Boring!

Not attention span, but horizontal boring for sewer lines and soil borings. I learned all about it at the last council meeting. Our sewer project continues to move forward. We got the report for the soil borings along the route for the new sewer line. Not a geologist, but still minorly interesting. Here is what it typically looks like under our feet, or at least along the proposed route:

0-5 feet, fill. 5-12 feet, Wisconsinan Glacial Till, 13-17 feet Glacial Outwash, and beyond 17 feed, Bedrock. I actually consulted Wikipedia to see that the heck that was. Another boring also had Pre-Illinoian Glacial Till. Reading about it made my head hurt, but still sorta interesting about how the glaciers dropped all this stuff.

So anyway, the engineers need to know what they will encounter while putting in the new sewer line, which will be about 20 feet deep. And actually, we will not need to dig the whole street up. It is going to be horizontal boring. Vermeer in Pella has a machine that can do that kind of work--up to around 300 feet. And the bedrock is a good place to do it, because it is a bit more solid, and not like trying to bore in sand. Apparently that bedrock stuff is the grey flaky stuff. You've probably seen it if you've seen a basement dug.

Anyway, a hole will need to be dug at Cottonwood and Maple, then bore 300 feet, dig another hole, bore another 300 feet and dig another hole. Manholes will be installed where these holes are. So Cottonwood will have to be closed in spots where these holes are. Looking to start this sometime after Memorial Day. So it will just need like 1 block detours, so not much disruption.

I'm really excited about this plan (if you can be excited about a sewer project). It is going to more than double our sewer line capacity to the plant. And most of the east side of town will have a more direct path to the sewer plant, cutting down the chances of backups in the NE side of town, and the Samson neighborhood.