Article from GoUpstate.com
By Zach Fox, Staff Writer
Just two years after the Gaffney Peachoid was completely stripped and repainted for the first time ever, the Cherokee County landmark is getting yet another new coat of paint.
Gaffney Board of Public Works officials wanted the water tank to look more like a ripened peach, said Kim Fortner, the agency’s operations engineer and assistant manager.
“The colors weren’t blended to look like a peach and the tank up top wasn’t painted at all,” Fortner said. “The final product didn’t have the appearance it needed to have.”
Fortner said a long-term contract for care and maintenance of the water tanks the board owns and operates was transferred this year from the company that did the 2015 work to Southern Corrosion, a water tank care company based in North Carolina.
So the new paint job for the Peachoid won’t cost the Board of Public Works or taxpayers anything extra, she said.
“It’s (money) just going to a different place,” she said.
The contract is for a quarterly fee of about $18,000, Fortner said. That adds up to about $72,000 a year.
In 2015, all the paint on the Peachoid was sandblasted away, leaving a metallic silver sphere hovering above Interstate 85. It was the first time the peach had ever been stripped of its orange and yellow colors.