City of Indio Public Works - Strategies, Solutions and Best Practices for Business Leaders

In the earliest days of the Interstate Highway System instituted by President Eisenhower, the city of Indio, Calif., was just another sleepy railroad town 120 miles east of Los Angeles in the Coachella Valley. City of Indio Public Works Director/Engineering Jim Smith says the creation of the interstate put Indio on the map as the last western town before the edge of the Colorado River. “All roads come through Indio,” he says. As an agricultural city it soon became famous as the date capital of the world.

The expansion of the railroads also made Indio an important center of commerce, serving as home to numerous processing and packing facilities for the produce from nearby farmers. The city also became renowned for being “the city of festivals,” hosting events including the National Date Festival and the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival.

Although this focus on festivals has brought Indio recognition from around the world, Smith says it lacked capital investment in some vital public facilities. “There was no park system, and we needed to build public buildings to serve 80,000 residents,” Smith says.

The city is rectifying that in a big way, however, with a number of significant public projects that will not only provide Indio’s citizens with needed services now, but also will provide the basis for the city’s growth in the future. These projects total approximately $300 million.

Big Impact
Smith says Indio’s current level of development is noteworthy for the modernization it brings to the city. “It’s huge,” he says. The community was a township founded in 1893 and incorporated as a general law city in 1930. “Streets are being repaved and widened, youth and senior centers are being developed, all parks in the City are being renovated, a new fire station is being built and infrastructure systems enhanced to provide the basic necessities that many communities enjoy,” Smith says.

In the last decade, however, an influx of interest from developers has brought new life to the city. “The community began a great transformation with the last business cycle in 2001 and 2002,” Smith says. The development brought new homes and businesses to Indio, but nothing in the way of municipal projects.

The scope of the city’s current projects involves building a 5 million-gallon water storage tank complex, a new teen center, a new senior center, a new corporate yard, and a new fire station. Ten parks are also included improving 52 acres of land. At build out, the city expects a total of 375 acres of park land to serve a population of 125,000 residents.

These projects are expected to have a huge impact on the community, Smith says. The water tanks, for example, will allow the city to install municipal plumbing systems north of Interstate 10 across the San Andreas Fault and gravity flow clean drinking water to the entire community.

In 2005, Smith says, the city only had 6 million gallons of water storage capacity, but this project is the first step in increasing that to a planned 70 million gallons in the future.

The new water tank system also will help provide fire protection in the event of an earthquake. The San Andreas Fault runs through the city and along its northern edge, so although the entire state would suffer from an earthquake, Indio could get the worst of it.

Part of the new water tank system is a system of emergency generators and shut off valves designed to move water after an earthquake. “Engineering is a learned science and we do learn from seismic events,” Smith says.

Unique Challenges
Building in Indio requires a bit more planning than the average community, Smith says, due to the city’s unique locale. Besides being located directly on the San Andreas Fault, it also is situated below sea level.

“Indio’s a little bit unique, we’re not quite like New Orleans where you look up and the lake is eight feet above the city,” he says. “Here in Indio, most of the city sits below sea level.” This necessitates the creation of a flood protection system.

“We’re utilizing the pipes that were there before to try to solve the community surface flooding problem when it does rain in the desert,” Smith says.