Columbia Power and Water Systems (CPWS) located in middle Tennessee is currently in the midst of a $600 million Long Term Water Supply Program consisting of multiple phased capital improvement projects. The most recent phase, scheduled for completion in early 2026, focused on improving treatment reliability by rehabilitating aging infrastructure within the existing water treatment plant. A key component of this effort was the complete rehabilitation of CPWS’s sedimentation basins. The original sedimentation basins were equipped with hose-style sludge collectors, fiberglass-reinforced plastic (FRP) tube settlers, and submerged weir effluent systems. Due to recurring operational challenges, these components were demolished and replaced with stainless steel hoseless sludge collectors and plate settlers with v-notch weirs, and the basins underwent concrete rehabilitation. Operational decisions for the original sludge collectors prioritized keeping equipment functional rather than optimizing process efficiency. If basins sat undisturbed for too long between sludge collector runs, the sludge would become dense and either weigh down the hoses, preventing sludge collection, or air would collect in the hoses, which limited their ability to remove sludge until CPWS could take an entire basin offline to clean it out. To mitigate these risks, the sludge collectors were operated once per shift (three times per day) in each basin, resulting in approximately 345,000 gallons of water wasted daily—nearly 2 percent of the plant’s 20-mgd treatment capacity. The new hoseless sludge collector system eliminated these limitations while introducing significant operational flexibility. Operators can now adjust multiple parameters, including waste flow rate, collector speed, frequency of operation, number and length of passes, dwell time, and automated valve positions. While the new equipment is not complex technology, the number of possible operating scenarios, due to the number of adjustable variables, is significantly more than the previous system. This presented an opportunity to reduce water waste from their sedimentation basins while maintaining effective solids removal, which is in line with CPWS’s focus on improving the efficiency of their water usage at the WTP and maximizing plant production to meet growing demands of the region. As a result, CPWS and IDG conducted a sludge optimization study to monitor the new equipment and to develop best practices for the plant based on the data collected. This presentation will detail the study’s sampling methodology, data analysis, and resulting water savings. It will also demonstrate how similar optimization efforts can be implemented by other water utilities to reduce costs, improve operational efficiency, and enhance stewardship of critical water resources.