Recognized by numerous states across the country, the second annual National Concrete Pipe Week, entitled “Maintaining Resiliency” is designed to educate communities and their leaders on the importance and strength of the nation’s concrete pipe and precast infrastructure. It serves to acknowledge the contributions of thousands of workers, hundreds of manufacturing plants and other related industries that support concrete pipe producers, and recognizes the integral part that the concrete pipe industry plays in the country’s infrastructure and economy.
County Materials leading the way
Wisconsin’s 2016 proclamation, signed by Governor Walker, stresses the “vital importance” that reinforced concrete pipe and precast play in the lives of the state’s citizens. Additionally, the proclamation signed by Iowa's Governor Terry Branstad, states that “reinforced concrete pipe and precast products and services could not be provided without the dedicated efforts of the concrete pipe and precast industry manufacturers, professionals, engineers, managers and employees…who build, design and maintain our transportation infrastructure, water supply, water treatment systems, solid waste systems, and other structures and facilities essential to serve our citizens.”
County Materials and the concrete pipe industry as a whole afford numerous benefits to the wider economy by offering durable products that create the framework for utilities and infrastructure, and by contributing to thousands of jobs. County Materials alone employs over 1,200 individuals in more than 40 locations. Since 1946, the company has been pivotal in supporting America’s infrastructure development. Today, their concrete pipe products are utilized in infrastructure, transportation construction, commercial, agricultural, municipal and residential developments.
The backbone to American infrastructure
Few contributions to modern construction are as fundamental as concrete pipe, or as overlooked. Private structures and public facilities essential to the country’s safety, sanitation and economy are possible, in large part, due to the innovative uses of reinforced and precast concrete pipe. While most citizens may be unaware of the technical details of manufacturing concrete piping, they no doubt appreciate its role in water management.
“For more than a century, concrete pipe has been the product of choice used in North America’s vast network of sewers and culverts, and yet most Americans don’t give these vital, ‘unseen’ structures a second thought,” said Matt Childs, president of the ACPA. Clark Wantoch, Executive Director of the Wisconsin Concrete Pipe Association, concurs: “The National Concrete Pipe Week brings awareness to the materials. When you think about a pipe, they are generally buried underground so out of sight, out of mind.”