$9.6M water project to replace
deteriorating, 50-year-old system in Osan
By Jim Lea, Osan bureau chief
OSAN AIR BASE, South Korea — You wake up late for work, run to
the shower, turn on the tap — and nothing happens.
That’s occurred 62 times at Osan this year. Last year, it
happened more than 100 times.
The reason: The base’s 50-year-old water mains are crumbling.
But Master Sgt. William Young of the 51st Civil Engineering Squadron
said a $9.6 million project beginning in September will fix the problem.
The Korean government-financed work replaces the base’s entire
water system, he said.
“We have water mains that have been here since the base was
opened in the 1950s,” he said. “… [W]e expected to be here for only 15
years or so. The system has been failing miserably since the 1970s, but we’ve only
just now gotten the money to replace it.”
When breaks occur, Young said, disruption of base operations is
massive.
“We lose water not only for showers, cooking and such, but also
for fire suppression systems. Depending on where the break is, we might have to shut down
the BX, dining facilities, the commissary. Sometimes we have to turn off the water in 20
or 30 buildings to make repairs. Traffic also has to be rerouted around streets where the
break occurred,” he said.
Osan gets its water from Pyongtaek, the civilian community that
surrounds it. Since the base water system is so fragile, “we’ve been operating
on reduced pressure. If the pressure wasn’t reduced, we’d be having more breaks
than we do now.”
The work should be finished by 2003, Young said.
“We’ll be installing PVC (plastic) piping, which is a lot
better than anything else,” he said. “Manufacturers say PVC will last 50 years,
but since it hasn’t been around that long no one really knows how long it’ll
last. Probably a lot longer.”
Replacement work will begin at the pumping station near Doolittle
Gate and move through the base in sections. “We’ll also upgrade the pump station
and some of our major water tanks,” he said.
Once the project begins, building occupants will be notified, through
the commander’s TV channel, where crews will be working. Water to buildings
shouldn’t be cut off for more than two or three hours to tie the building into the
new system, he added. An auxiliary water line will be in place when building tie-in begins
in case the work takes longer than expected.
“Most of our customers won’t even notice it,” he said.
He said the new system will have more valves “so that if breaks
do occur in the future, we’ll be able too fix them by turning the water off to only
one building rather than 10 or 20.”
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