Sherwin-Williams has announced the winners of the 2021 Water & Wastewater Impact Awards, which honour the companies that successfully overcame challenges while extending the service lives of critical infrastructure assets.
Sherwin-Williams has announced the winners of the 2021 Water & Wastewater Impact Awards, which recognizes application contractors, specifiers and owners managing water and wastewater projects in North America that have a compelling effect on the industry with regard to public safety, asset protection and infrastructure life cycle improvement. Eligible projects include any water-related structure that was newly built, restored and/or rehabilitated in 2020 and was completed using coating and lining materials from Sherwin-Williams Protective & Marine.
The 2021 winner is the Devil Canyon Powerplant project in San Bernardino, California. The project team had to reline an 8- to 9.5-foot-diameter, 1.3-mile-long penstock while working in a challenging environment following an aggressive coatings schedule. This multi-year project involved blasting and relining the penstock’s entire interior while navigating grades of nearly 75% in spots, figuring out how to manage equipment access via 30-inch-wide entry points located 1,000 feet apart and maintaining warmth inside the pipeline when outside temperatures were near freezing and winds occasionally reached 70 mph. The winning team includes the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) and industrial services firm Unified Field Services Corporation.
The runner-up project is the one carried out by the project team of Holyoke Water Works, applicator Champion Painting Specialty Services Corporation and engineering firm Tighe & Bond, which restored five surface water storage tanks
for the City of Holyoke, Massachusetts. The companies worked with Sherwin-Williams to save more than half of the initial anticipated $2.2 million cost of restoring the tanks. The resulting $1.2 million savings was made possible by reassessing the tank’s conditions and opting for an overcoat system on four of the tanks instead of setting up full containment systems for each tank and dry blasting their surfaces down to bare metal. Only one tank required the full restoration treatment, saving the city some expenditures and enabling the restorations to take place over two years.
The 2021 honourable mention
project covered the restoration of an elevated water storage tank that celebrates iconic TV personality Andy Griffith, in his hometown city of Mount Airy, North Carolina. The water tower boasts a logo featuring a pair of familiar silhouettes fishing – a scene reminiscent of the actor’s fictional TV hometown, The Andy Griffith Show’s Mayberry. Water tower maintenance contractor Southern Corrosion Inc. restored the tower’s exterior using an overcoat system that prevented the need to endure the higher costs and longer time associated with a complete rehabilitation. As the final step, the contractor retraced and filled in the iconic logo by hand, helping the city renew its highest tribute to Griffith.
“The 2021 Sherwin-Williams Impact Award winners faced a range of difficult challenges, while successfully overcoming them to extend the service lives of critical infrastructure assets. That’s the kind of dedication we look forward to honouring each year via the program”, commented Bryan Draga, Global Vice President – Marketing of Sherwin-Williams Protective & Marine. “These winners have found optimal solutions to water and wastewater challenges that save time, labour and precious municipal budget dollars – not only in the execution of the coatings projects but also over the long term as these applied systems continue to prevent corrosion and enhance aesthetics.”