U.S. Water News Online
FRESNO, Calif. -- In the past two years Fresno, California has invested more than $12 million on sewer repairs using Insituform's cured-in-place methods. Twenty-three years after completing the first cured-in-place installation in the U.S., the city of Fresno, Calif., has become one of the most proactive cities in the country in its approach to sewer repair.
Over the past two years, Fresno's Department of Public Utilities has used Insituform Technologies' cured-in-place methods to rehabilitate more than seven miles of sewers on projects totaling more than $12.4 million in value.
"It's not that we have a blanket policy that says we only use CIPP," explains Robert Volpp-Garcia, a management analyst for the Sewer Maintenance Division of the city's Public Utilities Department. "We look at every project separately. It's just that at this time, CIPP is, hands-down, the most versatile, least disruptive and least expensive solution on the market."
Fresno's investments are being made in response to a comprehensive analysis of the city's sewer infrastructure completed several years ago. That analysis revealed extensive deterioration, particularly in the city's large-diameter trunk lines.
One of the lines Insituform rehabilitated runs through the Fresno City Zoo, near what is believed to be the first U.S. test site for a cured-in-place pipe installation. The year of that first installation was 1976, recalls Ray Salazar, who was then a young design engineer working for Fresno's Department of Public Works in Fresno.
Salazar remembers being called into a meeting to discuss the fate of an historic log cabin located on the grounds of the Fresno's Roeding Park. The cabin, moved to the park grounds years earlier, was sitting directly atop a deteriorated 12-inch-diameter sewer.
"The talk centered around a new technology that claimed to be able repair the sewer without digging up the line or destroying the cabin," says Salazar, now Fresno city engineer. "A trenchless technology. What a novel idea it was."
The technology under discussion was the Insituform® process, a cured-in-place sewer rehabilitation method that was already gaining popularity in England in the 1970s, but had not yet been tried in the United States.
"Insituform was doing some promotional work at the time and was trying to interest some cities in looking at the method," says Don Wible, technical representative for Insituform. "The log cabin site seemed like an ideal place to demonstrate Insituform's nondisruptive qualities."
When workers arrived at the park some weeks later, Salazar and others from the department were there to observe.
"I'd never seen anything like it before," recalls Salazar. "But the technology did exactly what they said it would do. The line was repaired, the cabin was left intact and the CIPP lining is still fully functional, 24 years later."
Fresno sewer officials attribute their current preferences for cured-in-place methods to the many changes that have occurred over the past 24 years, both in the city itself and the sewer rehabilitation market in general.
"One of the biggest differences between 1976 and today is that we now have an active preventive maintenance program to restore our sewers' structural integrity and, in some cases, enhance flow characteristics," explains Volpp-Garcia.
"Like in other cities of comparable age, the sewers here are simply aging," he says. The oldest date back to the 1870s.
"I think we just recognized, perhaps a little earlier than some other cities, the value of taking care of the infrastructure we've got."
Nondisruption is a much bigger issue today as well.
"Beginning in 1976, Insituform showed us it was possible to repair our sewers without disturbing the people who live and work here," says Salazar. "Today it's not only possible, it's practically a requirement. We don't need the 'excuse' of a historic building or a busy freeway to justify using CIPP."
Another big change is in the CIPP technology itself, specifically its cost. "Twenty years ago, the cost to reline miles of pipe using CIPP methods would have been prohibitive," says Salazar. "Today, however, we can't afford to dig up and replace pipe. CIPP has become more affordable for everyday repairs."
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