en-us http://www.gongol.net News on water, wastewater, and the environment, especially in Iowa, Nebraska, the Upper Midwest and Great Plains Tue, 15 May 2012 14:15:01 CDT http://gongol.net/newsletter/2012/05/15/ http://gongol.net/newsletter/2012/05/15/ Mon, 14 May 2012 16:08:01 CDT http://gongol.net/newsletter/2012/05/14/ http://gongol.net/newsletter/2012/05/14/ Thu, 10 May 2012 16:03:01 CDT http://gongol.net/newsletter/2012/05/10/ http://gongol.net/newsletter/2012/05/10/ Tue, 03 Apr 2012 12:25:01 CDT http://gongol.net/newsletter/2012/04/03/ http://gongol.net/newsletter/2012/04/03/ Mon, 12 Mar 2012 17:47:01 CDT http://gongol.net/newsletter/2012/03/12/ http://gongol.net/newsletter/2012/03/12/ Thu, 08 Mar 2012 01:28:01 CST http://gongol.net/newsletter/2012/03/08/ http://gongol.net/newsletter/2012/03/08/ 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. Wed, 07 Mar 2012 11:45:01 CST http://gongol.net/newsletter/2012/03/07/ http://gongol.net/newsletter/2012/03/07/ 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. Thu, 16 Feb 2012 12:29:01 CST http://gongol.net/newsletter/2012/02/16/ http://gongol.net/newsletter/2012/02/16/ 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 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. Wed, 15 Feb 2012 14:18:01 CST http://gongol.net/newsletter/2012/02/15/ http://gongol.net/newsletter/2012/02/15/ No other manufacturer can meet the rush delivery schedules offered by Golden Harvest. Fri, 10 Feb 2012 15:25:01 CST http://gongol.net/newsletter/2012/02/10/ http://gongol.net/newsletter/2012/02/10/ 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. Thu, 09 Feb 2012 18:07:01 CST http://gongol.net/newsletter/2012/02/09/ http://gongol.net/newsletter/2012/02/09/ 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. Thu, 09 Feb 2012 18:07:01 CST http://gongol.net/newsletter/2012/02/08/ http://gongol.net/newsletter/2012/02/08/ 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. Tue, 07 Feb 2012 18:37:01 CST http://gongol.net/newsletter/2012/02/02/ http://gongol.net/newsletter/2012/02/02/ 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. Tue, 07 Feb 2012 14:55:01 CST http://gongol.net/newsletter/2012/02/07/ http://gongol.net/newsletter/2012/02/07/ 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. Wed, 11 Jan 2011 16:39:01 CST http://gongol.net/newsletter/2012/01/10/ http://gongol.net/newsletter/2012/01/10/ While nobody's ready to get too confident yet, the US Army Corps of Engineers is reporting that the storage capacity of the lakes and reservoirs in the upstream Missouri River basin should be about 2% greater than normal levels when the runoff season begins in March. The winter season has been relatively dry so far, which may help reduce the likelihood of spring flooding this year. Last year's devastating floods left terrible scars in western Iowa, where contractors are racing to repair damaged levees. The cover illustration on the updated USACE operating plan for the Missouri River gives a really good overview of just how large a network of rivers feeds into the Missouri, which illustrates in turn just how significant the snowfall in Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado is to river conditions in Iowa and Nebraska. We are actively assisting communities working to improve their river-flood defenses right now, with rush orders for flood gates and pumps available for those seeking to beat the arrival of spring. Contact us if you need emergency shipments on pumps, gates, or other flood-control products. Our suppliers are capable of meeting deadlines faster than anyone else in the industry. Mon, 09 Jan 2011 22:23:01 CST http://gongol.net/newsletter/2012/01/09/ http://gongol.net/newsletter/2012/01/09/ The Sioux City Journal publishes a regular column with stories from the archives, and in yesterday's edition shared an 1887 story about the then-brand-new waterworks serving the city. It's widely lost to the public's imagination, but municipal drinking water systems in the United States are mainly a product of the post-Civil War era and are thus not really all that old from the long viewpoint of human history. (In other words, we're still relatively new at this, at least when compared to lots of other things we've been doing much longer.) On the other side of that coin, however, is the knowledge that the components making up those systems are aging all the time, and many are in urgent need of repair or replacement. There are many systems with original components still in place delivering water today. They've far outlived their reasonable service lives and need to be upgraded in order to ensure the continued supply of safe fresh water that we take for granted. Thu, 29 Dec 2011 12:52:01 CST http://gongol.net/newsletter/2011/12/29/ http://gongol.net/newsletter/2011/12/29/ The US Army Corps of Engineers is getting more money than previously expected to accelerate the repair of levees in southwest Iowa along the Missouri River. This is good news for the thousands of households and dozens of communities that were hit by the floods of 2011 -- and that could be threatened by a new round of flooding in the spring of2012. The Corps acknowledges that it can't get all of the repairs done by next spring, but the extraordinarily mild weather we're having should help. Most people haven't been there in person to see the damage left behind by the flooding, so we offer you this video taken in early November right around the Iowa/Missouri border, where some of the damage was greatest. It's difficult to grasp the full extent of the damage from this video taken from Interstate 29, but it's educational nonetheless. Jump ahead to the 2:36 mark to see Hamburg, Iowa. We are working right now to assist communities in the Missouri River valley with flood-protection equipment and systems, including portable pumps and flood gates. Please contact us if you need our assistance.