Review of the Bureau of Reclamation's Corrosion Prevention Standards for Ductile Iron Pipe (2009)

摘要

Water is a resource that is often not fully appreciated until its supply becomes diminished or interrupted. In the western United States, where water is not always readily available, it is often transported large distances in pipelines that may serve large populations. If these transmission pipelines fail, the interruption of the water supply can have severe economic and public health impacts. In some cases a catastrophic failure can even lead to the potential loss of life, which became undeniably clear just as the committee was completing a final stage in the preparation of this report: On the morning of December 23, 2008, a 66-inch water main broke in Montgomery County, Maryland, and 150,000 gallons of water per minute gushed from the 44-year-old ruptured pipe, leaving cars with their occupants trapped in the torrent. Some of these individuals had to be rescued by helicopter, and there was concern that some cars might have been swept away. Beyond the immediate problem of rescuing people caught in the floodwaters, other problems quickly developed: the need for people to deal with no water, contaminated water, and destruction of the local landscape. Although the Bureau of Reclamation in the U.S. Department of the Interior does not have oversight of water in the Washington, D.C., area and although the pipe involved in the break was of a material different from that studied in this report, early indications are that the failure may have been caused by corrosion, which underscores the importance of corrosion control and the extent of damage that corrosion can createwell beyond an interruption in service.