ROCHELLE — After the painting was recently completed, the City of Rochelle’s $1.2 million renovation project of its large water tower near Illinois Route 251 is complete with the exception of antennas that will be moved back to it by early July, Rochelle Municipal Utilities Superintendent of Water/Water Reclamation Adam Lanning said June 18.
The tower was offline for nearly a year and was refilled with water and put back into service on June 17, Lanning said. The project consisted of structural repairs, welding, interior cleaning and an inspection, sandblasting and painting inside and out, and safety upgrades. Antennas that are utilized by cell service companies and public safety organizations were moved to a nearby temporary tower while the work took place.
Lanning said he’s happy to have the tower back online after it was empty for a year that saw a “pretty severe” drought. The past year consisted of a lot of the RMU water department “holding its breath” without the tower.
RMU’s water system has redundancies and a newer water tower it built south of town helped it to keep up with demand. RMU did not have to use a portable pressure tank during the water tower renovation, as some communities do.
The water tower, built in 1953, is 150 feet tall and holds 500,000 gallons of water. It was last painted around 2000.
“The biggest thing about having this project done is that the tower is restored for decades now,” Lanning said. “The paint will be good for 20-30 years. If it's kept up, the steel will be good for the next 100 years. It will have to be inspected every 3-5 years and cleaned every 5-7 years. It will go a very long time without another large expenditure.”
City Manager Jeff Fiegenschuh said that while the city wants the tower to look nice, its number-one concern is its functionality as a water tower. The project saw some delays, including six months of working with communication stakeholders on moving the antennas and high winds and cold temperatures that put the outside painting on hold through the winter and early spring.
Lanning said the tarp that had to be put up for the outside painting and sandblasting was only rated for about 15 mile-per-hour winds, which caused delays due to an “unprecedented” windy year.
“It needed to be done,” Fiegenschuh said. “It was a big project. I think the project went as well as it could've, considering all of the negotiation and work that had to go into it beforehand. The frustration I had with it was starting it later in the year and having to leave it half painted and not in use over the winter due to weather. But we came out OK and Adam and his team did a great job managing the system during that time. I'd give it a B or a B+ after all the factors that affected it. It turned out well and a lot of things that could have gone wrong didn't and things that needed to go right did.”
The water tower renovation project had been in the city’s capital improvement plans for quite some time and was long slated to be completed in 2024, which it missed by just six months. $1 million of the $1.2 million project was paid for by a grant.
Fiegenschuh said receiving grants and principal forgiveness loans for recent water projects is the reason why RMU has not had to make large increases in water rates. The city is also currently starting an iron removal plant project at Well 8 and considering the drilling of a new well.
“If you take all of the projects Adam has been involved with since he's been here, we've had rate increases but they've been very minimal,” Fiegenschuh said. “Because we need to keep up with the current costs, but we get all these grants and state funding and debt forgiveness. The local ratepayers aren't paying the full boat of all the infrastructure improvements we've made. I've been here eight years and we're over $20 million in infrastructure investments in just the water department. Half or most of that was either forgiven or received as a grant.”
Last fall, the city released the final design plan for the painting of the water tower on its social media. The new design mixes the city’s new branding font with the previous water tower design’s color and depiction of the Rochelle Township High School Hub logo. The city held a social media poll and solicited resident feedback before the city council decided on the final design.
Fiegenschuh said the positive response to the water tower’s new paint job has been overwhelming.
“In my eight years here, I've never seen so many positive likes on a Facebook post before this one about the water tower being repainted,” Fiegenschuh said. “We've talked about how we can start incorporating purple back in as we start replacing things like banners around town. Hub purple is important to folks in Rochelle and we want to make sure we incorporate that. It makes me happy that people like the look of that. When we get positive comments, that makes me happy.”
