SIGMA and Lincoln Winwater are delighted to announce the delivery of a major order to the OMAHA Metropolitan Utilities District (MUD). The public water utility began an ambitious overhaul of one of its three Water Treatment Plants in April 2022. Located a stone’s throw from the Missouri River, MUD’s renovation project involves replacing aging waterworks infrastructure including the main header system at the plant.
The OMAHA Metropolitan Utilities District is responsible for providing drinking water to a population of nearly 600,000 customers in the metro area. The renovation is interesting because of its complexity; the treatment plant originally dates to 1889. The engineering company and contractor have completed the initial phase of the renovation, which involved ‘flagging’ the area in preparation for install of the new treatment plant pipes. According to Melissa Polito, MUD’s Director, Water Production and Pumping: “There is a spaghetti network of pipes; our system has evolved over some 134 years. Today this same plant has a capacity to pump 158 million gallons of drinking water a day. We’ll replace half the main header system and keep the other half in operation. We’ll then flip flop the system and address the second half of the system. In this way, there will be no interruption of service.”
Delivery of all SIGMA products to the job site is almost complete. The fulfillment of an order this size is an achievement given recent supply chain issues in the waterworks industry. Larry Rybacki, SIGMA’s President commented: “This was no mean feat: I’d like to pay tribute to SIGMA’s inside sales team, especially Matt Levysson and Viviana Lopez, who pulled out all the stops to fulfill this order, on time and on budget.”
The MUD project in more detail includes the replacement of the suction and discharge lines along with the service valves, which mostly connect to 48” pipes. The SIGMA order filled 13 trucks, weighed in at a hefty 500,000 lbs, and consists of 300+ Pipe Restraint Products including SIGMA’s larger sized 48inch restraints, 170+ ductile iron fittings and infrastructure-related products, including Polywrap. According to Dennis Wilson, SIGMA’s Technical Sales Coordinator: “We hosted an onsite training session, and the contractor was impressed to learn about our built-in re-rounding ONE-LOK feature. On large installations, the capability to reconcile a ductile iron pipe’s diameter is useful because it ensures proper restrained joint assembly at time of installation.”
SIGMA was proud to play a part in this critical infrastructure project. The Contractor on this project is Hawkins Construction, and the design engineer is Burns & McDonnel. For more information about SIGMA’s products and services, please contact Dennis Wilson at SIGMA, dwilson@sigmaco.com.