VILLAS — Instead of waiting for water towers to rust and need a major repair, a new concept is continuing maintenance.
At an April 4 Lower Township Municipal Utilities Authority (MUA) meeting, Executive Director Matt Ecker said the authority has four water towers. He said MUA would make a flat payment to a water tower maintenance firm “as opposed to not doing anything and waiting until they kind of get deteriorated,” and then hire an engineer, evaluate the coatings, going out to bid, bring in a contractor, paint the tower and put the tower back in service.
Ecker said preventive maintenance would accomplish items that get ignored such as washing out and disinfecting a water tank and doing visual inspections.
“If you look at our tanks, we have the tale of two cities,” he said. “We have two tanks that are in pretty poor shape that are older tanks and we have two tanks that are relatively new and in excellent shape.”
Ecker said if the management of all four tanks were “packaged,” MUA would end up with a balanced payment. He said the Scott Avenue water tank was in rough shape, having lead coatings and with the need to be blasted and painted.
In comparison, the Millman Center tank needs no repairs, said Ecker.
Marty Mazzella of Utility Services, a division of United Water and Suez Environment, a utility company, told MUA Commissioners his firm would evaluate the water towers on an annual basis, renovate the tanks as needed, keep the inside of the tanks clean and make sure the tanks are always in good condition. He said when four tanks are “bundled,” his firm could produce a payment package “that costs about the same if you did it the traditional way.”
Mazzella said in many cases, the cost is less. He said water tanks were steel structures and should last “indefinitely” if kept from rusting.
With a maintenance package, if there were ever an issue with coatings or an emergency repair, Utility Service would bear the responsibility. He said without such a maintenance package, if a tank was painted and three to four years later the paint begins to come off, a utility would be out of luck.
Mazzela said his company would be responsible to redo the paint job at their expense if the utility had a maintenance contract.
“In this environment down here near the shore, we like to make sure that we do an exterior overcoat renovation every eight to 10 years as opposed to waiting 14 or 15 and then you start to see a lot of rust, all the coatings have to come off…” he said.
The goal is to avoid the “big dollars” having to do a containment system when blasting down to bare steel and add all brand new coatings.
Mazella said his firm had about 6,000 tanks under management. He said his firm served six or seven utilities in South Jersey.
Contracts in New Jersey have ranged from 10 years with multiple year extensions to 20 years. He suggested a 15-year plan for the MUA, which would get each of the four tanks, renovated “at least once.”
Commissioners voted to advertise for tank management bids.
According to Today’s Sunbeam, the Borough of Elmer has been presented with a proposal from Utility Services for a 15-year-plan estimated at $868,000 for a single tank.
Sea Isle City – I would like to let everyone know that the fire chief salary also includes 4% raises in the next four years, while they offered public works and everybody else much less.
