Photo by Lester Smith
Tunneling deep under Hill Street near Suffield Academy’s west property gravel roadway, the boring machine powers a slow-turning augur inside a 24-inch casing and pushes them both into Suffield’s stoneless clay subsoil. The pit is big enough for the machine to back off and add additional 40-foot lengths of augur and casing for the long, diagonal traverse.
In the two months since the Observer’s first report, gas pipeline work has been active throughout its 6.7 miles in Suffield, plus a short stretch from the Agawam compressor station just over the town line and another to the construction pipeyard near the airport in East Granby.
In preliminary work, the right of way had been cleared and timber platforms were laid down on wetlands. Now, topsoil has been scraped aside. Forty-foot lengths of the 24-inch pipe have been laid out along the entire route, some with slight bends to accommodate ups and downs of the terrain and the places where the alignment takes a modest turn.
By mid-August, the pipes had been welded together along over half the length across the town, and a short stretch north of Hickory Street had been set five feet down in its new trench and covered with backfill. Trenching continued south of Hickory. The narrow cut used for most of the route is dug with a trencher something like an undershot waterwheel with cutting scoops instead of buckets.
In July a hole was bored to run the pipeline under Russell Avenue and a corner of Thistledown at their intersection. Unfortunately, the boring augur drifted a bit and cracked a sanitary sewer, whose repair left a troubling bump in a beautifully smooth, newly paved surface.
The boring crew moved to Hill Street, where the hole was successfully completed.
In early August, effort began at the Mountain Road crossing, west of Sacred Heart Church. But the discovery of an underground spring there caused this work to be interrupted.
Boring shifted to North Street, and that hole was completed by mid-August. This reporter watched with interest as a welded assembly of several 40-foot pipeline lengths was pulled through the bore hole, attached by a temporary weld to the bore casing being winched out. Work for reboring at Russell Avenue then resumed, this time from the south side.
At this writing, work at the Mountain Road crossing had not been resumed. Hale Street and Halladay Avenue West are to be crossed with road cuts.
Crossing under brooks also requires special effort. For these spots, high-capacity pumps are used to pump the flow around the crossing site during the pipe-laying work.
For residents wondering why there are piles of old tires alongside the road crossings: crewmen quickly lay the tires out on plywood panels when heavy excavators or bulldozers must cross, to protect the pavement. The crossing is then immediately swept clean by a power road brush.
Tennessee Gas reported in early August that the Connecticut pipeline project was on schedule to go on line by November 1.