Infrastructure, energy, and water planning

Learning objectives

• Explain how infrastructure capacity shapes where and when growth happens, and how plans, the CIP, and extension policies connect.
• Describe asset management and why life-cycle costs matter more than construction costs.
• Summarize the planning issues in water supply, wastewater, and stormwater, including combined sewer overflows and stormwater permits.
• Distinguish riparian and prior appropriation water rights, and apply the solid waste hierarchy.
• Describe land use's role in energy planning, including renewable energy siting, electrification, and broadband.
• Recognize the equity questions in siting infrastructure and locally unwanted land uses.

Key concepts

Infrastructure shapes growth

Water, sewer, roads, energy, and broadband don't just serve development; they steer it. A sewer extension can open thousands of acres to subdivision, and a lack of capacity can stop growth entirely. That's why planners coordinate:

• the comprehensive plan's land use map with utility service areas (where the jurisdiction will extend water and sewer). Drawn as a firm line beyond which the jurisdiction won't extend water and sewer, it becomes an urban service boundary, a close cousin of the urban growth boundary;
• level-of-service standards and concurrency or adequate public facilities rules (see Implementation programs, partnerships, and monitoring). Adopting a level of service is a fiscal promise: the capital program has to be able to build what the standard assumes, or development stalls;
• the capital improvements program, which schedules the investments (see Capital planning and public finance); and
• extension policies: who pays for new lines (often the developer) and where extensions are allowed.

When an infrastructure plan and a land use plan disagree, the infrastructure usually wins, because private development follows capacity.

8 more sections follow in the full lesson.