News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
A piece of 1920s vintage wood pipe, pulled from a trench during Sisters’ current Hood Avenue/Fir Street water project.
The Hood Avenue/Fir Street water-piping project has revealed layers of history of Sisters' municipal services.
City Public Works Director Paul Bertagna last week displayed a piece of wood piping the construction crew dug up. The pipe dates back at least to the 1920s. Most wood piping of the era was made of cedar, Bertagna said, but the Sisters pipe was fir (abundant in the region).
The piping was surprisingly efficient and easy to maintain.
"When they had a leak with the wood pipe, they would just cut a hole and push in a plug," Bertagna explained. "Kinda neat old stuff."
Some tar-wrapped steel pipe dates back to the 1940s. The tar wrapping helped preserve the pipe from rust-through. Some of those pipes have continued to be in use, despite age and wear.
"Water-quality-wise, we've never had issues with these," Bertagna said. "It's just leaking, breaking."
The current project, like the big 1994 water main project, utilizes C900 PVC pipe. Some public works director may be digging it up in 2113, but it'll still be functioning properly.
"I think it's 100-year plus," Bertagna said.
The only natural enemy of the heavy-duty PVC is sunlight. The pipe comes straight from the factory to the job site, so it goes in the ground before the sun gets a chance to work on it.
"You don't want pipe that's been sitting in the yard for years, because that's the only thing that can degrade it," Bertagna said.
The project has been conducted at night to minimize disruption, and JAL construction crews have had to work around fiber optic cable and utility conflicts. But perhaps the biggest challenge of the work is dealing with unmapped, improvised - and eccentric - connections.
"We have an idea where we think the service lines are connected to the main line," Bertagna said.
One puzzler was the connection to the building that formerly housed El Rancho Grande. There was an improvised connection using a pair of one-inch pipes instead of a two-inch pipe, probably reflecting what materials were on hand at the time of the job. And the path of the pipe appeared random and strangely circuitous.
"The route they took - who knows why," Bertagna said.
Replacing aged pipe and rationalizing a crazy-quilt of connections demonstrates the reason the project was needed, Bertagna noted. The project will also boost fire flows at Fir Street and Hood Avenue.
"We needed to beef up fire flows in that area," Bertagna said.
Piping is upsized from eight to 12 inches on Hood and from six to 10 on Fir.
The project is moving along apace, after a pause over rodeo weekend.
"We've got all the main lines in; we've got almost all the service lines in on Hood street," Bertagna said.
Using a hot-tap process, "we've been able to connect with all the existing water lines without shutting any of them down."
Night work has been an effective way to get the project done without undue disruption of downtown businesses, according to both Bertagna and City Manager Andrew Gorayeb. The work on the upcoming Cascade Avenue road project will also be conducted mostly at night.
That means very long workdays for Bertagna and public works employee Andy Duran, who are supervising the project.
"For the last three weeks (Bertagna) has been putting in ... at least 20 extra hours a week," Gorayeb said. "At least; 20 to 30 hours is probably a fair estimate.
"We're proud and pleased to do anything we can to help local businesses," the city manager said. "And if working at night and these extra hours are what we need to do, we'll do it."
The project, which will cost $243,744.50 funded through the city's water fund and water system development charges (SDCs), is expected to wrap up on schedule on June 30. Then, Bertagna will go on vacation.
Jim Cornelius is editor in chief of The Nugget and author of “Warriors of the Wildlands: True Tales of the Frontier Partisans.” A history buff, he explores frontier history across three centuries and several continents on his podcast, The Frontier Partisans. For more information visit www.frontierpartisans.com.
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