OTTAWA — Residents and those passing through town this week may have noticed steam rising from the sewer system and a collection of trucks clustered on 11th Street between Agner and Pratt streets and North Perry Street.
The trucks and employees are from Miller Pipeline out of Indianapolis. The village hired the company to install special adhesive lining in decaying sections of the sewage line, said Russell Bales, waste water director of the Village of Ottawa.
“Lining the pipes is a lot more cost effective then doing a deep cut,” Bales said. “It would probably be five to ten times as costly.”
The village paid Miller Pipeline a total of $142,800 for the project, he said. They are laying 3,330 feet of 10-inch line and 1,013 feet of 8-inch line.
“If you did it open cut it would be $2 million or more,” Bales said.
Not only would it cost so much more, it would also be inconvenient for the residents of Ottawa, he said. There would be service interruptions for extended periods of time, traffic would have to be rerouted and the project would take months to complete, he said.
Inserting the lining does interrupt service for homes along the section of the sewer being worked on at the time, said Smith. Residents are advised not to use their water for a few hours because the waste has no where to go and can back up into clean water lines.
The lining being used has a special resin on the inside that adheres to every nook and cranny of the decaying pipe, creating a perfect seal, Smith said. This process produces a eye-watering smell like rubber cement, and an odor of waste is also present.
The lining has to be kept in a refrigeration truck, which is kept on site. When it is needed, the lining is inverted by hand, lowered into the section of sewage pipe and then air is pumped into it to finish inverting it, Smith said. Once the lining is in place, the Miller Pipeline workers pump steam into the liner at 9.5 PSI and around 193 degrees F, which triggers the adhesive resin, sealing the lining to the host pipe. The host pipe could continue to decay around the lining and it would still hold the host pipe shape and completely replace it, he said.
“If they were to replace this 350-foot section it would take weeks,” Smith said. “It takes us a day.”
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