The City of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, has 658 miles of sanitary sewer and 14,225 manholes. Cleanings were previously set up to about 300 miles off of backups that were called in over the years, and those pipes were put on repetitive maintenance. About 240 miles a year were getting cleaned repeatedly, while the other 418 miles would not get cleaned. The city spent time fixing bad areas and would not remove them from the cleaning list. In December 2023, the sewer staff and the GIS team worked with the work order system and developed a plan to put all pipes on a 10-year cycle. They went through the last five years of cleanings and set a true schedule for when they needed to be cleaned. They removed lines that didn’t need to be cleaned as often as they had been. The city has five jetters that were running almost constantly on sanitary sewer, while the storm sewer system was rarely cleaned. Now they run four on sewer and one on storm full time, and also have had time to send a second jetter to help clean storm. They are almost through their first year and realizing benefits larger than planned. They are getting about 22 percent more completed this year. Â Accredited Agency: Cedar Rapids, IA Public Works Department “After this session, participants will be better able to:
• Recognize how the city collaborated to review its system to regularly schedule cleaning and free staff to clean other lines that hadn’t been cleaned in years.
• Evaluate their systems to see if they may benefit from this approach.
• Consider making a change to their current procedures.”
Contributor/Source
Daniel Price, Patrick Keating-Sewer/Construction Superintendent
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