capacity Analysis
4.c. Risk Analysis/Project Prioritization
4.d. Asset Management
i. Analyze existing asset management
practices for the water distribution system
ii. Prioritize future asset management
procedures (tracking, evaluating, and
replacing aging infrastructure).
4.e. Identify project funding opportunities
4.f. Project Practicability Report
4.g. Preliminary Engineering Reports (30%
Design) for up to three projects
Task 4 Deliverables:
• Technical Memorandum (TM) summarizing
results and findings of the capacity analysis
including proposed pipeline replacement
projects. Recommended project will consider
emerging technology.
• Technical Memorandum summarizing the results
of the risk based analysis including likelihood of
failure versus consequence of failure analysis to
develop risk scores for each water asset.
• Based on the results of the capacity evaluation
and the risk evaluation, a prioritized list of
replacement, repair, and rehabilitation projects
will be developed that include an evaluation of
the feasibility of implementation and funding
options.
• Preliminary Engineering Reports will be
developed for recommended projects that
contain adequate detail to support the
environmental and funding process. Reports will
include:
° Schedule ° Funding Sources
° Cost ° Grant Funding Analysis
° Mapping ° Project Priority Ranking
° Detailed
Project
Descriptions
° Environmental and
Permitting Requirements
to Support Funding
° Design Trigger
Alternate Tasks
A.1 - Preparation of CEQA/NEPA determinations
and associated studies needed for grant
applications.
HDR has supported several jurisdictions with the
preparation of environmental constraints analyses,
initial environmental reviews, technical studies,
and identification of CEQA/NEPA documentation
strategies for grant applications. Often, early
environmental review as part of the grant application
process can be beneficial for scoring purposes as
well as for demonstrating the project’s applicability
for the grant program and ultimately leads to
successful grant award. HDR has a wide range of
technical environmental experts that can conduct
air quality, biological resources, climate, cultural
resources, energy, hazardous waste, hydrologic,
traffic, visual, and wildfire assessments to support
grant applications. HDR has successfully prepared
several CEQA-Plus documents as part of the Clean
Water State Revolving Fund Grant Process. HDR
is very familiar with the CEQA-Plus requirements
and has local experts to address the federal
cross-cutting regulations. HDR is also intricately
familiar with federal grant programs, specifically
the FEMA Hazard Mitigation Grant Program. HDR
has NEPA experts locally in Northern California
as well as across the country to assist with
NEPA documentation in support of federal grant
applications. HDR can assist with preparation of
CEQA/NEPA documents, conducting technical
studies, and early environmental reviews for the City
as part of grant application processes. HDR can work
with the City to define the environmental review
needs as part of the grants being pursued. Once the
environmental review needs are defined, HDR will
provide a separate scope of work and fee.
A.2 - Preparation of Programmatic EIR for CIP
projects associated with Utility Master Plans.
As described above, under Task 2, there are
benefits to prepare a programmatic EIR (PEIR) for
CIP Projects associated with Utility Master Plans.
HDR has prepared PEIRs for several jurisdictions
successfully. Within the PEIRs that we have prepared
we have typically described the program as a whole,
identified the list of projects, analyzed the full
range of projects included in the program, and also
City of Fort Bragg | Section E | Scope of Work
E-11
Figure E-7. WIFIA Infrastructure Financing
evaluated at a project-level of analysis those projects that are more defined at the time of preparation
of the PEIR. This allows for additional efficiencies
and reduces the number of tiered and subsequent
CEQA documents that are necessary to finish CEQA
compliance, ultimately saving time and money. HDR
would recommend this approach for the City’s PEIR
if there are CIP projects that can be defined at a low
level of detail and still have full analysis of potential environmental impacts, while other CIP projects that
may be in the early planning phase and have a higher
level of detail to meet CEQA review requirements.
This programmatic/project-level approach informs
a whole decision-making process under CEQA with
necessary legal sufficiency; it also informs better
design in the next phase of work. HDR can work with
the City to define the appropriate approach for the
CIP Program PEIR. The agreed-upon approach will
inform the scope of work for the PEIR. Therefore, if
the City elects to prepare a PEIR for the CIP Program,
HDR will provide a separate scope of work and fee.