On Thursday, July
2, NIPSCO was supposed to make an emergency repair of a leaking natural-gas
valve on Calumet Road, just south of the Norfolk Southern railroad
grade-crossing.
But the locate
company got to the scene late on Thursday, too late to begin excavation, so
the grade-crossing ended up being closed for eight hours that day for no
good reason.
So--after deadline
on Thursday--NIPSCO postponed the job until today, Monday, July 6, and
Street Commissioner John Schnadenberg duly informed the Chesterton
Tribune of that fact, though too late to make Thursday’s edition. The
Trib did get something up on the website, since the paper didn’t publish
a Friday edition.
Motorists in the
Downtown today will have noticed, however, that there was no NIPSCO crew
toiling away on Calumet Road and that the grade-crossing remained open.
That’s because
NIPSCO has simply postponed the job “until further notice,” Schnadenberg
said.
The reason this
time: a welder is required for the work but the NIPSCO crew was unable to
arrange for the services of one today.
NIPSCO is calling
the gas leak a “small” one (although pedestrians crossing the street have
apparently gotten whiffs of gas).