A NIPSCO crew directional-boring a natural-gas line under 100E has once again ruptured a sanitary sewer pipe.

The same 12-inch clay pipe, actually, that was damaged a couple of weeks ago, only a few hundred feet further to the south.

Town Engineer Mark O’Dell told the Chesterton Tribune that evidence of the rupture was discovered on Tuesday when a collections crew was jetting the pipe and began to create a sink hole in the area of Davies-Rensberger Surveying Inc. at 1105 N. 100E. On Wednesday the site was hydro-excavated and it was found that the NIPSCO crew had not only bored through the pipe but then pulled back the apparatus and for an unknown reason bored under the pipe as well.

NIPSCO was contacted, O’Dell said, and NIPSCO subsequently retained the services of R.V. Sutton Inc. to repair the damage. An R.V. Sutton crew was on site for nearly 12 hours on Thursday, from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m., in what proved to be a major operation requiring two trench boxes and additional shoring efforts due to the saturated ground.

Only St. Paul Lutheran Church is connected to the sanitary sewer pipe at that part of the line, O’Dell noted, and its drains and toilets were monitored closely to ensure that there were no backups.

O’Dell did say that a crew is now going to video the entire line to determine whether NIPSCO has inadvertently bored through that pipe in any other locations.

NIPSCO at the time was installing a natural-gas lateral to the Davies-Rensberger business as part of the South Calumet District project.

A similar rupture in the same pipe was made on April 7 by a NIPSCO crew directional-boring a different natural-gas line.

Posted 4/24/2009