In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, water management facilities have had to figure out how to keep systems up and running while avoiding putting their technicians and other employees at risk of contracting or spreading the coronavirus. 

Simply not servicing valves is not an option. A malfunction can lead to a serious headache, said Roger Lah, Technical Product Specialist for Cla-Val, not only in terms of coping with a malfunction but also from bad press or frustrated residents. 

“Whenever you see a pipe main failure on the nightly news, they don’t talk about how it happened. It could be just old pipes, or it could’ve been a valve that was never serviced that actually caused the problem to begin with,” Lah said. “There’s often a story behind it.”