Coated Piling Specified for South Fork Sediment Basin Project

There's a first time for everything. For Midwest Foundation Corp. of Tremont, Ill., a project at Lake Taylorville in 2002 marked a first. According to Jim Gilles, vice president of Midwest Foundation, it was the first time the company had been involved in a project that called for galvanized steel sheet piling.

The piling was specified for the South Fork Sediment Basin, a project for the city of Taylorville, Ill. and the Natural Resources Conservation Service, a division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It is part of an ongoing effort to reduce sediment coming into Lake Taylorville, about 25 miles southeast of Springfield, Ill. Galvanized steel was specified to increase the life of the sheet piling.

Midwest Foundation turned to Hammer & Steel to supply the PZ-22 galvanized piling, which was rolled by Nucor-Yamato Steel and galvanized at North American Galvanizing in St. Louis. "Galvanizing is just one finishing process we offer," noted Mike Ormsby, Hammer & Steel's regional manager. "We also offer coal tar epoxy coating as well as the fabrication of special corners and connectors."

The three-month project, completed in early September, involved installing PZ-22 galvanized steel sheet piling in an arcshaped structure, fitted with trash racks to catch debris. The radius on the arch is about 430 feet, with a total of about 1,500 linear feet of wall. Midwest also installed filtering fabric to keep sediment from entering the lake, and used 3,100 tons of riprap inside the structure for additional stability.

The biggest challenge on the $700,000 project, Gilles noted, was that all the work had to be done in 3 to 3-1/2 feet of water. The six-person crew, led by job superintendent Forrest Junker Jr., worked off sectional barges to install the piling, using a Koehring 405 crane and an HPSI 130 vibratory driver.

Midwest Foundation, which has worked closely with Hammer & Steel for years, received "excellent service on this project," Gilles said. "The 25-foot sheets were delivered in a two-day period, as scheduled. Hammer & Steel shipped them in four-piece bundles for easy unloading, and we used an integrated tool carrier to move the sheets about a quarter-mile from the delivery site," he explained. "The whole process worked great."