Week 25, Part 1- Railroad Crossing and Lift Stations

This week a major effort was finally begun- boring under a railroad track! This is the final stage in bringing the Effluent Force Main into the Wetland Discharge area. Going in the big unknown was whether a hard version of basalt would be encountered and take several days to drill through. Luckily, that was not the case. We did hit some rock but it did not create unusual problems.

Here is a good look at the boring equipment sitting down in a hole by the tracks-





While the drill bit was going under the tracks Thorco Construction monitored the location with a detector-



After boring the initial hole, they attached a "back-reamer" and pulled it through from the other side. This back-reamer is a medieval-looking piece of metal!-





During the back-ream operation a shaft broke and had to be welded back together. Here's an interesting shot of that repair-



While the railroad track under-boring occurred off the main site, Owens Construction was backfilling Lift Station 1. This pump station sits about 450 feet southeast of the Treatment building on the main site, for point of reference-





On the main site CNI (Contractors Northwest Inc.) built walls for the final lid on Lift Station 2. This is the pump station that sends treated water down south to the Wetland Discharge area-



Also on the main site, CNI started building forms for footings in the Mechanical building. This picture shows the middle of the Mechanical building- the UV room. More pictures of progress in the Mechanical and Operations buildings are in the next update!