Planning ahead for algae control in ponds and lakes
May 15, 2012

It's still quite early in the warm season in our part of the country, but it won't be long before summer is fully underway. A major summertime nuisance in many ponds and lakes is the growth and spread of unwanted algae, especially in urban areas where runoff from fertilized lawns carries lots of nutrients along with it into the water, where it feeds the growth and spread of algae -- especially when combined with a dose of warm, sunny weather. Treating ponds with chemicals to kill algae can be an expensive and time-consuming process.

We offer an alternative option: Pond aerators and fountains, which can be used not only to provide a combination of air and agitation (which help to inhibit the growth of algae), but that can also be combined with a simple lighting system to provide an attractive landscaping feature. Please feel free to contact us with your questions.


Maintenance on the Gorman-Rupp Super T Series
May 14, 2012

Gorman-Rupp has shared a series of videos (about 20 minutes in all) describing and showing operations and maintenance tips and guidelines for the Super T Series of trash pumps. With hundreds of these pumps in operation across Iowa and Nebraska, we are pleased to share these videos with you:



Please feel free to contact us with your questions about Gorman-Rupp self-priming pumps.


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Checking out the dam
May 10, 2012

The US Army Corps of Engineers has been checking out the Gavins Point dam on the Missouri River near Yankton, South Dakota -- just a bit upstream of Sioux City, Iowa. Their inspections revealed the need for some repairs this summer. While we aren't directly involved with the Gavins Point project (it was constructed in the 1950s), we've been extensively involved with levee-repair projects downstream on both the Iowa and Nebraska sides of the river.

Related items: radial gates • sluice gates


Dusty cars beat broken water mains
April 3, 2012

Omaha is in the midst of a major project that is a combined effort to replace water mains and natural-gas pipelines at the same time as the city separates old combined sewers into distinct sanitary and stormwater sewers. The Omaha World-Herald has a story highlighting the inconveniences to some neighborhoods as their utilities are being changed over. While it would be unfair to dismiss their inconvenience altogether, it's only fair to note that the city and the Metropolitan Utilities District thoughtfully planned ahead to conduct all of the work at once in order to minimize costs and disruptions to the community. One neighborhood now in the midst of construction work has cast-iron water mains that are nearly 140 years old -- so they actually got quite lucky that their utilities had been delivered reliably for so long without a replacement. There will be lots of other communities that won't get similar upgrades to their municipal utilities unless something breaks -- which is a far greater inconvenience.


Doing our part to fight unemployment
March 12, 2012

We're proud of the American manufacturers we represent, all of whom employ workers here in the United States to produce the highest-quality engineered products for use in water and wastewater treatment. This map illustrates the enormous footprint of American manufacturers that make great products for us and employ hundreds of skilled workers:


View DJ Gongol & Associates - Representing American Manufacturers in a larger map

We can help you with products from any of these companies. Please feel free to contact us with your questions.


Are nuclear plants threatened by deficient dams?
March 8, 2012

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is asking the nation's nuclear power plants to re-examine whether upstream dam failures along rivers could put them at risk. Power plants of all types are routinely found near rivers, since they usually require large volumes of water as part of the steam-turbine process of power generation. (It's said to account for 90% of all power generation in the US.) The proximity to rivers means that the risk of flooding must be accounted-for. After last year's epic flooding along the Missouri River made trouble for Nebraska's two nuclear power plants, it seems like a good time to ask. Lingering concerns over last year's nuclear accident at Fukushima also have the regulators' attention.


Corps of Engineers says Missouri River has extra storage
March 7, 2012

The US Army Corps of Engineers manages the Missouri River through the series of reservoirs and dams up and down the enormous river's stretch, and their latest report is that there's a little more storage capacity inside the system this year than usual. That's good news if it means we won't see a repeat of last year's severe flooding. We are actively involved in about half a dozen active projects right now to repair and re-construct the levees protecting towns like Council Bluffs and Omaha. Keep us in mind any time you have an project requiring flood gates (like flap gates and sluice gates), especially if it's time-sensitive. Golden Harvest has been able to rush emergency orders through production in a matter of a four to six weeks for those most urgent installations. No other manufacturer can even come close to that kind of responsiveness.


X-ray vision for pump users
February 16, 2012

We often tell people that having a good set of suction and discharge gauges for a pump is the best way to "see inside" the system and to diagnose what's happening if anything is going wrong. That's because it's impossible to literally see inside a working pump -- unless you happen to be in a pump school with a Gorman-Rupp glass-faced pump.

The glass-faced pump is an educational tool without equal. With it, we can demonstrate a range of important principles in pump operation, maintenance, and troubleshooting -- including NPSH, air entrainment, self-priming action, cavitation, air binding, entrance velocity, and diagnosis using gauges. Gorman-Rupp pump schools using the glass-faced pump are available throughout our territory (Iowa and Nebraska) and all over the United States. Operators and engineers alike can learn as much from an hour-long or two-hour pump demonstration than they'll learn from days in a lecture hall or poring over textbooks. Invite us or your local Gorman-Rupp representatives to teach a pump school for you.


When a rush delivery is required, Golden Harvest delivers gates
February 15, 2012



The floods of 2011 did massive damage to the levees up and down the Missouri River valley last year. The US Army Corps of Engineers has been designing repair projects and issuing contracts for fast-track completion of repairs before the spring flood season arrives in mid-March. Many of these projects have required new slide gates, sluice gates, and flap gates to replace old ones that were damaged last summer. Golden Harvest, the gate manufacturer from Washington state whom we have represented since 2004, has repeatedly delivered the near-impossible, with rush turnaround times on gates for these projects that beat out the abilities of any other manufacturer in the world. Consider the gate thimbles shown above. The project followed a remarkable emergency timeline:

Final quotation issued: January 6, 2012
Order received: January 6, 2012
Submittal drawings issued: January 9, 2012
Submittal calculations issued: January 10, 2012
Release to production: January 12, 2012
Thimbles shipped: January 25, 2012

The completed gates are scheduled for shipment in the next three or four business days -- less than 6 weeks after submittal approval. When you need a rush delivery on stormwater gates or flood-control gates, Golden Harvest has the fastest turn-around in the industry. Contact us and we'll help you get the gates you need on the deadline you need to meet.


An alternative plan for the Keystone XL pipeline
February 10, 2012

TransCanada, the company behind the proposed Keystone XL pipeline from the oil sands of Canada down to the Gulf of Mexico, reportedly has an alternative route well under design that would go around Nebraska's Sand Hills in an effort to offset concerns about the potential impact of an above-ground oil spill on the massive Ogallala Aquifer below. The plans, according to the Omaha World-Herald, are being run up the flagpole with Nebraska state officials before further formal proposals are released.


Problem solved: Fitting a progressive-cavity pump into a tight space
February 9, 2012

One of the main obstacles to the use of progressive-cavity pumps in lots of installations in the past has been the huge amount of space that had to be set aside for pump maintenance. That obstacle has now been totally solved with the introduction of the Monoflo EZ Strip pump series. The EZ Strip progressive-cavity pump is designed to be maintained in place, without disturbing the piping around the pump. This can translate into huge time savings (which have a real dollar value, especially as maintenance budgets are stretched ever thinner). For those applications where a positive-displacement pump is needed to move fluids with very high solids content, the Monoflo EZ Strip now offers a practical alternative to fit even very tight spaces. Please feel free to contact us with your questions and we'll be happy to help.


Congratulations to Gorman-Rupp for a record 2011
February 8, 2012

Our congratulations to the Gorman-Rupp Company for a record-breaking 2011. The company had record-setting sales, earnings, and orders last year and is already off to an exceptionally strong 2012. We have represented Gorman-Rupp since 1984, and we are proud to have sold hundreds of pumps from across the Gorman-Rupp family, including AMT, Patterson, IPT, and Gorman-Rupp's Mansfield division, in 2011. The entire GR family of companies is proof positive that American manufacturing is anything but dead -- for innovative companies with products that set world-class standards for quality, it's stronger than ever.


Glass-faced pump demonstrations available
February 7, 2012



Chris Suomi from Gorman-Rupp helped us with demonstrations of the glass-faced pump at last month's Snowball Operators Conference in Kearney. We appreciate his time and invite anyone with pump education questions to contact us anytime. We're always happy to help.


Looking at the long term: Will Iowa ever have water shortages?
February 2, 2012

The Cedar Rapids Gazette carries an interesting story today about how population growth in a handful of Eastern Iowa cities could put a lot of local pressure on municipal water supplies -- the kind of pressure that the state, as a whole, generally doesn't face. It's one of the major consequences of the shift in Iowa's population, in which the people are ever more heavily concentrated in a small number of urban centers. The state as a whole has abundant water supplies -- but that doesn't mean particular local areas won't face their own shortages.

Other water news from February 2012
For more news, visit the Water News Archives from 2005 through today