By KEVIN NEVERS

When all the invoices are paid—they’re still coming in—the emergency replacement of a force main beneath Porter Ave. will have cost the Chesterton Utility in the neighborhood of $450,000.

And it’s still unclear where the Utility Service Board will find the funds to defray that expense.

At their meeting Monday night, members briefly discussed the feasibility of several options, including a loan from a reserve fund which the Utility must maintain under Indiana Code until it has re-paid the State Revolving Loan used to finance the extension of the wastewater treatment plant.

Perhaps, on the other hand, a federal grant. “Can we get (U.S. Rep. Pete) Visclosky to help?” President Larry Brandt ventured. “He’s big on sewer projects, for other people. We have to figure out how to come up with the money.”

One thing is certain, however. The bill could have been hundreds of thousands of dollars higher had not Town Engineer Mark O’Dell designed a temporary by-pass from the force main, originating at the Dickinson Road lift station, to a gravity main beneath Porter Ave. east of Second Street. That by-pass permitted the re-activation on June 28 of the Dickinson Road lift station, which crews, including contractors, had been pumping with vacuum trucks around the clock since the failure of the force main was discovered, on June 21.

O’Dell put the cost of pumping the lift station at around $15,000 per day. The math is simple. The emergency replacement of the force main itself was completed on Friday, July 18, or 21 days after the lift station was reactivated: $15,000 X 21 is $315,000, which the Utility would have been out of pocket without O’Dell’s design.

“It’s hard to say how great it was to get that tie-in,” Member John Schnadenberg said. “It was a good idea.”

Meanwhile, a representative from American Pipe of Birmingham, Ala., the manufacturer of the ductile iron pipe which corroded in the ground long before it should have, has visited the site and taken small samples of it for testing, Superintendent Steve Yagelski said.

Yagelski also said that he has asked an independent firm in Chicago with access to a metallurgist for a quote on additional testing.

Eventually, Yagelski added, the rest of the force main—from Fifth Ave. where the 20-inch PVC replacement pipe was fitted to the original 16-inch ductile iron pipe, to South Calumet Road—will have to be replaced as well.

Members took a moment at the end of the meeting to thank everyone who had a hand in the emergency project: staff, employees, contractors. “We can’t say enough about our staff, from the top down to the bottom, about how this thing on Porter Ave. was handled,” Member Andy Michel said.

Member Jim Raffin, who happened to drive by the site on June 21, just after the sink holes which alerted the Utility to the failure of the pipe had opened, expressed his astonishment at how quickly excavating contractor R.V. Sutton Inc. was able to muster a crew, within hours. “Honestly,” he said, “it was amazing how fast everybody responded.”

For his part Brandt noted that the week-long de-activation of the Dickinson Road lift station—which pumps flow to the wastewater treatment plant from virtually the entire service area east of Ind. 49—did not result in a single backup. “To my knowledge not one customer was affected by the project,” he said.

Yagelski did particularly thank the neighbors who live along Porter Ave. for their patience and cooperation during the ordeal.

Posted 7/22/2008