Lessons in Sustainable Infrastructure from the Water Sector

In line with our continuing focus on water and wastewater, this post offers key insights from three Envision-awarded projects.

Sustainable infrastructure is no longer just an aspiration— it’s essential to the long-term viability of communities. Sustainable infrastructure includes renewing the assets that will provide critical services well into the future. Achieving this requires a holistic approach, recognizing and balancing many interconnected factors through a sustainable planning lens. The essence of sustainability lies in safeguarding an asset’s long-term viability while preserving resources and minimizing harm — striking a balance between interconnected trade-offs and benefits.

The Envision Sustainable Infrastructure Framework was tailor built for this purpose. Specifically, ISI’s framework is a decision-making tool and holistic system that helps project team  identify and track progress against the full range of sustainability indicators. Water and wastewater projects of every size frequently use Envision, so much so that this category makes up 40% of ISI’s portfolio of projects. The framework is effective for new facilities, as well as upgrading and replacing aging infrastructure, including drinking water systems, wastewater treatment plants, and stormwater conveyance systems. Often these projects are complex, yearslong undertakings involving numerous variables and potential impacts throughout design and construction. To navigate these challenges, project teams rely on proven tools to assess performance and set measurable goals for improvement. For many, Envision provides that structured approach.

Consider a hypothetical wastewater treatment plant upgrade project:

Project primary goals: Service reliability and water quality

Owner and project team focus: Enhancing treatment processes to remove emerging contaminants or to reduce nutrient discharges.

The goal of service reliability might lead to deeper discussions about capacity expansion — ensuring the system can accommodate population growth or increased demand, operational efficiencies, and long-term maintenance.

The project team might ask themselves questions like:

• Are there new technologies that can reduce costs, energy use, or chemical consumption?
• Can the design be configured to improve access for routine maintenance tasks?
• Should systems or equipment be added to monitor operational performance?

Resilience and climate adaptation may also be important considerations to meet the primary goals; and could warrant a system-wide review to determine the need to upgrade systems to withstand extreme weather, sea level rise, or other hazards or threats.

The discussion also might draw attention to inter-related aspects, such as factors that would contribute to the project’s social licence, or increased community satisfaction from adjacent neighborhoods or the communities it serves. The owner and the project team might look for enhancements that go beyond the project’s functional goals to support social sustainability and contribute to the community’s quality of life.

The project team might ask themselves questions like:

• Could the project add opportunities to provide education about the facility and/or the wastewater process?
• Are there on-site or adjacent public spaces that could be improved or created?
• How can construction impacts be minimized to alleviate negative effects on community safety and mobility?

Forward-looking water/wastewater owners and project teams are focusing beyond service reliability by connecting projects to broader community goals. Many recent Envision projects illustrate this philosophy. They’re leading the way in recognizing aspects like public health, energy and water use, climate resilience and protecting/enhancing ecosystems — even as they deliver much-needed water/wastewater service improvements. Here is a brief look at three Envision-awarded project examples: the Bee Ridge Water Reclamation Facility (BRWRF) in Florida, the NE 16th Street & Jefferson Avenue NE Stormwater Green Streets Project in Washington, and the Holland Area Wastewater Reclamation Facility Anaerobic Digester Project in Michigan. Departing from a traditional single-objective focus, these projects provide wide-ranging community benefits while offering valuable lessons in sustainability, innovation, and stakeholder engagement.

Lesson 1: Infrastructure Can Enhance Environmental and Community Resilience

The BRWRF Expansion and Advanced Wastewater Treatment Conversion Project in Sarasota County, Florida, exemplifies how infrastructure can address both environmental and community needs. This $25-million (USD) project increases wastewater treatment capacity by 50%, while implementing advanced technologies to reduce nutrient pollution. With Florida’s largest membrane bioreactor system and biological nutrient removal basins, the facility will significantly cut nitrogen and phosphorus discharges, helping to prevent algal blooms that impact ecosystems and tourism.

Beyond its technical achievements, BRWRF integrates climate resilience by incorporating design features that withstand sea-level rise and extreme weather events. Its emphasis on water reuse helps conserve potable water, while financial innovation—securing a $105M low-interest federal loan—ensures affordability for ratepayers. The key takeaway might just be that sustainability is not just about engineering, it’s about integrating resilience into financial planning, environmental protection, and long-term community benefits.

Lesson 2: Community-Led Design Strengthens Equity and Environmental Outcomes

The NE 16th Street & Jefferson Avenue NE Stormwater Green Streets Project in Renton, Washington, highlights the power of community-driven infrastructure. Built in the Sunset neighborhood—an area with outdated infrastructure from the 1940s—this $3.5-million (USD) project prioritizes both stormwater management and social equity. Through extensive community engagement, including multilingual meetings and neighborhood surveys, residents directly influenced the project’s design.

Sustainability features such as permeable pavers, vegetated strips, and stormwater runoff treatment units improve water quality while enhancing neighborhood aesthetics. By integrating bioretention systems and pervious pavement, the project reduces the burden on larger stormwater networks, mitigating flooding risks and enhancing climate resilience. The result? A project that not only manages stormwater effectively but also revitalizes a historically underserved community, proving that equity and environmental sustainability go hand in hand.

Lesson 3: Circular Economy Principles Improve Long-Term Viability

In Michigan, the Holland Area Water Reclamation Facility’s Anaerobic Digester Project demonstrates how sustainable infrastructure can embrace circular economy principles. Faced with rising costs and regulatory challenges around biosolids disposal, the facility turned to anaerobic digestion to reduce wastewater solids by approximately 50% while generating renewable energy.

By capturing methane-rich biogas and converting it into heat and electricity, the project will meet 100% of its own energy needs and produce surplus energy for other facility operations. The transition to producing Class A biosolids also eliminates the need for lime stabilization, reducing potential water pollutants and operational costs. This $34M project not only addresses immediate waste management challenges but also aligns with broader sustainability goals, demonstrating how infrastructure investments can create long-term environmental and economic benefits.

The Future of Sustainable Infrastructure

These projects underscore key principles of the Envision framework like environmental resilience, community engagement and resource efficiency, and indeed highlight similar concepts in other sustainability management systems. Through advanced wastewater treatment, green stormwater management, biogas generation, etc., these projects demonstrate how infrastructure can simultaneously support environmental and ecological health, economic development, and social sustainability.

As cities face increasing pressures from climate change and population growth, the projects’ lessons learned provide a roadmap for building forward-looking infrastructure. Their success highlights a powerful truth: updating or replacing infrastructure assets requires more than technical knowledge and perspectives — it calls for adopting a sustainable infrastructure lens in order to create lasting value for generations to come.