Underground Infrastructure - October 2023 - 30

PREVIEW
Water & Sewer Damage Awareness Week (WSDAW)
runs from Oct. 23-27
GPRS Launches Water & Sewer
Damage Awareness Week
Goal to Increase Awareness About Threats to Water, Wastewater Infrastructure
Kyle Humphreys has seen it all.
As the director of pipe inspection
services at Ground Penetrating Radar
Systems LLC (GPRS), he has a birdseye
view of the thousands of inspections
that the national firm conducts
annually on wastewater systems across
all 50 United States.
With remote-controlled crawlers
equipped with closed-circuit television
cameras, GPRS Project Managers inspect
every nook and cranny of these
lines searching for structural defects
that can cause service interruptions, or
otherwise negatively impact the communities
that rely on these systems.
Project managers expect to find certain
things when they inspect a line:
a baseball that washed into a storm
drain and is now plugging a pipe; a clog
caused by yard debris; a line shattered
by invasive tree roots.
Then there are the more unique finds.
In one instance, a crawler came face-tolens
with a rattlesnake that had taken up
residence in a compromised pipe.
Humphreys says the root cause behind
all these problems is the same:
infrastructure that was left too long
without proper maintenance and inspection.
" It's
a great idea to do bi-annual
video pipe inspections of your sewer
systems, " he said. " Otherwise, you never
know what could be in your lines.
We've seen anything and everything. "
To increase awareness of the risks
facing water and wastewater infrastructure,
and the practical strategies that
municipalities, facility owners and other
entities can take to protect these systems,
GPRS has launched a new safety
initiative called Water & Sewer Damage
Awareness Week (WSDAW).
Comp opportunities
A rattlesnake had made this compromised storm
drain its home when GPRS discovered it during
a video pipe inspection.
30 OCTOBER 2023 | UndergroundInfrastructure.com
From Oct. 23-27, GPRS will offer
free safety presentations to anyone responsible
for water and/or wastewater
systems. The firm will also share additional
safety information throughout
the week on its social media channels.
GPRS Senior Vice President of
Marketing and SiteMap Product
Executive Jason Schaff explains that
WSDAW is designed to help these
groups retake control of their infrastructure.
" Utility
infrastructure, and specifically
sewer infrastructure, is in bad
shape, " Schaff said. " Water is becoming
scarcer. WSDAW is positioned to help
address some of these issues with simple
and practical solutions. "
of
In 2021, the American Society
Civil
Engineers (ASCE) gave
America's overall infrastructure a C- on
its biannual infrastructure report card.
The United States received a C- in the
category of drinking water, D for its
stormwater infrastructure and D+ for
wastewater.
The U.S. loses approximately six
billion gallons of drinking water a day
to subsurface leaks and water main
breaks. The federal government estimates
10 to 30 percent of the average
water distributor's supply ends up
seeping into the ground, as what is
known as non-revenue water loss.
http://www.UndergroundInfrastructure.com
Underground Infrastructure - October 2023

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Underground Infrastructure - October 2023
