High water levels hinder construction projects

13 years ago

By Natalie Bazinet
Staff Writer

CARIBOU — High water levels of the Little Madawaska River have hindering two pipeline construction projects, both literally a stone’s throw from completion.

Standing on the bank off the Grimes Mill Road, Solid Waste Director of the Tri-Community Landfill Mark Draper watched as water rushed downstream at 917 cubic feet per second on Friday morning — over 800 cubic feet per second higher than normal based off of a U.S. Geological Survey average for the last three years.

ne-stream-dc1-ar-37-clrAroostook Republican photo/Natalie Bazinet
Workers began efforts on Tuesday afternoon to drill from one bank to the other under the Little Madawaska River in Caribou on Tuesday afternoon.

“Last year at this time you could walk across this river and not get your feet wet,” Draper said.

Tri-Community landfill is 175 feet from completing their 2.3-mile pipeline project that connects the landfill to the Caribou Utilities District (CUD), where the landfill’s leachate (water that’s come into contact with garbage) will be treated.

Until the pipeline is completed, Tri-Community employees will continue hauling the leachate to the CUD one 6,300-gallon truckload at a time, as is the historic norm.

As Draper explained, CUD didn’t have the capacity to accept Tri-Community’s leachate when the landfill was first built, and there wasn’t a feasible way to pipe the leachate to Fort Fairfield for treatment.

Now that Caribou has the capacity for the leachate, the pipeline will save Tri-Community employees roughly 1,000 trips a year hauling approximately six million gallons of leachate.

But Mother Nature seemed to have other plans for the project, and her abundant rain has dampened efforts to build a cofferdam across the Little Madawaska River to lay two six-inch pipes under the riverbed — one pipe for daily operations and the other as a backup. The proposed cofferdam would have pushed river water to one side of the stream, allowing construction personnel of Soderberg Construction access to the riverbed to work.

But the river’s been raging with this summer’s record-setting precipitation, and building a cofferdam simply wasn’t possible.

In need of the pipeline as a more efficient means of transporting the leachate, officials with Tri-Community and Soderberg Construction opted for directional drilling under the river — essentially drilling down from one bank, under the river, and over to the opposite bank.

Subcontractors with Enterprise Trenchless Technologies, Inc. of Lisbon Falls were on site Tuesday afternoon for the directional drilling under the river, which will allow the two ends of the pipeline to finally meet after a season of opposing each other from the banks of the Little Madawaska. There’s a possibly that the project could be completed as early as today.

Expediting the weather-delayed project by essentially bypassing the river will cost an estimated $18,000 for directional drilling, and that cost that will be split between the contractor and Tri-Community. The total projected cost of the leachate pipeline project is approximately $1.7 million, which includes engineering, easements for right-of-way, environmental permits and construction.

What Draper found most frustrating about the delay was the effects of not completing the project were two-fold.

“The project that will allow the leachate to be transported to the Caribou Utilities District has not been completed due to the rain, but because there’s been so much rain, there’s been an increased amount of leachate,” Draper said on Friday.

But Tri-Community isn’t the only entity that’s been trying in vain to cross the Little Madawaska River this summer; just downstream, the Greater Limestone Water and Sewer District (LWSD) is also just shy of completing their pipeline that would connect their multi-million dollar project with the Aroostook River via a Caribou Utilities District existing pipeline.

As Limestone Water and Sewer Director Jim Leighton explained, directional drilling isn’t an option for their project as the pipe they plan to run under the river has a diameter of 21 inches.

Like the Tri-Community project, efforts to build a cofferdam earlier this summer were a wash.

“So now we’re doing the waiting game,” Leighton said, and it looks like they might win that game next week, pending Mother Nature cooperates.

Since Sept. 6 and 7, when the. river was rushing at over 2,500 cubic feet per second (bare in mind, a gallon of water weighs just over eight pounds), the water level has been steadily dropping. As of yesterday at noon, the river was “down” to 374 cubic feet per second. Waiting out the weather isn’t a problem for LWSC, as a few week’s delay won’t change the project’s cost.

While the delays undoubtedly come as a pain for those waiting for the river to drop, Leighton is confident that the project will find a window this fall.

“This [pipeline under the river] will connect us to the Aroostook River, then it’s just a matter of turning a couple of valves and we’ll be able to start utilizing the pipeline,” Leighton explained.

Leighton also preemptively clarified that while the Greater Limestone Water and Sewer District is connecting their pipeline with that of the Caribou Utilities District in order to reach the Aroostook River, all of Limestone’s wastewater will still be treated in Limestone — it’s not being transported to Caribou. Rather, LWSD is utilizing the same diffuser pipe as CUD to discharge into the Aroostook River.