Gurnee to spend $900,000 to rehab water tower

Lack of water tower maintenance has caught up with Gurnee, forcing the village to OK nearly $900,000 in funds over the next six years to refurbish and maintain its largest tower.

The tower located at Northwestern and Country Club avenues was built in 1986 and has not had any paint or maintenance work over the past 25 years, said Tom Rigwood, director of public works.

"We need to get on it immediately from a painting perspective because if it gets worse we are going to greatly increase the cost of getting that Northwestern tower painted," said Village Administrator James Hayner.

The cost to refurbish the tower to a like-new condition will cost the village about $241,000 a year for the next three years. After that, it will cost $56,000 a year for the following three years for maintenance. Then, for the two years after that, the costs for maintenance might go up by about 5 percent.

The $900,000 price tag came as a surprise to Mayor Kristina Kovarik, who thought it included the village's additional three towers.

"We don't have any money budgeted for the other three?" asked the mayor. "I honestly thought the price was for all four," she said.

Rigwood said the tower would have to be taken out of service next year if the work was not started almost immediately.

"If this goes offline we would have to buy water from Waukegan," Rigwood said. "If we don't take care of this this year it would be out of service for several months."

The contract was approved for the Utility Service Co., which maintains over 6,000 water towers across the United States.

"We are front-loading the first three years to get up to a baseline condition and the next five years becomes maintenance, so we won't have a big surprise like this again," Kovarik said."

"These assets are too valuable not to put the money into and retain them because to replace them is real expensive," Hayner said.