Beyond replacing lead water lines and copper pipes, aging water infrastructure is becoming a major challenge for local municipalities.
The city of Monmouth’s water supply comes from six deep wells, with three going to the north treatment plant and three to the south.
When the water tower on West Harlem Avenue recently sprung a leak, the city learned it would have to be patched from the inside as well as the outside.
But the 500,000-gallon tank that supplies the Smithfield Foods pork-processing plant in town couldn’t be drained for repairs without causing other problems, like water main breaks.
“This required a worker to be in a diving suit, which had to be thoroughly chlorinated and cleaned as not to contaminate the water in the tank,” said City Administrator Lew Steinbrecher
The water tower repairs cost the city an unexpected $65,000.
The contractor also welded metal plates over other cracks that could become leaks in the future.
But the water tower built in the mid-1960s is just one part of the city’s aging water infrastructure that needs to be addressed.
Steinbrecher said the city plans to replace four water mains and drill a new production well just this year.
“Some of our older wells on the south side of town have been failing. And they’re very expensive to repair back into production,” Steinbrecher said. “So we truly need another source of water, which will also create the need for a new, small water treatment plant.”
The city is funding the water projects with reserves, grants, state appropriations, and proceeds and operations savings from selling the city’s landfill to Lakeshore Recycling Systems in 2021.
Steinbrecher said Monmouth is not alone in dealing with aging infrastructure.
"Except for maybe some of the richer Chicago suburbs, I would daresay it’s something that is very common to most Midwest communities," Steinbrecher said.
Meanwhile, Galesburg gets its water supply from an aquifer in Oquawka along the Mississippi River.
The water is transported to Galesburg through a 31-mile pipeline that was installed in 1958.
Now the pipeline is old enough that it needs an inspection to determine how much life it has left, but inspecting the entire length would cost $2 million.
So the city council will vote Monday on a $152,000 engineering agreement with Klinger and Associates for a risk analysis and inspection of six miles of the pipeline.
The work would include a hydraulic analysis to measure pressure along the entire pipeline and using 3-D drones for topographic mapping.
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