Managing past and current septic permit applications for areas totaling just over 425,000 residents without an enterprise content management (ECM) solution meant a lot of paper trails and time-consuming manual processes for Idaho’s Central District Health Department (CDHD). Full story »

There’s little in life that’s more elemental than water. And yet, in most developed countries, it’s easy to take access to safe water and sanitation for granted.

Prior to the creation of the Central Contra Costa Sanitary District (CCCSD) in 1946, however, Contra Costa County—located east of San Francisco, CA—was in crisis. A post-war building boom had brought an influx of new residents, most of them relying on septic systems that didn’t take well to the area’s heavy adobe clay soil. With septic tanks overflowing and waterborne diseases such as typhoid becoming a potential threat, health authorities considered the polluted conditions in the county to be among the worst in California.

As a result, the CCCSD was formed as a special district, a sewer system and treatment plants were put in place, and the public received much-needed access to safe water and sanitation.
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The Clay County Utility Authority is an independent special district, created by special legislation in Chapter 94-491 of the Florida statutes, that services the water, wastewater, and reclaimed water needs of its service area in Clay County, Florida. “Being a governmental entity, CCUA obtains its revenues from its ratepayers, not from taxpayers,” explains Dave Howell, Records Management Administrator. And when people don’t use as much water – say, in the case of the recent economic slowdown and the resulting lull in home building and new service requests – CCUA acts like any other business: It watches spending and looks for ways to cut costs. Howell says Laserfiche has given him the administrative control to be flexible enough to not only manage CCUA’s exponential paperwork growth, but to monitor productivity, ensure compliance and implement a disaster recovery plan. As a result of this streamlining, efficiency and oversight, CCUA has been able to not only solve its document management issues, Howell says, but has also been able to cross-train existing staff to run more efficiently.
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The West Piedmont, VA, Health District is going high-tech when it comes to digging below ground. By using Laserfiche to enable instant access to digging permits, this branch of the Virginia State Health Department has expedited the process of digging wells and septic systems for new real estate development in this scenic slice of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
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Minnesota. It’s not called the land of ten thousand lakes for nothing. This aqueous state needs a total of 45 watershed districts to manage water quality and to regulate any land development projects near bodies of water.

In Minnesota, watershed districts are local, special-purpose units of government that work to solve and prevent water-related problems. The boundaries of each district follow those of a natural watershed and consist of land in which all water flows to one outlet, and districts are usually named after that watershed. They range in size from the Carnelian-Marine District with 43 square miles, to the Red Lake Watershed District with 5990 square miles.
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