Airport Water Reclamation Facility

The expansion, which took two years, will increase the capacity at the plant from the current 1.2 million gallons per day to 3.75 million gallons per day. In addition, the new facility is scalable, enabling future expansion phases to increase treatment capacity up to a total of 15 million gallons per day.

The cost of design and construction was approximately $42 million, financed though the Water Infrastructure Financing Authority (WIFA).  The debt is being repaid via wastewater rates and impact fees.

Design, permitting, and construction of the facility were successfully accomplished through the efforts of the City and its numerous partners and stakeholders including WIFA, the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality, Arizona Department of Water Resources, Northern Arizona Council of Governments, Arizona Eco Development, design team Waterworks Engineers and sub-consultants, and construction team PCL/Fann Environmental and subcontractors. 

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Alarcon Street (before)                 Alarcon Street (after) 

Several sidewalks in Downtown Prescott were rehabilitated in 2014, part of the  Downtown Sidewalk Repairs Project the Prescott City Council budgeted for in 2013.  Many of the completed sidewalks in the downtown area had not been replaced in more than 70 years and were in disrepair.
 

Thanks to improvements in concrete that exist now, the new sidewalks are expexted to last for decades. In certain areas, necessary ADA improvements, including ramps with truncated domes were added to help guide visually impaired pedestrians. Several property owners made additional enhancements to driveway entrances, walkways and landscaping, further improving the overall look of the streetscape. 

Improvements to sidewalks on additional streets in the downtown area will begin in the Spring of 2015.

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 Prescott Regional Mass Casualties Incident Exercise

The City of Prescott hosted a public safety exercise at the Prescott Municipal Airport on November 8, 2014, to simulate a commercial passenger aircraft accident.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) requires that all commercial airports nationwide perform a full-scale drill every three years and prescribes various aspects of the exercise, including the type of aircraft used in the simulation, and the number of "victims" to be treated, for the purpose of evaluating incident management and first responder readiness.

The exercise included fire and smoke from a simulated aircraft crash, followed by emergency vehicles with lights and sirens responding to the scene inside the secured perimeter of the airport.

The Prescott Police and Fire Departments planned the drill for several months in coordination with the Prescott Regional Public Safety Communication Center (PRCC) and other local public safety organizations. 

These agencies conduct annual "table-top" exercises to review emergency plans and make refinements. Every third year, the agencies conduct a comprehensive drill of this type to test their emergency plans and operational capabilities.
 

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Prescott was one of six communities selected for the inaugural launch of a program based on the seedlings from the Survivor Tree by The National September 11 Memorial & Museum. The museum sent seedlings from the tree to what it calls "resilient communities" that embody "the spirit of the Survivor Tree." Prescott was selected in honor of the fallen members of the Granite Mountain Hotshots, an elite firefighting squad that lost 19 men on June 30, 2013.

On September 11, 2001, one tree, a Bradford Pear, survived the World Trade Center attacks. Barely alive, it endured following years of off-site intensive care and rehabilitation by The New York Parks Department. Home again at the World Trade Center, The Survivor Tree now thrives, and is a national symbol of hope and resiliency.

Each year on September 12, the 9/11 Memorial donates a Survivor Tree Seedling to a community that has overcome tragedy. According to the Memorial, "These communities represent the spirit of the Survivor Tree and their tree will serve as an inspirational landmark conveying resiliency and hope within the community, just as the Survivor Tree does at the 9/11 Memorial."

According to the Memorial, when the pear tree was found, "it was severely burnt with its limbs reduced to stumps and its bark charred. Amazingly, however, leaves still sprouted and this tree's perseverance gave the recovery workers hope. The tree was replanted on Veteran's Day in 2001 and watched over with great care. The Survivor Tree quietly, but remarkably, grew from eight to 30 feet. New bark, leaves, and branches sprouted from the tree's scars, an inspiring symbol of survival, renewal, and strength after 9/11." 

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