Anchorage Water and Wastewater Utility (AWWU) owns and operates approximately x miles of water and x miles of sewer pipelines throughout the Anchorage bowl.
Approximately x miles of the water pipes are cast iron and x miles are DIP.
Approximately x miles of the sewer pipes are cast iron and x miles are DIP.
This paper will focus soley on the x miles of DIP. While the corrosion mechanisms and failures of CIP water mains and CIP and DIP sewers mains occur on a regular basis they don’t have the same risk associated with corrosion related failures of DIP.
Because of the environment of the Anchorage Bowl (high seismic expansive soils corrosive soils etc.) having a robust pipe is necessary in order for the assets to survive. Until as recently as 2009 AWWU only allowed DIP water and sewer mains to be installed because of it’s structural properties ability to withstand the harsh Alaskan environments.
AWWU has experienced many premature failures of DIP as a result of external corrosion. These failures have occurred on both bare DIP and DIP installed with polyethylene encasement installed in accordance with AWWA Cxxx.
Because of the depth of bury of water mains in the Anchorage Bowl 10-foot minimum cover the cost associated with the repairs and ultimate early replacement of this pipe has had a huge impact on the ratepayers. And because of the huge cost associated with the deep excavations the pipe materials itself only contributes to about 10% of the project costs. Therefore AWWU made the decision to install external tightly bonded coatings on DIP installations in corrosive environments or go with non-metallic piping.
This paper will review some of the case studies of the different types of coating materials we’ve used on DIP and the lessons we’ve learned from them.