September-October 2006

Tomorrow and Tomorrow

Today’s fast water pipe repairs are not our long-term solution.

“Time crumbles things; everything grows old under the power of Time and is forgotten through the lapse of Time.” Thus spake Aristotle, one of the wisest of men, more than 2,000 years ago. He was not talking about the condition of our water distribution systems, but he might have been if he’d made his observation today. The worst part of the saying is its end, that part about being forgotten through the lapse of Time. The water that leaks from the pipes before it reaches our homes and businesses (but after it has been treated expensively) is seldom seen. It seeps into the ground, a costly moisturizer, but it is usually hidden. For most of the time and most of our neighbors, it is out of sight and out of mind. I contacted my own two senators on this issue. One responded that he has fully supported major federal funding sources to improve our state’s water infrastructure. The other senator did not address the issue but told me what a fantastic job he was doing in unrelated areas.

It’s much easier to be concerned about those problems we can see (such as rising gas prices) or smell (like sewer malfunctions). It’s easier to be concerned about those items that the television newscasters tell us to grieve over, unpleasant incidents that always seem to happen far away. They are interesting, even awful, but we’re not often in a practical position to do anything about them, are we? There have been many efforts in the last few decades to get everybody interested in the problems of our water infrastructure. Some of those pushing for more commitment from governments are senators and other members of those governments, but the problems do not seem to go away; nor does the situation seem to improve.

A couple of years ago, Professor Neil Grigg of Colorado State University wrote an excellent article on this subject, and I contacted him today to see if much had changed in the two years that (true to Aristotle’s reasoning) have elapsed. “In the two years since 2004, the pipes have aged two years (if that’s a surprise) and replacement rates lag decay rates,” observes Professor Grigg. “There is more interest in plastic pipes, but cast iron and ductile iron will continue as the major pipe material for many years. Water quality as it is affected by distribution systems is under more scrutiny. Bottled water sales continue upward, indicating concern about confidence in piped water. Utilities are under increasing cost pressures. So, you might say that water supply distribution systems continue to be under scrutiny and the prospects are for higher costs as drinking-water utilities seek solutions to this massive infrastructure issue.”

As Professor Grigg mentioned, some of the water pipes are decaying. In communities where they discover old pipes breaking up, decaying, and letting the water dissipate into the ground, they may be facing rehabilitation of the entire old system. Yes, that could mean miles of new pipe. With funds as rare for this kind of infrastructure work as qualified volunteers for most community boards and councils, the response to broken pipes has been a repair to solve the problem temporarily. It seems that the quick fix is the standard procedure. It solves today’s problem. What of tomorrow? Sadly, the condition of the water pipes that have not been fixed is not going to improve. We should not blame the original installers. That’s not a solution. Their pipes have lasted very well, better than many man-made systems of construction, but nothing lasts forever, certainly nothing that constantly and continuously transports water.

Establishing Directions in Distribution
Some of our major cities—Atlanta is one—have been taking steps to remedy the situation. A good start for finding remedies may be in asset management systems that help a municipality or utility make the most of available dollars. “The City of Atlanta is an example of one municipality that has recently begun efforts to build such a tool for its potable water system, to help prioritize where and when dollars need to be spent,” observes Ernesto Aguilar, PBS&J associate vice president and division manager of the company’s California Public Works Division. Commenting on the current state of our water distribution in North America, Aguilar adds, “People take it for granted that you can turn on a faucet and good water will come out. Yet it’s inevitable that we will see the quality of our water deteriorate unless we start seriously addressing our distribution systems. When people start to get sick because of contamination resulting from deteriorating lines, it will be too late. We’ll be replacing water mains as well as distribution lines then.”

PBS&J (some of you may remember the company as Post, Buckley, Schuh & Jernigan) has almost 4,000 employees nationwide and overseas. It has several areas of engineering expertise but perhaps the most relevant here is the company’s watershed management. For many years the company has worked for the EPA; FEMA; and state, regional, and local entities to develop watershed management plans that provide watershed solutions for the long term. Those plans may include addressing of water quality, flood hazard mitigation, and the stream stabilization and restoration aspects of flood-prone areas. “Those of us in the water industry know that the current state of water distribution in North America is not good,” observes Aguilar. “Maintenance of water distribution systems seems to fall to the bottom of the list when it comes to money allocation, far behind transportation and sewer systems. Why? Because, every day, people see traffic congestion and are inconvenienced by it. They see beaches closed because of poor-quality stormwater and directly impacted by that. There are consequences when regulations governing stormwater quality and sewage spills are not met. These things capture our attention and our local governments respond accordingly by giving them priority. In the western US water is sacred. We are doing some innovative things in the area of water supply. But when it comes to our distribution systems, we’re like everyone else. We’re just patching them up, providing quick remedies that get us through to the next problem.”

Subsurface utility engineering (SUE) is a branch of engineering practice whose benefits have been most obvious for construction of streets and highways, but it can help virtually any underground projects. SUE can include the management of risks associated with utility condition assessment, utility relocation design and coordination, or cost estimates for utility rehabilitation and relocation. The State of Florida reports that, for major projects in Miami and Tallahassee, the use of SUE saved $3 in contractor construction delay claims for every $1 spent on SUE. Understanding that a most significant early step in all water distribution projects is finding out what we have already, it seems possible that using this form of engineering could be of great benefit to planners, especially when records are not perfect or even available. Some savings enjoyed have been due to what contractors or public works departments did not have to do to change or improve underground systems. As an alternative to the temporary repair of breaks in isolated places along the lines, perhaps we should look at the whole system in our community. The facts we discover and the use to which we put them make the foundation for a future, lasting network. Tools to find out what’s down there are available, and there are computer-based systems available today that will investigate and record what is happening (and what could happen).

Starting From a New Plan?
Most professionals agree that our current quick fixes, patches, and temporary repairs are not the ideal solution to our distribution problems for potable water. Don’t malign such jobs, however, because they have solved problems for the time being. Community Development Block Grants (CDBG) have been a good source of funds for solving water problems, especially in communities (or parts of communities) where low incomes would prevent any alternative funding. These communities can be metropolitan or rural. In some states there are several communities involved in grants that benefit them as a group, but there has been much speculation lately that CDBG are going to be virtually dismantled by current authorities.

For a program that has completed so many worthwhile projects (including water projects) over the past three decades to be put aside seems unthinkable. So keep your professional eye on that concern. I was speaking with the director of operations of a small community (about 5,000) yesterday, and he could not praise the grants highly enough. A whole section of his state, not just his own community, has benefited. What that means is that the people living there have had adequate and affordable water supplies for a few years now. The reason that the communities in question have been awarded the grants has been the number of low- to middle-income residents. To deny these persons healthy water is worse than Marie Antoinette saying that those who had no bread should eat cake instead. In today’s situation, that is telling some communities to buy all their water in bottles. In that same (large but not populous) state, a fairly average small community’s monthly water rate is $26.78, thanks in part to grants in years gone by. How many bottles of water would a family of four get for $26.78? Enough to drink, cook, wash?

If we are going to address this problem on a long-term basis and start again, we’ll find out what we have and try to forecast what we will need and how we are going to meet those needs. There are tools available; this is the age of the computer. There was a most interesting report recently about a program from Colorado-based MWH Soft, a company that has a good global reputation for water resources applications software. The program is the most recent version of the MWH Soft Designer module. Its pipe network optimization capability seems to be a large step forward in water distribution system modeling. Know what you have and go from there. The program combines the latest in Genetic Algorithm optimization technology with good control strategies. Designer can quickly identify the best combination of pipe system improvements to satisfy the required hydraulic and water-quality performance at the lowest cost. Those improvements could include cleaning and lining the pipe, replacement, expansion options, strengthening, and the building of new pumping and storage facilities.

"We have seen MWH Soft Designer used with great success, producing better designs for our customers more quickly,” observes Adel AbouJaoude, Ph.D., head of the Environmental Engineering Department at Khatib & Alami, a leading company (in North America and the Middle East especially) in the provision of utility solutions. “This new, enhanced extension is a practical, powerful tool that engineers can rely on to produce superior designs and quickly improve the reliability, integrity, and performance of their water distribution systems. It is remarkably easy to use, highly flexible, and rich in functionality.”

Not All Leaks Are Political
It would be easy to assume that leaks came from broken pipe. Pressure from the ground itself and impact from rocks on buried pipe can cause breakage, but we have learned that many of the leaks are at the joints in the pipe. The joints are as important as the pipe itself. New materials of construction and new jointing techniques have made today’s pipes less likely to leak. Don’t blame yesterday’s installers for the bad joints! In most instances, they were using the best available at the time. A couple of years ago our local water department workers found that the leak causing problems down on River Drive was a break in a wooden pipe. They patched it. Interestingly, there has been no break since (nor before, as far as our records show) in that old wooden section of water pipe. When we do decide to replace lengths of pipe (and some projects will be miles long), we should be able to do so with confidence that the leaks will not start at the joints. The answers, as for so many of our problems, have been chemical. Plastic, if you wish.

One of the types of pipe that has earned great praise was born in 1969—not long ago in the history of the world’s infrastructure. The pipes are centrifugal cast fiberglass reinforced polymer mortar (CCFRPM); the North American source is HOBAS in Houston. This pipe claims high-strength pipe wall, leak-free couplings, and a hydraulically efficient interior that gives long (maintenance-free) life together with lower pumping costs. No cathodic protection is needed, even in corrosive oils or locations where there are electrically charged spots. Many of the highly populated, water-guzzling countries in the world, including the USA, Spain, United Kingdom, Austria, Hungary, Poland, etc. etc., have officially approved this pipe for potable water.

The public tends to think of water pipe as small bore stuff, because that’s what comes into the house. In New Orleans, for an emergency water main replacement, the HOBAS pipe installed by Boh Brothers Construction was 36 inches. There were 1,000 feet sliplined into an old cast-iron line. The 36-inch liner pipes were reconnected at both ends to the 48-inch cast-iron pipes using steel reducers with dresser-style joint seals. Critical to the success of HOBAS pipes has been the leak-free aspect of their installation. It was an aerial survey that indicated the need for new pipe in McAllen, TX, including the McAllen-Miller International Airport (the primary business airport for deep Texas and the northeast of Mexico). Aerial photos showed areas of beautiful vegetation where there wasn’t supposed to be any, along the pipeline that was a water supply channel crossing Hidalgo County and some of the airport. The vegetation meant leaks in the channel. Summit Contracting of Weslaco, TX, used 63-inch-diameter CCFRPM pipe that was slipped into the crumbling concrete pipe joints—1,090 feet of new pipe. As the channel is a major feed for the city’s reservoir, only 70 calendar days (calendar, because water does not take the weekend off) could be allowed for the rehabilitation; it was completed a week ahead of schedule.

More Options for Tomorrow
In the course of our research we found an excellent presentation given in October 2005 in Saskatoon by representatives of Insituform Technologies from the US, Canada, and the UK. We are not going to reproduce the presentation here but we do recommend that you find it and read it. It is full of (non-advertorial) information. It’s on the Web site for the Western Canada Water & Wastewater Association, with the title “Bridging the Gaps.” We will quote only four definitions that the authors themselves quoted as relevant to trenchless and minimal disruption construction methods for maintaining water system infrastructure. They are:

1. Rehabilitation: All measures for restoring or upgrading the performance of an existing pipeline system

2. Renovation: Work incorporating all or part of the original fabric of the pipeline by means of which its current performance is improved

3. Repair: Rectification of local damage

4. Replacement: Rehabilitation of an existing pipeline system by installation of a new pipeline system, without incorporating the original fabric

There, we thought, are four excellent starting points for discussion of our community’s water distribution network.

There are several different methods of replacing old pipe, and the solution for your community will be the one that you can afford and that takes into consideration all your local conditions. The arrival of trenchless technologies for underground construction has made a huge difference to the efficiency and cost of all underground projects. We don’t see many streets torn up and poorly replaced. There are fewer complaints from residents. One of the trenchless techniques that have earned particular praise is that of pipe bursting. The City of Winter Park, FL, had something like 40 miles of pipe to correct. Hurricanes and uprooted trees did not help much, twisting and breaking the old materials. The city decided to acquire pipe-bursting equipment and to combine that with pre-chlorination. Pipe bursting is cost-effective for replacing (or upsizing) pipes; it does not entail tearing up the streets. There are other advantages. Pre-chlorinated pipe-bursting systems (HammerHead Mole is one of which we have heard good reports) use your existing utility location and easements, and that helps reduce engineering and design costs. “Potentially there is a cost savings of at least $2,500 per project in design and engineering costs associated with permits alone,” observes Craig Campbell, division chief of Winter Park’s distribution and collection division. According to the guidelines of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, pipe bursting is a replacement method that does not require special permits as long as the new pipe is either the same size or up to two sizes larger than the existing main.

One of the pleasantly surprising results of our research into this nationwide problem is to hear operations directors and the chiefs of public works departments say that improvements they had dreamed of may become realities with advances in today’s technologies and costs, and with more pressure put on public officials to recognize the needs. Manufacturers of drilling and pipe-bursting equipment have certainly been doing their best to make the necessary tools available, whether you are dealing with pipes of diameters that horizontal directional drilling machines like those from Vermeer and Ditch Witch offer or pipes that are best installed by larger equipment like the tunnel-boring machines from companies like Akkerman. The size of the pipe required can be accommodated. Our greatest challenge may be to nag the right people into understanding the critical nature of our nation’s water infrastructure. Then we nag them some more to get funds approved. The nagging is not just a responsibility for the mayor or our local political representatives; it’s for all of us to do. We are at the stage where we know what can be done, and we know what should be done, so we should be devoting time and energy to making sure it is done.