Established in 1925, Renewable Water Resources (ReWa) is a nonprofit, special-purpose district that provides wastewater collection and treatment services for upstate South Carolina. ReWa’s mission is to enhance communities’ quality of life by transforming wastewater into a renewable resource.
Over the past few decades, ReWa’s service area has expanded substantially, and the organization has acquired new properties to support its growing operations, geographically dispersed throughout its service area. This area now spans Greenville County and portions of Anderson, Laurens, Pickens, and Spartanburg Counties.
Because of this growth, managing accurate and historically reliable property information across this region has presented significant challenges, particularly when it comes to maintaining historical records of properties that have changed ownership over many years. Much of the information existed only in institutional knowledge or was stored in boxes of paper documents. Without a unified and up-to-date property database, it was difficult to track and manage the properties.
To address these challenges, ReWa’s GIS team collaborated with multiple departments across the organization to develop a comprehensive and authoritative property inventory, as well as a corresponding dashboard created with ArcGIS Experience Builder. This initiative aimed to create a centralized digital record of all ReWa-owned properties and establish a single, consolidated GIS data warehouse for property information. As the project progressed, this GIS-based property data became the foundation for property inspections, environmental and habitat assessments, and long-term planning for public recreation and trail development.
Building the Property Inventory
Before this project, ReWa had no centralized digital record of its property holdings, and parcel information varied across county jurisdictions. The GIS team began by researching parcel data from all five counties within ReWa’s service area to identify every property owned by the utility. From county parcel datasets, information such as property boundaries, parcel identification numbers, purchase dates, and prior land-use records were extracted to enrich existing property data. The team also compiled related documents including deeds, easement agreements, and memorandums of understanding and organized them in a shared location. Each document was later linked to its corresponding property record in the GIS database, which could be accessed through a shared folder via URL.
Collaborating with the facility management coordinator, the team added other data fields to support future property condition inspections as well as environmental assessments. These fields included attributes related to the physical condition of gates, fences, and structures, along with environmental indicators such as floodplain presence, aquatic ecosystem areas, and green space existence and acreage. By incorporating both operational and environmental attributes, the inventory evolved from a static ownership record into a dynamic dataset capable of supporting a wide range of management and planning needs.
During the research and development process, several key challenges emerged. One challenge was the standardization of property ownership records. Some properties were still listed under ReWa’s previous name, which was changed in 2009. In other cases, treatment plant sites were still recorded as multiple small parcels that needed to be consolidated. The team also discovered that several pump stations transferred to ReWa were located on school or homeowners’ association properties without distinct parcel identification numbers. To ensure data quality, the GIS team held standing review meetings with the engineering right-of-way coordinator and the facility management coordinator to verify property information and identify these and other issues that needed to be addressed.
Through this effort, ReWa established an authoritative property inventory that now includes 177 properties totaling approximately 1,883 acres. This inventory has provided the organization with its first comprehensive overview of all land assets and helped establish the foundation for subsequent stages of the organization’s land management initiatives.
Integrating into the Asset Management System
With the property inventory established, the team’s next step was to integrate the GIS data into the organization’s asset management system to support routine property inspections.
In this stage, GIS played a pivotal role in connecting property GIS data with the Computerized Maintenance Management System. The asset management team worked closely with the facility management team to develop property inspection templates that aligned with the attributes defined in the GIS database. These templates ensured field staff consistently recorded property conditions and observations, including potential hazards, site signage, and any evidence of illegal dumping. To maintain data synchronization, the GIS team developed a daily scheduled SQL script that automatically overwrites inspection data back into the GIS database.
With the integration completed, the GIS team developed a property inspection dashboard using ArcGIS Experience Builder to make the data easily accessible and actionable across the organization.
The dashboard provides an interactive view of inspection progress, property observations, and conditions in real time. Users can filter inspections by property condition score and quickly prioritize areas requiring follow-up. Each property record includes direct links from the GIS environment to the corresponding inspections within the asset management system, enabling seamless navigation between inspection data and maintenance actions.
The dashboard has become a central tool for management and field coordination. Supervisors use it to monitor inspection progress and identify maintenance priorities, while field teams rely on it to verify property details and update inspection records.
Supporting Environmental Assessment and Land Revitalization
To better understand the environmental characteristics of ReWa’s properties, the GIS team performed a series of spatial analyses using Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) floodplain data, the National Land Cover Database, and wetland datasets. The analyses quantified the environmental composition of each property, identifying areas influenced by floodplain coverage, aquatic habitats, and green space.
Across ReWa’s 177 properties, the results showed 124 aquatic ecosystem areas, 714 acres of floodplain, and 1,413 acres of green space. These findings now serve as the foundation for field-based environmental assessment efforts led by ReWa’s watershed and natural resources team with support from the GIS team. It supports water quality improvement projects such as land protection, wetland and riparian restoration, stormwater and green infrastructure best management practices, and stream-bank stabilization by providing reliable property and environmental information.
Most recently, to support ReWa’s land revitalization initiatives, the GIS team also developed a property map view application. This project combined many of the property inventory and asset management integration system components in a new collaborative effort. With the property map view app, managers and land management consultants can navigate geospatial data of property and land assets throughout ReWa’s entire service area, conduct land-use assessment, and determine future land-use plans.
The application provides query, filter, and field edit functions that allow users to access property details, review environmental characteristics, and record assessment results directly within the GIS platform. By integrating environmental data, operational
information, and planning tools into a single spatial environment, the application supports informed decision-making; promotes collaboration; and helps identify opportunities for restoration, repurposing, and community-focused development.
Through the land management initiative, ReWa has transformed how property information is collected, managed, and shared across the organization. What began as an effort to centralize property records evolved into a comprehensive GIS framework that supports asset management, environmental assessment, and land revitalization. By integrating data from multiple departments and systems, ReWa created a unified platform that improves efficiency, strengthens collaboration, and supports data-driven decision-making. This initiative not only enhances ReWa’s ability to maintain its property asset portfolio but also advances its mission of environmental stewardship and community engagement.
As ReWa continues to build on this foundation, the organization plans to expand the use of GIS to further support sustainable land management, promote public access to natural spaces, and ensure that every property contributes to the health and vitality of the community.
About the author
