Huntsville, Alabama

The City of Huntsville, Alabama provides sanitary sewer service to a rapidly growing population near Huntsville International Airport, one of the region’s key economic hubs. As development around the airport corridor expanded, the city’s aging 18- and 24-inch ductile iron force main lines needed replacement to keep pace with demand and reduce the risk of failure in a critical service corridor.

To address this, the city partnered with contractor Garney Construction and consulting engineer Garver on the I-565 Force Main Relocation project, installing 36,410 linear feet of 30-inch HDPE DR17 DIPS pipe supplied by Consolidated Pipe and Supply. The new line replaced the aging ductile iron force main using a combination of open cut installation and two trenchless crossings.

The project’s location offered a rare opportunity to install pipe efficiently. Work took place along a 50 foot right of way that ran through airport property and surrounding crop fields, giving crews wide open space to work with the pipe. HDPE’s fusion process allowed the team to weld long pipe segments away from the trench, using two McElroy T900i fusion machines to stage joined sections along the planned centerline ahead of installation. Because HDPE fuses into a single continuous line free of mechanical joints, crews avoided the added time and risk that come with jointing rigid pipe materials, particularly across the airport property. This approach let fusion technicians Caleb Postell and Hunter Friese, working under foreman John Postell, help the crew install 5,700 linear feet of pipe in a single 16 hour shift.

Throughout construction, the city, Garney and Garver worked together to keep the project ahead of a demanding 270 day contract schedule. Despite six months of material lead time delays, the team achieved three months of schedule compression through value engineering, reaching substantial completion in November 2025. The project shows how HDPE’s flexibility and fast installation speed can help utilities modernize aging infrastructure and support long term growth around critical facilities like Huntsville International Airport.

Image: Garney Construction, 2025