City Of Akron, OH Gives HDPE A Chance

FINDLAY, Ohio, July 22, 2003: Rubber is king in Akron, Ohio. It’s home to the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company and the local university’s football stadium is aptly named the Rubber Bowl.

But as of spring 2003, there’s another round, durable, solid black product that’s improving residents’ quality of life in this medium-sized city just south of Cleveland: high-density polyethylene (HDPE) pipe.

The Akron area’s first storm water drainage project using corrugated HDPE pipe was completed in May. Officials at Hancor, Inc., an Ohio-based manufacturer of storm water management systems, believe that once HDPE is written in the municipal specification, other projects will quickly line up.

"Up to this point it was concrete or clay pipe – there was no need to even discuss it," said Hancor representative Jim Milligan. "With budgets being pushed to the limit, city leaders have found a way to get better performance for lower total installed cost."

The City of Akron owns an easement in a fully developed Bath Township residential area along Sourek Road. The project called for more than 1,000 feet of 36-inch and 48-inch Sure-Lok F477 pipe to store the excess flow and prevent downstream flooding.

"Storm sewer and drainage problems have plagued that area for years," said the project’s engineer Gene Hill of GPD Group, the firm that helped design the LandMax retention/detention system to fit the site footprint. "After numerous complaints from residents, the city came up with the solution. In addition to minimizing the impact on land use, the underground system we designed eliminates the need for ponding and introducing an unnecessary mosquito-breeding habitat."

Northeast Ohio Contracting firm Spano Brothers had worked with HDPE pipe on projects in areas outside the city before the Akron project.

"This wasn’t the first time our firm has worked with HDPE pipe – it’s performed well for us," said Marv Hermes, an estimator for Spano Brothers. "We were able to save approximately two weeks worth of labor by using the HDPE. The same project using concrete would have cost approximately 40 percent more.

"We’ve done site visits to the Akron system several times since it’s been in the ground, and it’s working very well. We think HDPE is going to be used more and more for storm water projects in this area," Hermes added.

According to Akron City Councilman Bob Keith, duplicating the success at Sourek Road would be a welcome change for many of the nearby residents, based on what he’s heard (or hasn’t heard).

"No one likes construction, and I didn’t hear one complaint from residents about this project," Keith said. "What probably made them happy was that the project took so much less time. In a couple of days they were in and out and it was done."

Keith added that the city’s budget benefited from the project as well. "Our savings on Sourek Road, based on other projects of this kind, is about $25,000," he estimated. "The time savings mean we could accomplish more projects in a given year, and the cost savings benefit Akron overall."

One of the nation’s largest suppliers of storm water management systems, Hancor manufactures a wide variety of plastic drainage products for the commercial, residential, construction and agricultural markets. Hancor was founded in 1887 in Findlay, OH and operates manufacturing facilities and service centers across the country.

For more information, please contact:

Ms. Tori Durliat, Hancor, Inc.
Marketing Communications Manager
401 Olive Street,
Findlay, Ohio 45840
Phone: 1-419-424-8275
Fax: 1-419-424-8302
E-mail: tdurliat@hancor.com