FOUR CORNERS STATES EDITION
®
October 22 2023 Vol. I • No. 22
“The Nation’s Best Read Construction Newspaper… Founded in 1957.” Your Four Corners Connection • Dennis Hogeboom • 1-877-877-4997 • dennishogeboom@cegltd.com
Construction crews are in the process of excavating and putting in base aggregate at the South Rim Water Treatment Plant construction site — part of the $200 million Transcanyon Waterline project — at Grand Canyon National Park.
By Joe Jancsurak CEG CORRESPONDENT
Talk about your humungous projects. Work is now under way to replace the Transcanyon Waterline (TCWL), a 53-year-old, 12.5-mi. long, 6-to-8 in. diameter aluminum pipe buried below a hiking trail in the Grand Canyon National Park that is considered the mighty mainstay of the park’s water system. The water originates from the Roaring Springs source below the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. From there, the water moves via the TCWL to Phantom Ranch, across the
Colorado River and up to the Havasupai Gardens pump station and, ultimately, to the South Rim. The waterline provides 190 million gal. of water to as many as 5 million visitors annually and 2,500 residents in the Cross Canyon Corridor and South Rim area. It also provides water to facilities and more than 800 historic buildings, including administrative and operations buildings, residential housing for staff, the Grand Canyon school, hotels/lodges, campgrounds and water-filling stations. That’s a lot of heavy lifting for a structure that was completed sometime around the first Earth Day in 1970. In fact, since 2010, there have been more than 85 major breaks in the
line, with each resulting in water-delivery disruptions. “The TCWL is beyond its expected useful life and requires expensive and continuous inner canyon maintenance work to repair leaks,” said Rob Parrish, division chief of the Division of Planning, Environment and Projects at Grand Canyon National Park So, instead of paying for unbudgeted repairs ranging from thousands up to hundreds of thousands of dollars and having staff work in hazardous situations, the National Park Service awarded a $208 million construction contract in March to Stronghold Engineering Inc. of Perris, Calif. see GRAND page 8
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