Pollution Engineering - September 2008 - (Page 28)

STORM CONTROL of seed grain crops. The company was given five days to deliver and install a dewatering system inclusive of an operations team to maintain the system 24/7. Within four hours of the call, a team was on the ground, walking the job. The team designed a turnkey system ready to handle the 20,000-GPM total pumping capacity. Twelve hours later, a SWAT (a company acronym for “sewer and water A-team”) project manager was on location receiving equipment deliveries and coordinating the dewatering system installation. Two 24-inch axial-flow, hydraulic submersible pumps – the same type as those employed for emergency flood relief after Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana and Mississippi – and two 134-foot segments of 24-inch hose were brought in and fused together on site. The two submersible pumps came with trailermounted diesel-driven power units, and continuously pumped with as little as 5 feet of suction submergence. Ten local farmers joined the company and National Guard to work through rain-soaked nights, trying to protect whatever crops could be saved. The company contributed equipment to assist the Levee Commission in building up the sandbag barriers around the fields. Expressing the emergency of the situation, a company representative reported, “We are fighting the levee. 70 National Guardsmen are laying sandbags… and the Red Cross is here with food.” During the course of the installation, over 4 inches of rain fell one night and 6 inches fell the next night, making site conditions more challenging. Nevertheless, according to several company employees on site, everyone worked non-stop in the mud to install and fuse the pipe, and impressively, finished the pipe-laying part of the job within 24 hours. All the while, water on the river’s side of the levee loomed more than 17-feet above the worksite. This haunting condition, along with the additional 10 inches of rainfall, warranted a safety warning to personnel, instructing them to keep lifejackets within reach in the event of a second levee breach. By the end of Day 4, in spite of the extra time spent on the sandbag effort, the around-the-clock dewatering system install The Corps and Rain for Rent team worked together around the clock. Image provided by NOAA’s Midwest Regional Climate Center planning meetings, and providing professional and technical assistance to priority locations where the Corps was using the company’s pumps. One of the priority locations was the city of Quincy’s water treatment plant, home to the area’s potable water supply. The Corps went in first to hold back the floodwaters with sheet pilings. Then the company’s engineers were called in to pump from behind this temporary wall. Within 24 hours, the engineers had their turnkey system installed and pumping. Together, they prevented the stormwater from contami28 Pollution Engineering SEPTEMBER2008 nating the plant’s freshwater supply. Working against a wall of water One week from the initial pump delivery to the National Guard depot, extreme weather was still drenching the Midwest, the downpour causing portions of the Mississippi River’s levee to breach. The Corps asked the company to increase support by providing more equipment at another location, the Indian Grave Drainage & Levee District. The district’s pump station was down, and rising water threatened to destroy fields

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Pollution Engineering - September 2008

Pollution Engineering - September 2008 Contents The Editor’s Desk Reader Comments EnviroNews PE Events Legal Lookout Environmental Management The Green Files Guest Dialog 500-Year Storm Control How Do You Clean Up 100 Years of Pollution? SPCC: Don’t Wait and See The Next Wave in Air Purification An Invitation to the Windy City Flood Control Infrastructure Saves ‘Green’ Puts a New Spin on Pest Control Instrumentation Products Material Safety and Storage Equipment PE Products Classified Marketplace Advertisers Index State Rules

Pollution Engineering - September 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.