That ruckus on
Saturday at 23rd Street and West Porter Ave. was the result of a breach in
an eight-inch sanitary force main, caused when a telecom company boring
fiber-optic conduit hit the main after failing to check the pipe’s depth.
The breach occurred
around mid-afternoon, Chesterton Town Engineer Mark O’Dell told the
Chesterton Tribune today.
O’Dell said that
the company is installing fiber-optic conduit from the new “Christmas tree”
telecom tower at Bethlehem Lutheran Church on 1100N down the west side of
23rd Street. Although the Chesterton Utility did provide a locate for the
company, the company’s field crew neglected to dig a pothole to ascertain
the pipe’s depth, instead boring right through it, O’Dell said.
The force main in
question serves pretty much everything west of 23rd Street: Abercrombie
Woods, Westwood Manor, Crocker, Golfview Estates, and Porter Cove.
It took a Utility
crew around five hours to temporarily patch the breach, O’Dell said, with
assistance from the Street Department and the Porter Public Works
Department. O’Dell in particular expressed his gratitude to Porter Public
Works Director Brenda Brueckheimer for tasking two of her workers to the
scene as backup for the duration of the fix. “We’re highly appreciative of
that,” he said.
O’Dell added that
Utility Superintendent Dave Ryan is currently working on invoicing the
telecom company, seeking compensation for the man-hours and materials spent
on the emergency repair.