Reservoirs are storage tanks used for drinking water, storing water for firefighting, buffering strain on the water supply system during peak demands, and allowing for continuous service during brief supply shutdowns. As the population grows, Bellevue needs to be able to store more water. Based on regulations and industry standards, the City will need additional reservoir volume by 2030 to serve anticipated growth in downtown, Bel-Red and other areas.
The City has already exhausted other alternatives to constructing more storage, including updated efficiency standards that reduce demands, and construction of added transmission capacity to access available storage elsewhere in the system. These efforts improved system redundancy and extended the anticipated deadline for needing additional storage (from 2020 to about 2030), but new storage still must be planned and built.
Opportunity for public input
The City considered four neighborhoods—shown in the map below—for the new water reservoir. The City implemented a process for the evaluation and ultimate selection of one of these neighborhoods based on the following criteria:
- Technical feasibility
- Community benefits and impacts
- Operational impacts
- Costs
- And other factors
A new reservoir would affect neighbors, particularly during construction, but the City was interested in finding ways for it to offer meaningful, long-term benefits to the neighborhood as well.
Timeline
Initial Engagement: May-July 2022
- Walk-and-talks or small meetings with neighbors of potential sites
- Collecting comments/feedback from neighbors via paper and electronic forms
Feedback was used in the development of criteria for evaluating alternatives.
Alternatives Identification and Analysis: July 2022 - January 2023
- Follow-up emails to community members
- Collecting comments/feedback from neighbors via paper and electronic forms
Feedback updated our understanding of community interests and priorities.
Alternatives Evaluation: November 2022 - January 2023
- Community-wide Survey: Available on Engaging Bellevue from November 7, 2022 to January 13, 2023
- Online Open House: November 29, 2023. Feedback informed the City's evaluation and selection of a preferred option. View recording of the Online Open House:
Alternatives Evaluation and Selection: March - December 2023
- Launch web-based storymap with interactive maps and digital content
- Follow-up emails to community members
- Additional evaluation centered on updated criteria regarding future projected growth within the City
Final Decision on Site Selection: Meydenbauer neighborhood (December 2023)
The Meydenbauer neighborhood location was selected for the following reasons:
- Bellevue Utilities owns the property.
- The size of the property can accommodate a large reservoir that will be needed to support future growth.
- The location is geographically close to where additional water storage is forecasted to be needed.
- The neighborhood supports a new reservoir at this location (based on it being a fully buried reservoir in order to preserve the current open space of the property).
- The location is favorable from a system operation/redundancy standpoint.
The scope of the project will include not only the new reservoir, but also a new pump station building next to the reservoir, and several thousand linear feet of transmission water main to transport water from the reservoir into the existing water distribution system.
Contact
