Water Tower Paint Job Budgeted at $1.3 Million

The cost to re-paint the town’s water tower – estimated at $1.3 million – is the largest single item on the borough’s 2012 capital improvement budget, by about twice the amount of any other requested item.

The tower requires re-painting on both its interior and exterior every 15 or so years, as a preventative maintenance measure in order to protect against the rusting and deterioration of the tower’s metal frame. 

Last re-painted 17 years ago, the tower is due for a new aqua blue paint job this year, borough engineer Ken Garrison said.

“It needs re-painted,” Garrison said. “The wall gets dirty, it starts to rust. If it starts to rust too much, it starts to deteriorate metal. Therefore it doesn’t last. So that’s why we protect the tanks. It’s really that simple.”

When the tower was re-painted in 1995, Garrison said it was pressure washed, cleaned and re-painted at a cost of about $600,000. 

In addition to inflation, the reason the cost has ballooned to $1.3 million this time around is due to new environmental concerns.

Rather than simply being pressure washed and re-painted this time, Garrison said the tower will need to be sandblasted to remove all of the paint down to the bare metal. Getting down to the bare metal will require removing the paint job done more than 30 years ago that used lead-based paint. 

“Why it has gotten so expensive,” he said, “is because with the old coatings, there’s still a lead base there, so it has to be protected. So we basically have to tent it and scaffold it.”

The old coatings done around 1978, Garrison explained, need to be encapsulated to protect surrounding homeowners from harm. 

“Basically you’re going to have a full set of scaffolding going up 200 foot high in a tent. The whole thing is going to be tented,” he said. “Especially in that location…it’s right in the middle of a residential zone, so we have to make sure that’s all protected.”

Depending on the weather, the entire project should take about four months. Garrison said he’d like to begin the job in the fall, contingent on how quickly the funding allocation is approved by council.

The borough’s water department will need to perform some operational alterations during the re-painting process, but residents should not notice any difference in their water costs or water availability.

“[Residents] won’t have a clue what’s going on,” Garrison said. “It’s not a question of quantity, it’s a question of pressure and operations that we internally have to be a little bit more vigilant.”

Borough manager Tom Metzler stressed that for now, the $1.3 million cost figure is only an estimate that came from the consultant who performed the water tower’s most recent inspection. 

“That number is the guide,” he said. “We always go out for bid. It’s entirely possible that bids will come in under that.”

As is the case with all hefty capital improvement projects, the money to pay for painting the tower will be bonded.

At the last borough council meeting, a resident suggested painting an American Flag on the outside of the water tower in addition to the words “Fair Lawn,” that already appear on the tower. However, Metzler said Tuesday that he had looked into getting an American flag painted on the tower and learned it would require too much costly maintenance over the paint job’s lifespan for it to be economically feasible.

“Unfortunately, red is a color that fades very, very quickly and the concern is that we’re going to lose the color pigment in the flag before the tank needed to be redone and there would be a cost in maintaining the flag on the water tower,” explained Metzler, who said otherwise he thought painting an American Flag on the tower was a great idea.

While an American flag is out, Deputy Mayor John Cosgrove said he’d be in favor of trying to find a reputable company to advertise on the water tower, if they would eat the project’s costs. Councilman Kurt Peluso and Deputy Mayor Ed Trawinski echoed Cosgrove's sentiments.

"I actually think that John makes some sense, that we should at least explore that possibility,” Trawinski said. “What’s the downside?”