Fast-Paced Land Acquisition and Pipeline Design

The Polk County Regional Water Cooperative (PRWC) is a special district made up of the cities and Polk County dedicated to addressing growing water needs in Polk County, Florida. To protect the environment, regulators are capping withdrawals from the traditional drinking water aquifer at the 2025 demand level. One of the selected projects by PRWC to provide alternative water supply (AWS) to the cities and the county is to pull from a deep aquifer below the drinking water aquifer and treat the water by reverse osmosis. The water will be delivered through a 60-mi transmission pipeline to member drop-off points. The pipe diameters range from 42 in. to 6 in. The pipeline portion of the project is divided into multiple construction packages, which will be procured using the Construction Manager at Risk (CMAR) procurement method. The growing need for alternative water supply led to the need for expedited project management methods in terms of easement acquisition. A large majority of the alignment was designed to be outside of the right-of-way in permanent utility easements due to the lack of space in the existing right-of-way. The project will require over 400 separate easements for the permanent utility easements and the temporary construction easements. The fast pace of the project did not allow for the easements to be acquired for the entirety of the route before moving forward with final design and construction. A full-time acquisition team was utilized with a strategy to attempt to acquire parcels in the order that the bid packages would be released and continue based on the delivery timeline. As negotiations continue for parcels, there has been an increased requirement for flexibility in the design alignment due to the fast pace of new development. There are large portions of the alignment that were once open land that have quickly become new residential or commercial developments. Each development provides a unique challenge that sometimes requires an alignment shift. There has also been a need for constant communication between the acquisition team, legal, and the design team to answer any questions that parcel owners or their legal representatives have. The critical path for the project requires the design drawing to be used to assist with the acquisition documents during the design phase, as they are produced for each construction package. This method has allowed the team to acquire easements during the design phase and even while the first packages go out to bid. This method relies on a thorough route analysis at the start of the project to ensure that the choices made for easements can be fully defended. Also, the impact of community outreach and communication on the acquisition process has been an important factor.