February’s feature article in Municipal Sewer and Water features the Town of Muldrow in Oklahoma, who is understanding the risks lurking in their collection system and meeting compliance needs, while performing all preventative maintenance in-house with a lean crew.

“Incorporating the SL-RAT for assessing our whole collections system, which is fairly spread out, was an enlightening moment for everybody within our staff. It enabled us to get out in the field, pop manholes, investigate them quickly and see all of the problems that we had throughout the collections system.”

-Matthew Duke

Download article here.

The City of Ivins, UT, was maintaining their sewer lines like most utilities around the country – by cleaning the entire system on a time-based schedule. In Ivins case, they were cleaning 50 miles annually to prevent a handful of backup incidences. Since 2020, Ivins, Santa Clara and the Ash Creek Special Service District conducted a pilot acoustic inspection program with the help of R.H. Borden and Co.

Instead of cleaning every pipe, they discovered, by using the SL-RAT, that only 5% of the system actually required maintenance. Thousands of gallons of water, wear and tear on expensive cleaning equipment, and thousands of manhours were saved by inspecting prior to cleaning.

“This is the future. Eventually everyone will do it this way. I just feel like we saw a technology that might work, and it did.”

– Chuck Gillette, Ivins Public Works director

Download article here.

Rich Cummings, outgoing Director of Hillsborough County Field Maintenance Services Division, shares insights on what are effective tools for mitigating Inflow and Infiltration. Cummings recommends the Sewer Line Rapid Assessment Tool, or SL-RAT, as an easy way to quickly inspect sewer lines at low cost.

“This could tell me in less than one and a half minutes whether or not that system was good to go or wasn’t,” he says. “There’s nothing else out there that is even close to that.”

– Rich Cummings

Download article here.

This month’s Municipal Sewer & Water Magazine cover story features Metropolitan Sewer District of Greater Cincinnati’s implementation of innovative above-ground storm water conveyance solutions to reduce CSO events.

Download article here.