V&A Consulting Engineers (V&A) was retained by the Coachella Valley Water District (CVWD) to assist in the district-wide effort to improve the efficiency of the CVWD’s 12 cathodic protection (CP) systems. V&A provided corrosion protection consulting services to assess the CP systems owned by CVWD. The CP systems for the Bombay Beach pipeline have been offline since 2013, when it was found that the pipelines suffered from electrical discontinuities. V&A provided corrosion protection consulting services to assess the locations of discontinuities so the CP system could be brought back online. For the other 11 projects, the purpose of the testing was to document the physical condition of the CP facilities, including rectifiers, current control equipment, anodes, shunts, bonding, coatings, and isolation systems for impressed current, sacrificial anode, and corrosion monitoring systems, and to perform operation testing in the field.
V&A oversaw the assessment of twelve different structures and pipelines. The condition assessment consisted of visual evaluation with photo documentation, rectifier output measurements, and the attenuation, linear resistance, and fixed-cell methods for determining electrical continuity. V&A prepared multiple detailed reports for each facility’s CP system that included recommendations for continued monitoring and maintenance of the CVWD systems. The goal of the project was to protect and ensure the structural integrity of the CVWD’s existing domestic water, sanitation, stormwater, non-potable, recharge, canal and irrigation facilities.
