Press Release: GIW Provides Pumps for $450 Million Lake Mead Tunnel Project
NEWS RELEASE
For Immediate Release
Media contact:
Pam Welty, Brand Manager
GIW Industries, Inc.
706-863-1011
PWelty@giwindustries.com
GIW INDUSTRIES SELECTED AS PUMP PROVIDER FOR $450 MILLION LAKE MEAD TUNNEL PROJECT
Subterranean tunnel with pump system will help secure future of Las Vegas' water supply
Grovetown, GA. (Jan. 25, 2010)
— GIW Industries, the leader in the design, manufacture and
application of heavy-duty centrifugal slurry pumps, has been
contracted to provide eight pump and drive train systems for use in the
construction of the Lake Mead Intake Tunnel No. 3. The $450 million tunnel project is necessary to protect the water supply of Las Vegas and surrounding municipalities.
In Las Vegas, 90 percent of the city's water supply comes from the Colorado River at Lake Mead, behind the Hoover Dam. The Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA) operates two water intakes in Lake Mead, located 20 miles east of Las Vegas. Drought conditions since 2000 have caused a severe decline in lake levels, which threatens the operability of the lake's current water intakes. With future declines expected, a third intake is needed to help ensure existing water-system capacity and to prevent depletion of the area's future supply.
Scheduled for completion in 2012, the Lake Mead project first entails construction of a vertical shaft that is 600 feet deep and 30 feet in diameter. The shaft then opens to a man-made "cavern" where a tunnel-boring machine will be assembled for the purpose of boring a 24-foot wide, 15,000-foot long horizontal tunnel beneath Lake Mead.
Vegas Tunnel Constructors, a joint venture of Impregilo and S.A. Healy Co., was contracted in March 2008 to oversee construction of the intake shaft and tunnel. Vegas Tunnel Constructors selected Georgia-based GIW Industries as a supplier to provide eight pump systems, seven of which will pump slurry through the tunnel's closed-loop circuit. The eighth pump will be located in the processing plant at the shaft's surface.
According to John Park, GIW's western district sales manager, "Four of the pumps are going to be the slurry return pumps that come from the tunnel-boring machine's rotating cutter head and pumps slurry all the way out that 15,000-foot tunnel to the bottom of the vertical shaft."
Throughout the tunnel construction, a bentonite slurry, acting as a lubricant, will be pumped to the cutter face of the tunnel-boring machine. As the machine's cutter face burrows through the earth, the subsequent loose rock and dirt is pumped up to a processing plant at the shaft's surface. The dirt and rock are then separated from the bentonite, thus cleaning the bentonite slurry. Three of the GIW pumps will then pump the cleaned slurry back down the tunnel to the cutter face so that the same process can be repeated.
Tunnel and shaft construction commenced in June 2008, and GIW's pump installation is set to begin in April or May of 2010. Pumps, each with an assembled weight of 24,000 pounds, will be strategically placed along the wall of the tunnel that, when complete, will be three miles in length. The seven GIW high pressure LSA36 pumps will be placed in series to remove the excavated material from the tunnel.
Park, who worked on the project with GIW representative Pacific Coast Pump and Equipment, Inc., says that several factors helped GIW Industries earn the contract from Vegas Tunnel Constructors.
In addition to being a more economically sound option than European pump manufacturers, GIW Industries was able to provide what Park describes as "bigger, heavier, more rugged equipment."
"Not only were they (Vegas Tunnel) confident in our equipment and confident in our ability, but our supply chain was domestic," says Park.
GIW Industries began as a small foundry and machine shop in Augusta, Ga., in 1891. In 1914, GIW began building slurry pumps. Today, the company comprises two manufacturing facilities, one in Grovetown, Ga., and the other in Thomson, Ga. These foundries and machine shops are used for manufacturing and assembling pumps and for casting a variety of abrasion- and corrosion-abrasion-resistant alloys and polyurethane elastomers. As a subsidiary of KSB AG of Germany, a global pump and valve manufacturer, GIW has the infrastructure to supply pumps worldwide. KSB has presence in 100 countries with sales organizations, offices and 30 manufacturing sites.
To learn more about GIW Industries and its pump products, visit www.giwindustries.com. To learn more about the Lake Mead Intake Tunnel No. 3 project, go to http://www.snwa.com/html/system_cip_intake.html.
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NOTE TO MEDIA: High-resolution images are included below. For more information or to schedule an interview with a GIW representative about the Lake Mead Intake Tunnel No. 3 Project, please contact Pam Welty at 706-863-1011 or PWelty@giwindustries.com.
GIW will provide eight pump and drive train systems for use in the construction of the Lake Mead Intake Tunnel No. 3.
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GIW high-pressure LSA 36 pumps will be placed in series to remove the excavated material from the Lake Mead Intake Tunnel No. 3.
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